#repressed reality

[manticore239]

The Yellowing Road

I wish I could say I was as calm as I looked, but I’m not. Beneath the skin-deep poise, a tremor ripples through me—uncontrollable, panicked shaking, the inevitable result of breaking the one rule: “Don’t look down.” But it’s too late. I’ve seen it, and no amount of willing blindness can undo that revelation.

Everyone complains about the irregularities of the road we walk on. Some stub their toes and curse. Others wrinkle their noses at the ever-present stench. People trip and fall, slicing themselves open on jagged edges, their wounds oozing and festering. “It is what it is,” they say. “Don’t complain about what you can’t fix.”

But the road isn’t merely flawed. It was built from desperation and innovation, from the remains of a past too grotesque to face. Its very foundation is a concrete mixture of human remains, ground and reconstituted into something we tread on daily without thought. Beneath my feet, brittle bones crunch like dry leaves. A kicked fragment skitters ahead—not a stray walnut but an amalgam of shattered teeth and plastered dental fillings, clicking off the hollowed skulls of expired strangers.

We all know the truth, deep down. That’s why no one looks. To look down is to risk annihilation of the soul. The road is a graveyard, a monument to everything we’ve consumed to survive. A single glance is enough to rob you of sleep, of sanity, of the will to keep moving. Look long enough, and you’ll crumble under the weight of it, become bedridden, unable to earn your place above the cement. You’ll fall, and soon enough, your body will join the next avenue’s unholy mix.

I see it in the eyes of others when they catch me staring downward, their gazes flickering with recognition and dread. My expression betrays the truth they’ve repressed, shattering their fragile denial. Their fear mirrors mine, though they hide it better—for now. But reality stinks worse than decay, a stench too foul for our senses to endure.

And yet, amid this nightmare, I notice something else. Tiny shoots of green—thin, fragile tendrils forcing their way through cracks in the pavement. They seem impossible, and yet they persist, defying the weight of the road above them. They draw their strength not from denial but from the very horror we refuse to face, reclaiming nourishment from the remnants of what once was.

The others don’t notice, their gazes locked firmly forward or cast to the ground in resignation. But I see them—the first flowers of a truth too powerful to suppress. They whisper to me, their petals trembling in the foul wind: Life endures. Beauty endures. Even here.

A choice lies before me. I can keep walking, pretending not to see, preserving the illusion of stability while cracks spider-web beneath my feet. Or I can kneel—risk breaking the unspoken rules—and nurture the green shoots rising from the ashes. To touch them is to risk everything. But perhaps, in the end, it is the only way to rebuild a road that doesn’t demand our bones.

[moonlarked]

unpopular opinion apparently but I don’t think it would be very hard for anybody disconnected and sheltered enough to be light yagami. look at the comments under any video detailing a violent crime - child molestation, sexual abuse, brutal murder, etc. it’s literally vigilante logic. light was just seventeen and grew up around constant news broadcasts dictating that kind of thing (and probably online if his quick knowledge of the kira cult means anything - he’s probably been on forums like that before). like yeah sure, light’s dad was a cop and he was heading down that route anyway, but he was also a kid. a kid who had the chance to change.

[seance]

STEDE BONNET / BURN IT DOWN by Daughter

[cantgetworsethanthistbh]

dumping more of my stancest feels here because i cannot NOT think of them. i read journal 3 for the first time this week and its great because Ford acts like stanley's biggest hater which is pretty fking funny (if not absolutely infuriating at times because omfg stfu you smug prick)

but the moments like this get to me

Ford being blinded by his quest of grandeur, accolades and praise for world changing discoveries, so obsessed with greatness, being the first name people remember, and all the other things his npd-isms tells him he wants.

And then there's "reminds me of camping with my brother. i wonder what he's up to..."

i mentioned in my previous post that stan acts quite a lot like the anchor to ford's boat, keeping him grounded and most importantly, safe from both the bitter and the sweet kinds of evils. but he also represents something so much simpler to ford too: the simple desires he represses so much because its not "good enough" for someone special like him.

he resents stan so much because he represents a "block" against that percieved good enough success he wants, the obstacle that made it impossible to get in a fancy college, become the world renowed researcher, the one who wanted to destroy his journal's and lifes work (even though it was the better, safer option if Bill really WAS that dangerous, which he was) that could still make him famous. because if ford's not "praised and weird" then he's just "weird" and being "weird" was nothing but a pain his whole life that kept him rejected and isolated from the masses. and stan prevented him from that.

(btw "maybe he can prove himself to me" is nasty work my god ford is a douche lmao)

a lot of his projections of something greater comes through with how he treated dipper in the show (his whole spiel in damvtf) and fiddleford in journal 3 where he looks down on the happy life that fiddleford had with his wife and child and saying he was "wasting his talents" making computers. and like, we all know by the way he takes them on high stakes adventures they're not as prepared for compared to him (and end up causing more trouble than not by doing so), he's trying to fill a gaping hole left by someone else. we all know this obviously, we all know what we ship here, but what i came to appreciate the most about it is how much that gaping hole exists in the low stakes

everytime ford is thinking during the "down time" moments, his thoughts always drift back to his childhood, and one person who represents it.

childhood memories, making fun of stans favorite snack, scribbling out a design of the stan o war, whenever Ford lets his mind wander it expresses such an intense yearning for the past before he became obsessed with wanting something more. these are his most utmost and most unfiltered thoughts, which is why he scribles them away or and writes in code. and the fact that he directly says they are about NOT getting married, followed with "wondering what he's doing right now", painting the picture of what his most ideal idylic life is. wanting a return of something lost. wanting Stan back more than anything.

he finally accepts that his dream never really changed, just the same as stan's and so they saild off together for the rest of their days, in ford's own words (which ironically sounds like a marriage to me either way so tough shit ford)

[nando161mando]

[aphel1on]

not sure how to phrase this but something i have been ruminating on recently is that xue yang is strangely fragile. obviously he is also incredibly resilient. he survived, and continues to survive, impossible things. he has a million barriers between himself and the world, but none of this actually matters when it comes to what he feels. everything is personal to him. everything pierces straight through all that armor and goes right to his battered heart, the heart that no one else believes he has. that even he is not fully cognizant of. the world strikes and strikes and strikes and so he strikes and strikes and strikes back, even (especially) when the wound is something other people would not think worthy of retribution.

xue yang would never realize this- would be outraged at the concept of it- but the way everything, everything is something to rally a defense against is in itself a form of fragility. he does not know how to let go of things, or let them pass him by. passivity is death. so he is ruthlessly cruel and violent. he projects himself as a lunatic untouchable by anything you might possibly do to him, and on some level he even believes this. but in actuality he is one raw emotional wound. he never learned to separate himself from his emotions, much less process them. the volatility is not so much insanity as it is the constant lashing out of an animal in a trap, and the trap is the world, and the trap is himself, and he is never going to get out. and like so much else, this pain is just part of the background radiation of his life. it hardly registers. to be able to register the hurt, you would have to be able to register a time in which you were not hurt.

i feel like it is a fragility that could blossom into such tenderness, given exactly the right set of circumstances. how at the very first touch of softness in his life he fell into a domesticity from which he never recovered. how much was there, still, to be salvaged from the cruelty. on some level i am always thinking about the little apple bunnies. about the meal for daozhang and the straw in a-qing's bed.

it was too little, too late. it shattered like glass when the world intruded back in. but the tenderness was there. no one, least of all xue yang, knows what might have happened had it been unearthed in him any sooner.

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

"Cuhut it out- you guys!" "Nu-uh, not until you're all perked up first! You don't want those gym challengers meetin' with an ol' mopey leader, do ya?" "Whitney's right, dear friend. No need to hide that beautiful smile of yours, alright?~"

What it takes to cheer up Johto's beloved ghost boy 👻💕

[philosophybits]

What expression has in common with repression is that its movement is blocked by reality. That movement, and the whole complex of experience of which it is a part, is denied direct communication with its object. [...] Each successful expression of the subject, one might say, is a small victory over the play of forces in its own psychology. The pathos of art is bound up with the fact that precisely by withdrawing into imagination it renders the superior power of reality its due, and yet does not resign itself to adaptation, does not prolong external violence in internal deformation. Those who accomplish this, have without exception to pay dearly for it as individuals, left helplessly behind by their expression, which has outstripped their psychology.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 136

[cartoonnerdygoat]

I'm so sorry to anyone following my blog. I got into a youtube series about personified political ideologies and there will be nothing else I'm capable of thinking about for the next few days.

I'm shipping political ideologies now. Send help.

[ciderjacks]

wait oh my god the chilchuck professional disordered eating is canon, I thought people were just committing like. micro aggressions against half foots.

[notbecauseofvictories]

I never want to read about people having healthy, loving relationships in fiction. Not for any particularly noble or logical reason, I just hate it.

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

one thing i really deeply wish is that i'd had access as a kid to the plural community and information that are more easily available today, instead of my first experience with plural community which both took it seriously and was nonjudgmental having been 10's era tul/pa.info lmao

[melien]

[nando161mando]

[spectrum-color]

Being a RotE fan is so fun because the way we talk about Fitz legit must seem to outsiders like we hate him, but we actually collectively adore him and he’s our special boy

[yutamayo]

byeeee