#let's see how long it takes me though

[spookybeandoodle]

I decided I hate myself and will post this when no one will probably see it but that’s okay cause I’m sick and have a hard time sleeping.

Anyways hi I doodled two listeners and a bad bitch. You decide what type of bad I don’t care. I dont really go here anymore but I doodled them so here.

[demonslayedher]

I finished posting the unabashedly educational Sword Fic.

It includes a detailed (but hopefully beginner-friendly) explanation of all the steps of making a Nichirin blade from a sunny mountain like Mt. Youkou, a touch of swordsmith and metalworker folk lore (including demons), meta about what must make Kimetsu no Yaiba's swordsmithing methods different from real life methods, some character exploration for Haganezuka and his polishing method, vocabulary and additional resources in the chapter notes, and hopefully, an endearing, silly POV character to learn this all through.

[flowercrowngods]

making a real post for @rvspecter pls bear with me

anyway harvey hurt fic where after mike is busted and given a second chance at life (or a third, really) and pearson specter litt seizes the chance to instate a pro bono department mike is heading because he wants to get it right this time and harvey will do just about anything to keep him, these two men finally mention this Thing between them and decide to give it a try. and it’s good. it’s fragile and it’s tentative and it’s gentle and it’s the same as it’s always been but with more tenderness, more honesty, more vulnerability (and more sex of course) and it’s good. against all odds, it’s so good.

but then one day, long after hours, donna approaches harvey in his office and her eyes are shining, but it’s not a glow harvey is used to — he never wants to get used to donna’s eyes filled with tears so he asks her what’s wrong, but he’s not ready for the answer. because she tells him she can’t work for him anymore. she tells him she’s leaving him — to work for louis at first, maybe to quit altogether. the fact do the matter is she can’t be the Donna to his Harvey anymore because she’s in love with him and she thought she had it under control but she doesn’t, okay, she doesn’t and it hurts and she wants to be happy for him and mike because they’re so good but all this time she’d never thought that harvey would ever find someone real, and now that he has, well. she can’t pretend anymore that it doesn’t tear her up inside and she doesn’t want to put that on any of them so she’s doing the mature thing and leaving. to heal. to get over him. to come back stronger.

and she’s so, so sorry.

they listen to gordon one last time, they toast to thirteen years one last time — her words, not his, but they drive a knife into his heart nonetheless because harvey doesn’t do one last-anything and yet here sits his best friend and asks for one last night together and who is he but to give her everything she wants and more. she’s his donna — still, tonight; one last night. she is.

he doesn’t tell mike that night. couldn’t, even if he wanted to; because he doesn’t have the words. but in the secure hold of mike’s arms, he says “donna won’t be working for me anymore, starting tomorrow.” and he doesn’t mention how that means that donna went to jessica and louis first, he doesn’t mention that he was the last to know, he doesn’t explain how he wasn’t given a chance to fix this — not this time. “donna quit?” mike asks, and harvey swallows, shakes his head, shrugs. “just me,” he says. “just me.” and when mike pulls him closer and holds him tighter and tells him “i’m so sorry, harvey,” it’s the first i’m sorry that night that he believes.

unfortunately, sorry never fixed anything.

especially when soon after, mike finds out just why donna left. and he gets all up in his head about it, he allows himself to spiral because he’s so ready to succumb to tunnel vision and obsessing over solutions to problems that aren’t his to fix. and so he tells harvey that he can’t be the thing that comes between him and donna. they’re soulmates after all, mike can’t bear to be the one to sever their bond. harvey doesn’t understand. he’s the one who’s supposed to lose his mind over having lost his best friend and pretend like everything is okay, what right does mike have to make that about himself, to take it upon himself to fix everything when harvey’s the fixer, harvey is the one who solves problems and protects people. but mike won’t hear any of that and tells harvey that he can’t do it like this if it means hurting donna because she’s his best friend, too, and he wants to get it right this time. he doesn’t want to build this new life on decisions that hurt his people — not again. he’s hurt enough people, he can’t keep doing it.

harvey wants to ask him why he’s always so ready to protect everyone at his expense. isn’t this thing between them, their relationship, isn’t it meant to stop them from hurting each other? why is it okay to hurt harvey, but not to hurt donna?

he doesn’t ask any of that, only tells him that they’re not in high school, and that they’re either doing this or not, but he refuses to base their relationship on whether or not his best friend is okay with seeing him happy or not. “you’re either in this with me, mike, or you’re out. that hasn’t changed, and it won’t, because donna will get over it and everything will be back to normal before you know it.”

“you don’t know that.”

“yes i do, because we’re grown-ups and we get over things.”

famous last words, it turns out, because mike just slowly shakes his head, agonising over this and not thinking, clearly not thinking when he says, “i’m sorry, harvey. i can’t to this; not like this.”

and all he can do is watch mike’s back as he all but runs from him, dragging his heart behind him, through the dirt, uncaring as bits and pieces of it chip off with every step mike takes, with every second that passes and allows the words i can’t and i’m sorry, harvey echo in the hollow of his chest.

we’re grown-ups. we get over things. well, tough fucking luck.

and this is how harvey loses the two most important people in his life in the matter of a week. before he knows it, he’s alone, left to fend for himself and hollowed out. his walls are broken down, deconstructed piece by piece by carefully, gentle hands to reveal what’s underneath — only for the hands to retreat, letting in the icy cold and accepting what’s inside to wither and die.

there’s a reason harvey specter makes his own luck; the universe isn’t very forthcoming otherwise. a fact that is proven when he finds a stranger outside his building when all he wants is to curl up and breathe through the cracks of his broken hearts that have pierced his lungs, they must have, surely they must have, because he can’t breathe. and he doesn’t learn how to breathe again when the woman — a kid, really, merely twenty-five — reveals that she’s his half sister. because it turns out the reason lily specter was so ready to up and leave all those years ago; the reason she didn’t fight for her family and instead blamed it all on harvey, was because she was pregnant. and she lied about it — for twenty-six years.

amelia selene specter is the little sister harvey has always wished for — but cancer is a curse that rests on the specter family, and while marcus got lucky twice, selene isn’t. she didn’t have the money for medical resources, and it’s eating harvey alive that he didn’t know, that there was no way for him to help her and that there’s no way now.

but there is. because selene has two kids, seven and four, and she needs his help because they can’t get lost in the system, they can’t live with total strangers or be separated because the system doesn’t actually care about children, they only care about not feeling guilty. and she won’t ask lily. these two angels must be kept from her at all costs because she ruined two families already, she won’t ruin this one.

and harvey is obsessed with the thought of more family, he needs to take care of and be there for someone and he’s ready to take on the world to protect his niece and nephew — but he’s not warm, he’s not available, he’s not even at home most of the time, nor is his place suitable for kids.

he agrees to take them in and find a solution though. he promises selene that he’ll be there for them. he’ll always be there. and when he gets to meet them — a few days before his sister dies way too young, way too alive for something like death to not rip him apart entirely — he gets attached instantly and vows to himself and to selene that nothing will happen to them as long as he’s there.

even though harvey just lost his family — the one he chose, the one he was born into, and the one he never got to meet. even though harvey’s entire world was deconstructed with no one around to put it back together. even though he doesn’t know how, because evidently he got it wrong every single time, harvey gets to build a new family with these kids. and though it tears him up inside, it heals something inside him too — and sometimes they balance each other out, and he can breathe again for just a little while as he reads to charlotte because she’s feisty and afraid of nightmares and not listening when he says she’ll be tired in the morning because “i’m tired in the morning anyway, but now i wanna read” and he trades her going to bed for a bedtime story, and she falls asleep with her face pressed into his side.

it’s so frail, though, so fragile, this little family, and he knows what it’s like when everything breaks. he knows what it’s like to lose one’s family — over and over and over again. and he’s terrified that he’s building himself back up the wrong way. he’s terrified because there’s no one keeping him together but both his hands are occupied holding these children that cry for their mama.

he’s terrified because he’s not supposed to be doing this alone. but everyone else has made their choice and he, as always, is just there to bear the consequences and try to turn it into a win.

one day, he will. he has to. and one day, he’s not alone anymore.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[valleymyristica]

[Masterpost] FOP What it takes

┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑ ⠀⠀░░▒▒▓▓▓██████▓▓▓▒▒░░ 🌸 In The Beginning 🌸 ⠀⠀░░▒▒▓▓▓██████▓▓▓▒▒░░ ㅤ [ Read on AO3 ] ┝━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┥

Chapter 1, To get a star Chapter 2, To make a wish Chapter 3, To be sick Chapter 4, To make it through [Comic] Chapter 5, To have a normal day Chapter 6, To 'fix' a farther Chapter 7, To live with the results Chapter 8, To have happy and normal days Chapter 9, To worry for a friend Chapter 10, To fail a friend Chapter 11, To run away Chapter 12, To WORK. [Intermission]

┝━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┥ ⠀🌲 ░░ ░░░ ░░░░░░ 🌲 ┝━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┥

[ Information ] Chapter 1 (4/2), Chapter 2 (11/2), Chapter 3 (18/2), Chapter 4 (25/2), Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10,

Tags: #fop What It takes -> All works that fall under the story

#fop What It takes Chapters -> All the chapters of the story

#fop What It takes Art -> Just the things I create for the story. Don't promise much, but just something. Better than nothing, right?

#fop What It takes Ask -> All asks related to the story

#fop What It takes Fanart -> Doubt it, but there is one, though, we have a long way to go till we get there, but do hope we get there. Man, and then we have her too, I really do hope we get to that point and meet her. Then we have pesky Bug, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We haven't even gotten to the place to return to yet. Well, we haven't really started yet, have we?

#Valley Writing -> For all the writing we do

#Valley Creation -> For that one game I made

#A little ask in my valley of despair -> For all the asks I get, yay!

Read other stories on AO3

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[deus-ex-mona]

farewell, my idiot son…

[desideriumwriter]

angst you say?

What about reader x Fred where reader is mad for him but doesn’t want to do anything to ruin what they already have (doesn’t help that he jokingly flirts) and she kind has her hopes up but then Fred goes out with someone else and now she’ll never be able to do anything because Fred’s happy and in love with someone who will never be her

So fast forward to war times, Fred hands her a letter before the war and is like if I die, read this please and reader is like “you’re getting this back”

But then he dies and it’s big sad and the end is her reading the letter where he confesses that he loved her but didn’t think she’d feel the same so he tried to move on :)

How’s that for angst? I say with hope as I’d thought about it in two mins

- 🐍

oh. my. god. this is evil. this is so evil. i’m on it.

[bumbleblurr]

So I've FINALLY been consumed by BlurrBee but wanted to ask you something... How do you feel about ShockBlurrBee (the TFA one I mean)?

oh em gee hello it's been a hot minute since I've gotten an ask on this blog loll

Obviously I love Blurrbee, though I'm also a big fan of shockbee too. Sooooo. My thoughts on shockblurrbee...... Complicated actually!

At first I was like "mmmm I am not rlly a shock/blurr guy but. I can tolerate it with Bee buffer actually" but then I kinda fell off again bc I got super turned off by shock/blurr to an extreme degree </3

Now uhhhh . I think I can tolerate it again with the Bee buffer but I'm not super passionate about it. I think the tricky part is I see shockbee and blurrbee to be Very different timeline situations for them to respectively occur. Like idk, I often think Blurrbee ends up forming in a timeline where Bee closes off from Shockwave to heal alongside Blurr. While Shockbee I see it as Bee and Shockwave reconciling and that's how that conflict between them is settled. (Both situations I personally struggle to see blurr & shocks working things out. I struggle to vibe with them in general bc I see them not even having a particularly strong/"good" relationship before cubing anyhow)

BUT HEY that's just how I usually view these pairings and it's not canon at all. One can easily imagine a situation where they all grow close together, and I'll probably nod along with it and 👍. I'm not ur boss man be creative to ur heart's desires<33

[famewolf]

I'm gonna be a little quiet on here until after I start playing Dragon Age. I don't want to be spoiled and the urge to click on posts that have DA tags blacklisted is mounting. And just like with Inquisition, I want to go in totally blind.

[nichiperi]

Guh....the big boy painting won't be done by the arbitrary deadline I set for myself uuurrrrgghhhhh

[teethbomb]

mob psycho(logical horror) 100

[caterpillarinacave]

You've been waiting a while, every snapping branch or sound of the forest testing your patience, but as you catch your breath you check your things, you were mostly packed beforehand in case of an emergency, so all the important things are there, you're sure you'll be fine if it turns out you need to slip through the door after all.

Eventually the sounds of footsteps begin to pervade the air, you gather your things and open the door, just enough to dart through if needed, your company walks into the clearance in the trees, you can see who's in charge as soon as they step through, a confident aura about them, they see you and call out an order, the rest of the group halts, there is a brief moment of quiet while you each study the other, finally the standstill is broken, the leader of the group introduces themself and you return the favor, you ask what they want and they tell you they're from a group funded quietly by the government to explore the next dimension, you ask more specifical what they want with you, they tell you they are interested in learning of your world and your capabilities, they want you to join them, they promise to help you in any way they can, providing resources about what they know and offer assistance in your journey.

Do you accept their offer?

No

[thegirlwholied]

Charmed (1998) rewatch but only seasons 1-3 and then treating the season 4 premiere as an open-ended finale 🤷🏻‍♀️

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Some Batman: Telltale thoughts

[this is a Batman Telltale critical post, ye be warned.]

So. There are perhaps no words in the english language to describe with how stupid i feel right now.

I started Telltale Batman because i thought that it's one of the more distinct unconventional Batman narratives that would let you have a more interesting, complex and nuanced relationship between Bruce and Joker— the game even lets you bring all of Bruce's sincere hypocrisy and sentimental selfishness to the surface and have him admit that yes, he can fight the rogues gallery because it takes a madman to know a madman; to love a madman. For a moment i geniunely thought that i can escape the everpresent shadow of DC hays code in the freakshow funhouse that is Batman comics, i thought Telltale had done something different.

But telltale's approach to The Enemy Within is so flaky and flimsy and timid at best— such noncommittal twist on themes of pain and grief. They take on a hefty plotline, "what does it take to actually fight through evil and be surrounded by it? How long does it take before your resolve and your selfhood cracks? When you lose the mask, which one did you truly lose— The ideal persona, the superhero, the crusader, or the person underneath, the casket that holds all your humanity and your heart and your hopes? How long can you stare onto the abyss before it stares onto you?" It's indeed a very Nietzsche approach to Batman— except that a good Nietzsche narrative takes a lot of intentional plot points and honesty of thought and of heart. And Telltale doesn't commit, not to Bruce's characterization, and not to any other character, and definitely not to Joker's journey in any variation of it. The existence of the Vigilante route is useless on every front; Joker is going to turn into a villain anyway, just with a different hello kitty eyeshadow palette and an extra bland consolation lollipop. No good choice Bruce makes on Joker's behalf affects anything whatsoever, and i particularly love the "community and friendship and sympathy do not help the mentally ill and all that ever works is punishment and shock therapy and confinement and loneliness" message the vigillante route puts on the table, charming charming status quo commandments from DC as always.

Telltale Batman could only be revolutionary if it had dared to break comic convention and let the vigillante route play out like Selina and Bruce's relationship always does; very grey morality, irrational, full of tension and trust, unstable, intriguing, inexcusable, irreversible, unavoidable and heartfelt, human. But we can't have nice things in batmanverse, so both Joker routes run on stuck gears and topple and fall into a predictable narrative hole that neither Bruce nor Joker can claim out of.

And on the predictable front? this story is too lukewarm to be a good time for me personally. When you get 84 Batman comics per minute every other Tuesday, all ending the same way no matter whatever the fickity happens inbetween, you have to pull no punches. This is my 53368532th Batman-with-tragic-batjokes-implications read of the week, say something new or forever hold your blue-balling silence, i dont care.

[volivolition]

Idk if you saw or not but a new chapter of the fury of a shattered mirror dropped last night! I haven’t read it yet but I thought I should let you know 😎👍

awughgh HELL YEAH!! ive been away from my laptop for a while so i didnt see, thank you birdy!! :] this is the best news ive had all day hkjgh <33 excited very excited going to read it now <33