#that is where i am meant to live

[sotvtaughtmehowtofeel]

The author regrets everything

TW: major character death, child death, suicide, graphic depictions of violence/body horror

This is the only dead dove: do not eat thing I will ever write

I blame @joelxmiller @skoulsons @tlouobsessed but really it's just my fault. I am so sorry.

Joel enters the operating room in Salt Lake City to find that he's too late.

Joel shouldered the door to the operating room open. Ellie was lying on the table, bathed in harsh fluorescent lights. The pulse ox on her finger was beating too quietly for him to hear.

It had to be.

“Unhook her.” He didn’t remove his eyes from her, didn’t even notice how many people were in the room. There was blood.

Oh God, why was there blood?

In the periphery of his vision- he couldn’t look away from Ellie- he saw bloodied gloves move away from her head. He couldn’t see where they’d been, she looked fine- she had to be fine.

“Unhook her.” The voice sounded so far away. He was only vaguely aware it was his.

There was shifting in the periphery of his vision. They were stepping away from her. She wasn’t moving. He rushed forward, setting the gun on the table.

Her skull-

His breath was forced out of him like he’d been hit by a truck. His blood was so cold, colder than her hand when he touched it. She was cold.

“No, babygirl, wake up, babygirl you need to wake up, I’m here, baby, I’ve got you, I’m here, wake up, baby-” the words tumbled out of his mouth as he gripped her hand, touched her face, cupped her cheek, pulled her chin so she’d be looking at him—

Her eyes were open. Glossed over. Sarah had given him the same look after Tommy pulled him away from her. “No, no, baby-” He had no idea when he’d started crying. He couldn’t feel the tears on his cheeks. His lungs had stopped working, a deep burn in his chest building- his heart had stopped.

He’d failed her again. He’d known. He had known. He’d only get her-

“It’s done,” the doctor said quietly, trying to pull Joel away from his babygirl.

His shouted “no!” was echoed by the gunshot. He had fired hadn’t he? Yes. How had he gotten the gun…? He silenced the whimpers in the corner with two more quick shots. Ellie would be silent forever; the world shouldn’t have sound anymore.

“Baby, please, please, baby, I need you to wake up, you gotta tell me some puns, babygirl, I need to hear some puns and you’re the only one- baby, please, wake up, tell me about space, babygirl, where you gonna go once we find you a spaceship?, where we gonna build that sheep ranch, baby-”

He finally saw the piece of her skull they’d removed, lying discarded on a bench next to the operating table. He picked it up delicately, trying to overlay it trying to replace it he had to cover he had to cover her brain oh God her brain

they’d hollowed her out. He had to get her out he had to-

-Ellie jostled gently in his arms as he walked. He was outside, standing on a hill, taller than any around. She had to get to moon. She had to-

-he stared down into the hole in the ground. Dirt and blood caked his arms up to his biceps. It was too shallow it was too small he had to keep digging- he couldn’t look over at her, lying on the ground next to him, but he knew the hole was big enough.

She was too small. He cradled her against him, holding her too tightly. She should be complaining, telling him he was gonna break her ribs-

-the gra- the mound was too small. He had to add more dirt just to make it a mound, just to prove that she was there. His babygirl-

He fell to his knees at her feet, his hand grasping around to find the gun. His eyes were open; he didn’t see anything.

It wasn’t like last time. It wasn’t really that he was ready. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t afraid.

He just wasn’t.

He wasn’t anything. Sarah was gone, Ellie was gone, and so was Joel. He was already dead.

The bullet didn’t matter.

[persona-brainrot-real]

Sae Niijima is such a good character it drives me insane a little. She's not a mother nor a maternal or doting older sister but instead a twenty four year old who was thrown into a position of responsibility that she never asked for. She loves Makoto just as much as she resents her and its so apparent every time they talk up until November. "Are you studying?" (I want you to do well) (I need you to get a job and stop making my life harder) "I'll use any method necessary to get this promotion" (Life will be easier for us) (So stop distracting me with your problems) "Focus on your future" (I know that you're capable) (I can't afford to waste my time on you, so stop wasting time on others)

Makoto is not only the sole reason she pushes as hard as she does for a promotion, for success, and the reason that she loses herself in her animosity over her fathers death, but also someone she can't stand for so long. Makoto was 14-15 when their father died. Sae was 21. As soon as she got the career she wanted and things started to look up, her stability was robbed from her and she was disillusioned with the system that her father had taught her to rely on and completely adhere to. How do you manage, the daughter of a cop, following his footsteps towards law enforcement, when you're suddenly reminded of how unfair it is? You can't quit, your little sister relies on you and she's so young and struggling just as badly with this grief. So you pick yourself up and you get moving again. You push harder, press further. You abandon your morals and your ethics because punishing criminals (guilty or not) is almost like punishing the man who killed your father.

And the whole time she's fighting for promotions, going for drinks with the SIU Director to make herself more favourable for promotions, trying to navigate being a woman in a competitive, suffocating, male-dominated field, falling behind despite doing so much where others are promoted for doing so little - all the while your little sister comes back from school and her biggest issues are so small compared to yours.

Persona 5 revolves so heavily around grief and loss and change and Sae embodies all of that so well, all of the sharp and unpleasant and jagged parts of grief.

[egophiliac]

Did peepaw come home?!

HE DID! :D! luckily it only took me three ten-pulls; I think my past experience of being so thoroughly denied a Fairy Gala Ortho made me more worried than I should have been. may the gacha blessings pay forward to everyone else! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

so far this is hands-down the funniest Lilia card, because he'll say something all edgy and badass in that deeper ~General Vanrouge~ tone and then follow it up immediately with one of the non-card-specific cutesy Lilia lines, and it gets me every time

[00fairylights00]

I hope this will be a healing message...... I keep thinking of making a high-humanity P laugh really hard 🥹 like doing or saying something he thinks is SO hilarious that he is literally on the floor, gasping for breath, unable to speak because he is genuinely dying with laughter.

Prolly would take some real tame shit to make him laugh like that too. Like a funny drawing.

I will keel over and die but in a happy, positive way. If you would allow me to add onto this though I’d like to think the higher the humanity the more his body reacts to touch, I think he’d be ticklish!

His head is in your lap, the usual resting place for him on sunny afternoons like this. The heat makes everyone sleepy and with Krat no longer under eminent threat P can finally just laze around and relax to his heart’s content.

The light turns his hair a chocolate brown as you run your fingers through it slowly, stopping every now and again to scratch at his scalp which earns you a happy hum and a beautiful, closed eye smile. Your other hand rests on the warm skin of his chest, visible through the opening in his shirt.

You can feel the steady beat of his heart under your palm, and the hand of his legion arm is laying on top of your own, squeezing every now and again to tell you that he’s not asleep, he promises he won’t fall asleep, he’s a liar but he’s happy and you don’t mind and he knows you don’t mind.

The heat is turning your mind syrupy but not enough that you don’t notice him flinch ever so slightly when the hand in his hair brushes against the length of his neck, his eyebrows furrow for only a moment but the idea is already in your head.

You only wish to test your theory.

As gently as you can you brush your fingers against his neck again, this time with far more intention. P jerks up, trying to escape your hold but you’re already one step ahead, having braced your arm across his front to trap him against you.

A beautiful sound falls from him, you can feel it through his back as much as you can hear it, he’s laughing! 

A proper, joyful, bordering on hysterical laugh. The sound was higher pitched than his talking voice, but was still rich and warm. You come to realise that this is the loudest he’s ever been, you don’t think you’ve ever heard P raise his voice. It’s nice to see him let loose, smiling big, broad and unabashedly.

With everything over and the state of his humanity clear, watching him navigate the ways he was taken advantage of was a careful thing. He’d become well acquainted with being angry and with being sad, so the moments when you could have him rolling on the floor, losing his mind over something silly was a blessing in every sense of the word.

You pushed him forward, the two of you wrestling against your bedsheets until you came out victorious. You sat straddled atop his stomach, digging your fingers into his neck as he squirmed and pleaded for mercy,

“Stop stop, I can’t breathe,” he laughed, throwing his head back and then pulling his chin toward his chest in hopes of trapping your hands.

You continued your assault of feather light touches, poking and prodding at other areas you thought might also be ticklish.

His chest, his armpits, his sides. It was the prod to his stomach that made him yell suddenly and almost throw you off of him entirely, as you tried to recover your balance he swept your wrists between one hand, breathing heavily as he tried to calm down.

“What… was that?” He asked breathlessly, smiling up at you dazedly.

“Tickling,” you hummed, also catching your breath.

“I thought I was gonna die,” he groaned dramatically, “do it again.”

“Catch your breath first,” you instructed, breaking your hands free of his grasp gently, “it’s nice to see you laughing, you deserve to be happy.”

His eyebrows turned upward as he soaked in your earnestness, a quiet thank you said with his eyes. His hands brushed against your outer thighs, you squirmed with a giggle and a mischievous smile took over his face.

“No,” you warned, “Pino don’t!”

He dug his fingers into your sides, copying your movements and making you squeal, he’d always been a quick learner.

[yuridovewing]

oh my god can the erins shut up about the sisters already

[wherefore-whinnies]

like idk if I'm too soft or a billionaire sympathizer or whatever but openly celebrating and mocking someone's absolutely terrifying manner of death because they're someone you don't like using a product you don't like is just a bit too close to the train of thought behind "capital punishment would be fine if the Right Good People are choosing who are the Wrong Bad People who die" for my comfort

[cosettegf]

i love the penumbra podcast and i love second citadel and i really enjoyed listening to the finale but i feel. weird about the way this show treats its female characters???

[darkwood-sleddog]

does it bother u how many ppl these days buy huskys or mals for cosmetics? Like ppl who live in places where there is no cold weather and the dog only gets walked like every other day???? I feel like same as shepherds ppl get them bc they r trendy and pretty when there is no way for them to provide a dog built to go MILES in the snow proper stimulation.

I don’t feel negatively about responsible owners that have sled dogs in warm weather climates just as in the same breath I don’t feel negatively about responsible owners that own short haired dogs in cold weather climates. There are many owners that have dogs in not necessarily the perfect climate for that dog (a majority in fact) and give their dogs fulfilling lives (I know mushers in Georgia, southern California, Arizona etc.)

And it doesn’t bother me that people get dogs for aesthetic reasons either. The malamute appeals to me not only because of its temperament and workability, but it’s looks and it would be disingenuous to say the looks of northern breed dogs didn’t drive my initial interest and appeal towards those breeds. People that get intense working dogs for looks either step up to the plate and give their dogs fulfilled lives, often learning a sport and finding a supporting community while doing so or they become overwhelmed and regret their purchase. At that point a person has two choices: Rehome to somebody that can handle the dog or don’t. It is only the later in which the dog suffers so that is the only situation that bothers me and a big reason I think we need to destigmatize rehoming.

[bunnihearted]

i've also realized that there is no therapy that can fix what's broken inside of me

[binch-i-might-be]

been hyping myself up to do one (1) chore for like three hours now WHAT is wrong with me

[yarrowleef]

mmm somethings been rattling around inside my brain about queerness in xenofiction (warrior cats centric cause that's obviously mostly what people are talking about in my internet circles) and I know around here I am preaching to the choir but w/e. I feel like i may have made this post before but i’ll do it again until i feel like i’ve crafted all of my thoughts correctly

everyone knows there’s always like. some shmuck on twitter or youtube comment sections, complaining about how gay cats just don’t make sense ~realistically~

and the common argument back is always something along the lines of “these cats have complex society and religion and talk to ghosts and sometimes have magic powers, and being gay is where you draw the line? it doesn’t have to be realistic”

and something just rubs me the wrong way about that argument, not that it’s WRONG, it’s not wrong, xenofiction by definition is all super super unrealistic. I think it’s more like, it oversimplifies it. because honestly when I make critiques about the warriors world building not making sense, I don’t tend to like the argument beginning and ending at “well it doesn’t have to be realistic” because no it doesn’t but it’s still supposed to feel believable.

i think i don’t like that the argument seems to imply that gay animal characters are at all on par with other fantasy things like talking to ghosts and having powers or complex religion. I also don’t like it when people who are being fake-supportive can condescendingly say “well the gay couple may be completely absurd and unrealistic but I guess it’s ok because its just a silly fantasy :) ” cause like. Like its not unrealistic tho. i don’t like the implication that it’s uniquely unrealistic, if this was a grounded story with no magic or religion and the cat social groups were more inspired by real feral cats, it would still be illogical for some queer cats not to exist.

 I feel like it is a more effective argument to point out that straight cats are just as unrealistic, in fact more unrealistic and silly

“cats lovingly and monogamously married-for-life and raising kids together” is the absurdity it should be compared to, rather then the magic elements. Because then the complainers have to contend with the fact that they aren’t bothered by unrealistic relationships between cat characters, they are just uniquely bothered by gay ones. 

I mean...not to get tmi but it seems obvious to me this knee jerk reaction people have to rolling their eyes and scoffing when “gay” and “animal character” are placed in the same sentence is based on their insistence on equating the breeding behavior of animals to the romantic relationships of humans. Y'know, they're assuming that when people talk about romantic couples between anthro characters, that that is the sort of thing they are drawing from. When, certainly when it comes to cats, that is a very very poor equivalent. Cat mating behaviors are not affectionate or long lasting--they actually seem quite stressful, and then the father runs off to find more girls and probably never calls his one-night-stand again.  

this is why I am really not fond of “mate” being used at the go-to replacement for husband/wife in xenofiction. Consider just coming up with a brand new word for your animal character’s version of romance! maybe they have types of relationships and words for them that humans don’t even have! but “mate” feels like. an action, nothing more. It doesn’t inherently imply love. frankly I think more people should be anthropomorphizing mates as simply Business Partnerships where the business is in desiring offspring, as opposed to husband/wife.

Just like....ok if you’re going to use the real behavior of animals as at least the loose inspiration for your anthropomorphic character’s behavior, surely pair bonding would be a smoother translation to what we view as a romantic couple?? not mating?? because pair bonded animals are the ones having consistent pleasant interactions, and being physically affectionate, and working together in life, sometimes even raising each others kids together.  

And keeping that in mind, frankly you could argue that gay-coded cats should be the norm. (not that I think pair bonded creatures should always be interpreted as a romantic coded relationship, you could interpret some as platonic or familial or simply allies needing to survive. The point is no matter what route you go, you are projecting some human experience onto animals who’s minds and feelings we cannot ever actually understand. So to make it coded as a gay romance is just as reasonable as making it an adopted found-family sort of affection. You can go any route and be the same amount of unrealistic.)

If these losers actually want reasonable cat fiction, no one should have romantic affection for anyone! and if two cats have kittens together, it should be treated more like a short-lived antagonistic business partnership where you part ways immediately after. If you only criticize one type of romance for being “unbelievable and silly because these are CATS for crying out loud 🙄” but you don't feel “distracted” or “taken out of the story” about the other type of romance, then this aint about realism my guy, sounds like you just have some baggage to unpack.

I am beating people over the head with a very big sign that reads “Whether you’re writing about cats or birds or aliens or fantasy people or whatever, you cannot grant any creature the ability to love without all the variety and complexity that **naturally** goes hand in hand with those messy emotions. If the creatures can fall in love at all, then there must exist the possibility for some of them to be queer about it. And if you view queerness as unnatural, then we don’t have a writing disagreement, we have a fundamental moral disagreement about life. And I can’t help you there, that’s your problem! But I refuse to let people benignly hide behind a “simple desire for more realistic-feeling fiction uwu” as a defense!! (gay people are real. It’s true! I checked!!)”

[bunniexmae]

the only thing that’s keeping me from hurting myself right now is staring at my dog

[boyobjectifier]

no yeah i love when tumblr doesn’t let me edit a post i reblogged. definitely won’t drive me crazy that i missed a word in the tags and it changes the meaning of the sentence

no yeah tumblr is such a cool and very functional app :)

[cheese-water]

Call me a monster all you want. If doing that resolves your mental turmoil over the ethicality of the choice Showfall Media forced us to make, that’s fine by me. I am more than willing to be your scapegoat.

However, due to some recent… revelations, the guilt is starting to weigh a little heavier. What would have truly happened if there had been a 50/50 split? Is Ranboo really dead? Do our choices actually matter?

Short answer: I have no clue, but that’s boring.

With the long answer, however, I still believe that no matter what the vote favored, Ranboo would’ve died and been reprogrammed solely based on what we’ve seen in the series, thematically and physically. It’s the 50/50 question everyone seems to be focusing on. I mean, I can't blame them; we were so close to splitting the results until someone realized they could vote more than once, but what’s done is done. But I just can't get behind the notion that that was the solution. I mean, logically speaking, even though a poll may look 50/50, the results may have been rounded and scaled due to thousands of people voting (2/2 out of 4 and 20000/20001 out of 40000 will both look like 50/50). Also, thematically speaking, when has the solution to any puzzle ever been to sit on the fence? If "cheating the system" (and succeeding) was a central theme across all three episodes, then I completely missed it.

So hypothetically speaking, let’s say there was a "good ending." What could we, the audience, have done in order to change Ranboo’s fate? Ruling out die and live winning for obvious reasons, and I just talked about why the 50/50 option doesn’t make sense, so what does?

Neither.

What would’ve happened if no one voted? Really, tell me what Hetch would’ve done. As impossible as it seems, a 0/0 split is theoretically possible. Showfall loves to remind us how powerless Ranboo and the audience are to what happens on set, so why give them that power in the first place?

Think about it. Earlier in the third stream, the only time the "all-knowing" Hetch seemed caught off guard was when Ranboo found the exit prematurely. Ranboo would have left right then, ruining the broadcast until Hetch mentioned his friends were still alive. That’s why Ranboo continued. That’s why he went off with a bang. That’s why the broadcast was a success. Because he was forced to make a choice. You or Them. Except it never really mattered.

The choice the audience makes in the end isn’t whether Ranboo lives or dies. It’s whether we humor the monster who’s already plunged the knife in his back or not. His fate is sealed either way; why are we forced to "choose?" Why are we choosing to create an impactful ending for a company that we know doesn’t give a damn about us? Why are we playing right into Showfall’s hands? What is the point of all of this?

This was the Social Experiment. And goddamnit, we tested well.

[aq2003]

rewatching ben whishaw's richard ii and yea i think the biggest difference between his and the rsc version is that he plays richard's flippancy/disregard for other people's lives completely straight and in a kind of sinister way while david plays it for humor

[thlayyli]

i am insane over I Saw The TV Glow in a different way to most tumblr users and likely in a different way to what the creators intended, but still I am insane over it nonetheless