#like. over a few weeks yeah

[philtatosbuck]

the writers well and truly hate bonnie i'm sorry but you have to suspend your disbelief so fucking much about the fact that NO ONE ever found it weird that bonnie didn't speak to them over the phone for an entire summer. you mean to tell me not ONE of them tried to call her and found it weird they kept getting sent to voicemail? even if they were all busy and doing well why would a bunch of teenagers accept that bonnie was resorting to email to talk to them exclusively for MONTHS. that's absolutely mad bro the writers hated her so bad jesus christ

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[deoidesign]

Thinking about vampires, death, life, and the space they occupy in between

[egophiliac]

Sorry, most likely my memory being poor, but I thought Malleus' mom (don't know how to spell her name and too lazy to check how to spell it) was already an adult when Lilia ""proposed""?? Like I was always under the assumption that it was like a one-sided child crush on somebody completely out of your league you tend to have as a kid 💀

I don't think they say how old she was? although it's entirely possible I just misunderstood; my Japanese is...shaky. :') the actual line is "幼い頃に私に求婚したのは偽りか?", which I read as "isn't it true that you proposed to me as a kid?", and took as her being older than him, but not necessarily an adult (like, I was thinking of Lilia as being not quite a preteen and Mel being preteen/young teen). although I don't know if there's a connotation or something I'm missing that implies a bigger age gap, if that makes sense!

(and of course, I might also just be forgetting some other line -- if someone else knows, then please correct me! I need to know which headcanons need adjusting 👀)

BUT YEAH in a canon-y sense, Malleus is 178 and around the third-years developmentally. which makes me think that even though dragons have a way longer lifespan, they go through childhood at about the same rate as most fae (or at least the kind that Lilia is) and just kinda...slow waaaaay down once they hit adulthood. so it makes sense in my brain that he and Meleanor could've basically grown up together!

...it makes it angstier that way, anyway. :)

[beaulesbian]

I was once again thinking about this goofy Luffy moment after his Lucci punch™ and i had to see it frame by frame.

first the force of it throws them both away, and while Lucci is seen on screen tumbling for a long moment, Luffy is just away in a blink of an eye.

and then his funny scene - his legs are like jelly that he tries to get under control,

he stumbles, falls, rolls into a mix of all his limbs and eyes,

and then only the cloud behind him cushions his fall

- which would be interesting if he can subconsciously control that while he tries to regain the control over his movements - that the environment around him still adapts to his awakened Devil Fruit abilities and morphs to help him. Where others would probably fall through that cloud, for Luffy that cloud backs him up like a trampoline.

It's just fascinating!

[spadem00narts]

Y'know what? *colors your ISAT Characters*

[genericpuff]

vent post

[mueritos]

a big brain dump about autism, life, being indigenous, and whatever else is going on

so the past few months I made it a personal journey to understand my autism more (and maybe a possible ptsd diagnosis but whatever whatever whatever). and that's what i'm calling it--the autism--because no other thing makes sense for me, and while i'm parsing through childhood memories and experiences, it's definitely...a bittersweet conclusion? bitter because in a lot of ways, i dont relate to the stereotypical autistic experience because every autistic person who has clocked me was usually a White Queer. It's probably why it's taken so long to get to this point of concluding Autism is what it is. I grew up in an immigrant family as a girl, and for that reason I was expected to not be disabled and to be a completely normal and high achieving Mexican catholic girl who went to college and became a doctor or whatever. Now i'm a fag of a man doing none of those things haha.

My older brother was supposed to be assessed for ASD in his youth, and like most immigrant dads, mine decided that nothing was wrong with him and the rest is history. Except my older brother is a man riddled with childhood trauma, shame, and so much autism. Absolutely uncharted rates of autism, and while he gets some sort of pity from my parents for him ("it's all out fault" "he never got the help he needed" "cut him some slack he doesnt understand"), I can never let my own parents know about how much I struggle. Hell, I can barely show it to my own friends because even they don't understand the extent of my autistic struggles. it's actually caused continuous miscommunications, people mad at me, me mad at myself, meltdowns, shutdowns, and a lot of crying. And shame. (a peer recently even demeaned my habit of keeping to myself, despite the fact that I had actually been trying to put myself out there more)

so i'm at a point in my life where I've accepted that I can only take responsibility over how I communicate, and I take ownership over that. Accepting this responsibility allows me to keep myself safe, as I've essentially lived over 2 decades of my life feeling like I was responsible for not just my communication, but everyone else's, including all of the judgements, missed cues, failures, miscommunications, and whatever else came from it. It's definitely double empathy. Last time I truly took on everyone's communication, it nearly killed me (cue over a year of suicidality). But, in a lot of ways it's very freeing. I'm sort of detaching myself from this neurotypical/White need to socially interact with others on their terms. In other ways, it's restricting. I uh. Don't really talk to a lot of people nowadays, and there used to be days where I wouldn't say a single word out loud. But because I don't talk to as many people, I'm able to put energy into the quality of my connections and not just the quantity. Which unfortunately a lot of people take personally. They dont like you admitting that you only see them as an acquittance, or as a classmate, or something like a friend but not quite there. I find comfort knowing how people feel about me, even if its that they actually dont feel close to me. Great! Now I know! Knowing makes me feel safe! But I'm finding that people actually really fucking hate when you admit that to them, the how you actually slot them in ur brain in terms of social levels. I can understand why, but I also don't get it.

Another thing that's helped is I've changed how I do eye contact. I used to make eye contact with professors or classmates while I spoke up in class because I thought that was important. Now I've found I can actually focus more on what I'm trying to say when I don't make eye contact. My god how freeing that has been. I don't have the same anxiety as I used to before, nor do I experience all of the involuntary blushing as I did for many years of my life. It didn't matter how confident or how prepared I felt, I would just blush furiously and I fucking hate it. Now my blushing is almost nonexistent, and I say what I mean with the flat ass tone that I love speaking in because it makes me feel safe. Sure, I miss the real-time non-verbal reactions to my words in class, but it's an okay trade-off for feeling more safe in myself and more confident in the classroom.

another thing is my internship. I work with majority neurodivergent students, and many of my clients have autism, adhd, or both, and are sometimes BIPOC, trans, or children of immigrants. Man, I've been having a blast. Sure, I'm learning how to be a therapist and best practices, but screw everyone in my life who has called me "cold" "emotionless" or "heartless". I have connected with so many people on such a human level, and I have sat there and helped them hold their pain in that tiny gay office for 45 minutes every week, and even though it's only 45 minutes, i'm showing them that they're allowed to ask for help holding that pain. I have had challenging sessions, difficult conversations, and times where I wasn't sure I would know what to say. But at it's core, I know that I'm capable of connecting with the person in front of me because my autism brain is automatically in tune with the person in front of me. It is so wonderful, and overwhelming, and so confusing all at once. When people start crying in front of me, I feel tears well up in my eyes, even if I'm not actually sad with them. It shows me that I'm capable of this empathy that so many people over my life have questioned, which they questioned all because I processed things slowly, or made quick decisions, or because I was honest about how I felt.

on to being mixed indigenous. Phew. I've been trying to build more connections with other Native folk, and I have a couple who I can thankfully call friends and who have never disrespected my detribalized experience. but recently I was interviewed a few times for a fellow indigenous researcher's dissertation, and I did not expect to be chosen on account that I am detribalized. But it had been a lovely experience and I finished my final interview today. It really left me with a lot of emotions that are hard to put into words. Mourning would be one of them, as I likely won't ever know what my tribal affiliation is. Never knowing who my people were, what language they spoke, the land they lived on...I can't describe just how much it destroys me. It feels like literal death, because that's what it is. A disgusting colonial death. And it's why I abhor that of all my identities, being autistic and being mixed indigenous has been met with the most vitriol online. like i guess people can only handle the trans fag mexican dude when hes not autistic and mixed indigenous, because now I am far too ambigious for anyone else's good. though i do know better than to listen to what random people online have to say about me and my path toward reconnection/neurodivergency.

beside's that, i'm trying to find neurodivergent spaces that feel safe, and I'm trying to find ways to keep myself safe. stimming, carrying stuffed animals around, using fidget toys, engaging in my interests, listening to the same songs, eating the same foods. I've had coffee with bagel and chive+onion cream cheese for over a year now. I've listening to almost only Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains for nearly a year now. I rewatch the same youtube videos over and over again. I wear the same few outfits. I wear the same shoes everyday. I walk the same way to and from campus everyday. I try to be in nature as much as I can, and really see it. I imagine nature where it isn't, and I get emotional thinking about the life that used to be on it. I wish so badly that I was a cat, a horse, a bunny, a deer, all so I could experience life through their eyes. i'm putting trust into people, into the universe, and into myself. safety is hard to come by, but im doing my best to accept the risks of life, trying to be flexible, and learn how to sustain myself for the good of the world. I deserve to be here too.

that's about it. besides that, i'm moving to philly once i'm done with grad school ^-^

[unovaslankiite]

Prolly gonna be my one and only rwde post (cus the fanbase is rancid and I'm not rlly a rwby fan, just a person who watches the show): some of you rwby fans are too comfortable using your queerness as a shield to silence BIPOC voices about the racist writing and your 'precious' bigoted CRWBY. You guys unironically act/think that just because you have to deal with queerphobia; you are IMMUNE to being bigoted yourself and you are INCAPABLE of parroting bigoted beliefs. Cus I know there will be a dumbass ant1-rwde posters who will try to drown out this post by saying its 'lies from the EVIL RWDE!!!': You would rather weaponize your queerness to bash on BIPOC voices, while claiming to care about our voices. You would rather be complicit with the racist writers and their racist writing, just because your racist writers gave you a queer ship. There is no shame nor issue in projecting the abused you suffered onto the characters, however you refuse to see through the characters and their writing through a BIPOC lens. You do not get the right to impose your perspective of the characters at the expense of BIPOC voices, you do not get to twist our voices to be alt-right bigots because we called out RWBY's rampant racism. You do not get the right to say you give a shit about BIPOC and have #BLM in your bio when you fervently defend your bigoted company. You do not get to pretend to care about racism when you buy merch off of your bigoted company. My fellow BIPOC (especially the queer BIPOC): why are you guys so comfortable dismissing your fellow poc about their discomfort with RWBY's racist writing? BIPOC are not a monolith with the same opinions about racism in media; but some of you guys are weirdly comfortable with turning a blind eye to your fellow BIPOC getting dogpiled by the white fandom. We can and will disagree, you not agreeing as a BIPOC about RWBY's racist writing is not what I take issue with. The issue lies within you upholding the racial colourblindness in the fandom; like how the fandom was ok with throwing the racism under the bus in favour of queerness, you are ok with throwing your BIPOC peers under the bus for white queerness. Sincerely, a POC who has been watching the fandoms rampant racism problem ever since 2019.

[viktoriakomova]

There’s something that gives me a low grade ick about rivals cheering each other on in elite gymnastics (particularly WAG) now. Like why the fuck are you rooting for your competition DURING the competition. idgaf about sportsmanship or whatever there’s a difference between acknowledging your direct opponent’s performance mid-competition and wooping and hollering on the sidelines for them idk

in ways I feel it’s a function of the outside impression of the sport. like howwww many sports are there where the top competitors, even clear rivals, clearly respect each other but when it’s game time they’re savages. MAG is like that to a lesser extent too. Why is it that they all have to stand around and sing kumbaya or they hate each other and have personal beef? Why is there no middle ground, even? are these not world class athletes? what’s wrong with them having a different demeanor/mental approach during a competition vs immediately after and outside of competition?

In a way I think it’s a failure of the fans/spectators now to separate the two and it feeds into how acutely aware they are of the public’s interpretation of the smallest interactions. Maybe even a chicken or egg situation.

[redo-rewind-if]

Very exciting Progress Report today folks!

Next Update (Chapter 3? Maybe?):

Intro Scene (if not on music fest route): 100%

Music Fest Routes (Solo, V, and Amara): 100%

Club Pyre Path: 100% (Finally!!!)

Editing: 4%

Coding: ???% (I code some as I write but fuck if I know how much is done at this point)

Bug Testing: 0%

Yes, you read that right! I've finally (finally) finished writing all the parts for the next update! Now, I just need to edit, code, and bug test the hell out of it and it'll be ready for release.

(Let's just hope I don't go too crazy on the editing and decide to add a bunch of new content or else this may take a while.)

[thedroloisms]

just an essay bc it's been on my mind but the way that victimhood becomes a weapon on social media is so fucking stupid and counterintuitive to actual advocacy. people wielding "im a victim" as a defense not only in situations actually involving their specific case but also in basically every damn situation in the world is so ???? even in cases involving dream, for example, i will see people using his history as a means of defending him (it's really fucked up that you would accuse a victim of ___, he's an abuse victim i'm sure he won't defend ___ and that he'll ___) and while i understand where that sentiment comes from, the base assumption it's making is...nakedly untrue. and assuming its truthfulness can hurt victims moreso than it helps them.

being a victim isn't moralizing. being a victim doesn't make you a good person. suffering isn't absolution, and going through fucked up shit doesn't make someone "good." people equate abuser = bad person and victim = good person, and then assume that victims are incapable of abusive behavior or "problematic" internalized ideas. an abuser can't be neurodivergent, or mentally ill, or part of a marginalized group, and most importantly an abuser can't be a victim. the boxes of victim and abuser are strictly defined with no overlap. once you've been through something truly, verifiably, Fucked Up (tm), congrats! you get a certificate of eternal victimhood that prevents you from ever being a Real Bad Person ever for the rest of your life.

only that's not how real life works! it's just not! generational trauma leads to cycles of abuse that perpetuate themselves over whole generations of people! the kids that think that it's perfectly fine and a-okay for a parent to physically punish their children don't tend to be the ones with parents that don't lay a finger on them! and you know, it sucks. it sucks that you get nothing out of being hurt, that there's no fucking prize, that there are no suffering vouchers for you to cash in because of the abuse you suffered that can give you good-person-points. it sucks to endure all that shit for nothing. but the opposite idea of suffering making you a good person is the exact reason why some people preach about the miles they walked to school in the driving rain to excuse taking out their shitty temper on their small children.

being abused generally doesn't make one "better." if anything, trauma tends to fuck you up in ways that hurt you...and others. going through shit tends to make people worse. working to get better is something that requires actual conscious effort, not something that you are given as a side effect of going through hell. over and over again, traumatized individuals who are made to feel powerless and given little freedom and ability to change their circumstances, when in a situation where they are given power to some degree over some person, may choose to abuse that power while they're in their own abusive situation or after. part of being a victim of abuse often means having a distorted view of the abuse you've been through! it can mean normalizing fucked up behavior! looking at shit and treating it lightly because you've been taught that it's "not that bad," if you've been taught that it's bad at all! victims aren't granted perfect ideologies from god because they walked through flames--cult survivors usually have to unlearn all sorts of messed up beliefs that were drilled into them--beliefs that many people on twitter would then damn them for, because obviously if you've thought something like that in the past then you're a bigoted hateful individual.

i can only speak from my own experience, but i can't fucking count the number of people i've heard of or met or known personally who have been through some kind of trauma in the past, who are undoubtably victims of abuse, who then go on to act in toxic, manipulative, and abusive ways to others. oftentimes, these people are aware of the fact that they were in abusive situations in the past and make quite a big deal about the fact that they care about victims, as a victim, and want to advocate for them. they're the same people who react extremely negatively to anyone alluding to the idea that they could be abusive--they're not like that, they've been abused, how could anyone accuse them of abusing another person, don't they know how much that hurts with their history. and so on and so forth.

and...i have a lot of sympathy for these individuals, generally speaking. because as mentioned above, being abused in the past doesn't necessarily make it harder for you to be a perpetrator in the future. sometimes--oftentimes, even--it's the opposite. and i feel for them, because going through trauma and being hurt makes you scramble for ways to not be hurt again, and oftentimes the easiest answer for that (and the ways of solving problems as modeled to them in the past!) is control, and controlling another party can very easily slip into manipulative, abusive behavior. especially if you still have internalized ideas mixed in with the fear that surviving abuse entails, internalized ideas that are often left unexamined by people who believe that their victimhood absolves them from any further responsibility. i feel for people who are deathly afraid of ever being seen as terrible people, oftentimes because of the shit that they went through, who seek explanations for their abusers' behavior that make it so much easier to simplify the matter into "they're something separate from me, something that i can never become." i sympathize with the anger and fear and frustration and grief that might never had had a healthy outlet while in a past situation that ends up poured out into places where it shouldn't be in the present, i sympathize with the desire to find reason in being hurt where it doesn't exist, to want there to be something to make the whole damn thing worth it instead of having nothing to take with you but your pain.

but at the end of the day, that's not how life works. that's not how abuse works. yeah, there are abusers who are cruel for cruelty's sake, who are aware of the harm they do and desire to cause more--and there are just as many who genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're doing good, that they care for the one that they're hurting unselfishly and wholeheartedly. there are many, many people who hurt others because they have been hurt before, and this isn't an excuse--of course not--but refusing to acknowledge the ways that pain can perpetuate itself and blinding oneself to the possibility of their own actions ever being abusive can literally be how this pain continues. it's good to be self aware, it's good to want to do the right thing, but assuming that victims are good people because of the suffering they went through not only means that so-called "bad victims" (or anyone that's not yet Acceptably untangled the thought patterns and actions that have been normalized to them, or anyone who lashes out in quote-unquote appropriate ways as judged by whatever social media council is handing out social justice tickets for the week) get overlooked and ignored, but abusive patterns of behavior are allowed to continue to exist, just in a repackaged form with different language. it's not fair to victims to nail them to this standard of so-called righteousness that is also inextricably connected to their experiences, allowed to be revoked if they're too "abuser" to be "victim" anymore, or to overlook the victims of their behavior because their inherent suffering-borne righteousness keeps them from crossing the line into bad behavior.

at the end of the day, no one deserves abuse, victims deserve to be advocated for, and people who have been through horrific shit didn't deserve to go through horrific shit. but you don't get handed get-out-of-jail-free cards for being treated badly, you know?

[rustedleopard]

Hate to be a Debbie Downer but I don't think Chujin would like Ben 10 (or at least not be openly obsessed with it).

I feel like if you told him the premise of the show (A 10-year old human boy gains the power to turn into 10 aliens (which are kinda sorta monsters) and he fights other aliens with this ability), he'd scoff and say "This show is an appeal to humanity's naturally violent tendencies!" and "They're indoctrinating children! Humans find the idea of child soldiers entertaining!" and "This show discriminates against monstrous beings!" and all of these other dramatized nit-picks about it, despite the fact that it's a fictional cartoon whose target demographic is tween boys.

(I just think that all monsters should take human media a bit too seriously in one way or another. IDK if he would actually believe that a human could turn into a bunch of aliens with a wrist watch, but I do think he'd take the premise of "a child fights fantastical battles against aliens" too literally. Kinda like those parents who think their kid playing a video game where you kill fictional monsters is "corrupting the youth.")

Now, if you put an episode of Ben 10 on the TV, I do think he'd stop whatever he's doing to stand behind the couch, arms crossed/in his pockets in that "I am interested in what's going on on the TV but not enough to commit to actually sitting down" sorta way. He'd probably scoff and roll his eyes whenever Ben does something stupid because Ben is a 10 year-old and this boosts his ego a bit because "ha, I'm way smarter than this kid, I could see how that action would go wrong from a mile away. If this is how humans are on the Surface, I'd easily be able to crush them. Especially with my serum and Axis." But the split second you catch him in the act of watching, he pretends that he was looking for something in the room and then walks out.

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

For this week's post, I have a very special announcement:

As of the minute of my posting this,

this blog

is officially

A DECADE OLD!

To mark the occasion, I've gone back to my old sketchbook and (at long last!) made a scan of the first drawing I ever posted here...

...which I've used as reference for a redraw🥹

I've been through a lot in the last decade (as you can imagine), and, consequently, the nature of my love for and appreciation of the novel has changed so much through those years; with each subsequent time I've read it, A Tale of Two Cities has meant a different thing to me and held a unique place in my soul, tailored to its shape at that point in time.

That's part of why it has been such an immense, immeasurable joy to have this blog as a constant, a place for me to capture those shapes (and their changing over the years) by providing the good people of Tumblr's A Tale of Two Cities fandom with posts of all varieties. What a wonderful and rewarding place it has been for finding community in which we can all share our collective appreciation for this incredible novel. So if you're reading this, thank you! And I hope this blog has been able to provide for you anything like what it has for me!

Now this post is done, why don't we call a health, dear reader; why don’t we give our toast?

Many more posts - and years - to come, then!

[ninkaku]

dazai arcane verse........chainsaw man verse.......

[rapidhighway]

also picking raspberries turned out to be.. really fucking hard