#life purgatory

[spite-and-waffles]

I know we've all had a pretty rough few years by now, but thinking of Tim Drake helps keep it all in perspective. For instance, if you were 17-year-old Pre52 Tim this year, it means that Bruce died in 2022. Steph, Connor, Bart, Dad all died and Bludhaven had gotten nuked with Dana in it in 2021. No Man's Land happened in 2020, Knightfall in 2019 and your Mum died in 2018, before you'd even properly got the job. And you still can't vote.

[anoant-haikyuu-dump]

Kenma meets his future self

[feelingvoguish]

The universe would explode if they ever met/teamed up😔

[pm-00]

El Mariana logged in, told the whole global chat the coordanates of blue's base, was killed with Tina a bunch of times, met a new creature which he named mike wazowski, died some more, had gay sex with his ex-husband and just fucking left

[shaykai]

I just think that the UTMV fandom is sleeping on Afterdeath + Life

Edit: TikTok has dubbed this Lifeafterdeath

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

only in death 💔

[ludinusdaleth]

for the record i think what happens to vax'ildan tonight is whatever liam feels is correct for his character whose story became about the heavy meta knowledge of his journey of grief in c1, and how he feels about that journey of grief now, and any decision made would have weight in liams feelings on his mothers loss

[verdantglow]

I’m fine.

Jimmy Solidarity personally solved a gaping plothole in my smalletho fic today.

It’s fine.

I’m fine.

It’s fine.

[the-mcyt-crackships-brackets]

[tubchunk]

yes the possibility of qtubbo having been snatched away in the blink of an eye today to be sent to purgatory with no warning is fucking depressing. but do you know what could be worse?

qtubbo logging back onto the island, shaken and sick from radiation exposure, but everyone celebrates that he's alive and escaped capture.

only for him to tell them that its because he doesnt know when theyll take him. he's a dead man walking, a ticking time bomb. he has agreed to something and has no idea when theyll come to take him to purgatory. no idea what lies in wait for him.

and he spends the next few days trying to distract himself, while also getting his affairs in order. its sad, but no one talks about it. how he's walking around with a foot in hell, waiting to be dragged back in, with no warning.

and one day, q!fit and q!pac wake up, and they see sunny come to them, alone. and they just know what has happened.

the rain doesnt stop for the next 5 days.

[sarucane]

Ed Teach's Stories

From practically the moment we meet him, Ed's identity is unstable. We know who is he (Blackbeard) from context, from the story told by the the room around him, by Izzy and the flag his crew. But the thing is, Ed doesn't fit the story of the Mad Devil Blackbeard. Two of his first few words are "good" and "love" for crying out loud. He's called "Blackbeard," but his beard is grey.

This instability exists because Ed himself isn't sure what story he's telling--or wants to tell. "I shouldn't be bored, I'm fucking Blackbeard!" All through his early episodes Ed is in increasingly desperate tension with his own identity. He's trying to tell stories within stories, wanting all the stories to be true at the same time, yet aware of the reality that the world is constantly trying to wipe one or another of the stories away. And not really trusting that he can tell the whole story of who he is.

In the first season of OFMD, Stede wears a different outfit every episode. Yet Stede remains the same: despite his internal tensions (almost despite himself) there's a stability to his identity. But all through both seasons of OFMD, Ed putting on a new outfit means he's trying to tell a completely different story about himself.

And underneath this cacophony, there's Ed. And Ed is himself a chorus of stories, a living contradiction. A patricidal murderer who was protecting his mother; a paragon of masculinity who longs for softness and fluidity; a man renowned for violence and madness who has in fact carefully cultivated that reputation and is extremely careful with his violence; a killer who doesn't kill, yet who does kill all the time just at a bit of a remove; a half a dozen names and personas and yet always Ed; unloveable, yet deeply loved.

At the beginning of the show, Ed isn't actually good at telling his own story. He's good at listening to other people's stories, and conforming himself to them often without conscious effort. But when he tries to really tell his own story--asking Stede to run off to China, singing his break-up song song, going to become a fisherman--he fails. We don't understand in the first season why his judgement clouds, why he becomes weak when he tries to tell his story. But in the second season after spending half an episode in Ed's mind, a painful truth is undeniable: Ed, like Stede, doesn't think he's worthy of telling his own story.

So instead of telling his own story, Ed let other people tell his story. In the first season, Ed built off what Izzy told him he had to be. But he couldn't lose himself in Blackbeard, no matter how hard he tried. So in the second season, when Ed couldn't face living with his contradictions anymore, he wrote an ending worthy of Blackbeard.

All this, because Ed thinks he can only be "himself" by telling one, single story about himself. By denying his contradictions, rather than embracing them. Splitting himself in two to tell himself a story, rather than telling the story himself.

What Ed doesn't believe or trust is this: For Ed to really be himself, he has to be impossible. Two contradictory things, at the same time.

The second season of OFMD is about learning to embrace all these contradictions. In each episode of OFMD, character look at the same object or situation (a wanted poster, a unicorn, a velvety suit, a relationship, a past trauma) and they tell two completely different stories about it. Sometimes one of those stories turns out to be wrong, but more often than not both are true, and something else--something beautiful-- is born from the place where those contradictions meet. And the characters, Ed most of all, learn to accept and balance this dissonance.

Thematically speaking, I'd argue that's why the second season of OFMD is more fantastical than the first: fantasies are contradictions, real and not-real at the same time. And isn't that what transformation is, in the end? What you are and what you are not, meeting and becoming "you"?

Transformation isn't all good. At first, Ed's fantastic stories hide his pain or invoke despair

But later, the fantasies make their way into reality. The impossible begins to shape reality--and opens a way for hope.

In the last episode of S2, Ed emerges from the waves as the kraken--but there's 3 musical tracks playing, three themes: the kraken, Ed, and Blackbeard. Then he reads a love letter, and has a deeply romantic moment with his boyfriend. He puts on a new outfit to escape the British, yet his personality doesn't change at all. When Izzy first apologizes to him, Ed says "I'm the one who should be apologizing," but then Izzy changes his entire understanding of their relationship. Becomes the first family figure to offer Ed permission to be himself.

Contradictions galore, and yet Ed is still Ed. Both who he was formed into by other people (his father, Izzy, Pop Pop) and yet who he is.

In the final scenes, Ed begins to finally accept the tensions of his life. He tells Zheng that yes, he wants to kill Richie--but he doesn't go on a revenge quest. And while before his forays into being someone else meant changing his name, his clothes and mannerisms, his whole story, he doesn't act like that at all in the last scene of the ep.

And Ed's been able to do all this, to come this far, because of Stede. Stede, who Ed was drawn to because he was a "fancy man who leads a brigade of imbeciles," yet had won a fight with Izzy. Stede, who looked at Ed at his lowest moment, after Ed had admitted that the entire basis of their friendship had been in bad faith, and said, "I'm your friend." Stede who, even knowing Ed wouldn't want to hear from him, poured his heart into letters about how their bond was unbreakable.

Stede is everything he is, all at the same time. And when Ed was drowning in his own contradictions, (a rope tied around him that he could not undo and yet had put on himself) trapped somewhere "inevitable, yet impossible," Stede appeared as a fantastic, beautiful creature and brought him home.

Stede lets Ed be everything he is, and sees it all as true and worthy of love. Even when Ed fucks up, it's all right.

And sometimes, telling two different stories about something doesn't lead to a fragmented self, doesn't drive people apart.

Sometimes, it means understanding. Means acceptance, safety, connection.

From discordance (contradiction), harmony. A gentleman can be a pirate. A man can be a bird, or a unicorn. Izzy can have been one of the good ones and a fucking nightmare. And Ed can tell all his stories, they can all be true--and he can still be Ed.

[uncanny-tranny]

I think what might actually help the families of trans loved ones is to actually engage with where the trans person is at - especially if the family isn't quite understanding yet. When I came out, I was completely alone in figuring out my manhood. I had peers and I had exposed myself to so many trans people who explored gender, and while it was amazing, it isn't quite the same at times. I grieve quietly, sometimes, about all the missed opportunities that might have just made it easier for my family to have seen how utterly happy I was. It took them a very long time to actually notice that I was happy, especially once I got on testosterone. I'm lucky that they saw that happiness eventually, and slowly accepted it. My manhood is completely detached from their influence, both to my relief and chagrin. It's sad to me that I learned to shave from a kind online stranger, somebody who didn't even have a father and yet, I do. I have a father. I grieve at the loss of a potential shared experience. I grieve about the pain I went through when I was in that stage of transition, especially because it was raw and vulnerable. I grieve that many trans people today are traversing the path I had to, because it's sometimes lonely (even when you do have other forms of support).

It's hard to know that I will never have gotten my sense of being from my family. In many ways, it has severed a lot of connection with them because there were so many times that I was begging them to see happiness when they were focused on the idea that I was almost in a state of purgatory - flesh which felt warm but held no familiarity to them. I don't harbor ill-will toward them, I hope I don't leave the impression that I despise them. I understand what they felt, even if I can't conceptualize it myself. However, it's a raw wound in my heart, and I don't want to leave anybody else feeling that way, either.

[chayannesegg]

what i love about pierre and tubbo's relationship is that to pierre, him and tubbo have a great close relationship. he holds sunny dear to his heart and thinks of tubbo as a mentee/nephew. they tease each other, they prank each other, they have so much in common, they talk about create problems, he looks out for tubbo (in his own kooky uncle way)

meanwhile to tubbo, pierre is simply the world's most annoying old man (whose a bit obsessed with him)

[fallenflamess]

my list of parallels of qsmp purgatory and the life series because of this post because I'm going insane

- I'll add more as I come up with more or get suggestions

• death games

• watchers (life series eye & ears/fanon)

• global tasks/secret tasks

• someone/a group of people go insane (team bolas & double life pearl)

• traps (mostly ambushes/spawn killing for purgatory)

• bloodlust (people in purgatory wanting to constantly fight each other when they don't need to but also when they need to (tasks))

• friends being made to fight against each other

• eliminations (losing all their lives in life series/green ninjas being eliminated - split across teams in purgatory)

• someone starting a cult (bolas rojas gas mask cult / Joel and the perfectly round mounds)

• viewing different people as the protagonist/antagonist depending on the pov you watch

[wisteriagoesvroom]

HI LOVE!!!💖💖💖

pathetic + carcar <3

Oscar sits. The bed is firm beneath his palms. Carlos is on his knees.

The other man’s mouth is parted, gently pliant in a way he never is anywhere else. He's usually this way, crawling to Oscar in his need. Demanding with his touch, on edge after a race, after one of their racing incidents.

If Oscar were unkind, he might think Carlos, still bereft of a seat for '25, was starting to cause on track run-ins with him deliberately. For what reason, Oscar doesn't know, and Oscar doesn't wish to entertain that train of thought because it was a nonstop bullet to nowhere good.

Unfortunately though, he has always enjoyed driving on the limit.

"Is this how you like it? How you need me?” Carlos says, acrid with disgust. With Oscar, with this, with himself — who’s to say.

“I don’t need anything from you.” Oscar replies.

Carlos’s laugh is hollow. “That is a lie. I think you find a strange happiness in leaving me unsatisfied."

Oscar doesn't respond. Just peers at Carlos with his most neutral expression, mind turning. Piecing together the puppet that is Carlos. Heart too big. Talent overshadowed by others. The obvious and barely concealed inferiority issues that might as well leave the man bleeding openly on the side of the track.

Alpine 2022 means Oscar has had too close a brush to irrelevance, and he knows a little something about being unwanted. He has broken his ribs. Understands plenty about silent injury. How to push through pain. It's just the way it is, kid. Mark had said once. Luck of the draw. The words ring in his ears, in the silence.

Perhaps they have more in common than he wants to believe. Perhaps this is why he and Carlos compel each other.

"You are so quiet. I don't know who are you are fooling with your act." Carlos says, under his breath, perhaps more to himself than to anyone else. Trying to bait Oscar, twisting the nail with hope that it hurts.

Carlos clambers up from the floor, bringing himself eye to eye with oscar. "If they only knew what you are like in here, the way you beg me to let you come, the way you look when I–"

Oscar finds himself bored of this. The excessive verbiage, the posturing, when they could just call this what it is. A bad habit. A need.

Besides, Carlos’s arousal is evident the strain of his boxers, the deep maw of his eyes.

So Oscar peers steadily up at Carlos, and spits into his open mouth.

Carlos looks as if he's been slapped. There's a flash of danger in his expression.

Oscar counts upwards. The room is so silent that Oscar thinks there’s an element of truth to that saying about a pin being dropped. Oppenheimer could rise from the dead and remake his bomb, and neither man would probably move.

Then Carlos lunges at Oscar. Kisses him, shoves Oscar so hard back onto the bed that Oscar can barely breathe.

If it's destruction that Carlos wants, then Oscar can be charitable, just this once. He lets Carlos take what he needs, lets Carlos push and push with his tongue and his hands and his body. Lets Carlos take from him until Oscar's own mouth swells with the ache of it. And still, Oscar does not cede, and never does.

Carlos gasps when he breaks the kiss. It’s the surprising noise of concession, of defeat. But Oscar lets Carlos cage him in, hands at the side of his head, and he lies perfectly still. He doesn’t feel the need to posture all the time, to prove his power.

"Are you done?" Oscar says.

Carlos hovers, muscles tensed with anticipation, waiting for the gunshot. The next move from Oscar to push them over the edge, or end it all.

You're pathetic, Oscar thinks.

But watching Carlos spiral, watching him fall apart in the face of Oscar's glacial indifference - Oscar wonders if he is the pathetic one too.

As the person who keeps the door open for a kicked dog.

Who unfolds his hand, and lets him stay.

[afterartist]

RAHH 100K VIEWS??!

Let’s gooo