#something about friendship

[feralstemgirl]

thinking about how as a kid i struggled so hard to learn how to put my hair up in a ponytail and i always had my mom do it for me but when i was in seventh grade my best friend decided to try and teach me and she spent at least a week teaching me and helping me practice until i finally got it right.

and it’s been years but i still do it the way she taught me, and i think of her almost every time. do you miss me too? do you think of me when you put your own hair up?

these days, we only really talk on birthdays (yours, mine) but somehow when people ask me who’s your best friend, my mind always flashes to her first. bright eyes. strawberry blonde hair. a smile like sunshine. laughter like the most lovely music i've ever listened to.

and i still haven’t had the heart to change my instagram profile pic from the photo we took in fifth grade, sitting on the edge of your neighborhood’s pool with our backs to the camera and our arms linked together like an infinity sign. and i wonder, do you still look at my profile from time to time? and if you do, what goes through your mind when you do? does it make you smile to yourself and think of summer days spent traipsing through the woods? or do you just think it's a little weird that i never changed it?

and maybe i should but not today. not today.

today, i'll look at it and think of warm hands holding mine, promising me, you're my best friend, i could never forget you.

today, i'll look at it and i'll remember the day we stripped into swimsuits and went down to the pond and threw mud at each other like snowballs until we were covered head to toe and laughing like we were mad, and i'll think to myself, you were my home for a decade of my life. you were my everything, and leaving you was the hardest thing i've ever done.

today, i'll look at it and i'll remember the box full of letters she gave me when i moved away (one to open when i was sad, one to open when i was grieving, one to open when i was happy, one to open when i was afraid, and one to open on my next birthday) and i'll think to myself, i loved you and i love you and i will always love you and it's not the same anymore but the love still remains and sometimes i don't know what to do with that.

today, i'll look at it and i'll remember the pack of cards she gave me for my thirteenth birthday with notes written over each card in sharpie about all the things she loved about me, and i'll think to myself, i hope more than anything that you are happy right now, that your life is full of joy and success and love and friendship and wonder.

today, i'll look at it and i'll remember us, promising each other we'd always stay together. we'd go to college together and get jobs at the same company and we'd find a little blue house out on the edge of the woods and we'd be roommates and our husbands would be best friends too and we'd build a little life together and when we grew old and weary of this life we'd sit on the porch of our little home and we'd laugh as we finally passed into the next, our hands still linked together.

i wish we'd had more time, i'll think to myself, but i'm so grateful for the time we did have and i know the memories we made will stay with me forever.

[robinsunrest]

Maybe some things don’t have to last forever. Maybe some friendships only last a year. Maybe we can just be happy now and not worry that the future may be sad. We have to live, don’t we? Maybe we can just live

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[mumblesplash]

i know it’s like years old at this point but i love that one collab mumbo and grian did with tommyinnit bc it’s like the single most concentrated example i’ve seen of mumbo’s Chaos Nullification Powers

you get to see a bit of it on hermitcraft, mostly via his interactions with grian, but until seeing that collab it didn’t really hit me just how completely mumbo can no-sell other people’s attempts to control a situation. tommyinnit is possibly the single shoutiest, most chaotic minecraft youtuber out there, and in most videos i’ve seen he pretty much overwhelms everyone else and sets the tone for interactions because of this. but mumbo just. doesn’t let him. no matter how much tommy escalates in intensity, mumbo reacts with *exactly* the same energy he always does. grian largely comes across in the whole video as annoyed and reluctant to engage with the whole thing, but mumbo’s not even affected. he just rolls with anything he finds funny and basically ignores anything he disapproves of, only seeming more and more unflappable the harder anyone tries to get a rise out of him.

AND imo, this is the key to my favorite interpretation of him as a character

see, when the people around him are being more reasonable/calm, i think mumbo often comes across as anxious and a bit easily overwhelmed. the thing is, his nervous wet cat vibes do not scale. he has one setting. his responses to the last life ‘ah-ha!’ jokes and to hermitcraft 8 starting to crumble to pieces under a falling moon are almost identical.

mumbo jumbo is inexorably and eternally Just Some Guy, but that gets stranger and stranger the weirder his surroundings become. the giggly incredulousness that makes him an easy target for goofy puns looks Very different when it’s also his reaction to the impending end of the world.

[dapper-lil-arts]

I'm not the kind of person that's like "Here let me fix the canon" usually but like holy crap gen 5 implied a lot of messed up shit about our hero Twilight Sparkle lmao

[bycourageandfaith]

Am i the only person who wants Jess and Lupe to just be best friends?

[thebrainrotsreal]

Random musings about an episode where Spectra disguised herself as a student, rather than a counselor to sow misery within the high school! Spreading gossip, being outright malicious, shattering friendships, and all that jazz! Plus, using that fact she looks like a teen against Danny, since unless cornering her, he couldn't fight her without looking like he's attacking a random student.

[ingravinoveritas]

David, Michael, and the joy of being together...

| GO 1 press tour, 2019 vs. TV BAFTAs red carpet, 2024.

[jkvjimin]

"my happiness started when I met rapmon hyung" for @jung-koook ♡

[karvviie]

have i mentioned that i’m a red team locus truther

(this is old art. earliest is from 2020)

[mourn-and-watch]

you know what. i actually love that trying to talk to solas was the last thing varric did and it ended in complete failure. especially if you put it in the context of his feelings about anders. varric was so bitter every time he mentioned him because he could not stop him. he didn't even realize that anders was up to something and when it was too late he started to think of him as of someone who destroyed that fragile peace in kirkwall that actually never existed.

it adds layers to the way he felt about solas. he believed that time he could stop a friend who simply lost his way. because varric tethras can talk anyone out of anything, can't he? anders was just too dodgy and self-centred and cut everyone off just like solas did but this time varric is completely prepared. surely. absolutely.

he could have never talked anders out of it even if he had known what was coming. he could have never talked solas out of it either. anders was a desperate person standing against (as varric himself put it) forces he couldn't possibly defeat. solas was a god standing against a couple of mortals and his own conscience buried under his guilt and regrets. being a good friend would not stop meredith's oppression. being a good friend would not stop someone who fears so much that all of the atrocities he committed were for nothing and would mean nothing at the end. varric died because he didn't realize it. he died and left his second in command with an immense guilt because they believed he knew solas enough to pull that off and there's something tragic about it

[disasterzoo]

dysfunctional girls jv tennis team vs the zombie apocalypse :]

[benevolenterrancy]

"Heavens, he doesn't understand again." "Every time he says 'I don't understand', Lui-shixiong grabs someone to demonstrate until he understands..." Ji Jue quietly complained to Shang Qinghua. No wonder the injuries at Bai Zhan Peak had only increased!

so this is obviously Liu Qingge's entire love language, right?

[abyssal-ilk]

thinking so so hard about vivienne's defensive reactions to dorian and cassandra trying (and failing) to comfort her over bastien's passing. chewing on it. thinking about her inability to talk about bastien, even to an inquisitor when the player tries to talk to her about him.

and then her banter with blackwall, who is one of the companions she has a mostly negative dynamic with, yet it is him and not dorian or cassandra that she responds kindly to.

blackwall doesn't dance around it or try to lessen the blow of bringing it up like dorian and cassandra do, and i think she appreciates that directness. she still doesn't open herself up to him, though. she is so,,, agh

[cosmicdreamgrl]

the absolute cutest for @jkvjimin ❤️ [ cr : namuspromised ]

[blayarka]