#they've made me worse

[floweycidal]

there was never any other way this could have gone. 

the universe is not cruel, but it is not kind. it does not cup hands around a trembling flame to keep it from going out. it does not press balm to old wounds, does not soothe, does not spare. 

no. if it answers at all, it does so only in the way it must.

with necessity. with inevitability. with the understanding that some things cannot be saved, only changed.

and for siffrin, fate wore but one face.

no one else could have been sent. not a well-meaning friend, not a compassionate stranger, not some wise soul raising patience like a lantern through the dark. siffrin would have turned them all away, one by one, until none remained.

to accept help means admitting its necessity. to ask for it is to believe oneself worthy of receiving it. siffrin had never allowed themself either indulgence.

so, the universe did not bother sending a savior. it instead wrought the one thing that could not be disregarded, could not be waved away with distance or deceit.

it sent consequence, something so close to the marrow of siffrin’s being that ignoring it would have been akin to ignoring breath in their lungs.

see, hatred is easy when its target is nothing more than a specter, a formless thing against which one can rage without consequence. phantoms do not cry out. shadows do not bleed.

but when that hatred is split into two, when it gains corporeality, when it articulates with your own voice and quakes with your own hands... it becomes much harder to turn your back.

for suffering cannot be disavowed when it stands before you in bone and breath.

you cannot look away when your reflection refuses to blink.

rage cannot maintain itself when the thing you are fighting flinches just as you do.

recognition is a dangerous, dangerous force. once you recognize something, you give it permanence. you name it, bind it to your reality, and in doing so, you invite it to stay. you give it the semblance of understanding.

and understanding, whether accidental, begrudging, or dragged out of you kicking and screaming, comes frighteningly close to love. 

not quite. but enough.

enough for loop to reach out. 

enough for siffrin to reach back, fingers shaking. 

enough to make survival possible.

self-hatred does not tolerate exposure. it swells on distance, gorges itself on the safety of never having to face itself. but then drag it into the light–force it to stand, to see, to know–and watch how quickly it begins to starve.

loop resented siffrin for making it out. for being given something they never got. they didn’t believe they had helped. as far as they were concerned, the universe had written them off as collateral, something to be spent so siffrin could rise.

but then siffrin thanked them. and for all their wrath, for all their acrimony, loop had no answer for that.

because how do you hate something that thanks you?

how do you hold onto the toxin in your veins when the very thing you created whips around and tells you it was never meant to be your grave?

how do you look into your own eyes, your own hands, your own voice, and deny the truth standing right in front of you?

that you are here. that you existed. that you mattered.

that you were never the price. that you were the point.

that in every branching possibility, every outcome the universe could have siphoned, you were the only answer that ever could have worked.

siffrin never asks for help. but the universe made sure someone would.

[egophiliac]

Since book 7 part 5 (the part where we meet Meleanor/Maleanor 👀) is coming to EN this month, i would love to see your take on lilia’s proposal to meleanor! i mean they were like little kids right? it couldn’t have been that serious…i think the only reason she even brought it up again is because she could tell lilia still genuinely loved her…(even if he didn’t realize it himself?) but, oh well! Let’s think about silly childhood shenanigans to numb the pain! ^_^ (orz)

oh shit?! get ready for a doozy guys, it's comiiiiiing ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I chickened out of posting the whole thing (look, I get VERY carried away when it comes to these wacky kids and their Tragedy), but I do believe that it probably ended with Lilia getting embarrassed and just shoving the first thing he sees into his mouth to try and cover for it.

(we're just lucky it wasn't a frog this time)

[twig-tea]

I CANNOT BELIEVE

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2024

I HAVE ON MY SCREEN

TAY TAWAN AND NEW THITIPOOM

SHIRTLESS MAKING OUT

ROLLING ON A BED

IN AN ADAPTATION

OF CHERRY FUCKING MAGIC

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

SINCE 2019/2020

AND IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT

[waterfallofspace]

Anyone else not able to say 'bless you', either because it feels too personal, embarrassing, slightly erotic or a mixture of all of the above-

Buuuuuut also whenever an event interrupts the conversation, you feel so much more awkward not saying anything/commenting on it at all, and so you wish you could just... say that phrase, or have some other thing that makes sense to say to just- shrug it off???

[xskyll]

I'm glad I'm old enough to see how much the world has progressed. As awful as things have been, I think the progress is easy to forget.

When I was in high school, I tried really hard to get into cosplay (I tried, and I tried, but I am not a good seamstress). Most of my failed attempts were crossplays. Back in those days, cosplay.com was popular, and it had a huge, beautiful forum of people sharing tutorials and tips and advice. Regarding crossplay, binding was, of course, a common topic. I, along with many others, used to put on a sports bra and then wrap Ace bandages as tightly as I could around my chest. It achieved a good effect—I once spent a weekend at a con with my chest bound like this all day long, but eventually, people started realizing this was dangerous. So then the suggested thing to do was to wear adjustable back braces over your chest. I personally never tried that, mostly because I didn't want to shell out $30 or so for one, but also because I was skeptical about how dangerous my Ace bandages actually were.

After the back braces came binders. I remember there was one site where you could buy them—they were expensive—and another where you could get on a waiting list to receive a free one. I remember thinking it was unethical that cosplayers were signing up for those because the donors obviously intended the binders for trans people. Those were the only options I remember (keep in mind, cosplay.com was the only resource I was using). I gave up on cosplay, eventually, partly because I was so bad at sewing, but mostly because I felt I was too ugly to participate. And then the cosplay.com forums got shut down and archived permanently, so that community was lost.

But my husband and I are going to an anime themed drag show later this year, and we figured some audience members would probably be in cosplay. We decided it would be fun (and easy) to dress up as Light and L in handcuffs. I have a fairly large chest, so, on a whim, I looked up binders, and I bought one from a reputable site for a reasonable price and there wasn't a waiting list...from research to purchase, I spent under 30 mins buying this binder.

I'm not trans, and I won't pretend I know how it feels to be trans, but it made me really happy that I could find and buy a binder so easily. Regardless of why they're doing it, I hope no one ever has to bind their chest with Ace bandages or back braces ever again.

[sysig]

Coming in to play! (Patreon)

[equalperson]

I fucking hate being traumatized because why am I bawling the hardest I've bawled in god-knows-how-long because someone I didn't even like that much berated Me. gasping wailing trembling and snotting over this for several minutes.

[izzy-b-hands]

Checked my old med records re: transition dates bc today's Pl/Pa appt is probably going to be a fucking doozy where I anticipate being quizzed on my transition thus far and future goals for it

And double checked the year to find out A. my memory is shit and I was off a year but also B:

Next year will be my 5 year anniversary on T!!

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

What're the housemates doing today that's so awful?

So I get the impression that they never clean as they go whenever in the kitchen, so I go clean down the space then leave, then it gets messy again because other people do the same thing not cleaning up as they go and then they complain the kitchen needs cleaning :/

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

oh my god what happened?? are you alright? do you need any help?

alright i will preface this by saying that physically, i am COMPLETELY FINE. please don't worry about me too much, i promise i'm physically okay and it's not that bad

the rest is under the cut not for length but in case people want to skip past it (warning for people being unpleasant)

so the short story is that someone i thought was an online friend suddenly sent me a pretty awful DM before blocking me. they said a lot of genuinely hurtful things which wasn't really good for my mental state since they preyed on a bunch of my insecurities, and i thought that i could trust this person. i'm doing better now thanks to my irl friends, but recovery is a process as usual. i'm not sure if you can really help apart from being emotional support, but your concern is appreciated nonetheless <3

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt my dupe ocs again... Maybe Quinn does have hashtag issues actually

[freesomebodybyluna]

if you order one of those new frozen refreshers from sbux you're going to hell

[marypsue]

For argyle, I can’t say much but I will say my dad is Chicano and grew up in LA area and he appreciated the Cheech and Chong references ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IMO, I feel like his character was exciting in that it was a chance to give the Byers some interesting development, especially Jonathan, but in reality he was more an excuse for weed jokes. I also feel like sometimes the fandom in more excited to show that they can like a brown man actually, than actually giving his character depth (necessary caveat this may just be the corners in lurking on). He mainly exist for car and pizza plot points, and also deus ex machina moments where the writers clearly decided if a high person has an epiphany that coincidentally solves everything, it doesn’t count because they’re high and it’s humorous.

Apologies if you could hear me rolling my eyes over that last point from all the way over here. Everything I hear makes me more and more convinced that I made the right call dipping halfway through this last season. This show is very much no longer being made with me in the intended target audience.

(To be fair, this tendency toward stock comedic characters with cardboard personalities started with Murray back in season two, and just got fucking egregious when they decided he should be a main cast member and an important load-bearing plot element. I cannot stand the man. And yeah, season one had its share of dopey deus ex (Jonathan, why are you taking pictures in the woods in the middle of the night?), but usually it was to get the characters into Situations, not out of them.)

Like I do think it's important to be able to draw that distinction between 'this is what the author/showrunners/writers/story actually did, in our real world, where this is a fictional story that someone had to make all the choices about' and 'this is how I could explain this within the context of the story, as though it were a Thing That Happened and the people it happened to were real, and no deliberate, conscious choices shaped those facts'.

Maybe it really is just that I'm not the target audience here. Or maybe I just don't appreciate weed jokes. But it seems pretty clear to me that nobody on the writing team put in the time or the thought to give that actor much more to work with other than 'weed joke'. (Most likely because they didn't have the time to put in the thought. Or, possibly, that there was no one left on the writing team with the perspective to do so. Minirooms are bad, 'auteur theory' is bad, support the WGA.)

But I know fandom can Do Things with characters whose writers Didn't. I've done it myself! In this case, though, I can't get past how much he annoys me. Which is rough, because I agree with your point - having him there opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities for development for the Byers! It could have been really good! I just can't get there on my own. And I'm hoping somebody has the hookup for the good stuff, so that I don't have to try to sort through a lot of fics and headcanons about a character I am already irritated by for Meta Reasons, without a trusty guide.

[askshivanulegacy]

I don't deny the above issues exist but also those little comparisons between LOTR and ROP are just bad. You don't compare full plate armor with a robe, or grungy used piecemeal armor with a full polished and professional suit. Those ROP examples look amazing and certainly no worse than the LOTR examples, which are improper comparisons anyway. All of those examples look like they fit properly into the same world.

the decrease in costuming quality over the last 20 years has been soooo precipitous & nauseating. i’m not even talking abt marvel’s cg supersuits or anything this time, look at the fabric quality, structure, layering, character, and craftsmanship of older costumes in 102 dalmations (2000) vs cruella (2021)

ever after (1998) vs cinderella (2021)

lord of the rings (2001-2003) vs the rings of power (2022)

this trend should upset you not just because it looks cheap, but because it suggests a strong anti-art and anti-labor movement in film and tv making. don’t forget costumers are unionized