#that's all fair by the way!

[ofdarklands]

i am reminded of that time my mom went

mom: oh god, you're turning into one of those people who read for enjoyment only

me: what?

mom: one should not read only for enjoyment!

me: what should one read for then?

mom: for personal growth. knowing new perspectives. expanding your world. for the art of literature itself

me, artless: oh ok

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Macaque spent the whole season Big-Damn-Hero-ing and was NOT happy about it xD

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[hinamie]

sry i have chronic only draws megumi disorder the doctor said it's terminal :/

[noodles-and-tea]

For the twins in time AU, I genuinely wonder what kind of people the young twins grow up into because of Stan’s/Ford’s influence. Especially if it takes years for the portal to get fixed.

(Sorry if it seems like I already sent this question, I don’t know if it got sent the first time I asked)

I haven’t fully fleshed out how Ford grows up in the past but I do have thoughts on Stan presently

[saturated-silences-art]

Sokka, the plan guy, realizing that he too is capable of some catastrophic, Zuli-level strategic moves…

Based on that scene of @lovelyelbowleech’s War Games.

[the-woman-upstairs]

Really fucked up that, when they’re young, Patrick and Art are SO tactile with each other, so comfortable sharing the same space. Art lets Patrick touch him and move him and physically overwhelm him and easily acquiesces to it, if not outright enjoys it.

Then in the present, they’ve been so far out of each other’s orbit for so long, held such animosity that when they have their moment alone in the sauna, Art physically recoils from Patrick’s close proximity! It’s so painful to watch because even as Patrick’s goading him, it’s so obvious he wants to be able to get back into Art’s space. But Art has erected all these walls around himself, he refuses to give Patrick an inch or even admit to missing how close they used to be!

AND THEN we see Art and Tashi later and he wants her to hold him, to be gentle with him, and just TOUCH him. Like, he does miss that kind of close physical contact! He either doesn’t know how to ask for it or is uncomfortable being that openly vulnerable. Worth noting that he pretty much always defers to Tashi in regard to initiating physical intimacy (with their first kiss, though he does state his desire, SHE has to be the one to make the first move). And it seems pretty obvious that Tashi herself isn’t comfortable providing that intimacy, whereas Patrick actively seeks to provide it (the hug/forehead kiss after their win together in the early years, dragging the stool closer to him).

Art has tried very hard to act like he doesn’t need physical affection and even though his discipline and devotion to Tashi has made him a stronger tennis player, it’s made him a hollow person, which, in turn, has kept him from becoming a GREAT tennis player.

All of this, of course, is why the ending hits so damn hard.

[devotion-disorder]

it ok yall i caved and bought the game moments after i made my last post and im living out my blissful love life now

this screenshot out of context is taking me out lol hes like you are.🫵 dumbass?😄 you🫵 illiterate🫵😄

Ive got through most of the game and boy i have some THOUGHTS... spoilers under the cut!!

I didn't expect to like the game so much cause im not actually that much of a horror fan (<- squeamish) , and like i said in the last post I wasn't sure how fun a game all about decrypting the dialogue will be (<- dumbass). But in the end I think the game mechanics is exactly the source of all the charm!! And come to think of it, it's a very unique mechanic too. The word-guessing makes the game exciting and scary (and sometimes is the key to avoiding certain death), but there's also just something about overcoming "broken" language to express your thoughts that is inherently really sweet to me. Maybe this is a wild comparison but its like that greentext thats like "bad times friend ahead...i go away but we are two of soul, i will return".

The game is also just pretty player-friendly, and the characters are all (well, mostly) really chill, so it wasnt very hard to guess most of the words too. But i will say that sometimes, you can kind of tell the nuance of the language-translation makes more sense as Japanese, so maybe that gave me a slight edge.

After playing the demo I thought this would be a really short game (like around 2-3 hrs), but I clocked in a solid 6 hours today LOL...and im still missing a few endings. Big spoiler but when MC "kills" Mr. crawling it genuinely upset me like GIRL WHAT IN THE FRESH HELL..........😭😭😭 but thank god he was fine :DD the scene where he shut himself in a closet crying because he thought the MC abandoned him 😭😭😭😭 IM SORRYYY but also like omg...😭😭😭😭 he ouppy............😭😭😭😭

ouppy 🥹🥹🥹🥹🫳🫳🫳🫳🫳👐👐👐👐😭😭😭😭😭😭

But in contrast to those heavy moments there are also points where i think the game doesn't take itself very seriously LOL so by like 3 hours in it just kind of became a really chill game :)) I love how the MC is just so ridiculously forward being like "Do you have a crush on me or something 🥺👉👈" and most of them were just like "whats that lmfao"

[lycorim]

Oh to be twelve and consumed with girl rage

[edwinisms]

I feel like in the chaos of things they kinda glossed over possibly the most viscerally horrifying scene and concept in the show, ie; “…where did all the blood go?” “that was the last me,” and charles slowly lifting his lantern up to see the doll spider literally tearing edwin– not just a replica of edwin but literally the body of edwin from just a minute or two earlier– apart limb from limb, torn in half at the waist. then as he moves the lantern a bit to the side he’s met with an entire bloody pile of dismembered, decapitated, eviscerated edwin parts, from god knows how many killings.

like. charles must have persistent fucking nightmares about that right? in the moment he was focused on getting out of there and had to stomach it to move on, but afterwards? i think that must legitimately be the most gruesome, graphic thing he’s ever seen in his entire life/afterlife. i can’t think of anything that could be worse than that. it’s bad enough on it’s own, the live, constant mutilation happening to anyone, but then on top of it all it’s not just anyone– it’s his best friend, the most important person in the world to him.

ghosts can’t exactly sleep, but he must at least get flashbacks, or be triggered on occasion to an extent that makes him feel sick. i dont even know what that'd do to a person honestly, but it'd be hard (if not impossible) even for a pro-internalizer like charles to suppress that memory completely and not be tortured by it for an indefinite amount of time.

[rocketbirdie]

ptsd

[puppetmaster13u]

Who wants a prompt entirely in memes.

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[buggachat]

(random s5 finale musings) tbh I don't think Marinette chose to keep The Secrets™ from Adrien because Gabriel asked her to. I feel like Marinette keeping secrets like that is so consistent with her character; she hates giving people bad news, she hates rocking the boat, she hates upsetting people, she always chooses to keep any 'controversial' information to herself for as long as she can get away with (examples: bubbler scarf, telling Queen Bee she was benched, confessing to Adrien, warning Chat Noir about Scarabella or Rena Furtive, never told Chat Noir about Chat Blanc, etc) that I just totally believe she would've done it either way. She was even already having nightmares about Adrien hating her for finding out she defeated his father, so I feel like Gabriel's request was moreso giving her a go-ahead than it was a primary deciding factor, yknow?

[felixfeliccis]

:/