#life changing outcomes

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[fistfuloflightning]

In all honesty, they hadn’t been enemies at the beginning, not until Shen Qingqiu had pitted them against each other. Then they became rivals. But it’s an old, old trope and Ming Fan is tired of fighting. Each go-round is the same thing, each life a painfully familiar path, no matter what changes. Sometimes he lives, sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes at Luo Binghe’s hands, sometimes not.

Those times are the worst, because Ming Fan can never forget those large, horrified eyes watching him die.

[faunina]

happy TWO YEAR anniversary to everyone who attended the destiel wedding!

and happy valentines day to the rest of you guys <3 click the image for a surprise!

if you’ve ever seen that one post (i’ll link it in the replies) about the parallels between the rodeo scene in 12x11 and the movie “urban cowboy” and it entirely broke your brain, then this post is for you. and also i’m kissing you on the mouth

[ID. Digital art of Dean Winchester done in black and white. He’s is laid back on top of an electric bull. One hand rests on his hip while the other hovers in mid-air, fingers slightly curled, and he seems to be looking at it. When clicked, the transparency shows Castiel standing behind him. Castiel is holding Dean’s hand to his lips, while his other hand supports the back of Dean’s head. Castiel has a visible halo and wings that he has curled protectively around Dean. End ID.]

[lambjock]

hmm seeing some people say that a max who saves arcadia bay wouldn’t try and use her powers again for a similar reason … but i actually think she would! she is nothing but angry and resentful of her choice to sacrifice chloe over arcadia bay — writes in her journal that she loathes chloe for being so sacrificial, that it wasn’t worth it, etc. i think there’s something deeply reasonable about max making the mature choice, the one that hurt her the most, and secretly thinking she made the wrong call. thinks, if i could do it again, i’d rip that photo, i’d never let chloe leave … so when safi dies, she almost views it as a fix-it. she regresses! i think a max that kills chloe is someone who could never make that choice again, and it shows in double exposure. when she relives the bathroom scene, ten years later, she does what she did that first time : she reaches out with her right hand to save chloe, safi, whatever, and repeats herself like she’s still eighteen and about to come into her power. i could talk about this in length, but i genuinely think max not ‘learning her lesson’ is more about her trauma and regret rather than her not maturing. she is known to go back on her choices anyway, it is well within her nature … and when people are triggered, they aren’t exactly in the mindset to make rational choices anyway.

[retributory]

i'm going to say something that a lot of american trans people online might not like to hear and that is that some of you are so addicted to being scared and miserable that you refuse to take any steps to make your life better. fear-mongering bullshit aside, whether or not there is a nebulous future where you "can't" transition doesn't even matter at all. it is easier than ever to transition; you can go online right the hell now and buy some fucking hormones. hell, you can synthesize your own with enough know-how! thats not to say everything is all peaches and cream but it comes to a point where you have to take your life into your own hands. a government body will never be able to stop you from taking scissors to your hair, from stuffing your bras or packing your briefs, from asserting your name, from voice training, so on and so forth . . . there are millions of trans people before you that stuck it out through worse, and there will be millions of trans people after you that will stick it out through whatever bullshit comes their way. there are many, many people out there who have a very vested interest in convincing you that you are not the owner of your own body and that you cannot take control of your life. you are, and you can

[novadreii]

rewatched arrival for the hundredth time. this movie never fails to gut punch me with its approach to determinism. louise embracing her future that she knows every moment of, despite the tremendous loss and pain it contains, with open arms. she doesn't hesitate, or ruminate on how she can try and change it. she accepts it all, the good and the bad, because what she gains is worth it, so many times over for her. she steels herself against a certain future and runs forward to meet it all, to love, learn, and lose, and trusts and leans on herself to live through it all. because that's what life is; it's the joy and the suffering. to try and isolate the joy alone is madness, futility in its purest definition.

comparing her line of thinking to a palindrome (how she named her daughter, hannah), the movie kept emphasizing, "it's the same backwards as it is forwards." it doesn't matter if you can see the end; life is the same whether you live it "forwards" (without knowledge of the future) or "backwards" (with foresight). it doesn't change the significance of your life experiences; to try and avoid certain future pain just because you have the knowledge of it is a zero sum game. you think you win because you avoided pain, but you also avoided the joy that preceded it. the metamorphosis. so you still lose if you try to win, and vice-versa.

all you can do is rush forward and take it all head-on. see this whole beautiful mess as your one most precious gift; this one life, this one chance, a laughably miniature blip on the colossus that is linear time, to experience all there is to feel before you return back to an eternity without perception. it's all worth it, because only in living a full-fledged life open to everything it has to offer does the experience of living turn out to be greater than the sum of its parts; it's in trying to beat the system (avoid pain) that we actually lose.

"if you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?"

"maybe i'd say what i feel more often. i...i don't know."

[frostybirdgoddess]

Darius and Ben in Chaos Theory but… make Darius relive the trauma of losing Ben.

[hballegro]

inside you there are 2 little guys

[dandp]

Excited to announce I think I'm officially an adult now (just turned off the lights in my room and had a sobbing meltdown at work)

[gothmods]

This idea of enforcing lengthly wait times and psychiatric assessments in order to access hrt is a very personal matter to me as well since that was my experience and not only did it cause unnecessary and prolonged distress but also involved downright ableist and ill-informed probing on my status as an autistic person

I wasnt even approved for puberty blockers until 2 years in despite already being largely post-pubescent when i was referred and had to have a hospital board approve my case despite my turning 18 before them passing a verdict

What is so traumatising about the process is the denial of autonomy. I knew the consequences of hrt, i had them rigorously explained to me over almost 3 years of compulsory medical and psychiatric evaluations (including seeing a fertility specialist about freezing my eggs in case i wanted biological children, so i was considered old enough to consider child-rearing but not old enough to make my own decisions about my body outside of that????)

And still i had no control over the decision on whether or not i could start hrt

Then i transferred to the public adult sexual health clinic for the remainder of my care and it was such a system shock because one of the first things the endo said was that it was not her job to monitor my gender identity or feelings - it was mine, and that as long as i kept wanting hrt she would keep prescribing it

Surgery was a similar experience, my surgeon advised me on the best options for my body and the outcome i wanted - and the decision to undergo it was mine and mine alone

You cannot remove regret without removing autonomy

And yet people wonder why teenagers, a group so frequently denied autonomy in the basic happenings of their lives, would be resistant to being denied control over their transition

[silentalltheseyearsnomore]

I dont know but life feels so much better without therapy right now. And fucking magical things have happened now I'm not pouring my energy in to people and places that aren't fully reciprocal.. poking at raw wounds.. longing for things in places they won't be found. My relationships are better in every possible way. And my dream woman is in love with me. My crush on a straight married woman wasn't so straight or married after all. And it happened as soon as I let go of people and situations where I just felt longing or like I was getting less than I deserve and re enacting the past by hoping for things I would not get. Now parts come to us more, go to others who are available more. Its magical. We feel able to protect ourselves and have no desire to reach out to anyone who is not able to give us what we need (even with S, we still see her/reply, but during times she is emotionally unavailable we do not reach for her, we refuse to let ourselves create that re enactment. We deserve full recipricocy. She is not my therapist anymore and the reason therapy feels gross to us is them knowing us deeply when it is not equal- now we give her what she gives us.) And I'm so in love and so happy. It's honestly madness. I'm not magically fixed, my physical pain is bad, I have shit to sort out, and I'll probably still continue the specialist therapy referral, but I never want therapy or a therapist to be the center of my world ever again. I had two therapists tell me they love me the same as their own children, let me call them mum, hold us and rock us for hours, let us in to their family, every dream we ever had. And yes some of it was deeply healing, but also fuck that power dynamic risk from now on. It did not stop the longing anyway. I WANT to be the parent to my parts now. And no one gets access to them in that way unless it feels equal.

I feel happy. Me! I feel happy despite all the difficult things. I feel SO loved and SO full. From my dream woman, from a blossoming friendship who feels like home, from having more energy and love to overflow in to my other friendships because I am not draining my energy longing in the wrong places. I feel empowered and solid and no desire to reach to places who won't make me feel completely full. It's... magical. We've been triggered and still not wanted to reach in those old places, instead we reached for ourselves and those who never ever let us doubt how much we are loved. It has been hell on earth getting here these past months and we really nearly fucking died. But man. It almost feels worth it right now.

[rivilu]

disjointed fandom posting sorry but it just hit me that pwotr is like. the only rpg where a companion never once left my team

[msmargaretmurry]

caps winning also changed the nature of my relationship with hockey like sometimes sports really are just like that i think 😭😭😭

they ARE and it's very rude of them 😭😂 but you get me. i know every losing streak-ending championship is cathartic for that team's fans in its own way but the caps winning the cup.......... truly it changed my brain chemistry. captain holt vindication dot gif. if u weren't IN it u DON'T get it!!!!! 😭😭😭

[itspileofgoodthings]

do y’all wanna know something funny. when I was in England I accidentally stumbled into finding my sister a boyfriend via @ilovevanillatea and her husband and it is something that has been so funny and good.

[lingeringscars]

layla's relationship with jordan is just so interesting. When they were younger, she was liv's best friend. liv and jordan were also best friends. and layla pretended like jordan was just some annoying guy that hung around. sometimes, that was truly what she thought. most of the time, he was her best friend's brother. and on other occasions, he was one of her closest friends.

he was probably her first crush, but in a way that was never discussed because he was eww a boyyy and liv's brother. she'd secretly be glad when he showed up, while making a show of how annoyed she was that he was interfering with their time.

she would make an excuse when her head turned looking for him as they got older, and he stopped hanging around as much. she'd roll her eyes when he was around, though secretly enjoyed it. and around the same time that it seemed clear that jordan was interested in everyone but her, she thought asher and her made more sense.

and jordan became someone she sometimes hung out with in a large group who messed around with anyone but her. their easy intimacy never disappeared, but layla's feelings did. she never fully addressed or admitted to them, even to herself, and she felt that could never happen anyway. asher was her boyfriend. and then spencer arrived, and she was immediately interested in a way she hadn't been with asher in a long time. she felt disconnected from him, and spencer brought back a spark she hadn't felt since her mom died.

jordan was no longer a focus, was barely considered a friend, and he was still her best friend's brother. but for all her work reconnecting with liv, she never tried with jordan because, well, they were never friends in the first place. a lie she got very, very good at telling herself.

until he did become her best friend. until it was him she was turning to in her darkest moments. it was him that brought her relief, and it was him that she fell in love with but, once again, could not admit to. he was her best friend this time, though. he wasn't just a person hanging around. he wasn't just liv's twin brother. he was her person. and once she admitted that to herself, the rest was over. he was never going to be anything less, and she would not lie to him about her feelings for him after that. she needed to protect herself. he had walls he still needed to break down to get to all of her, but once he had, he had all of her, and he will for the rest of their lives.

[yellowocaballero]

I wanted to say this before but i chickened out and had an extreme case of the self-doubt and self-consciousness BUT ANYWAY MY BRAIN CAN'T KEEP ME DOWN, vash and knives have big granny weatherwax & Lilith de tempscire (older sibling assuming the younger sibling will turn out to be the good guy and prepping to take up the natural balance role as the bad guy, then getting mad when the younger sibling leans so hard into being the good guy and doing things For The Greater Good that they actually become the bad guy, leaving the older sibling to reluctantly be the good guy and seethe over how the younger sibling is totally wasting their role by not even being self-aware that that's what they are, THEY would've done it so much better than the younger sibling-) vibes. (Tho knives is the one that actually changed his name into something edgy like Lily lmao.) And this latest chapter really just confirmed it lol.

Hey I think only one of us is cringe here and it's the woman who can't stop talking about her own fanfiction on the internet. Like it's definitely me. Nothing cringe about making the fanfic posting experience rewarding by starting discussion about it with the highly enthusiastic author :)

I've read a bit of Discworld (which in Discworld terms is like 15+ books maybe lol?) but I haven't read the Witches series! But yeah that sounds super accurate lol. I think especially in the sense of telling a bigger, grander ur-story, and the characters having their predetermined roles in the story. I mean Vash is very much the Christ figure and Knives is very much the Devil. There's something mythological about them. Which is why Trigun especially is so much fun (and so challenging) to do a roleswap for: it's always interesting to put the Devil in the role of the messiah, and to make a messiah a demon. It's a puzzle that doesn't fit right, and that irreconcilability always makes for the most interesting stories.

The big thing of the story is 'choices'. (Just like Discworld is REALLY into!) Choices are huge in Trigun itself and it handles the topic in a way more interesting and nuanced way than I did lol, but the REALLY FUN thing about roleswaps is that it lets you explore how the choices we make change us as people and change our paths in life. What I wanted for this specific story is for Vash and Knives to basically be the exact same people as they are in canon, with the exact same natures and places in mythology. Knives wasn't meant to be good, and for him it's a series of active decisions almost every second of his life. He decided who he is. A big question asked throughout the story is 'what choices is Vash making, and to what extent is he choosing to be Like That?'. Yayyy foils lol.

(I forgot I'd read 15+ Discworld books. Wow, maybe it was an influence...)