#that is what triggered this

[aparticularbandit]

So.

If you see me binging the rest of DRV3 faster than I normally games.

And then spending a lot of time playing DRS probably.

And then maybe binging through TWEWY2.

It's because I'm going through a bad time and yes I know I need to think about it some time but I'm pushing it off for future me to handle it because yesterday me got depression triggered so hard she considered self-harm again. Which isn't good for anybody!

And then got stuck in another spiral and ended up depersonalizing this morning!

SO.

I MIGHT BE GAMING A LOT.

TO NOT THAT AGAIN.

[hotvampireadjacent]

https://x.com/treborrhurbarb/status/1819855330232480252?s=46&t=kvJFP3BjKnMEl5NO2bJUMA

[milfygerard]

so you'll condone cannibalism?

sure why not

[wanderingibon]

anya deserved so much better

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[novakiart]

spideypool but it's a comedy of errors

[burquillos]

Day 15: The embers are fading but something else remains

[howmanyholesinswisscheese]

That wasn't very open arms of her.

[creative-clawmarks]

I like to think that even other machines think V1 is a freak.

[loriache]

"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."

This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.

I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.

Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)

His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:

A) a short lived person

B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.

The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.

But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".

So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.

Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.

The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.

Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.

Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!

Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!

On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.

That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.

The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.

And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.

And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.

Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.

Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.

Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!

I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.

Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!

and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.

[kyri45]

We love MK, child of un-divorced. The next update will be more gay. And fluffier.

Shadowpeach Bio Parent AU (PREV / FIRST / NEXT )

before saying anything, read the stuff under the cut

About wukong and macaque

Both these bitches did wrong, but remember that MK saw the vision starting from the fight itself, not what happened before. He then read the chapters of the book and read that Macaque also attacked. I personally think he's mostly hurted by what Wukong did, not because it's worse of what Macaque did, but because he idolized Wukong for so long, and while he know he did so many wrongs in the past, his vision of a "hero" dissapeared in this moment. He s mostly dissapointed let's say. Of course it's not the best of things to put tour heroes on a pedal because you will always be dissapointed. I guess MK learned the lesson...

About what MK said in panel 8

Our monkey boy is remembering his own very stupid thing he sacrificied himself without trying to talk it out with the others AND using the circuit on Wukong.

About the posters

Yes they were Monkey King posters. MK ripped them immediately after the vision because he still was not sure was reality and vision and was scared.

About the eye

Because I would prefer no one dies of angst, his eye is fine, it s more like symbolism.

[inkskinned]

hey btw if you're in the USA at  2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4, they're testing the emergency broadcast system. your phone is probably going to make a really loud noise, even if it's on silent. there's a backup date on the 11th if they need to postpone it.

if you're not in a safe situation and have an extra phone, you should turn that phone completely off beforehand.

additionally, if you're like me, and are easily startled; i recommend treating it like a party. have a countdown or something. be surrounded by your loved ones. take the actions you personally need to take to make yourself safe.

i have already seen mockery towards any person who feels nervous about this. for the record, it completely, completely valid to have "emergency broadcast sounds" be an anxiety trigger. do not let other people make fun of you for that. emergency sounds are legitimately engineered to make us take action; those of us with high levels of anxiety and/or neurodivergence are already pre-disposed to have a Bad Time. sometimes it is best to acknowledge that the situation will be triggering for some, and to prepare for that; rather than just saying "well that's stupid, it's just a test."

"loud scary sound time" isn't like, my favorite thing, but we can at least try to prevent some additional anxiety by preparing for it. maybe get yourself a cake? noise cancelling headphones? the new hozier album? whatever helps. love u, hope you're okay. we are gonna ride it out together.

[smooshednetwork]

I’m BAAACKKKK!!

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x03 - “Finally Got The Name Right”

[go-fornicate-yourself]

Every day I am in the trenches fighting for my life defending this poor man. He was going through so much and people online demonize him and say he's as bad as his abuser

(I've got a lot of thoughts about this so I'll make sure to separate things to make it easier to look at lol)

Curly is a victim of abuse. Jimmy is his abuser. This is something that I feel a lot of people tend to brush over or don't acknowledge it often.

And I'm not just talking about post-crash. Jimmy's abuse of Curly is there pre-crash too. The party scene where the crew learns about the company going under is a huge example of this. Jimmy verbally abuses him, he gaslights him, he blames him for their (his) misfortune. Jimmy accuses Curly of thinking he's better than everyone (better than him), that he doesn't care about them (about him). That he's going leave them (leave him). Which is not true. Curly tries to explain himself but Jimmy shuts him down and he just takes it.

The fact that he just allows this to happen makes it seem like he's used to this... That this kind of behavior is a recurring thing with Jimmy. And the fact that nobody else tries to defend him or stands up to Jimmy just normalizes it for him. When Anya tells Curly what Jimmy did it catches him off guard. Bc he genuinely didn't think that his friend was capable of that. It wasn't something that was obvious to him. There were absolutely many red flags in the past but they were subtle enough for him to not see them bc he cares for Jimmy, he trusts him. Jimmy's the only one he feels he can open up to, who he can let his guard down with. Jimmy's his home. That's how close they are.

Because of this deep love for his friend and the subtlety of Jimmy's cruelty, he doesn't see the constant verbal and emotional abuse as what it is: abuse. Which is why he finds Jimmy's abuse towards Anya so shocking and jarring.

He isn't a man covering for his rapist friend bc of the 'bro code'. It does look like that from a certain angle and it's understandable why people see it that way but that's not what his character is really about as much as it makes sense otherwise.

He's essentially a battered housewife who's still in love with her husband but is realizing for the first time that the man she loves is a monster. That the man she loves and devoted her life to has been hurting her this whole time and she didn't even realize it. That the man she loves and spent so much of her life caring for has gone and hurt someone else. That he's most likely hurt others before and she's been utterly unaware of it the entire time she defended him and made excuses for him when he wasn't the best or the fairest or the most responsible or when he screwed up yet again solely bc of how much she loved and cared for him.

And Curly barely had any time to process ANY of that before Jimmy decided to try and kill them all to avoid the consequences of his actions. It was ultimately a selfish act even if he thought he wasn't just doing it for himself. Jimmy is selfish and needs to be in control or he loses it. He cares for Curly. He loves him. Curly's done so much for him. Curly's the only one who understands him, who doesn't hate him. Curly's his home. He resents how 'successful' he is but that's only bc he thinks so highly of him. He constantly puts himself down and put Curly on a pedestal and worships him while simultaneously mistreating him.

He treats his best friend like shit, he's awful to him. But he's not aware that this is the case or maybe he's in denial about it. He can't or just refuses to see how he's doing all of what he does for himself in the end. He justifies his attempt to kill them all (to himself and to Curly) by claiming he's doing this for them both. That if they were to get back to earth it would all be Curly's fault, that it'll ruin his life and career... despite the fact he had basically nothing to do with Anya's abuse. Jimmy's shifting the blame on him while acting like he cares for him. Well, he does genuinely care for him but clearly not nearly enough to not mistreat him or use him as a scapegoat for his own guilt.

Jimmy is the rapist, Jimmy is the one who does all of these horrible things. And yet it's highly likely that Curly would just blame all of it on himself bc that's exactly what Jimmy did to him. He's in so deep he can't see the facts of the situation.

It takes abuse victims so long to come to terms with their abuse. It takes time and reflection to see things with an unbiased and healthy perspective. Abuse (especially years of it) isn't just something you can just escape. It consumes you and can twist your reality. Curly had about a week or less to process all of it and then take action in a way that protected his crew and abided by Pony Express' guidelines. Dealing with something this serious in a setting that makes resolving it extremely difficult in a practical sense is already hard.

There were no locks on any of the doors except for medical and the cockpit. They couldn't just kill him. There was nowhere they could detain Jimmy that wouldn't involve corporate potentially penalizing the entire group. They could have used the cryopods but then there'd only be three available for any actual emergency and there were already five crew members and four pods in total. Also, I doubt corporate would be 'okay' with them using the cryopods for anything other than their intended purpose. Hell, even if they were able to make it back to earth without any incidents there's a good chance that corporate would consider the situation 'poor team synergy' and collectively punish the entire crew for Jimmy's actions.

So on top of having to deal with an already difficult situation, Curly has to grapple with the realization that Jimmy a: abused Anya, b: has been abusing him as well (for a very long time too), and c: has probably abused others before Anya and he had no idea about it. He needed to act but he didn't and it doomed all of them.

But it's so unrealistic (maybe even cruel) to put that much pressure on someone, force them through an utterly earth-shattering realization, and then expect them to do the correct/right/responsible thing in that moment. It's a little ironic how people vilify him for that when other characters do the same thing that nobody blames for it.

Anya is the ship's nurse. Curly is the ship's captain. They both have duties and responsibilities on board the Tulpar. She has to keep the crew healthy and safe and is the only one with enough medical knowledge to do so. He has to make sure that everything goes well and goes according to procedure. He's responsible for the crew, the cargo, and even the ship itself. Both positions are integral and require a lot of responsibility to do properly

They're both put through distressing and traumatic situations where due to them being human people with emotions and fears that make them essentially avoid their responsibility/doing what's required of them.

Curly has a freeze response and doesn't act when he should have when it was crucial to have done so. Anya has a fawn response and essentially puts her patient in danger and harm's way. She knew full well what Jimmy was capable of. She experienced it herself and she witnessed it happening to Curly as well. And yet she allows Jimmy to be alone with Curly while being fully aware of how dangerous he is. Which she shouldn't have, that wasn't the 'right' thing to do. Keeping him safe was her responsibility.

But Anya's human. She's going through a lot at the moment. She's terrified of Jimmy and she's trying to appease him so he doesn't hurt her again. It's a natural very understandable thing to do even if it's not the 'right' or 'responsible' thing. They failed each other when they needed each other most and I think that's the most tragic part of it. If anything, all of them failed each other in some way, shape, or form.

So it's incredibly frustrating to see people give Anya so much sympathy and grace for doing something so human yet still 'wrong' but then turn around and give Curly none of that for doing essentially the same thing she does.

I don't know for sure if it's actually because Curly is a man or if it's only part of it or maybe some people just lack that sense of awareness but it's depressing and frustrating as fuck as a male victim of sexual violence and abuse to see this kind of behavior and this much victim blaming towards a character who is undeniably a victim of abuse like I am.

[bixels]

Reminiscing about Little Witch Academia.