#special kind of torture

[argentsnake]

"Ominis, you're blind. Stop being dramatic."

"Well unfortunately I can still hear everything."

POV you're Ominis Gaunt and you can hear it when your boyfriends choose to have sticky drooly noisy makeout sessions behind you.

[nariarts]

Spent a ridiculous amount of time last night obsessively editing my hand written zines in Photoshop to take away any tiny blemishes so they were definitely readable.

Whatever. Understand or don't.

[theborzoiarebackintown]

Just dropped off Margo for yeeting the uterus and tacking the tummy. Cue anxiety and worry until I get the call she’s done and fine 🫣

[il3x]

ah, yeah, this quote will do numbers on the tumblr

[meet-you-at-the-north-star]

Well. I may or may not be developing a crush on Anthony Boyle. You know. Like the absolute clown that I am. send helpp 😭

[sunnybearvampire]

i am not normal about the calypso episode i will never be normal about the calypso episode. something something queer joy and love and found family and you can't ruin that or take it away. finding yourself and expressing yourself fully for the first time and finding a group of people that will not mock you but encourage you with every last breath left in their lungs. seeing all of those unique and amazing people gathered to see you perform. fully for perhaps the first time realising that there was never something wrong with you, something was wrong with the world for not accepting you as you are, worthy and deserving of love. you are the unicorn. i am mentally unwell i shall never recover.

[jakowskis]

atp i think i'd sell my soul for like a rlly lengthy slow burn e rated owento fic like i am So underfed when it comes to content i actually wanna see. im gonna write it myself eventually but it's not the SAMEE i need smth substantial i need sustenance im dying,,, growing weak heading towards the light etc etc,

[letteredlettered]

Lemme just talk for a second about the scene where Xie Lian gets murdered over and over again in his temple on his altar.

Specifically, the paragraph of "it hurts it hurts it hurts" over and over. Usually, I would say that just repeating the same thing over and over for emphasis is not going to make your point. Repetition dulls after about three times. Even reading that scene, my eyes skipped over that paragraph because I could see it was the same thing over and over again.

But you know what's crazy, it did a job and it did it differently and imo better than a lot of scenes like that I've read. Because how do you write about something endlessly being tortured so extremely? One technique is to just talk for a while about how painful it is avoiding exact repetition, but the truth is that this gets repetitive too. A reader can only take so much pain and suffering; after that, it doesn't feel like pain anymore. It feels like bad writing.

Another method, which is I think what you would more commonly see in a "well-written" torture scene and the method I myself would usually employ to write such a thing, is disassociation. We've all heard of or experienced a pain that hurts so bad you almost can't experience it anymore; you can't process; your brain goes to another place because the nerves overload it with too much info. So, the way these scenes are often written is that the person is suddenly outside of their body, watching it happen, or they are suddenly in a memory of a different time, or even the narrator just jumps elsewhere so that when the narrator returns to the immediacy of the pain the viewpoint character is experiencing, everything is sharp again.

MXTX...did not do that. And I think what comes across is that Xie Lian cannot do that. He's trying to get beyond "it hurts it hurts it hurts," to go to some other place in his brain, and he can't escape. The panic of him not being able to escape that temple, that altar, or even that moment in his own mind creates this kind of claustrophobia in which you really do have to experience every. single. sword.

And of course, this is Xie Lian's whole problem ("problem"). He was that he was not able to take a step back. He was not able to remain uninvolved. He had to try to solve every single issue. He had to take every. single. sword.

And he is only able to disassociate when he is completely broken, when he tries to kill himself and can't; his disassociation is so ultimate and almost complete that he becomes someone else entirely. He becomes White No-Face.

And what's wild about Xie Lian is that after he comes back to himself, he knows how to compartmentalize. He knows that it's possible to stop feeling pain. He knows that it's possible to put away hurt and replace it with something else. But Xie Lian chooses not to do that. For Xie Lian, every single sword hurts less than feeling nothing at all.

[theangrypomeranian]

"you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me" feels like something an ex Christian would say to someone who didn't grow up in any kind of religion

[rottengurlz]

"And then I get sick and throw up and there's another memory that gets stuck // inside the walls of my skull waiting for its turn to talk"

[enixamyram]

I'm sure this is a very unpopular opinion but I don't think Rue's death is necessarily the big breaker that I've seen some people say. If you think it is, that's totally fine, this is just my opinion. But I have seen a few people talking about it and it doesn't bug me or anything, I just strongly disagree.

I say this only for one reason really. And that being that Rue's death, while horrendous and tragic, is nothing new in the games. It's not nice, but nor is it uncommon for a 12 year old child to be picked and even her death itself wasn't especially bloody compared to others.

Her death was definitely one of the saddest and most tragic in terms of an innocent child being killed and I adore the scene in the films where they showed District 11 react violently in retaliation. But at the same time, I never saw that as their reaction to Rue's death. I always saw it as their reaction to Katniss reaction of Rue's death. Seeing another tribute from another District no less show such care, compassion and respect, even love, decorating Rue in flowers and doing what is considered a treasonous act towards the Capitol... I think that kindess allowed them to react to the rage that had been growing every time they saw one of their own sent to die in the games.

[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

[thegreatyin]

The Scoundrel would totally do red honey wouldn't they? They wouldn't care about the poor schmuck with bees in their brain at all

maybe even black honey if they were feeling extra stupid one day.

funny you should ask because i've thought about this. way too much. and my conclusion is. well. they'd do it but only conditionally. and by conditionally i mean if you presented it to them they'd happily do it but when you tell them how it's farmed they'd be upset for the wrong reasons

[starmocha]

You know Dawnbreaker would eat a carrot for us.

[ritz-writes]

me, sobbing about the ineffable divorce: theres nothing good about these omens

[drop--pop--candy]

yet another night i am feeling the loneliness deep in my bones