#so unfortunately i did it myself

[certifiedlavendarmenace]

My thoughts on Lada from The Secret of Us

When it comes to this show I feel like some fans are biased towards particular characters and it hinders their ability to fully appreciate the narrative being told and the complexity of the characters the show has given us. The most complex character is definitely Lada.

I saw a Tiktok comment saying that Lada was born to be a lover girl but forced to be a vengeful ex and that is the most accurate and succinct way I have ever seen this character described. Some people like to think of Lada as a victim due to the way Earn treated her during the break up scene. Others painted her as some villian because of how she reacted at the end of episode 5.

The truth is she can both but more importantly she's the hero of her narrative. TSOU from Lada's perspective is the story of how she gave her heart to another woman. Only for said woman to wake up one day and decide she was done with her.

Earn told her she was using her for her money and she only really liked men which is the worst thing you can say to any queer woman during a break up. And those words nearly broke her. She spiraled and her life would have went down the drain if it wasnt for her friend.

So of course when she met Earn again she was cold and occasionally cruel. She doesn't know Earn's side of the story and Earn refused to clarify anything. Instead she wanted to move on like nothing happened but that type of breakup is not something you just move past. From Lada's perspective it looks like Earn was just bored and back to mess with her life again.

Truthfully, she should have done what Thaen wanted and banned Earn from the hospital but she couldn't because despite of everything that happened she loves Earn. She loves Earn way more than any of the other characters realise even Earn.

That decision left her in an intresting position. She couldn't just take Earn back because she would look gullible and pathetic for crawling back to her ex and she couldn't just send her away because she did want her back and deep down she was afraid of losing her permanently. I think there was also a huge part of her that liked having Earn chase after her and lashing out at her. It gave Earn a taste of the pain she felt for all the years they were apart and it gave Lada all the power in their new dynamic. Which must have felt great after the fiasco that was their breakup. I doubt there's anything more demeaning than crawling on your knees and begging a spouse not to leave you.

This made her outburst and even her slutshaming Earn justifiable in her eyes . If the show was told from Lada's perspective no one would be mad at her in fact the audience would probably cheer her on. Some people questioned why she was so quick to believe an unreliable source and say she should have talked to Earn which is true but why would she? Earn admitted to lying and cheating her in the past who is to say she wouldn't keep lying. Especially when she saw the 'proof' of her deception. Her biggest fear was the possibility that Earn was playing her again so when she was given evidence to suggest that was the case she reacted the way to most people would. It doesn't make what she did right but in hero vs villian narrative its not always about being right it's about having the moral high ground or getting even. Earn hurt her so she had the 'right' to hurt Earn.

Moreover, that scene was necessary for their development because in Lada's mind she finally hurt Earn enough that they were even. Which is how she forgave her.

There's alot more that makes Lada intresting. Like the fact that she seems to have a great relationship with her parents but is still closeted. Possibly because she idolizes her mother and will do anything to make her happy including entertaining a man she can barely tolerate. Yet she trusts in her mother's love for her so fully that she just assumes she will accept her. Or the fact that she seems to be an only child in the show and that must have come with a shit ton of pressure. Or her terrible coping mechanisms and how she's inclined to binge drink at the slightest inconvenience (or more accurately anytime something goes wrong in her relationship with Earn). She's a great character and i feel like she gets sold short sometimes.

Also if the puzzle symbolizes their willingness to rebuild their relationship like Earn said than that whole sequence has alot more depth. The first time they build the puzzle Earn 'tricks' Lada into helping before she falls asleep. Which could symbolize the fact that while Earn is willing to rebuild the relationship she's not ready to do the labour to re-establish the emotional connection she severed leaving Lada to do all the heavy lifting alone. However Lada still has a large amount of residual anger towards Earn and her temper flares up often effectively tearing down everything she built. It's only when she hurts Earn the way she was hurt and Earn is confronted with the ugly reality of what she caused (and she almost reaches her limit) that she's finally ready to do the hard work and that's when Lada is ready to set her anger aside. The second time they build it they work together finally bridging the divide that was their own idiocy and their commitment to miscommunication.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ooh, you want to know what happens at the gay bar run by ex-pirates, ooh...You'll just have to read Tiger Tiger to find out...

(Inspired by this Disco Elysium comic)

[collapsethevillain]

Two reasons for my mother to roll her eyes over me still not being over fnaf. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be over it tbh

[xxplastic-cubexx]

oh noooo or whatever

bonus aka The Real Motive Behind This:

SURPRISE double bonus. textless ver of the first pic under the cut

[laurrelise]

i did a little doodle

[grimstrawberry]

If I don't make light of everything, I'm gonna explode.

[milktea-grn]

i think if you put these two in a room together and came back ten minutes later you would find it fully burnt to the ground

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[virgothozul]

Mantaraybryn doing songs for CJ ✨

[daily-xisuma]

[047] Applied my version of Doom's partial invisibility fuzz effect and an accidental offshoot I created in the process, heehee :-)

[ctommy-antigone]

it's meant to be the happy time of year - c!tommy + if we make it through december (phoebe bridgers cover)

Image credits:

https://pin.it/3dbmb0LFP

https://x.com/tommyinnit/status/1338596444681490433

https://youtu.be/UEj1xRvpSbk?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/DRXKriskZdQ?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/ZhNXz2yRPVs?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/_okO4CssoqI?feature=shared

https://lmanberg322634374.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/the-1st-lmanberg-war/

https://youtu.be/_okO4CssoqI?feature=shared

[mafuyuakgae]

stickers i made ٩(˃̶͈̀௰˂̶͈́)و

[sharkneto]

Hm. I've got an annoying lack of words right now, but not a lack of random WIPs.

If I edited up some of my Five's Time In The Apocalypse Fic (that was originally supposed to be like. a 10k piece about Five's relationship with Delores but is now over 30k words and only in the first year, still) and threw it up on AO3 with no plan or schedule for further updates except "Eventually" - would that be something you guys would be interested in?

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

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