#must be something else going on idk

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[fifthnailinstevesbat]

steve “cant get out of bed till middle of the day, barely leaves his house or is never home, isolating himself from everyone, never takes time for himself anymore, depressed and is slowly losing more and more of himself every single day” harrington post 1986’

robin “i know you loved her, and it must’ve killed that she wouldn’t take you back, but nancy is happy steve and she still loves you. she’s not the only one out there for you, and you’ve gotta get over it. we miss you” buckley post 1986’, trying to help her best friend

steve “…this isn’t about nancy” harrington.

robin “wha-?… oh. oh steve.” buckley.

he still wears the vest.

[adhdandcomics]

whoever needs to hear this: if you got a disability, if you don’t know if you have something, if you ever think “it’s not that bad” if you have a thing about guilt, if you’re ill, Anything: listen. it is okay to throw things away.

you can throw it away. if it sucks and it stresses you the fuck out, if you just “need the right time to fix it” for the past 3 months. or years. if you loved it once upon a time but it makes you feel kinda weird and guilty now. if it’s a jacket youve reaaaally been meaning to mend and then donate. a jar of sauce that “all you have to do” is clean out to recycle but it’s been a week and now there’s a small colony growing in it. slowly shredding to bits fabric scraps you plan to use to fix something. busted picture frame. cracked mug. old shoes. extra box. an entire pack of granola bars that you hate so much but don’t want to waste.

life is already so goddamn difficult for us. i know you still care about recycling and the environment and sustainability. but it’s okay, i promise. sometimes you have to take care of your space. sometimes you have to cut your losses so you can actually have energy to recycle the next thing. get rid of the old shirt before it turns into a tornado pile of guilt under the bed. you’re not a bad person. you can throw this one away.

[fisheito]

everyone gets a turn in the ridiculous skintight edmondsuit. or at least, .everyone SHOULD

[tetzoro]

a little morning hello from mr luffy himself ! happy friday friendz ! a few more hours and we will be at the weekend 🙂‍↕️ what a week it’s been ! i think we all deserve a little treat for getting though it hehe be gentle to yourself today and have a great one <3

[milolunde]

We all know Timmy is Wanda’s mama’s boy but we need to keep in mind he’s still Cosmo’s kid too and that Cosmo would love him just as vehemently as Wanda

[evocatiio]

if chibnall was the one writing this season you lot would be talking VERY differently

[lynxfrost13]

Gender is truly stored in the haircut

[sskk-manifesto]

--

[theshadowedqueen82]

So I've been seeing the seasonal "abandon ship tumblr's going down" panic, and I've also seen some truly dumb takes about the staff running this website. For people not in the know, there's been talk about tumblr basically going into maintenance mode on account of not making any money (I first heard about this here, and there's a good post talking about what comes next here). And I'd just like to take this time to say to @staff, both current and former: thank you.

Thank you for trying. Thank you for putting so much love into this website. Thank you for the crabs and the polls and the Goncharov mugs and @brickwhartley, and a thousand other things you do behind the scenes to keep this hellsite (affectionate) running.

I've been here for a while, and there's been a noticeable difference in how the website is being run since Automattic acquired it in 2019. Is it perfect? Absolutely not! But there is a genuine effort to work with the current userbase. Its a stark contrast to the many incredibly scummy ways other social media websites make their money, from data mining and selling personal information, to turning the site over to algorithms that moderate for outrage and maximum engagement for the sake of advertisers. Tumblr is special to me because it feels like one of the only places left on the internet where I'm not met with a constant demand to buy buy buy. Which unfortunately is also probably why Tumblr has not been doing so well financially. It's a sacrifice to not cross that line, to try and make badges and merch and hope that users will sign up for ad free, all in the hopes of funding this website with cooperation rather than deception.

I don't know how things will shake out, but I hope that Tumblr will be around for a good while. I see the love and the effort put into the merch shop, and the artist collabs, and the april fools events, and the q&as. Things are not perfect, and things can be improved! But there's so much I love about this site, and a lot of it is because we've had staff who genuinely care about this weird little corner of the internet. So thank you, and I hope that this is far from the end of the road for us.

[kateis-cakeis]

rewatching bbc merlin really has me like buzzing in my mind with so many thoughts. Like I'm kinda watching it backwards atm going from S5 to S4, I think I will jump around 3, 2, and 1 but just,,,, there is so much especially in S5 that makes me !!!!!!!

Honestly, I feel like this fandom has to give the writers more credit. Like they did a damn good job, and to me, it's such a good tragedy. Especially how S5 plays out, it takes everything and just tears you down, and down, and down. It's perfect, perfect with flaws! But still perfect

[deus-ex-mona]

when you say you’re happy being by yourself

but maybe that’s just what you’re trying to convince yourself of…?

[chimericchaos]

You know I see these posts about how maturity should be the standard and i start to agree untill i realize just how many fucking conversations ive had about maturity not even being a real thing??

Like people will believe what they will but i have times even niw as a fully grown adult that i recognize i am absolutely not fucking mature at all. And i stop myself then and ask what the hell maturity is, and every time i look it up because i want a source that isnt just my brain, i get a completely different answer. It really depends if you get it from merriam webster or this one guy on quora. One maybe be far more credible, but its not just one guy on quora. Ots a whole lot of people saying very different things to the actual definition of what mature is. This indicates that either education globally is fucking awful (which may not be wrong tbf) or that possibly what we understand to be matuity is a complex and nuanced thing that is unmeasurable and is probably sonething else actually

Like i dont know what fucking metric you want to use for "if this person consents to having medical bills" or whatever but if it isnt age then maybe something more concrete and physically measurable than maturity? Or maybe if we *cannot* have sonething concrete and measurable because that thing doesnt exist somehow, then perhaps we can say "to each their own" and just go with what the person fucking says they want?

I dont know about yall but i feel like im saying and not saying so much here. But like. Maybe let people make their own choices. Their own mistakes. And help them so that those mistakes are reversible. Other than that i dont feel like i should get a say in what someone else does. Just. End of story.

[13eyond13]

So the book club that I've been in since 2022 has 9 regular members now including me, and we have collectively read a total of 28 books together now. This month we put all of our book choices and the members' ratings of the books on an Excel spreadsheet, and have been having fun figuring out various trends and statistics and so on – what decades we have mostly read from, what countries, what genres, what our most and least highly rated picks were for each year, etc. I also thought it would be fun to use the spreadsheet on my own to figure out who rates things most and least similarly to each other in the club. What shocked me was that I found out that I scored the number one most similar/compatible rater to every single other person in the club except two (I was 2nd most similar rater for somebody and 4th most similar rater for the other). Also, apparently me and the guy who I scored least compatible with based on our ratings/taste have the top rated book selections on average in the club so far. I'm not at all sure what this means except that I just know from now on I'm going to have this secret semi-subconscious goal in my mind of inching my way higher in this one outlier book club member's taste compatibility scoring for 2025 hahaha

[blupengu]

Y’all is Hollow Knight hard or do I just suck because oh my god??

[varjopeura]

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