#on solid ground

[sadclowncentral]

when i got my medical certificate i very confidently answered the question "what do you do if a person becomes unconscious?" with "remove from the room immediately" only to be met with puzzled silence by the instructor and that's when i learned that the deeply ingrained nautical fear and grim reality of seamen and their rescuers asphyxiating in enclosed spaces due to build up of toxic gas or especially lack of oxygen does not translate to land.

[voice-of-dissent]

made the mistake of googling up an image of solid snake

[givemebackmypills]

[spacecadetdana]

guy waiting at the laundromat

[aldercaps]

I think I surprised these guys as much as they surprised me

[starry-bi-sky]

blood blossom danny except i briefly talk about his version of the accident

It all happened so fast that Danny doesn't really remember dying at all. It was like, one moment he was alive, the next he's dead. He remembers hitting the button, and the lights coming on, and then a great big flash.

Then he was outside of the portal.

He thinks he may have been screaming, but that's not true at all. The only sound he made was a split-second, startled gasp as the portal turned on, that was cut-off before he could finish the noise. The only ones who were screaming were Sam and Tucker; Danny was dead before he could feel anything.

The most vivid thing to him was the terror before the light. The blood rushing moment of mind-numbing fear and cold revelation that he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. A weird sort of resignation, desperation, horror, and static calm that hit him all at once.

He was extremely disoriented when he woke up. Like waking up from a long nap and struggling to comprehend what the day or time was, but knowing instinctively that time has passed. He didn't stay in his ghost form for that long either, further cementing his confusion.

From the moment he hit the button to the few minutes after he woke up is an unsolved jigsaw puzzle to him.

It took him about a day and a half to fully remember what happened beyond 'went into the portal, then suddenly i was out of it and everyone was freaking out', and then a week to process.

Sam and Tucker remember his accident better than he does. They say he was in a daze after he woke up, before he recognized where he was. And he kinda just... squinted at them like he didn't know who they were, and said something in a language they couldn't understand. He was terrifyingly calm and passive, and still smoking.

(They later find out its ghostspeak. He was asking them where he was.)

It was only the moment he realized where he was that he transformed back into human. That's the moment where Danny's memory officially cuts back in for him. His first time as a ghost, and he doesn't really remember it that well.

[fjordfolk]

none of these are still or in focus, so here's just the whole dump

[soybean-official]

The parts of you that support me

[nmoroder]

a crowdy day at the park

[maplebean2003]

A typical day on mother base

[silverusneo]

managed to port in a really good venom snake addon from gmod into SFM and naturally this is the first thing i did

[stagefoureddiediaz]

The layers of meaning in Bobby giving Athena a safe place to land the plane has me all up in my feels actually!

[ksjanes]

Remember that you are Earth. Grounded, rooted, giving, healing, stable,  nurturing and solid.

K.S. Janes

[imnotyetfound]

My take on Five/Lila - and why they were endgame

I’ve seen so many people say that Five and Lila didn’t make any sense, and I just disagree. I've tried to really motivate why, and also why I see them as endgame. Feel free to agree or disagree.

First of all, Five and Lila share a common background of being raised plus trained as survivors and weapons. Five was molded by his time in the apocalypse, the Commission and his ruthless upbringing within the Hargreeves family, while Lila was similarly trained and manipulated by the Handler. Both of them were forced into brutal, high-stakes environments from a young age, developing a sense of independence, ruthlessness, and survival instincts that the rest of the family can’t fully relate to. We see this especially in Five and Lila’s difficulties in showing emotional vulnerability and trusting others. This shared experience means they both understand the cost of their traumatic upbringings and can relate to each other’s emotional scars in ways others just won’t be able to. So already by this, they’re somewhat bonded from the start.

In other similarities both Five and Lila possess extraordinary intelligence and tactical thinking. They challenge each other in a way no one else does. This has been an ongoing thing between them, bouncing off each other and sometimes teaming up. It’s also what drew them to work on another mission together in S4, there has always been some kind of pull/push there. Personality-wise both Five and Lila have a dark sense of humor and a cynical outlook on the world. But despite the cynicism, they still manage to eventually relax and find humor in each other’s company. The lighter moments we’ve seen between them at times have been an interesting contrast to their otherwise serious and violent lifestyles. 

I do believe their shared backgrounds and personalities created a bond that was then further strengthened during the years they spent lost in the subway together. Isolated from the rest of the world, they literally only had each other for company. The intimacy and trust that grew between them was inevitable. When you have no one else to rely on, you’re going to develop a relationship stronger than under normal circumstances. So over those years, they must have grown close in ways that no one else could fully understand. Even though we didn't get to see every detail of how it unfolded (because the season was way too short), it’s not difficult to imagine.

I’d also say they naturally grew a bond stronger than with any other character at that time, except for the one between mother and child which is why Lila’s need to be with her children would always make her go home if given the chance. Five knew this and it’s the reason he kept the solution from her for months. 

Now, to my thoughts about their actions in regards to Diego as this is often brought up. The argument that Lila cheated on her husband with Five is understandable from a moral perspective, if we see it as just that without any context. But when you consider the circumstances it is way more nuanced. You have to look at not only the environment they found themselves in, but also the emotional and psychological journey they went through together. Their relationship was ultimately forged over a shared background and then several years of isolation. Then you add to the fact that Diego seems to have treated Lila like crap in the years leading up to the isolation, she said it herself he was always moping around and complaining while she sacrificed her life to stay at home and take care of the kids. She even told him she needed a break to reassess their relationship. I do believe her and Five had somewhat already begun an emotional affair before the isolation, the way they were sneaking off together and clearly wanted to keep their thing separate from Diego and the others. Yet they still didn’t get physical until they settled down, believing they weren’t gonna find a way back.

Also, it’s important to here consider the strength of the bond, as I mentioned earlier, that Five and Lila must have developed over those years. They knew each other better than anyone else by the end. Spending every day together in a survival situation with nothing else around would likely create an unparalleled level of intimacy and emotional closeness. This bond would probably transcend Lila’s previous relationship with Diego, and maybe even Five’s bond with his siblings. It’s been years since he returned to them and they had all grown in separate directions. Lila and Five however had recently experienced something life-changing together, and it is unfair to dismiss the strength of their connection as something unethical or out of character when their reality had shifted so drastically from when the show started.

Another important point here is how the relationship with Lila allowed Five to finally be "human" and emotionally open in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to be before. Five was obviously emotionally detached as a result of both his past trauma and the burden of being a hyper-intelligent man in the body of a boy. With Lila, he had the chance to just feel love and trust without worrying about anything else. So I do think this outweighs his “betrayal” against his brother as people claim.

Now on to how and why Five and Lila were endgame. I’m convinced that Lila did love Five despite her choice to leave their isolation. To me this was cemented as she didn’t deny her feelings when Diego asked her straight out. If she wanted to make Diego feel better she could have easily denied her feelings for Five to reassure him. Yet even when asked twice she couldn’t do it. There was also Lila’s look of relief when Five returned to them at the end. It was Five who Lila allowed to comfort her after she said goodbye to her family, trusting him in her most vulnerable moment instead of blipping back to Diego and the others. These events showed the deep trust and emotional intimacy that still existed between them after returning to “the real world”. Despite her saying it was over. I also want to add here that Lila took Five’s hand as they were dying, the look between them was for me at least silently saying they loved each other. 

So all in all I do believe that the connection and love between Five and Lila was authentic. It also made sense. They’re able to understand each other’s emotional complexities, including their darker tendencies, without needing to change who they are. Still their time together seemed to actually have softened them both when they finally had the chance to settle down, almost as if they were healing from past trauma together. This would forge a relationship that no one else could replicate without going through the same experience. Making Five and Lila a reasonable endgame, which they also were in my eyes considering they died holding hands.

----------------------

Summary:  Five and Lila's shared background of trauma, matched intelligence, and similar personalities means they make sense. They shared a bond that was only further strengthened during their years of isolation. For 7 years they only had each other to rely on. This inevitably created an intimacy and relationship that couldn’t be compared to what they had had with anyone else. Outweighing what they did to Diego when you consider all context. Lila and Five ended up being human and vulnerable with each other on a level they hadn’t been with anyone else. Ultimately Lila’s refusal to deny her feelings for Five, her relief when he returned, him comforting her as she sent her family away and then finally them dying hand-in-hand, showed that they were endgame.

[king-wilhelm]

Love next door, Ep.10

I know the good is yet to come but this might be my favorite episode in the show. (I have so so may thoughts about seokryu's breakdown my God I shall make a post when I have better words) Grief is a strange thing to process for everyone involved.

It burns you inside out from the guilt - guilt that you could've done more, guilt that you could've paid better attention, guilt that you should've known better, should've done better. And you know, sometimes that's true - but, what ifs are the cause of misery and there's enough misery to go around when your loved one has been hiding cancer.

And seunghyo? Seunghyo is drowning in guilt. For all the signs he missed, all the texts he ignored, all the times he pulled away from her because what if one of those times, she unraveled and leaned on him. Maybe he could've done more? They've seen each other's sickness and arguments and embarrassing moments. They've seen the dark and the ugly, so maybe he should've seen this coming, right? Maybe maybe maybe.

We can stand here and call him petty and brash and immature all damn day but we're viewers, we have all the information. Should've picked up that damn call, seunghyo. Should've texted her back, seunghyo. Shouldn't have walked away from her when u saw her with another man, seunghyo.

But, What did seunghyo have? Besides the old pain of unrequited love and the new realization that he's lost her, again. From the day he realized his feelings for her, every poignant moment going forward between them, we see him lose her a little bit more. The knowledge that it doesn't matter if he hides his feelings or declares it into the wind, she will never see him as anything more (she called him a duckling that imprinted on her, come on now). The feeling of constantly fading from her life bit by bit, only hanging on by the claws of desperation to be near her.

At the end of the day, you can love someone to the moon and back but you can never dig out every important detail of their life if they don't want you to. Seokryu did her very best to shield her secret from everyone, much to her own detriment - seunghyo can't read her mind from halfway round the world and they aren't connected by the red thread of fate.

The first thing he asked her after finding out her diagnosis was if she was okay, or if she was still sick. He knows how to take care of her, the same way she knows how to take care of him. He's more than good at breaking down her walls of hyper independence. They just need to find their way to each other.

[lurkingshan]

That dressing room scene was excellent and a great culmination of everything happening between Mut and Rak over the last two episodes. I love how intentionally this show is unpacking Rak's attitudes and behavior around his wealth and class status, and how aware Mut is of the way the people around Rak are looking down on him. I also loved to see him address it directly with Rak and tell him how he wants to be treated. Taking Mut out to super fancy restaurants and buying him expensive suits he doesn't need or want is not actually about Mut, it's about Rak and the image he wants to project, and he needed to be called on that. He clearly doesn't know any other way of showing affection and I'm excited to see him learn.