#they said we missed each other

[33-16]

look at these two grabbing at each other while everyone else stands apart. real f1 is so back.

[tiniest-hands-in-all-the-land]

Carry me home

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

not to beat a dead horse but there's something kind of illuminating and warmie yet sad about the fact that Taylor's parents are attending Travis' game with her and regularly. I know the "you never saw--" joke is old, but the idea that [redacted]'s family did actually occasionally attend events with Taylor (including at what it seems may have been a difficult time), but after a certain point she herself didn't/couldn't attend his in turn, never mind her family, and it's just a testament to how different things are now, how different her life is, and frankly how integrated their family life has become. Idk I'm just really happy for popstar bestie because I feel like this is probably everything she ever wanted and didn't know she could have at one point.

[gingermintpepper]

I know everyone knows the story of Actaeon and how he met a terrible fate by stumbling upon Artemis bathing in her forest but did you know that Actaeon was Apollo's grandson? That his father was Aristaeus, lord of the bees and the rustic arts and his mother was Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus and princess of Thebes?

Did you know he was trained by Chiron? That he was considered a hunter so skilled his talent was considered divine, that he was his parents' only child and that he was loved?

Did you know the grief that consumed the household when word of Actaeon's fate reached them? That Cadmus cut his hair, that Harmonia wept and was disconsolate and that his parents... well, Autonoe walked the length of the forest, keeping a sharp eye out for her son, but all she saw were the scattered bones of a fawn. Aristaeus too, had heard his son was torn apart and so fruitlessly, foolishly searched for the bones of a man. (There was none to be found)

Did you know that it was Actaeon's ghost, unhappy and unburied, trapped on the earth, who leaned over his sleeping father and told him of his fate? "You will not find me as you knew me, gather me as a stag." And Aristaeus immediately woke his wife and told her the truth, and together they grieved all the night long.

(Did you know that this is why Aristaeus abandons Boeotia? He could not stand the sight of it and so he went to Ceos. And there he slayed the dog-star. And there he became a healing wind. All in the name of his only son, that foolish, beloved Actaeon.)

[spaceratprodigy]

(palette challenge) PINK LEMONADE OR WATERMELON FOR DELIRIS ⁉️⁉️⁉️

@oldworldwidgets — [ palette prompts ]

WATERMELON LEMONADE DELIRIS 💖💚

[refrigeratedboombursts]

Both Kamado and Volo suck, the difference is that Volo gets sent to gay baby jail and Kamado to “you remind me too much of my shitty dad for me to actually look at your actions from a justified pov” jail.

[lord-squiggletits]

On the MegOP fandom trend of saying "Optimus should apologize to Megatron"

(Speaking specifically for IDW1, though it applies to a lot of MegOP especially ones that do continuity soup with heavy reference to IDW1)

I was talking to a friend in DMs and they mentioned a common headcanon/fanfic trope that I also concurred with, and both of us said it's something that bothers us: a common take in the MegOP fandom goes basically along the lines of "If Optimus had just apologized to Megatron, the war would've ended" (or other variants including "if he'd tried harder to understand Megatron/work in collaboration with him").

And firstly, this is incorrect for a number of reasons:

There were attempts at peace negotiations during the war, but they fell through. So Optimus WAS trying to work with Megatron to the point of participating in formal diplomatic meetings.

Optimus tried multiple times on page to convince Megatron to just stop fighting and work with him for peace (Autocracy, Chaos Theory) that Megatron rejected. Given that these on-page examples take place at the start of the war and at the end of the war respectively, it makes sense that Optimus asking Megatron for collaboration is something he was trying/willing to do the entire time. So again, Optimus was always willing AND ATTEMPTING to work with Megatron and find a joint solution

Even before the war when Optimus was still Orion, he was very explicitly inspired by Megatron's writing and names Megatron as one of the people who "opened his eyes" to the wrongs of Cybertronian society. So how is it that people claim "the war went on for too long because Optimus never tried to understand Megatron" when OP literally named Megatron as one of his biggest idols, thus implying that OP does understand Megatron's ideals

But the primary purpose of this post wasn't to defend Optimus, actually. Even though I personally think Optimus did plenty (dare I say, everything) to try to end the war, there are some who may still think otherwise, so instead of arguing about whether Optimus did "enough", or who should apologize to whom, or who "deserves the blame" for starting/continuing the war, I'd actually rather talk about this:

No matter who is most "to blame" for the war, it's my firm belief that neither Megatron nor Optimus would even expect/demand the other to apologize to them at all.

On Megatron's side, he would never seek to judge Optimus negatively for the decisions to the point of saying "you wronged me, apologize." Whether it's evil Megatron who doesn't care about atrocities and revels in an opportunity to expose Optimus as a hypocrite, or post-war/Autobot Megatron who knows that his own evil actions are irredeemable, the idea of Megatron judging Optimus and demanding an apology for the war specifically strikes me as out-of-character. Why would Megatron demand or even want an apology from Optimus when Megatron knows fully well that he has his own sins to bear, he prolonged the war for his own selfish/material gain, and that he is responsible for an untold amount of suffering? Demanding an apology would imply that Megatron sees himself as the wronged party and Optimus as the wrongdoer, but by the end of the war, Megatron is too aware of his own part in the war to ever demand such a thing of Optimus. Even if he DID think that Optimus was "equally to blame" for the war (which he doesn't/wouldn't, btw), Megatron's own feelings of guilt would prevent him from trying to seek the petty satisfaction of the moral high ground or making Optimus beg for his forgiveness.

Additionally, Megatron knows Optimus very well as a person: he knows that the position of leadership is full of "loneliness [and] agonizing self-doubt" for Optimus (Chaos Theory) and that "when Optimus hurts others, he hurts himself" (MTMTE). Another reason that Megatron wouldn't demand nor want an apology from Optimus is because Megatron knows Optimus so well that he already knows that being a war leader fills Optimus with immense guilt and suffering. Given that Megatron knows about Optimus' self-doubt and guilt, why would he even need an apology when he already knows how much Optimus regrets the war and desperately wishes/wished for it to end?

Then, as established in the previous paragraphs, Optimus is too full of guilt for his part in the war (both before it started and in being unable to stop it sooner) to demand an apology from Megatron. Again, demanding an apology would put Optimus in an implied position of moral superiority and/or victimhood, but Optimus doesn't see himself as morally superior or as a victim (or rather, he sees himself as being responsible for these bad things happening and internalizes this as a duty to do better/fix wrongdoings). In other words, Megatron and Optimus both share this view of themselves and each other: Their hands are so dirty, and they both feel such guilt over this, and they know each other well enough to know that the other feels this way as well. Because both of them feel blame for the war and are acutely aware of their own flaws/part in suffering, both of them feel far too responsible for the war happening for them to ever blame their archnemesis for "not trying harder" or "being responsible for the war."

Hell, if you even look at the socio-political climate of Cybertron before the war started, neither Megatron nor Optimus were the ones who put this conflict into motion. The corrupt legacy of the Primes, Functionism, class issues-- all of these things existed before Megatron and Optimus did. Even once they started doing things like writing about social issues (M) or fighting against the Senate (OP), both of them were "underlings" in sense that they weren't leaders:

Megatron's writings may have inspired the Decepticon movement, but that movement existed as an independent entity with its own leaders and speakers long before Megatron became the "official" ruler of the Decepticons. He wasn't even the leader of the 'Cons until he took control of the gladiator arena and the nonviolent sections of the Decepticons were (presumably) subsumed into the underground, exploitative battle culture that Megatron created.

Optimus-as-Orion was a police officer to start, but even once he started going against the Senate, he mainly worked in collaboration with others like Senator Shockwave and Zeta (later Zeta Prime), who he either saw as his idols or who were literally superior to him in rank due to government/military structures.

So with this in mind, even from a social level, while Megatron and Optimus may have been "catalysts" of a sort that caused the war to escalate to an outright planetary/galactic level, the scenario is too complex to solely lay the blame for the war at either of their feet. I'm not confident in saying that Megatron/Optimus would explicitly think of this when talking to each other, but what I'm trying to say is that M/OP were just catalysts in a long chain of brewing tension that exploded into a war. Even if one could claim that one of them "started" or "escalated" the war, the social issues that caused the war and the positions of power that allowed them to become leaders in the first place were falling into place before either of them actually BECAME leaders.

In other words, this shared fate of being the final reaction that exploded a societal conflict into outright war... Megatron and Optimus both have that in common. And because of this, I really don't think either of them would even think to ask the other to apologize because they're both in such similar positions, with such similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, that they understand each other's feelings without words. To demand an apology would be akin to taking that shared vulnerability/guilt and stepping on it, attempting to claim that one is right/superior and the other is wrong/inferior, and that the inferior one needs to grovel and take responsibility for the bad things that happened.

[hauntingblue]

CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER (bark), THRILLER (bark) NIGHT

Usopp's outfit is so funny for reals

He got the whole squad laughing

Luffy enablers at it again.... (Robin.... I know.....)

The humor panels so far have been so good!!! God this arc is so funny

HE SAID IT‼️‼️

They look like birds 😭😭

It's just too good... luffy taking cerberus and zombies what can't he do

It's just banger after banger what can I say

Franky feeling for other people because of his guilt complex and sanji lying through his teeth and pulling out the women excuse to seem unaffected... yeah

Look at them.... look how they ate

Omg joyboy reference?? (No)

Sanji is rubbing off on usopp.... also chopper noticing that is sogeking's weapon akdhaksjak

ANOTHER SLAY!!!!!

Their priorities: I'm not strong enough, there isn't enough food, and nami isn't here

Franky going from wanting to kill brook for his jokes to making a joke like his after he hears his backstory... exactly (Robin was already enabling him before the backstory even fdagjsfha)

Sanji is altering his body and actually being on fire to communicate to us how fucking mad he is..... I need more of him going insane I do I do

My god what is he doing ALDJALAJALA

AHSAHAHQHAH THEY ARE THE SAME!!! naaah sanji wouldn't force a woman to be his wife

You cant see me but I am nodding my head in agreement over and over

You don't understand he altered his body to communicate to us how mad he is. He inploded himself and then reconstituted again. Those germa 66 genes are insane

You tell em usopp!!!! The first of many girls you've scared into defeat!!! Akdjqknql

Zoro zombie regressed to not trusting robin akdjaks he's still in there

ROBI-CHO SUPLEX??? HELL YEAAAAAH

There is zosa- [GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT]

Super frapper gong.... he is doing combo shots with frobin... omg.... parents....

Everything is so fun I'm having such a good time reading.... and then zosan angst like damn I am being fed well here

[quill-of-thoth]

Can't walk much so have a story: how I fell down a mountain and got my 'rescuers' stranded

(It's temporary) (The not walking and the stranding) Backstory: I periodically can't walk because my feet are, to use a technical term, flat ass bitches. I discovered this near the end of my second semester of college by getting a raging case of tendonitis that felt like someone was trying to drill a hole in my foot. Instead of taking another ice pack from the campus nurse, I promptly got a pair of too tall crutches and swung my way to finals with a 104 degree fever, scaring my philosophy professor badly enough that he threw out my final and just wrote in an A. Which is lucky, because. I sat down to analyze The Odyssey and woke up writing about The Tempest.

A doctor, physical therapy, a pair of custom insoles and three months later, I went back to college. With some amount of optimism because hey, I was 19. 19 year olds make full recoveries. Also the reason why I was a failure at gym and my feet hurt a lot had been figured out so I was probably going to get BETTER at, you know, being fully vertical for extended periods of time. Once I worked up to it.

And then for reasons known only to 19 year old me, a person who took a Spanish minor largely because I felt I should use 16 free credits somehow, I signed up for a month long trip to Guatemala during winter break.

Which is how I got to the mountain, but not how I fell down it.

The class was technically an econ course, but Profe. Ed was a closet anticapitalist and every year he dragged about 20 young people to Guatemala to

1) make business majors less insufferable by giving them a "cool" way to pad out econ credits while making them meet the realities of the world and how capitalism doesn't, you know, feed people well, 2) Distribute some American cash directly to the locals, via the purchasing power of said hungry young people who were willing to pay the equivalent of the price of a nice dinner for a single frozen chocolate banana because to us it was like 50 cents

and

3) let his advanced Spanish students do immersion by the sink or swim method. I was a member of group number three. I was in charge of speaking Spanish to guide my group of 4 around. I was also on uh. An amount of painkillers. Enough that it was not recommended that I do any drinking. Nobody warned me about doing any walking up a mountain though because they figured I was smart enough to know that already. Anyway we made it to the first stop and my group was charged with finding the new location of the weavers' collective, with whom our college's chapter of Amnesty International intended to deposit over a thousand quetzales. (So... maybe a hundred USD?) We did not find them on the first day. We were at over 5 thousand feet (and as midwesterners we were used to an elevation whose distance from sea level is a rounding error), we were jet lagged, we were working in a second language, and we didn't know how to find anything without, you know, an address. Also, we thought the directions we did get were to somewhere on the other side of town and my limp had become the fifth member of our party. We pulled out our instructions sheet, hopped back on the Lancha (a boat serving as a bus), took some dramamine because everyone working public transit in Guatemala drives like they're in mario cart, and I told the driver that we were returning via Las Lomas at Tzununa. I felt like I had gotten a second wind.

I remember being a little lightheaded but I thought it was heat exhaustion. Or possibly the moment of second language fluency that feels like either enlightenment or a stroke.

Anyway we were dropped off at Tzununa and pointed up. We walked. Increasingly slowly as I discovered that sometimes instead of being in increasing pain your nerves do an end run around your consciousness to make you EXTREMELY spacey. We saw a parking lot that said "Las Lomas" and went. Past it. Slowly. Until we found a cow and decided we should probably locate a human to ask for directions. At which point we were directed three or four miles up the private driveway we had skipped because we'd been told to follow the calle, a word I only knew as 'road'. The thing is that despite feeling like I was legitimately going to fall apart, and also barf, and probably also faint, I had to keep it together because I was the primary Spanish speaker, damn it. The token guy in our group for machismo safety was like, two classes behind me on a Spanish minor. Also if I didn't have something to do I was gonna hurl. So I cracked a lot of jokes that landed very poorly due to me looking kinda half dead and kept going until we finally reached Las Lomas, the place we were supposed to be over an hour ago. They told us, and I quote, "follow the path through the maize over the ridge and you'll come down right at the edge of town." Which was on our agenda. They also told us "you should be able to make it before dark" which was optimistic even if our group hadn't included me, current winner of the global misery award. They did not tell us that they had their own private dock with ten million stairs. Which was where we were supposed to dock.

I would not have been able to climb them. I was barely able to descend them. But. If we had known they existed we would have known three things: 1) We were now about two hours and five miles late for our original itinerary.

2) The alleged two mile mountain hike across the ridge had not yet begun

3) We could get back on the fucking Lancha from here. So when the hike turned out to be on an 8 inch wide dirt scuff through a field of maize that looked ALL the way down into the extremely sharp and rocky beach we might have thought of getting back on the boat instead of towing my - now violently shivering - top-heavy carcass in a conga line of suffering across the mountain. Hand in incompetent hand we crept like a concussed centipede around the point of the mountain only to see yet another ridge with a huge rock slide crossing the path between us and it. We tried to cross the gravely bit. I promptly slid fifteen feet, ripped the entire butt off my shorts, and kinda passed out for a second. At which point we decided to call Profe. Ed.

This was before international cell phone plans, or even good sim cards, or possibly the existence of cell service anywhere in Lago Atitlan that wasn't populated by American and European expatriates. "Profe Ed we're lost, the trail is washed out, Quill has like broken her ankle or something-"

"Tendonitis! It's actually not the bone -"

"-And the sun is going down and it's like. A million miles back to the lancha. Are there any wild jaguars around here? I hope there aren't jaguars."

"Pretty sure we need to worry more about freezing to death." (When in peril I become a font of extreme helpfulness.)

"GET BACK TO LAS LOMAS YOU HAVE 45 MINUTES TO CATCH THE LAST LANCHA AT 6 PM." The concussed centipede returned the maybe half a mile back up the mountain, at top dragging speed, with one fourth of its underwear on display. I only nearly fell twice. The time was 5:30.

It was decided that two of the team, Token Guy who spoke a bit of Spanish, and French club girl, who were cross country runners, would run and try and delay the lancha while Amnesty International treasurer girl would be my human crutch and keep me from going into shock or something with a water bottle and a bag of chips. The last I saw was of Token Guy literally jumping over a wheelbarrow as they sprinted... down the four mile driveway... to the town of Tzununa.

Whose last lancha was, unbeknownst to us, at 5:45 pm. Because we didn't know about the secret, private dock. And because not a single one of us could estimate distance well enough to realize that we had started by getting off at the wrong stop.

Someone at Las Lomas saw that I was an American in distress and offered their phone. And an English speaking front desk worker because my Spanish had been reduced to me duele las pies, which is less than grammatical, and my English had gotten kinda thin.

All I really remember is the phrase "we have a dock and you can flag the lancha from there" and then. Hundreds of millions of stairs. Uneven. winding. with handlebars added haphazardly to prevent me from just pitching off into the water. You can slide down a handrail on your armpits if you have to but not if it's broken up by a thousand turns. And then we were on the boat and Amnesty went up and down looking for Token Guy and French Club before realizing: they were not on board. We had the cell phone. The time was 6:15 pm and nothing we said could induce the lancha driver to turn around, though he did offer that we could get off in the middle of the lake if we wanted.

We crawled into our hotel at 7 and a new chunk of Profe. Ed's hair spontaneously went white while we tried to explain, in tears, what had happened. At least there (probably) weren't jaguars on the driveway from hell. "I'm going to make some calls" he said, in a voice that was reserved for crises, not the aftermath of dumbassery, and Amnesty dragged me, by way of a bottle of naproxen, to dinner where we sat in silent, guilty, treacherous misery, poking at the fish and wondering exactly how much shit we had just stranded our friends in. Everyone else, who had gotten in hours ago, was talking about the shaman, who was going to come and give us a lecture about how the world was not going to end this year.

No, it was just Amnesty and I who were going to end this year, because if the tendonitis didn't get me, leaving Token Guy and French Club on the side of a foreign mountain was going to do me and Amnesty in. Profe Ed was going to send us back to America, because we were dirty rotten traitors who split the party.

Meanwhile everybody sat playing with the candles until it was very dark. Amnesty and I had procured a blanket and sat under it like two hermit crabs trying to hide in the same guilty shell. Profe. Ed's dinner was attracting mosquitoes.

Until finally in a blaze of flashlights, the Shaman appeared, with French Club and Token Guy carrying like seven bags of his stuff between them.

[faaun]

my research partner and i are huddled in a blanket in paddington waiting for a too-late train i already miss you and you and you

[fisheito]

"makotolookinass"

the intersection of nu: carnival and free! fans that are all here because of our favorite green haired hunks (himbos?) is so funny

but it kinda makes sense given that both nu: carnival and free! are both at their core about caring about the people closest to you and prevailing internal struggles

dang , anonn, you really cut thru all the glamours of distraction

in brief contrast, i feel like a simple creature. one who was dragged into the intersection simply because i saw some dudes with Unlikely Physiques

[kaerinio]

update: i talked to my current boss, and his immediate reaction was “this is so fucking awesome. i’m so happy for you!” and then, he told me that this is everything he would have wanted for one of his direct reports, that i deserve it, and that, and i quote: “i am so fucking proud of you.” did i cry a little? yes. were they happy tears? yes.

[enterstellars]

guys i cannot wait to move

[eightspringdays]

had this sapphic moment with a coworker where she asked me if I was using contacts and I told her that I did and she was like, "I have 20/20 vision" and I diplomatically asked her, "what the fuck does that mean?" because in my country we don't use that and she replied, "it means my vision is perfect, how bad is yours?"

and i was like ?? rude but told her, "from where you're standing right now, it would be impossible for me to see you without my glasses"

Mind you, it was like a meter and a half, maybe a little more. and she was like "really? and from here?" and she got closer, sitting in the chair beside me and I was like "no, im really blind, like, legally blind. if I could drive i'd need like. a telescope."

she laughed and got really really close, like. i could see that she has green rings in her blue eyes and said "and from here?" and I felt my heart dropping to my ass and I coherently stuttered a "huh," and then I added feeling SHAME in my face, "i guess I could" and she smiled even more and leaned back and didn't say anything until we started talking about something else and then she dropped me off outside my apartment because 1) I dont know how to drive 2) it's freaking cold outside 3) my place is so fucking far from my work 4) she offered until I say yes

anyway i wished i was dead.

oh, and she gave me a lollipop that's from a latino brand and I was like "...really? for me?" and she was like "duh, of course." and I felt like I wanted to fucking cRY

[anaalnathrakhs]

i feel it's so fucking stupid and ungrateful but it still hurts a little when someone gifts me something i just don't like. i don't know. i know it's dumb and inaccurate to astrain that much meaning to a simple gift, but it feels kinda like they don't know me. i guess it feels like people don't see me, like a reminder that the person i reflect and the person i feel like are incredibly different.

[snixx]

life went forward and the world moved on but I never got over among us (2018)