#she is my comfort celebrity

[mysteryofvampires]

I love Lana del Rey because all her songs feel like a hug from an angel.

[kagooleo]

johto’s champion and chronicler for the deity of the ilex shrine, it’s lyra!🌿

this one took me a while due to trying out different techniques (studying a Lot of art nouveau) and making a couple changes to her outfit (the details help), but I’d like to think she’s learned a lot in her journey and wanted to reflect her experience more in her champion fit

her specialty would be in fairy types and her meganium’s divergent evolution is grass/fairy 🧚🪷

and a bonus w/ the johto gang after the photoshoot!

[good-to-drive]

would you say paul was a good husband to linda?

This is a super interesting question that I was actually just thinking about! The short answer is yes. The long answer is a little more complicated, but it's also yes.

In a way, all you really need to say about Paul and Linda is that they were happy. And I know a lot of people feel that trying to understand a happy couple is pointless (or possibly even offensive) because all that matters is that they were happy.

But I do tend to think that even a happy relationship can still be complex and interesting -- or, rather, that a real, human relationship can still be very happy. That's why I'm personally comfortable with thinking more deeply about their relationship, and those thoughts are under the cut.

Paul and Linda's relationship made them both happy and that is absolutely something to be celebrated. I also think that, like literally every other relationship in the world, the specific way in which they related to and loved one another was a product of their own personalities and experiences. It’s not necessarily fairy tale magic that made them right for each other. Or it is fairy tale magic, and fairy tales are just a lot more real and human than you might expect. 

I actually think to understand Paul and Linda it helps to look back at Paul's relationship with Jane, and how his relationship with Linda was essentially the logical follow-up.

This has been on my mind lately because I was just reading about a phenomenon where men, particularly of older generations, were shamed in childhood for wanting emotional intimacy or showing any vulnerability with their emotions (“man up,” “too old to cry”, etc.), which culminates a fear of intimacy/affection as an adult.

Because it’s generally acceptable for men to have high sexual appetites, sometimes these men will start to substitute sexual/physical intimacy for the emotional intimacy they’re deprived of, thus appearing to have a high sex drive.

(Obviously this can happen to women and young people, too, but everything I read specified that it’s most often seen in older men.) 

All this together reminded me a lot of Paul and how we often perceive him pre-Linda as having a high sex drive (i.e. cheating on Jane like a goddamn dog), and also how he seemed to fear emotional intimacy and platonic affection throughout his entire life (like when he thought George of all people was going to hit him for taking his hand on his freaking deathbed). 

It kind of makes sense given how massive and insane his life was (and how much grief and trauma he was still carrying from his childhood) that he would basically be a black hole of emotional need just like all the other Beatles were, and I genuinely wonder if he used sexuality as a band-aid for an enormous, unmet need for affection/intimacy/validation/etc. 

Which brings us to Linda, and the fact that he was able to be completely loyal to her. Which is an amazing achievement for someone who struggles with infidelity, and I definitely don't want to take that away from him, but I also think we can look a little deeper at why he was suddenly able to be loyal.

If I'm right that his high sex drive was band-aid for unmet emotional needs, then it would tend to follow that being able to be 100% loyal would mean that black hole of emotional need was being satiated, or at least soothed, by someone willing and able to do a lot of emotional caretaking to keep him happy.

Essentially, I think his newfound loyalty was a product of Linda's willingness to be a therapist/girlfriend/appeaser/etc. pretty much 24/7. (That’s barely an exaggeration btw – they spent a lot of time together). Looking at their relationship just in a practical sense, Linda really went out of her way to be with Paul all the time, to be involved in the things he cared about (even at the detriment of things that she cared about), and to make the relationship “about” him.

(Kind of a weird side note here is that John was loyal to Yoko under similar circumstances, at least until the level of emotional dependence between them got to be too much for her and she encouraged him to develop an outside relationship with May Pang, so it's arguably yet another unexpected parallel in John and Paul's lives after they “broke up” with each other.)

I've also wondered a bit why Linda was willing/able to devote herself to Paul's needs to an unusually self-sacrificing extent, but unfortunately Linda's childhood is something I know a lot less about. Some people (especially women of older generations) are deeply reliant on the need they sense in other people to give them a feeling of value. Only by being of service, by satiating the need, can they feel like a worthwhile person themselves. So in that way they're equally dependent on their partner. 

(Okay, maybe not equally, but they're still dependent).

Obviously love was the main reason Linda focused so much of her time and energy on being what Paul needed, arguably at the detriment of her own needs, but looking at it more in the context of her personality and experiences it does make me wonder about her upbringing and to what extent she was raised to believe she achieved value or lovability by being of service to others.

I think Paul's reliance on Linda to caretake his emotions for him (and Linda's potential reliance on Paul to require caretaking) could be part of why we see such extreme devotion between them, why they literally never (voluntarily) spent a single night apart in all of their marriage. It's an expression of love, yes, and also of how deeply they both relied on one another.

(It also probably indicates anxious attachment and potentially some deep rooted concerns about being cheated on, but that's speculation for another day.)

Now, all this being said, none of this changes the fact that Paul was loyal and he did adore Linda and they did spend every single moment possible with one another. I'm not bringing any of this complicated shit up to try to devalue their relationship or any of the things we love about it -- rather, I think the fact that it does come from a place of humanity and vulnerability is part of what makes it beautiful.

It's a good chance to remember that no relationship is 100% easy and simple 100% of the time, and we're all a product of our own messy internal stuff that we try to deal with and try to find other people who are also willing to deal with. And while it’s true that every relationship has a deeper story, it’s equally true that a relationship between two people with complex personalities and needs can still be extremely happy, loving, and positive for the both of them.

[squishosaur]

hey man. i'm just saying. why would we put inexperienced teenagers with over-inflated egos and obvious emotional issues into combat classes and make them claw their way to the top of their dorms and expect things to just run smoothly. who actually thought this

[im-smart-i-swear]

very importrant oc diagram

more in depth descriptions of this stuff below ig

omg same trauma - sympathy and respect but also acknowledging youre not the same. propably the most normal out of the three options. you know very intimate stuff about this person but you have never met and its weird. you live your life normally but sometimes you wonder what it would be like to meet him

i will never be as cool - constantly comparing yourself to him to the point a big chunk of your personality still revolves around your connection to him (in ryous case this is mixed with seeing shiro as a sort of idealised perfect father figure despite never having interacted with the guy before)(its really weird and he tries to be secretive abt it but the others knows anyway)(like kiddo they can tell)(youre not subtle at all). he is soooo good and so pure and perfect and you will never live up to that no matter how hard you try. there must be something wrong with you

gender dysphoria - what it says on the tin. you have this guys memories and voice and body and face and it makes you want to scream and cry and kill him and bury his body in the woods so nobody can ever find it

(also to clear things up this diagram and the explanations are written from a point in the timeline before the whole 'stickbug gets mind controlled' thing so the clones havent met shiro yet)(also also obv this is pretty simplified)

[hyperfixated-artist]

That feeling when @toh-tagteam-au breaks into your house and holds your entire brain captive. Again. (We've all been there, right?)

Anyway, I am thoroughly Unwell so take this quick Tag Team!Grom sketch before I completely lose my mind :D

[malwarechips]

mspaint moon doodles in celebration of iterator plushies

[diodellet]

wow so...that was a week.

[whatupitsgiaaa]

need elizabeth olsen to do a collab with the calm app NOW

[king0fcrows]

.

[supercantaloupe]

earlier tonight my roommates were talking about the halloween party they're planning in a couple weeks (i will be out of town) and since the convo went towards "party supplies needing to be purchased" one of my roommates mentioned that she had the present she's planning on getting me for my birthday in her digital shopping cart already and then made a little mischievous face at me. and like it's sweet i suppose but my idea of "celebrating" my birthday is basically acting like it doesn't exist cause i'm kind of...uncomfortable with receiving Direct Praise And Attention especially for things i don't think are worth it (for example, Existing Another Year). at any rate my idea of the perfect gift this year would be Not being stuck in rehearsal until 10pm that night but that will certainly not be the case so whatever

[torao-chan]

man idk what to tell yall

im just. exhausted atm

[deewithani]

Asks are always open. Tonight is an inebriated night, so...

Yeah, it's gonna be a night, I think.

[aparticularbandit]

@Cherry Anon - not answering your submission directly, because I want to link the thing when it's done, and I won't be posting it until sometime in December - but I started your N2N request. ^^

[feralnumberfive]

Being overstimulated is not really fun or funny in any way, but my situation tonight was honestly a little funny looking back on it now that I've calmed down. I was celebrating Pride in a city tonight and was in a bar/club with friends, absolutely overstimulated and disassociating. At one point I was sitting at a bar table alone, had earplugs in, playing word search on my phone, was surrounded by glowsticks and had three on each wrist, the club's DJ was blasting Aqua's "Barbie Girl" while all of the giant screens in the bar randomly displayed different pictures of Tiger Woods. A not fun but a little fun night

[madigoround]

💜