#or maybe less (it felt like less anyway)

[stealingpotatoes]

hands you all this cal to announce i’ve FINALLY finished fallen order (by which i mean i finally picked it up again after those couple hours i played a few months ago and then finished the whole game in 2 days lol)

[odysseys-blood]

ive been wondering forever about when exactly levi was kidnapped and taken to the heaven lab and this bit from his new unit's board here doesnt help much but i wonder if those are just the first words he remembers learning and not the first words hes learned overall.

mainly this is all just speculation based on 2 things:

1) he ofc had some sort of childhood before the heaven lab from how old he looked at the time, plus his selfie comic art looking younger than his sprite art from ch5 (look at his little horns plus his hair's grown out)

2) he does also just say straight up that he doesn't remember his life from before the lab

i wonder if that means he had to get reacquainted with the kings all over again too. like he wouldnt recognize them at all even with how it looks like they often played together. (tho i do suspect a little that some comics might have been done before there was a more coherent story put together but thats whatever)

[heshemejoshi]

i never posted the finished piece?? this is the actual first pmd fanart i ever did (before i got into oc making lol). dated december 2023.

sorry dusknoir hadn’t entered the polycule on my mind by the time i made this btw. maybe someday i’ll redraw this with him too. that would make it the redraw of a redraw as this is already redraw of art i found on an AMV from like 2011 hahajsjs

[ineed-to-sleep]

*me immediately after going through a terrifying and traumatic experience* haha yeah I guess it was rough but I'm fine now like I'm totally chill. It was kinda funny actually if you think about it

[strawbebbiesart]

chimckens 🐓🌽

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

It is truly fascinating how the common tumblr narrative around John and Paul somehow makes the guy who literally got violent multiple times over people insinuating he was queer appear more "on board with the whole gay thing" than the guy who said some awkward/dated stuff in interviews a couple of times.

[13eyond13]

love it when a character that's hard to read intuitively for you has like a dedicated fandom interpreter who can just glance at their blank face in a panel and then give you a 3k word essay on their innermost thoughts & desires & fears and neatly tie it back into the themes & whatnot as if it's the most obvious thing in the world

[maxthesillyy]

thinking about. i dont know how to phrase this really but. chloe and frank.

like. when Chloe killed Frank i (, personally,) feel like her guilt from it was less because she killed Frank, and More because she Killed Someone (and their dog).

but!!! thats not to say she didnt feel guilty for killing Frank. because she definitely did. because on some level. despite everything. despite all of his shitty behavior. a part of her still cared for him. that tiny 15-17ish year old part in her still cared for him.

because that 15-17ish year old with intense abandonment issues in her only had. a small handful of people in her life that actually cared for her, and when THOSE few people aren’t even doing the best job at it— it’s no shit that Chloe’s standards for Good Friends are going to be Immensely dropped.

and so. it’s kind of like what happened with Rachel, but WAY less intense. when she found someone who didn’t hate her, and was willing to hang around her—after so so long of people hating her and not wanting to be around her— it makes sense that part of her would kinda latch onto them a little bit.

and so, even after all of the shit she’s learned he did— even when Frank starts to hate her— even when he threatens Max and her’s lives— part of her keeps remembering him as one of the few guys who stuck around when no one else did.

it’s just that. no matter how bad the person— if you’ve known someone for years, and they were one of the only nice people to you in a town where theres like. four people that are nice to you— it’s gonna hurt if you kill them. even if it was self defense. even if it was entirely their own fault— even if you two aren’t on even remotely good terms anymore.

ESPECIALLY for such a sentimental person like Chloe. taking that in consideration it makes me wonder. maybe she didn’t feel bad for killing Frank. maybe she felt bad for killing the person Frank used to be to her. but maybe she realized that That Frank already died long ago.

but yeah. im mentally ill. take everything i said with a grain of salt considering it is 12:07 AM.

[naranjapetrificada]

The first thing I should ever have said about Izzy and the last thing I intend to say until at least October 26th.

[Although I am not Her strongest soldier, so who knows if I will stick the landing.]

So to start with, I was a "late" arrival to the show. I knew it existed of course, but I only occasionally saw things that reminded me it existed. The first time I saw a mention of "grumpy/sunshine" it was with a picture of Ed and Stede, so I guess on some level I knew there was shipping going on, but that was literally all I knew. I didn't even know it involved Blackbeard lol.

Which is all to say that I first approached and watched season 1 removed from basically anything anyone had to say about it. I think what actually got me to watch it wasn't anything anyone had to say either, it was from youtube recommendations? Like I think I had watched a couple Taika interviews or something and ofmd stuff started showing up? So after catching a few clips and intentionally spoiling the kiss for myself (life is too short to be queerbaited) I watched it in April/May 2023, and was Changed by it the way so many other people were. It grabbed me so hard I started looking for fics, and when fic grabbed me even harder I became a regular tumblr user for the first time ever in June 2023.

What I didn't do, before the second half of 2023, was care particularly much about Izzy Hands.

I remember describing him as psychologically fascinating to the first IRL friend I talked to about the show, and joking that he just needed a good dom. As much as his decision to call in the navy was a threat to Stede's and Ed's lives, I saw his actions as part of a thing needed for the story, and while I knew he was one of the season's villains there wasn't really any heat behind that assessment.

For me he was there to set things in motion, and to serve the narrative in certain ways, to be a foil, more storytelling tool than man. That doesn't mean I didn't think Con did an excellent job adding layers to him, he absolutely made Izzy take up space and feel more present and textured than he otherwise might have. But when I began to zoom out and consider things on meta level, Izzy existed to do a certain thing or occupy a certain place in relation to the narrative and other characters more than anything else. And that was fine.

Then I started reading meta here, and found myself surrounded by passionate conversations about Izzy from many directions occurring with an intensity that I couldn't wrap my brain around. I saw people tying themselves into knots to justify and excuse the behavior of a textual antagonist, and I was baffled and because I still saw Izzy for what his role in the narrative was, it literally made no sense to see his behavior explained away. In the framework I brought to the fandom when I first arrived, trying to explain away Izzy's behavior would be like looking at a forest fire and trying to explain away processes like combustion and oxidation. Or if you'll allow me to borrow another extended, nature-based metaphor from a fic in an entirely different fandom:

Again, because from where my head was at, it didn't make sense to look at Izzy's morality as a zero sum game because in this metaphor, he was functionally just a brackish body of water. I'm not saying the morality is brackish, I'm saying the morality was literally not the point because like an estuary, an antagonist "must exist" because antagonists exist for specific reasons directly related to storytelling goals.

So there was no real heat behind my feelings about him or his actions, beyond the natural emotional reactions we have to characters and their behaviors before we zoom out. I was of course upset with his treatment of Lucius, which was targeted compared to other members of the crew. I was annoyed with the way he talked to and about Ed. I laughed when his plans had the equal and opposite results of what he intended, which you could argue happened with every single plan he made for the entirety of season 1. And yes, especially as a Black person living in the US, I felt the fear and betrayal that comes from seeing someone call the cops (which given the show and its writers, it does not feel like a stretch to describe calling the navy that). I wondered if there was any coming back from a choice like that, which is a big overriding question for the series as a whole.

I'm not here to debate any of the points in the previous paragraph. I know how I feel and you feel how you feel and there's already been so much said about the morality of it all by people who have explained themselves well, so let them convince you or not. Instead I've been trying to talk about the two sides of my experience before and after getting into the fandom with Izzy.

Before: Izzy Hands, Narratively Useful Antagonist Portrayed Compellingly And Effectively by Con O'Neill.

After: Izzy Hands, Unfortunate Avatar Of The Sadly Common Tendency For Certain Fans To Hyperfocus On A White Antagonist Or Secondary Character When There Already Exists A Protagonist They're A Foil Of (And Also It Looks Bad TO Do That When The Protagonist Is Someone With A Marginalized Identity).

I'm not here to argue the merits of those assessments either, because that's not the point. The point is the vast gulf between them and how the latter does such an incredible disservice to the Izzy we were given and that so many people claim to love. The latter comes from a place where morality is the focus, which I'm sorry y'all, feels like it originates with people who refuse to countenance Izzy's role in the story as well as his characterization.

Viewers who were willing to see Izzy as an antagonist, who don't view the word "antagonist" as a value judgement in and of itself, who don't think that finding an antagonist charismatic or compelling means anything about their own morality, those people can look at the show we were given and take it for what it was made to be. I'm not saying that it's only the Izzy stans (not enjoyers, not jar people) who start fights or that people who understand that Izzy is an antagonist don't also have deep morality related feelings about him and his actions in the first season. What I am saying is that sanding off Izzy's rough edges and trying to make him into something he isn't poisons even the possibility of having a discussion about him because people enter the conversation with two completely different understandings of reality. If you cannot accept the job that season 1 Izzy was given to do to move the story along, well you might as well have watched a completely different show for how much that fanon Izzy has anything to do with the canon one.

This show deserves better than that. The writers deserve better than that. Con O'Neill deserves better than that. Israel Basilica Hands deserves better than that. We all do.

[faaun]

i should have never dated an iranian person like i told myself i would never do it bc it would be too much intensity all in one place and i was RIGHT now that i've experienced it (smn who can engage in poetry in a similar way, talk in the same language, making all the cultural stuff gay and hot, etc) i feel like without those aspects things will just be missing Something like from now on . idk . let's drink black tea w saffron and then make out . i've never celebrated the solar new year or leapt over a fire the wednesday before or read romantic hafez poetry w someone who loves me romantically and now i crave it . so much

[mag200]

when i say i chose to be trans i dont mean that im following a fun trend for cool points or that i haven’t experienced genuine dysphoria. i didnt choose to feel a certain way but i chose to name the feeling, and to name it in this particular language. i chose to live this way, to be open about my feelings and unapologetically transgender, and i chose to share my feelings with you. i would probably be just as trans if i never said anything about it, because the feeling i had from the beginning would still be there, but i wouldnt be choosing it. this is valid as well, i just decided its not for me. in this life, i am living this way. “i chose to be trans” because we are our actions as much as we are our feelings.

[jamietxrtt]

im still baffled by the general response to ep 8 btw. sure the dialogue got a little cheesy at times, but the dialogue in this show is always like 15% cheesy? that’s why people like it lol.

i thought ep 8 was really good, plotlines were moving, drama was happening, characters and relationships were being tested. juno temple acted her ass off. i wish the whole season had been like this!

i really don’t understand why everyone disliked this ep so much. am i missing something? am i just looking for something different out of this show than everyone else is? i agree that the season as a whole has been… scattered, but i thought this past ep was really good.

am i missing something?

[sisterkosho]

If anyone in the Tokrev fandom is on Twitter and interested in following me btw, my acc is here. A majority of my following rn is from the JJBA community, and while I’m absolutely NOT leaving that fandom any time soon, I feel like I’ve been Haitani posting into the void. 😭 It seems like the TR fandom is kinda dead on there, so I’m hoping to find wherever y’all are hiding.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

At The Feet Of The Sun

book 2 in a slow paced high fantasy duology*

the right hand of the emperor (who is off searching for an heir) struggles with what to do after passing on his responsibilities and also discovering various pieces of information that are mindblowing to him, personally,

after adventure is thrust upon him, he travels to find His Radiancy and they go on some otherworldly adventures while growing closer and figuring out the nature of their friendship

(*there’s extra novellas & i think another book coming? duology adjacent, currently,)

[cookinguptales]

that said, as much as I've been struggling the past 48 hours or so, I have to admit that it has felt a little clarifying.

I've been playing the hell out of stardew valley, like I always do when I'm struggling with my PMDD, because the calming repetitive movements and bite-sized tasks (which induce the illusion of productivity) make it much easier to calm my mind and like...

I keep thinking "wouldn't it be nice to make something that soothes...?"

I felt a little embarrassed last night when I was writing about how I realized that AITNISTS would have meant the world to me when I was a queer, disabled teen feeling very broken and unlovable, and how now it almost feels like I'm writing bedtime stories for a ghost.

but... I think to some degree, that's nice, too... if I'm writing what soothes me, maybe it'll soothe someone else, too. making art that soothes people that feel broken... I think that would be nice. or... kind, at least. maybe.

it's something to aspire to, at least.

like sometimes I do feel this weird need to make something beautiful or complex or important but I guess "important" can mean a lot of different things, and so can "beautiful"...

I'm obviously never going to win any kind of literary prize with monsterfucking hurt/comfort but like. idk. maybe it's enough to write the kind of book that would have made me feel like I was capable of being loved and wanted when I was a kid.

especially if it helps anyone else now...

idk. it's a nice thought, at the very least.

[aforgottenthing-in-space]

Ok so. Miles Edgeworth is trans. Gregory was definitely a trans affirming father so when Miles told him he was like “sure son. What name do you want to go by?”

And so all Manfred von Karma knew was that Gregory Edgeworth had a son. When he gains custody of Miles, he just. Does not realize that the kid he’s now in charge of is a trans boy. (Maybe Miles already had a name change. Idk. Somehow legal name wise, von Karma just. Does Not realize.)

So Miles grows up being raised as a boy and von Karma just. Doesn’t realize. Until puberty begins.

And he notices something, that Miles isn’t experiencing puberty the way he would have expected and he’s like hmmm. I am not sure what is happening.

And then like preteen Miles, incredibly nervous, comes to him and he’s like, “excuse me, Mr. von Karma, sir, but would I be able to start puberty blockers please?”

And von Karma’s just like “WHAT!”

He’s so caught off guard and so used to thinking of Miles as “Gregory Edgeworth’s pathetic son” that he just… kinda lets Miles medically transition bc he’s so caught off guard by the realization.

And for his entire life, Miles is like. Unable to wrap his head around von Karma being surprisingly trans accepting???