#or maybe i have unreachable standards

[chiltonetc]

here's the thing about people getting upset when yet another celebrity man turns out to be a piece of shit, its not even that most people ✨idolized✨ this person or put them on a pedestal.

we just had come to think of them as a generally good fucking person. a decent fucking person. I don't think being decent is a high, impossible, unreachable standard that people should be chastised for expecting from someone they look up to, or even just enjoy.

maybe thats why i find those posts so annoying that come up every time another Thing™ happens telling people they're stupid and parasocial for having hoped/believed someone was decent

and i dont think it makes you stupid to have hope that people are good

[anawkwardlady]

Okay I've been trying to write this for more than a week but frustratingly wasn't able to properly line my thought. Recently thought about Kyrie's violent assassination of Jessica during Ep7's Tea Party. And while theres some plausible practical explanation of why she proceeded that way (on top of all those traits that could be purposefully exaggerated) I always thought her sudden blood lust at that point felt a bit odd. I re-read the scene.

And I think it retroactively says a lot. Now I kinda want to go back to Rudolf in relationship to sexuality, women and by extension what it means for the people around him. Rudolf didn't have a lot of ways to establish a place, as a third in rank who was abused and mistreated by his older and more powerful siblings. Women thus became Rudolf's wealth, status symbol and means of control. Starting with using seduction towards the younger servants to isolate his little sister so she had no allies in the household, making himself a desirable option as a charismatic man bragging about money to have women fight over him during college and finally ending with the best of both worlds, marrying a kind and submissive woman (epitome of The Wife) while keeping the more exotic option on the side as a mistress (basically his Whore). Both being kept on their toes knowing losing him would also mean losing a life opportunity especially once pregnant. Rudolf made efforts and sacrifices to make each one of them stay at their assigned place which finally lead to the baby switching. And everything would have ran smoothly if not for Asumu's death, upgrading Kyrie from her mistress place to wife.

Rudolf's "attraction" towards Natsuhi is interesting. Whether it's played as jokes or comments about her looks it does seem trivial enough to never have triggered outward hostility from Kyrie since she is not an actual threatening woman. She however represents the wife fantasy by her seemingly pure and naive demeanor and motherly side, qualities that also drew him towards Asumu in the first place (and we know Natsuhi is more complicated than that and so was Asumu, probably it's more about the idea) and was lost after her death. He can't seduce her (she is maybe more disgusted by his ways than anything), She is also paradoxically not the best woman to go after by societal standards (being older, already having a kid). Finally she is married to a man who's superior to him (through hierarchy and physical strength), making her a prized possession by extension. During Episode's 8 Bern's game Rudolf finds sadistic pleasure of murdering Natsuhi in ways similar to sexual assault (putting the pen of the gun down her throat) which could be speculated as a way to get revenge on Krauss by defiling his wife and getting to have his way with a woman he cannot, and could never have at the same time. She is unreachable which is itself the appeal.

Meanwhile, Kyrie only reached the position of the wife because the first option died and she now has to spend the rest of her life making sure that place isn't stolen. Throughout the conference Kyrie actively performs a less assertive version of herself to fit that very wife image. One could fear any sign of fondness from Rudolf towards Natsuhi's character could trigger Kyrie past insecurities as it would betray a yearning for what Asumu was, what is still lacking within her. Especially since, by the time of Ep7's tea party, she is aware of the baby switching and by extension, of Rudolf purposeful sabotage to avoid having to marry her. It's hard for Kyrie to adapt to Rudolf's ideals because they're ultimately contradictory (seeking her because she is "different", ruthless, less conventional, yearning for a more quiet, meek woman who wouldn't challenge him).

Although Natsuhi is, as a person, inoffensive to her, Kyrie's initial mistake with Asumu (which haunts her to this day) was letting a woman she thought was inoffensive take her place by being exactly that. (I'll also note that Rudolf comments towards Natsuhi are often said in front of Kyrie which is interesting to say the least).

And at the same time Natsuhi is also a reminder of the position Kyrie would be stuck in if she wasn't able to escape her family to marry Rudolf. Theres probably some turmoil there. She never seemed hostile to Natsuhi because of all those reasons and I think it's probably because nothing is actively taking place, nothing is about her as a person. But even if, things to keep in mind is that, Kyrie performs a lot, extremely well and she has absolutely no angle or justification to be confrontational during the conferences. Basically if she actually beared resentment, theres a chance we would never know.

Then what about Jessica. Jessica previously being praised by Rudolf for looking like Natsuhi in something that seemed like a passing comment getting violently assaulted to the point of being disfigured. Kyrie even throwing in a comment about being used to smashing women faces, something that was certainly aimed at romantic rivals. I don't think Rudolf actually ever showed interest towards Jessica in that way and by extension I don't think Kyrie considered her to be a romantic or sexual rival as a person. At the time Kyrie confronts her Natsuhi already died rather quickly (and anticlimactically). Jessica is her mother's good looks though younger but with those less conventional attractive qualities, who fought back when attacked thus literally standing between Kyrie and her escape, metaphorically embodying the ultimate rival. Close enough to be a reminder, far enough to actually oppose threat. Disfiguring as catharsis and as symbolic rage against what she represents, "A waste a of a good Natsuhi-esque woman" with all that it entails.

[ineffable-suffering]

Trauma-Dumping on your plants: The Anthony J. Crowley Chronicles

This has been living in my silly head rent free for so long, I finally decided to slap it on here in hopes of thinking about it a little less (than three times a day. It's been years. I need to get over it.)

Also, I'm absolutely certain I'm not even remotely the first person to realize or post about this, since it's not the hardest of parallels to figure out. Alas, I still shall, because out of mind, out of sight and all that. So:

Let's talk about how Crowley is using his houseplants to work through his own Trauma of the Fall. Or, well, maybe not work through it per se, but more so roleplay it to give it somewhat of an an outlet because he never got over it. Lol.

It's not rocket science to figure it out and God Herself actually gives us a pretty spot-on explanation of it in her own narration.

Crowley's plants are perfect. They're, as God Herself tells us, the most luxurious and beautiful in all of London. He takes great care of them, waters them, mists them. Does any and everything to give them the perfect conditions so they won't have a worry in the world.

And yet, we're immediately shown that despite the seemingly perfect conditions they're living in, Crowley's plants still get *gasps quietly* spots. And we all know how Crowley feels about that:

It seems like such an unnecessary tiny thing to get upset about, right? Like, plants get spots all the time. They're not perfect, they're part of nature and nothing is ever perfect in nature. Crowley would know that by now. Imperfection is the whole point of nature. If everything had stayed exactly the way it always was, nothing would have ever changed or evolved.

Besides, Crowley is a demon. If it were merely about aesthetics to him, he could easily miracle away any spot with a blink of his serpent eyes. But he gets so angry about it, it's almost comical. At first we think it's just to show us, the audience, that, in contrast to Aziraphale, who cares very dearly and lovingly for his books, Crowley is a mean, mean demon who, instead of being outwardly nice to the things he loves (like Aziraphale does), yells at his plants because he's a mean meanie.

But! If you look at the whole scene and what God says, it's pretty obvious what he's actually doing is something else entirely: "What Crowley does is he puts the fear of God in them. Or, the fear of Crowley. The plants are the most luxurious and beautiful in London. Also the most scared."

Folks, this man dude serpent is literally roleplaying the concept of God/Heaven threatening angels with their Fall in order to keep them obedient ... with his houseplants.

Have I mentioned yet that I am absolutely obsessed with him and also desperately wanna get him a therapy voucher?

Because what does he do once he sees a plant disobeying his rules of perfection and acting out? The same thing God did to her questioning, equally disobedient angels (including Crowley): Parade it in front of the very scared rest, making an example of it ...

... only to then, well ...

... quite literally chuck it out.

To anyone else, this seems like a completely ridiculous thing to do over a tiny, minuscule spot. There would have been a bunch of other ways to go about fixing that spot.

Figuring out what it was the plant needed that might not have been given to it yet.

Taking care of it in a different, individual way so it would have been able to thrive again.

Listening to the plant and letting it tell you why its spot appeared in the first place.

Telling the plant, that loves and relies on you entirely, you love it too, despite it not being without fault, despite of it not fully living up to your unreachable standards of perfection.

Caring for the plant not because you want it to be perfect, but because you're okay with it being imperfect.

(We're no longer talking about plants here, as you are probably aware.)

Alas, this isn't what Crowley does. Because it wasn't what God did, either. We still know very little about Crowley's actual Fall and the Fall of Lucifer and the rest. But we do know that Crowley was never like or even with them.

All he did was ask some questions. A tiny spot. A seemingly insignificant blemish in the luxurious, beautiful flora of Heaven.

And yet, before he knew it, he did a "million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulfur". Cast out, chucked away, just like his little spotty plant. And for what? Well ...

... to keep the others angels plants check, for the rest of time.

***

(Addendum from the comments: If we go by what the book tells us, Crowley doesn’t actually end up violently throwing out the ‚bad‘ plants. He just finds a different place for them and makes sure they‘re looked after. So much to him being a big, bad, meanie-mean demon.)

[cruyuu]

Mr. “I don't feel a thing/I am not human” proceeds to show anger which is a human emotion. The contradictions with Sukuna are still persisting with Yuuji since with all others, he never had that issue. He never acted the same with others like he did and does with Yuuji. After all, the way he responds to love (to admiration) is by killing. He doesn't know what to do nor how to feel with Yuuji.

Still, something that is bothering me a lot is that for someone who is clearly very intent (and yes, that means emotionally invested) on killing everyone just because of Yuuji, it's pretty clear that he's obviously feeling and not incapable of feeling. Now, we can also speculate that he's afraid of being shown pure compassion (the kind Yuuji embodies) after years and years of being feared and being admired for his strength, standing on a pedestal away from everyone's hands. It would be obvious considering how he came into the world and what he did to achieve the status he's proudly wearing now. He's been seen as a monster, as the King of Curses, as a curse for a lot of years. Never as a human.

After all, Sukuna is someone who had survived a lot of years alone, persisted through the Golden Age of Jujutsu and is still persisting in the modern era. Untouchable, unreachable. Unseen and unknown.

And maybe he wants it to remain that way?

Yuuji is asking the right question. Why me? Why invest yourself? Why all that hate? Does it have an answer? He can only feel pity because all that anger is seemingly empty of reason. Sukuna gives no answer for why, only claims that he understands what Yuuji is telling him but feels nothing. Yuuji can't understand that even if he wanted to, which is why he separated them from others and trapped them in this domain in the first place. He still wanted to know why, even if Sukuna is someone he loathes and he admits it to his face.

Now, considering that Sukuna had unusually obliged Yuuji's request and went on a walk with him, with no threats nor attacks which is again quite unusual, and yet only lashed at him when he realized that Yuuji was feeling pity for him– we can conclude what gave Yuuji the idea to give chase, to try and reach him (someone who ruined his life and talk with him despite everything because it's true that Sukuna was there when he was the loneliest, dwelling inside of him and keeping him company), and why he's feeling pity, why he's compassonate towards him.

Yuuji thought there was something hiding behind that hate. Something about him, perhaps. So he shows him a lot of his life (something he never did with anyone btw) and even shares some of his past with him, creates memories with him also, and says that to him, this is what humans are all about. He shows him a different view, hoping it'll change his mind, prompt him to talk.

But that fails. After all: You can admire a blooming flower, but you can't ask it to understand you. Both of them are vastly different from each other, and even if they had rubbed off on each other slightly, they still persist on being who they always were without changing themselves for each other. They're unable to understand each other nor the ways they change each other quite subtly. Yuuji had changed a lot, went from being adamant on not killing to reducing himself to nothing but a curse killer (a cog in the machine) only to embrace that his life is worth something in the end and Sukuna had embraced emotions (even if denying it) when it came to Yuuji, started seeing other people's viewpoints and kept indulging Yuuji even if he was pathetic by his standards. He went all that way to crush his ideals and now is going his way to kill everyone Yuuji loves. He cares, your honor, even if he claims he has no reason behind it.

What's funny to me really is that Yuuji went through all that and wanted to have a conversation with him (he claims he was frantic, meaning he really really wanted to talk) before it really was too late.

He said, “I can kill you but... you can also live if you come back to me.” If anything it just proves Yuuji does actually care about him, even if it isn't said out loud. After all, he took him through his hometown, made memories with him and bared parts of himself he never showed to anyone else and is still giving him a chance. He had Sukuna fish, he had him shoot arrows. Had him be a human and not a jujutsu sorcerer. That cannot be hate.

Just how Sukuna's hatred towards Yuuji is unexplainable, Yuuji's pity towards Sukuna is as well. And that's something only the two of them have. Something nobody can understand, not even them.

[thatawkwardmoth]

I had no power during a tropical storm so I wrote a bunch of shit by candlelight, like a Victorian ruler. So I'm sorry for the spam posts but...

Enjoy I guess.

Let's start with one thing that has been on my mind for a while; if Emma had been able to raise the Cuckoos from day one, she would've put an emphasis on them all being different, not just a hive mind. She maybe would've stuck with the matching outfits but she wouldn't have let anyone group them up. They had names. It's something I see in a lot of twins or parents of twins (being a twin myself) is that eventually, you want to be different. And the Cuckoos were all different at one time, two dead, three dying their hair. But then the Krakoa era started and I understood in a way why they all went back to looking the same. They were a complete set again.

But I think that if Emma had raised them, they'd all be individuals in their own way. Even their rooms, which are important to any kid, are your first chance to portray and discover your interests and a safe haven for you. In the White Palace, they share one room, by choice. And I think they would do that in any universe. They want to be close and probably never slept separately until Phoebe and Sophie (? I think) died. So I think they'd have one room together. But they'd have different decors and aesthetics if they were only allowed to have a character arc outside of being evil, dead, or a hive mind. More than just a few interests shown or spats between them.

I would imagine they'd get to decorate the space by their beds and that would be that. Kind of like the og X-Men dorms, if you've seen that panel, where it's the boy's dorm and everyone has a section of the floor and walls to decorate to their tastes (and sadly, Scott's is empty and barren). But their room would have that vibe.

And Emma would be so organized with them. She's a good mom. On top of her shit, not like Hazel. Not overbearing and with unreachable standards that her father. Everything would be in certain folders, certains baskets, certain bags, their names on each thing. Or even just their initals. Her assistant would have to keep with all of their after-school activities just as well as Emma does because the driver shoulder never be late. Emma would have a fit if her daughters ever thought she forgot. Meaning every dance practice, gymnastics competition, swim meet, beauty pagent, whatever the Cuckoos wanted to join, had to be put in the calander next to Emma's meetings and such. Only the best private schools but Emma is not afraid to pull them out if they want, unlike her parents when she was telling about her being the outcast, or letting her girls pass because of how much money Emma gave the school to improve.

Just let Emma be a mom. Not just an at-arms-length mom.

(The Emma mini-series in the comics really is one of my favorite things, despite the weird teacher thing. It was a wonderful insight into her character and why she acts the way she does with her students/children. Mainly because of how her parents were. I also think Emma enjoys seeing how close the Cuckoos are as sisters because the only sibling she's close to is Christian and all her sisters tried to kill her and they never recovered from it.)

[kitkats-and-kittens]

Spoilers for Pjo now I guess. Never thought I’d have to type that out.

I have a feral urge to write a fanfic from the perspective of Olympus while all the events of Pjo where going down.

Like what were the political standings like when it was Zeus vs Posiden and it looked like another war was about to break out?

What were the Gods relations with one another and what were their relationships like with the other nymphs and Saytrs and Minor Gods that live on that mountain?

I know Hades isn’t really close with anyone on Olympus but do Zeus and Posiden have any sort of relationship with their sisters?

What about Hephaestus and Ares. They weren’t on good terms in the myths but Aphrodites story is presented a lot differently in the books from traditional Greek hyms.

How is Ares and Zeus’ relationship. It must be pretty strong if Zeus doesn’t punish him for switching over to Kronos side just for the sake of starting a war when Apollo interacting with one of his descendants to give Octavian his blessings was punished as badly as him killing the cyclopses or killing Python, and overthrowing Zeus.

What about the girls? Do Athena and Artemis get along? They’ve both taken vows of chastity and are both adept in weapons and fighting (plus they both piss of Aphrodite, if that’s not something to bond over then what is)

Like I need to know how they all interact with each over, who they like and dislike and why?

I also would love to see how trauma affects their view of the world.

I mean Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, Posiden and Zeus’ father tried to murder them when they were born so I imagine their judgment on healthy household relations is understandably skewed.

And then there’s the next generation.

Athena, Aries, Hephaestus, Artemis and Apollo.

Athena is canonically the golden child in the myths so how does that affect her?

She tried to overthrow Zeus in the myths so there’s clearly some tension there. Does she like being his favourite child or does she despise the pressure constantly placed on her to conform to an unreachable standard of perfection?

And What about Ares and Hephaestus? Hera considered them both embarrassments in different ways. Of course the infamous story of Hephaestus’ birth and how ugly he was, but then there’s Ares who is constantly in his sisters shadow despite them both being Gods of war.

It would’ve shamed Hera in those times to have a son who looses out to the bastard child of one of Zeus flings, but to have two sons both be subpar compared to the kids Zeus had with other woman?

That’s gotta create some rivalry for daddy’s favourite, and maybe a silent understanding between Ares and his brother.

And then we have the twins. Apollo who looking at all his attributes is definitely suffering from some sort of burnout as well as his father constantly punishing him with lightning probably some resentment there and maybe even some towards Artemis.

As far as we know she’s never been in trouble with Zeus despite ‘meddling in mortal affairs’ by helping Leo and Piper. Again maybe something to do with favouritism Zeus seems very partial to the woman in his family. Plus she doesn’t spend a lot of time on Olympus, maybe she’s as silently resentful as Apollo.

Though we see her worrying for him in blood of Olympus and he breaks the ancient ‘no meddling’ laws in Titans curse in order to help save her. So they’re clearly close, but I don’t think she knows about the lightning thing. I’m not sure if Zeus punishes just Apollo with it, though we hear no mention of any of the other gods experiencing physical abuse from their father.

Then we have the youngest and most recent generation (I’m splitting them into their own category cause they’re the only major gods to be birthed by humans)

Dionysus and Hermes.

We see in sea of monsters that Hermes doesn’t seem to really find joy in his position as a god anymore, maybe the stuff he did used to be fun but it’s gotten monotonous, even stressful with how much stuff he has to do and with no one to help.

Honestly maybe that’s a bonding experience? Him and Apollo silently lamenting about how exhausted they are by all their jobs?

And Dionysus. He seems to be seen as some sort of perpetual joke by Zeus, at least in the books. I mean why else give such a long winded and honestly disproportional response for such a minor action.

I mean even Apollos punishment (though being a lot worse) only lasted a couple months.

And the thing I haven’t even touched on with Hermes and Dionysus being from human descent. Do they miss their old lives?

Hermes had only been born a couple days before he was sent to Olympus, but still, it wasn’t as though he could bring his mother with him. Does he miss her? Or see her as some stranger he left behind. Did he mourn her death? Did Dionysus mourn his own mother. Was he angry with Zeus when he learnt his own father was the reason for her death? If he did what could he do about it?

And Dionysus spent years in the human realm (depending on which myths you look at) did he have friends? Lovers? How did he feel when they died and he continued to live on?

The Gods are left relatively untouched despite being such a large part of the series and it’s events, even ToA doesn’t give us a lot more than what audience already knew from myths and reading previous books.

They’re so intriguing to me because there’s something so human about their actions despite how vehemently they’d probably claim against it. In some ways they’re almost identical to people and it makes me slightly insane that we’ll never get to know everything about them all and the lives they led before the events of the series in modern New York.

[guillemelgat]

I just started a new semester, and I'm finally getting the chance to take Malayalam, which I've been trying to do since my undergrad. This is obviously a very exciting development, and it's so delightful to be in a language class again for the first time in ages, but it's also been a very unique experience as far as language classes go. First of all, for me, who is generally used to having very odd personal connections to a language and being the overachieving linguist of the class. And second of all because it's just a very different experience to be in a class largely oriented towards heritage learners and people with some cultural familiarity.

There are five people in the class. Of those five, four have Malayalee family and have had some exposure to Malayalam throughout our lives; the last person is a native speaker of another non-Dravidian South Asian language. Of the four of us who are Malayalee, I'm basically the only one who didn't have a significant amount of Malayalam at home growing up. What this means is that we've spent very little time on the phonetics of the language, because everyone roughly knows how to pronounce it - something which wouldn't be true if there were non-South Asian in the class! (It was a bit comforting to hear all the other Malayalees struggling with aspirated consonants, which have constantly been the bane of my existence, and then to hear the instructor say that few people pronounce them right in spoken Malayalam anyways.) The instructor could ask us to say things on the first day, and the more fluent speakers could say them. There is already Malayalam being mixed in with the instruction. I'm sure by the end of the semester we'll be having extended conversations - especially since the two of us who don't speak have very concrete communicative desires for our outside lives.

It's also a very scary experience for me, personally. Or maybe scary isn't quite the right word, but I've always felt out of my depth in claiming Malayalee heritage - I've always felt that there were so many things which I didn't know which any normal Malayalee would. There is no evidence that this is true, at least insofar as that my cousins with two Malayalee parents have wildly varying experiences and I'm not actually that far outside the norm. In most American spaces, I will never be clocked as white, and most people usually immediately identify me as South Asian. Nonetheless, I know that when I visited Kerala this past December, I was decidedly foreign - to the two guys speaking in rapid-fire Malayalam on the flight from Qatar, to the person at the immigration counter in Trivandrum, even to my own relatives. Part of it is a mental block on my part, of feeling myself foreign and therefore never letting myself belong. Part of it is that I am, ultimately, American. But either way, in this class, I can feel that I'm the American in the room, even when I'm not, even when my pronunciation is just as good as the other Malayalees and there's nothing that's telling me I can't belong. I keep freezing up when asked to say real things, or when people speak to me, because there's some unreachable standard in my brain of Not A Real Malayalee, and everything feels fraught and fragile. So maybe this semester will be about overcoming that.

It's still strange being in a language class where the instructor, on the first day, can look at you all and say, "You know why you're here, you want to be here, we all have a shared experience." But it's also a beautiful thing in its own way, and I'm really looking forward to taking on a language in this way. I love the structure and the logic of language, the puzzle of putting it together, the beauty of making friends in it and watching shows in it and listening to songs in it - but as I get older I find myself really reflecting on what it means to learn and to know a language. And sometimes those barriers to learning and to knowing are only in our minds, not in our worlds. Language is communication and connection, and I hope that Malayalam serves me to these two ends, even as it sometimes feels like a trial by fire at each word.

[puffyducks]

DCRC Week #27

Today we're reading PKNA #22: Fragments of Autumn and it's about to get CRAZY IN THIS BITCH!!! WHO UP FRAGMENTING THEY AUTUMN?!?!?

Ok so first of all shoutout to every single piece of cover art for this comic for being absolutely breathtaking. And also shoutout to Lyla for having eyes that get bigger and more haunting each time.

Uuh yeah she's gonna shoot the BAD GUY why the fuck did you jump in front of her 😭 Idiot

oh my god it's SLENDERMAN

Well he was a cop so 🤷‍♀️

friend and admirer 😏😏😏 (in a gay way)

OH NAW THEY SENT BABYGIRL TO THE UNITED NATIONS

I've said it before but I'll say it again: who the fuck calls into a meeting in this stance 😭 seriously is he sitting on the floor?

Oh GOD the Raider is rubbing off on him we're gonna have to put him down

Image that's relevant for 99% of conversation about Lyla Lay

NO HE ATE HERE!!! LEONARD, FUCKING KILL THAT GUY LIVE IN THE COURTROOM I BELIEVE IN YOU

So Odin is seen here in some type of hotel room with a bed in the background right? So my question is, does he actually use that? Can he sleep??? I mean Lyla said she has a sort of "sleep" mode where she has dreams, and Odin is technically more advanced than her so surely he needs to take breaks too right? These are incredibly important questions I need to know about his snoozer potential

Breaking and entering together, just like old times!!! ❤️

DID HE JUST CALL THEM CRACKERS

I like how much Donald is having fits of anger in this comic. Like yeah he's fucking everything up but it feels a lot closer to his usual character. Also I want him to kill.

"I'm going to do something Eidolon wouldn't approve of" YEAAHHH YEAH GO CRAZY GO STUPID

KILL HIM!!! KILL HIMMM THROW HIM OUT OF THE SHIP!!!! NOBODY WILL CARE IF HE DIES HE'S A POLITICIAN

Sorry maybe I shouldn't encourage PK every time he has violent fits but I think he should get to be a LITTLE homicidal. As a treat.

Soooo these panels are terrifying

Oh my GOD it was LEONARD VERTIGHEL ALL ALONG!!!!! (person who has totally not read this comic before and is definitely not pretending to be shocked)

"You don't know him" you shut your whore MOUTH. I mean not that Donald knows that he knows him well either BUT TECHNICALLY HE DOES.

Soooo instead of just making himself a robot wife that loved him from conception, he decided to make a bunch of pretty girl droid models, send them out in the world to develop their own personalities and memories, and THEN activate his secret little chip that would make them suddenly fall in love with him only AFTER they've become fully sentient beings with their own dreams and ambitions???........ EW

You just told us about your multi-year project to create someone to love you because none of the biological women met your "perfect" standards so... YEAH. You're an incel bro.

THE IMMENSE! THE UNIQUE! THE UNREACHABLE!!! A PRETTY GIRL IN A BIKINI WHO LOVES ME BACK

Odin please you can't just keep making vague references to your past with Donald I need them both to EXPLODE!!!!

Sooo that was Fragments of Autumn! (I'm not including anything here for the bonus comic cause I already hit the image limit, sorry to anyone that stans the Evron bonus comics or whatever.)

There was a LOT to soak in there between messages of love and autonomy and consent, but I mean HEYYY it sounds like Odin made some good deals for droid rights at the end there! So even if Lyla's big messy trial didn't amount to much, there's at least less of a chance that something like this will happen again in the future. Probably.

I'm sorry to Leonard Vertighel that he couldn't find the most perfectest woman ever to fall in love with him but also like, idk just get on Tinder or something bro. Go to the club.

I have a LOT of questions about Vertighel (specifically who this random fucking guy is and why Odin trusted him so much) but we're not ever gonna see him again in this series so for all intents and purposes we can just assume he burned to death in that lab fire. RIP bozo!!! Yes I know he's in PKNE but that's not relevant right now just let me have dreams

Coming up later this week: Crismus 🎄🎁🐻

[redditreceipts]

https://www.tumblr.com/genderkoolaid/736795285384216576/

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

The only coherent, non-rabidly misogynist and factually right thing OP say in this whole thing is at the very beginning when she recognized transgenderism as a completely made up modern human concept XDDDDD

Okay, let’s go through this word by word:

you can piss of both because it's just blatantly wrong and stupid. I could also say "the earth is flat" and piss of the catholic church and trans activists. what have I proven? nothing.

correct so far lmao

well yeah, everyone shares common experiences with trans and genderqueer people, because nobody identifies and behaves 100% according to their assigned gender at birth

woah, if I didn’t know that this was a gendie blog, I would think that this is a terf lmao. yes, some women are trans (aka trans men), and some men are trans as well (aka trans women)

I mean yeah, if you define “transphobia” as “opposition to gender nonconformity”, she sure as hell lived through transphobia. it’s just a bullshit definition, because being gender non conforming does not imply being trans. the thing with these definitions (i.e. defining trans as “not identifying with your gender assigned at birth” or defining transphobia as "an opposition to gender non-conformity") is that in this type of analysis, there is simply no space for gender non-conformity. every type of discrimination a gnc person experiences is transphobia, and every gnc person is trans or genderqueer.

yeah, maybe she just wore this type of clothing because she liked it. maybe she thought it looked stylish. maybe it suited her best. maybe she had sensory issues with skirts and dresses. maybe she really got a message from God. maybe she wanted to protect herself from sexual violence. it literally doesn’t matter, because she should be able to wear whatever she likes for whatever reason

good for her that she stood by what she wanted to do and started wearing the clothing she liked (which happened to be associated with the male sex in that time). and yeah, the society of that time was sexist, so they probably wanted to punish her for crossing gender roles

i mean, many gnc women wear clothes that are typically associated with the male sex for very different reasons, not just as a means to an end. women have always seen things that defy the patriarchy as vital to their soul, like loving other women, abortion, wearing certain clothes, doing certain trades etc. all of these things could have gotten them killed at one time or the other. you just pick “wearing masculine clothing”, because for you gender is just about fashion statements. 

also, nobody presents as cisfeminine, because femininity is an unreachable standard imposed by patriarchy, and “cis” would imply a total identification with that absurd standard. everyone is gnc in one sense or the other, some less and some much more, so there is really no inherent transness about Jeanne D’Arc. 

no, I don’t care about what the Catholic Church says, and we also don’t know whether Jeanne D’Arc actually heard some divine commandments or whether she just had mania or schizophrenia or something. It doesn’t matter at last, because “genderqueer” is not a useful analysis of anything. the human condition is one of being “genderqueer”, because at least for women, it is considered genderqueer to not shave - our natural bodies are “genderqueer”. you’re “queering” something that didn’t exist in the first place - a happily gender-conforming woman. Jean D’Arc is "genderqueer" because she did what she wanted, like every woman who does what she wants is "genderqueer". every free woman is “genderqueer”, every happy woman is "genderqueer", every courageous woman is "genderqueer". 

so in conclusion, this is not per se wrong, because gendies will just define any word how they like it and don’t do any analysis in the end, because the definition of things like “genderqueer” or “trans” is constructed in such a way that it always confirms the point the author wants to make. but because of its tautological nature, we don’t learn anything. 

but the huge problem with this type of analysis is that the language of “her gender expression”, “her masculine gender expression as vital to her soul”, and the individualised analysis of an experience that fundamentally, all women share to varying degrees: the inability to remain both a whole human and to submit to patriarchal demands. You can’t be gender-conforming and be a full autonomous member of society. And in that sense, being “trans” or “trans-adjacent” is an emotion that every woman shares, some more and some less. The thing is that gender roles were never meant to produce a woman that fulfils them completely, they were only ever meant to occupy women’s minds enough so they don’t start a revolution. 

But why do we have to call that very natural impulse “genderqueer”, implying that feeling like this distances you from womanhood in any way? Feeling like patriarchy is restrictive is the most female thing anyone could experience, and is a confirmation of Jean D’Arc’s womanhood. 

[wormytoast]

2.3 graphic! 2.2 graphic here

as always this post is leak free but my blog DOES contain leaks and spoilers, so please mute "#hsr spoilers" and "#hsr leaks" if you don't want to see that stuff <3

Trailblazer will not be considered in these stats because they are a null character.

TYPES

Fire: 7

Ice: 8

Lightning: 7

Wind: 6

Physical: 8

Quantum: 8

Imaginary: 6

Fire is now in the middle of the pack with Lightning while Quantum is boosted to the front with Ice and Physical.

PATHS

Destruction: 9

Erudition: 7

The Hunt: 7

Harmony: 8

Nihility: 9

Preservation: 4

Abundance: 6

Destruction is, once again, tied for most populous path with Nihility (who could've guessed? LOL). Erudition gained one more unit.

RARITY

Limited 5-Star: 23

Standard 5-Star: 7; Overall 5-Star: 30

4-Star: 21

For a second version in a row we did not receive any drip marketing for a new 4-star! I think the absence of one in 2.2 is fair considering the hinting they did with Trailblazer's hat in the live, but what's the reason in 2.3? It's not a big deal regardless but still strange.

OVERLAP

There are now 9 overlaps of unit path/type combinations. Neither Firefly nor Jade are new type/path combinations, although both are new rarities for their combos as well as the first overlapping combos for their respective types. The only type without an overlapping combination is Imaginary.

Fire/Destruction- Hook & Firefly

Quantum/Erudition- Qingque & Jade

Physical/Harmony- Hanya & Robin

Physical/The Hunt- Sushang & Boothill

Ice/Preservation- March 7th & Gepard

Ice/Destruction- Jingliu & Misha

Lightning/Erudition- Serval & Jing Yuan

Lightning/Nihility- Kafka & Acheron

Wind/Nihility- Sampo & Black Swan

Unfulfilled combinations:

Erudition- Wind & Imaginary

The Hunt- Lightning

Preservation- Fire, Wind, Lightning, & Physical

Abundance- Ice

MODELS

F child: 2

F short: 9

F med: 11

F tall: 11

M short: 3

M med: 4

M tall: 10

Wow, two more women in a Hoyo game? I'm so surprised! Seriously though, Jade is the first Quantum unit that has a tall model (all Quantum units up until this point have been F med or F short). Of course this is assuming that Jade has an F tall model but, realistically, her proportions are that of most F tall models so I'd say it's a safe bet. We already know Firefly is an F med model. No love for the boys or the children this version.

I don't feel like repeating old info so I'll try to be quick: Quantum is all women while Imaginary is all men except for Yukong. We have not received a new F child unit since launch (happy one year HSR!).

OVERALL + OTHER THOUGHTS

Not much to say about this update in terms of statistics or units. I'm REALLY hoping we get Sunday by 2.4, but there's also a good chance 2.4 will take us to a previous location to give players a breather from Penacony, so we might need to wait a bit longer for Sunday 🫡

I'm also surprised that we didn't get Screwllum for 2.3 considering they mentioned updating the Simulated Universe in 2.3! Very unfortunate for Screwllum enjoyers.

After Penacony... maybe a Japanese-themed location? We've already got hints of one from both Sparkle and Acheron (although Acheron's home is probably unreachable now...)

Thanks for reading this far if you did! Maybe consider following this account? Or not since this is basically a gacha ramble account LOL

[yellows-secret-blog]

Anyway the only men I wanted to actually fuck were:

1. Non existent (come on y'all know who)

2. Unreachable (long distance friends/cute guy from tiktok/Hozier)

3. Reachable but not on my league and I knew it (choir crush number 3#)

I also have severe standards for men and I am disgusted by the thought of a man touching me (platonically, but I think that's just trauma) even tho women are fine (also the type of men described by my standards is very feminine so)

Am I suffering from comphet or do I just need to live a little more? Maybe I do like men maybe just a very specific type idk

[clndrcy]

The truth is, as much as I want to, I cannot see myself settling down in marriage. Maybe I need to accept that love is not meant for everyone. Should I consider myself lucky for not being committed to anyone?

There have been times when I've questioned my worth. Long ago, I gave love a chance, but unfortunately, we didn't end up together. At first, I thought our story was a tragedy, but as time went by and I matured, I began to see it as a blessing for both of us. God broke us apart because, deep down, I know we weren't ready.

Some people think I have unreachable standards for a man. Others say I'm too idealistic because I'm a bookworm. But none of that is true. Honestly, I've tried a few times, but it's just not for me, I often tell them that I'm looking for something I can't even define, something I haven't found in any man who has come along. It's still a mystery to me.

I've never kissed or shared my soul with anyone. I get interested, but the feeling fades as quickly as the sun sets and rises again. Maybe I need to accept that this is the end game for me, maybe I'm just fooling myself into thinking I'm waiting for someone who will come along and make me believe my heart was made to love.

I was once a hopeless romantic, waiting for my prince to come, take my hand in marriage, and bring me to his castle, just like in the fairy-tale happy endings. But now, I no longer believe in those stories. Life isn't like the books I've read. It can't be confined to chapters with predictable endings.

Sometimes, our "happy ending" isn't about being with someone else, but about discovering ourselves, understanding what we truly want, and becoming the person we're meant to be.

✍🏼: Rodmie Tamang

[andrewuttaro]

Immaculate Simplicity

Few sports memories I possess are as distinct and lasting as those of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Specifically the memory that comes to mind is that of the famed American swimmer Michael Phelps. He was at his peak. These memories are aided by being largely concurrent with a family vacation I enjoyed quite a bit in Virginia Beach; that and I was going into Junior Varsity swimming that Fall, my freshman year in High School.

That summer it seemed like every other day I was watching something new about Michael Phelps. He would become the most decorated Olympian of all time with what many posited were in-born skills. I am not kidding when I say the man has partially webbed toes and biologist seemed to agree his body was uniquely designed to be good at swimming. I can still see that perfect butterfly stroke in my mind’s eye. He was the perfect swimmer.

I never made it to varsity swimming. I was bad enough that in a less forgiving program they might have sent me back down to the modified team I’d been on in Middle School. Within the same year I had been marveling at the swimming perfection of Michael Phelps I was swearing off competitive swimming myself due to a combination of hazing, lack of talent, and a newfound passion for Cross-Country running. I never got close to the same waters of swimming perfection.

We have a funny understanding of perfection don’t we? Plainly we imagine some sterilized vision of faultless grace unreachable to our kindest conceptions of ourselves. We pick up an instrument and imagine a symphony orchestra in a concert hall. This thinking infects our cultural understandings of Christianity as well: heaven is a collection of cloud-bound harpists, the Saints are wise paragons illustrated like military generals, and for we Catholics there is Mary Immaculate conceived without sin.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary (referencing Mary’s Immaculate conception i.e. conceived without sin) is really the final boss of absurdly perfect religious ideas. On the face of it even the well-versed Christian might ask: Why do we need a sinless mother when the son she bore was sinless? Does that not make her less relatable? Does that not make her less human in a certain way?

When I gushed about the Blessed Mother back in May I touched on this briefly. The monthly Catholic devotions circle around to familiar themes. This is intentional in a way: prayer often involves repetition and what better things to repeat than the inner truths of the faith? What I wrote back in May was that Mary’s perfection did not make her any less human, it made her MORE human. Sin pulls us away from complete human flourishing, not towards it.

But this monthly devotion isn’t about her immaculate conception, that comes in December. No, this is about Mary giving us the grace to be more human… and dare I say less sinful? More than that: Mary gives us the graces to be more. Maybe not Michael Phelps level graces, but graces that glow vibrantly in us, nonetheless. Yes, there will be shiny things in this article! But don’t be blinded by the light, the simplicity of this devotion is what will keep you coming back.

This feels like an old habit now, but it has served me well: let’s dive into history to start!

The Miraculous Medal

Paris in 1830. The July Revolution is unfolding. Yes, the revolution Victor Hugo was writing about in Les Misérables. This revolution replaced one monarch with another. Charles X wanted to be a more dictatorial, absolute monarch so a good old fashioned French revolution threw him out for a cousin, Louis Philippe who accepted a constitution. He would preside over a decline in French living standards, so he was himself thrown out eighteen years later in another revolt of the French people.

The same year, in the same city, something miraculous was happening. Catherine Laboure, a daughter of Charity (the female religious order to the Vincentians established two centuries earlier by the great French Saint Vincent De Paul) had just entered the convent. On July 18th she was beckoned into the chapel by what she described as a child’s voice. Once there, the Blessed Virgin Mary spoke to her saying: “God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world.”

Four months later, the Blessed Mother actually appeared to Laboure during evening meditations. This time she displayed herself in an oval, the details of which are all laid out in the Miraculous medal itself. The most notable feature of the miraculous medal (see the thumbnail image of this post) is the words around the outside: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

Mary was adorned with gems, most of which glistening out radiant light. Catherine asked why some of the gems were not shining and the Blessed Mother responded: “Those are the graces for which people forget to ask.” More on this exhortation in a moment. Mary told Catherine to bring a description of the image she appeared within to her confessor who would make medallions for which graces would come to those who possessed them. This Catherine did.

After some time assessing the sincerity of Catherine’s visions, her confessor did bring the visions to the Archbishop anonymously, hoping to protect Catherine from backlash. The Archbishop approved the visions and medallions were made. The devotion spread rapidly and had a big impact on the tumultuous but soaring Catholicism of the nineteenth century. The devotion was influential in the 1854 proclamation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope Pius IX, the biggest “long time coming” proclamation in the history of the Catholic Church which we’ll talk more about in December.

For her part Catherine Laboure would spend the next forty years of her life caring for the elderly and infirm outside Paris to the point she would be recognized as the Patron Saint of Seniors when she was canonized a Saint in 1947. Except for the four years immediately preceding her death in 1876 as she fell ill, Laboure gave her life exclusively to service, not the attention her visions had gained.

Nowadays you are likely to encounter the miraculous medal, in numbers, in any explicitly Catholic store or shrine. French Catholics practically throw them at you I’ve discovered. Just going to a Catholic shrine or on a retreat here or there I have come into a dozen of them. I also went to a Vincentian college, Niagara University, which helped my odds I suppose. The image itself, and its reverse, are densely packed with symbolic, prayerful meaning. Few devotions pack so much into such a little package.

The bottom of the front side has Mary standing atop the year 1830 which is a plain reference to the year of St. Catherine Laboure’s visions. The first words she spoke to Catherine are written around the outer parameter here. Mary’s arms are outstretched, symbolizing recourse to her, and the shining rays of light shine out from her hands extending the graces she told Catherine about.

As with most Marian depictions, Mary is standing on a globe representing her queenship of heaven and earth. Upon that globe is the serpent she strikes with her heel in reference to Genesis 3:15. We Catholics consider her the mysterious new eve discreetly referenced in that verse who crushes the forces of evil and sin by way of her brave acceptance of Jesus Christ before anyone else.

Before going to the symbolism on the reverse side of the medal I want to touch on this ability of Mary to dispense graces. All of Catholic Marian dogma really comes back to this idea that Mary is a mediatrix of the grace of God, indeed the premier mediatrix of that grace. Yes, God’s grace shines upon all who seek his face, but Mary is the original co-mediatrix with Christ. She is the great guide to Jesus Christ and the primary conduit of the graces he so desperately wants to impart on us.

Worth the distinction here, particularly for my non-Catholic readers, Mary is a co-mediatrix with Christ, that is she helps dispense his grace (like a true mom) like she does in so many small, personal ways and in big ways with these Marian visitations we talk about. Mary is not co-redemptrix, that is she is not herself a redeemer of humanity, that is a title and role reserved entirely for Jesus Christ. This is a critical distinction and worth repeating when you find someone scandalized by Mary’s prominence in Catholic life. Pope Francis reaffirmed this co-mediatrix/co-redemptrix distinction as recently as 2020.

Onto the reverse side of the Miraculous Medal. Around the parameter is the twelve stars crowning Mary from Revelation 12:1. While Protestants take a more agnostic understanding of this passage, it is the belief of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (and most non-Protestant churches for that matter) that this pregnant woman giving birth referenced is Mary. The twelve stars then become a loaded metaphor, a crown unique among all Saints, a sign of her queenship over the communion of Saints, all those who pursued Jesus in exemplary ways.

This is for the same deeply relational reasons I gushed about back in May, that Mary bravely chooses Jesus before any other human being; but also because the stars indicate a sacred continuity between Jews and Christians and of the character of God himself forever. In one sense, the stars are a symbol of eternity for the ancients, as far as they knew stars lasted forever. God is eternally with us and wants to extend his saving grace to us.

The number twelve is a reference to God’s original chosen people, the nation of Israel, and their twelve tribes. The twelve stars also represent the Twelve Apostles, the foundation of Christianity and the tangible origin of the Church itself. The Twelve Apostles reference with the stars is also bluntly literally when we consider Mary a constant feature of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Those original twelve would have known Mary’s holiness quite well personally.

The twelve stars meaning goes so much deeper than I can fit in this article. Suffice to say Mary’s queenship which they represent is an honor and a grace given to all humanity via her intercession for us. Mary continually pleads our case to God outside of time and space in the realm of eternity. In the ancient world the most powerful queen in a royal court was usually the king’s mother for various reasons. Mary’s Queenship would have made perfect sense in that period of history.

Central on the reverse side is the Marian Cross. This is a regular cross with the letter M beneath it, sometimes with a crossbar linking the two. The Marian Cross is meant to represent the Blessed Mother’s presence for her son all the way through the passion, especially the crucifixion. Mary and only two of Jesus’ followers were there throughout, the ultimate fruition of Mary’s devotion to Jesus which began when she accepted his conception at the Annunciation before he was born.

The two hearts beneath the Marian Cross are the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In June I went in depth on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and I invite you to go back to that profound image of Jesus’ love for us in that article. The Immaculate Heart of Mary is shown with a sword piercing it. This sword represents Mary’s sorrows, namely the suffering she had to endure for her son.

Sidenote: the September devotion is the Seven Sorrows of Mary. That devotion dives deep into Mary’s experience of the salvific mission of her son. Moreover, the image itself is seven swords piercing her heart so we will explain this in much more detail next month.

I don’t need to explain why the death of a child is a traumatic suffering. However, when we consider all that Mary went through we see how profound her motherly devotion was: after all she knew the mission her son was on. She was told before he was even born. She went ahead with it all anyway and felt every joy and suffering along the way, nonetheless. Mary’s Immaculate Heart is what this month’s devotion is really all about.

Simplicity Immaculate

What are the graces “for which people forget to ask”? That is the big question left open when you first encounter this devotion. As far as I have been able to ascertain there are no specific graces frequently missed being referenced here. Rather this is an invitation to be brave like Mary was and ask for God’s grace. There is a simplicity to this worth noting. If you have a question, ask it. If you need help, request assistance. If you knock, the door will be opened for you. There is no magical thinking here: just an exhortation to be humble enough to ask for God’s help.

I could go on and on about how powerful that message would have been in St. Catherine Laboure’s moment in history in a France clutched by revolution for the second time in many people’s lifetime, “Times are evil in France and in the world” as the Blessed Mother said to Laboure, but I already went down the history hole once in this article. Still we might want to take on the comfort of that message: the ugliness of the times come and go. Divine grace always awaits us when we’re willing to accept it.

The kicker of the graces not asked for bit is the emphasis of a spiritual, almost psychologically heavy, chasm we feel between God and ourselves; the same chasm that often stops us from contemplating any personal ascent towards God or… dare I say perfection, Christian perfection. We don’t consider that magnitude of holiness something we could ever do so we simply don’t try or worse, perpetuate the idea its all an inaccessible religious standard of a bygone era.

I think I still love swimming. They normally capture my attention the most at every summer Olympics. Michael Phelps has now retired from competition. I got all excited to see him in the commentator’s booth for the U.S. Olympic Trials this go around. He isn’t defensive about his records. Michael Phelps is actually in regular contact with some of the most promising American swimmers in the pool these days.

Principal among those is one Katie Ledecky who is a handful of medals away from becoming the most decorated female Olympian of all time, an honor not far off from Phelps’ own title as the most decorated Olympian of all time. The fun thing here is that Ledecky was a fan of Phelps since she was a child. She got his autograph when he was hardly twenty-one years old, in the early phases of stunning the swimming world. Ledecky was only nine years old at that time. That 2006 autograph was before those legendary Beijing Olympics that stick in my memory.

Ledecky took that inspiration and became the greatest female swimmer ever. She did not consider Phelps an unattainable standard of perfection hindering her own striving for swimming excellence. That may sound like a ridiculous proposition: why would inspiration, a role model, discourage her from swimming? Bingo.

Now you see how grace works. Graces are God’s way of working with us if we only choose to cooperate. To put them off is in some ways taking an utterly positive thing and letting it rot on the vine. Grace is simple, beautifully simple.

No, I am not comparing Michael Phelps to God or Katie Ledecky to the Blessed Mother. The point here is that we have to overcome this existential awkwardness for lack of a better term. Christian perfection is possible with grace. We have to overcome a very human but nonetheless unhelpful compulsion that God’s callings for us are not doable or even conceivable at that. Immaculate is not a synonym for unattainable. Mary’s Immaculate Heart is our home base for the kind of striving that helps us approach Christian perfection if we only choose to cooperate with God.

It is really that simple. It is immaculate simplicity. Effort the approach to divine grace and you are likely to come away with something shiny. Your mind might really get blown when you discover the grace of God in a talent you possess just waiting to be activated by the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Thanks for reading! My book “How to catch feelings for Jesus” is available online. Admittedly it is not this focused on the Blessed Mother, but I definitely hit on the themes of the devotion in other facets. Share this article! I am in the swing of writing on a monthly basis now and would love to hear your input. Did you really read more than 2800 words to not have something to say about it?

[stinkrascal]

I think no one likes my tav :( I love that simblrs began to share other games like bg3! And the small amount that does it sticks together! They reblog each other's bg3 posts, do art for them, put cute tags to support each other, so nice to see!! I really want to be part of that, but no one seems to actually like the bg3 stuff I post🥹 do you have any advice for me?

hi anon, i'm sorry you're feeling this way :( to be honest i don't really know what could be causing ppl to overlook your posts. idk what advice i could give you bc some of my bg3 posts do really really well, and some of them get like maybe 5 notes depending on what time and what day i post 🙈 but please dm me if you like i'd love to follow u if i don't already!! i love rbing bg3 posts on my blog i'd love to rb your posts too! i want everyone to feel included in this community you know ;-; even if you don't feel like your posts get enough attention i promise that isn't an indication of you not being wanted in this community!! it just means you haven't found your audience yet, and that's totally ok. it took me many years of posting consistently on simblr before i found ppl who were interested in my silly video game screenshots and tbh i feel major imposter syndrome for even saying that like jade stfu what do u mean ppl care about your screenshots no they dont😭 so like idk. for me when i get really worked up about feeling like nobody cares about what i post i just try to like......... make a circle of a few mutuals whose opinions i really cherish and every time they interact with my posts in any capacity, liking, commenting, reblogging, etc, i consider that post a win lol. be like "oh well my circle of elite mutuals all liked this post that means this post is pretty cool isnt it!!" lol that sounds silly but it helped a lot for me, bc i was really prone to getting myself in these cycles where i felt like if my posts didnt hit a certain note count that means i suck and nobody likes my stuff and thats a sucky way to feel you know!! and like i don't really know how i can optimze your note count for you, idek how i optimize my own, at this point ive given up on that endeavor bc it just puts too much weird pressure on myself to live up to an arbitrary and unreachable standard. but i think trying 2 reframe the way you think about this situation is just as helpful, it was really helpful for me at least. obv i think tumblr is a place where our posts SHOULD be shared ie reblogging stuff!! and i always always always encourage people to reblog posts bc thats how our community grows and flourishes, thats literally how tumblr has to function to survive so DO IT!! but also with all that being said, it will be better for u in the long run if you don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to hit a certain note count to be a valid participant in this community, instead make it about the love of sharing your creations online, and being content w the fact that your creations are still cool even if it didn't hit a certain level of engagement u desired!! and you know what, when you start loving and passionately posting about your creations, ppl pick up on that excitement. they get excited too!! and then before you know it you do have a community of support! so please dont unduly stress yourself my friend. does this make any sense. idk. YOU GOT THIS ANON I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!!

[fleurcense]

A devastating confrontation from myself to myself.

—

You often lay down on your bedroom’s floor out in the cold, thinking about the wrong and right. Do you truly want to know what’s your problem?

Your problem is that you have too many things that are going on in that small brain of yours. You always think, think, and think! You look at any book and you’ll think about it. You look at people and you’ll think about them. You look at couples and you’ll think about being in one. You look at travelling around the world and you’ll think about going there as if you’ll live long enough to see everything. A fool.

And you, being a writer don’t help either. Why do you think most authors ended up leaving this horrendous world alone without any involvement with their significant other? If it’s about them not unable to be romantic, that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s because they always questions their choices further and further. Always assuming choice A will lead to B and the consequence will be 54 and resulting to a parallel line. You are going to say, “That doesn’t make any sense.” but that’s the point. You always try to foresee the future assuming the assumptions will happen like you are some sort of a god or a fortune teller. A fool.

As much as you refuse to admit it, you are indeed the problem. A whole question that will remain unsolved and not because they can’t but rather because there is no formula that can provide an answer. You want so much of the world that no human being can provide. Are you not enough? No. However, you are constantly exceeding the ‘enough’ quota to the point an average human being on this earth cannot cannot fathom. A fool.

It is not wrong to have standards, it is even suggested to have some. But the problem here is that you’re absolutely, undeniably unreachable. As if once a person has you in their grasp, thinking you are finally confiding into them—then—suddenly, their skin can feel the touch of another, slowly removing their fingers one by one, and by the time they attempt to wrap you again, you are already on the loose, running towards a new celestial station, already creating a new problem consist of unfathomable numbers, arithmetic symbols that don’t correspond with one another. Why? Like I said, you simply do not feel enough with everything that you have. Always wanting more, always fearing more. Torn between risks or safety, dilemma between the future or the present. A fool.

Truthfully, at this point, nobody will be enough for you and you’ll die alone in extreme loneliness like those dead authors. You have all the talent to write pieces that others wish they could do the same, to make your world alive by those little sketches, to experience by creating things for your loved ones. But those talents are bound to get rusty by the time your find your own solver—the grave might have been your home.

A fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool.

Wait. I haven’t finished.

I apologise for sugarcoating, I was afraid you would cry. But this is the truth.

Maybe it is not that you are too enough but rather your inferiority complex is what makes you think so. Maybe you will never be enough. You’ll be like jude or yozo—no— you’ll be a lot worse. Always living in denial, thinking you have moved on from your past, thinking you have recovered—oh what a fool! A fool! You are indeed a fool! You don’t have that kind of privilege. You will always remain a disgusting human being, your body will not be accepted by the grave or the world, your face so distort that a circus won’t even accept you as their worker, your body horrendously disfigured like you are a failed sculpture where the sculptor decides not to finish you and leaves you to rot away on the bathroom floor at 3 am, transparent floor becomes a bloody pool of dark red, the trashcan accompanying you by your side but it is almost full because of tissues flooding it.

Yes, that’s what you are. Yes, this is your deepest ego. Your deepest persona that you wish to never think about but what can you do? It is inside you, within you—no—this is me. Oh, this is who I am. I am a fool. It takes me another perspective for me to confront my truest self. Am I a horrible person? Maybe I am. Do you know about the axiom of equality? No? Let me tell you why I love it. The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered.

That’s me. That’s my axiom. I will always remain X = X. It will never change. Where am I now? I’m in my closet, with a razor on my wrist, creating arts in the most painful way as a way to comfort myself and fight the shadows that are reaching out to me from below. Where am I now? I’m in the middle of a beach, watching the sea moving as my feet become one with the salt water, slowly rising from calf, to knees, to waist, to chest, and ultimately the top of my head. Where am I now? I’m in my high school’s toilet at 7 am, sitting on the toilet seat with a razor that I secretly took out from a sharpener, creating another art because the rooftop is calling for me. Where am I now? I’m in the middle of my room with a rope made with old clothes, staring at my window and visioning my future (it was distort). Where am I now? I’m in my classroom with a razor on my hand (again) because my friend is jealous of my relationship with my other friend and my friend is going through the same issue as me and I don’t know what to do because nobody ever comforted me (except the razor). Where am I now? I’m laying on my bedroom’s floor with a knife on my neck, thinking of my future (again) (it was distort). Where am I now? I am standing in front of the mirror and witnessing the ugliest creature to ever walk on this earth. Maybe I shouldn’t address it as a creature. A creature is a thing, it has something to it, some definitions. But this one doesn’t. Oh! I know! A defect! A defect object that should be criticised, bullied, insulted!

Lastly, where am I now? I am with Jude. I am on the bathroom floor with Jude. I am hiding from people with Jude. I am at the outside of the apartment naked with Jude. I am on the bed with wet clothes on with Jude. I am with Jude. I am Jude. Jude is my home.

Do you think I’m still beautiful?

—

From me, the moon.

xx sofea.

[barcalover86]

I hate that Pedri keeps perpetuating a stereotypical type of beauty that is unreachable for 99% of woman. I understand he is young and couldn't be bothered by that, he just see ass and tits but I wish he was more aware of the effect his actions and choices have. I'm sure all his male followers are like "yes that's the kind of girl worth dating Pedri" or they just praise him for the kind of girls he gets associated and is seems like a "winner" but he also has a large amount of female followers who only see with these kind of associations the perpetuation of impossible beauty standards that can only be meet with the help of surgery or dying in the gym all day. I know he is probably going to end with someone as her bc at this point that is his type but wouldn't hurt seeing someone I can kinda recognize myself in? Or someone naturally beautiful? (Like the girls Charles Leclerc dates) I mean that girl Ari was refreshing to see...

**I'm not against women with surgery because honestly if I had the money I would add some things to myself.**

I agree with you!

A lot of girls that like him maybe feel insecure and here I am also referring to you anon.

We will always find something about us that we don't like and it's really ok. I'm sure you are pretty and don't need any of those surgeries. Also, if you have a kind heart, you'll be seen much prettier in other's eyes. So learn to love yourself!♥️

About Charles, I think that he dates pretty girls too. Alex and Charlotte