#this has way too many metaphors

[six-white-venus]

[dykedvonte]

wanted to say I appreciate your nuanced takes on MW and especially Curly. i don't get the claim that the fandom is full of Curly apologists when majority (esp yt and tiktok) say he's worse than Jimmy. Yes there's commentary about bro culture defending people, he def messed up in trying to placate Jimmy (tbh "we'll fix this" sounded more like trying to keep someone prone to outbursts like Jim calm and not hurt Anya/himself) but I don't think he did nothing to help Anya, since she continued to confide in him and he had less than a week to resolve it before the crash (I also don't get everyone saying he knew for ages when it seems like Anya told him that same week). I get Jimmy's a pos but saying stuff like Curly should've known he'd crash the ship or that Jim had a criminal record he ignored, reducing them to obviously horrible villain and willfully ignorant sidekick feels like a disservice to the game. If your best friend turned out to be horrible, what would you do in a confined space in the span of a few days to respond? I'd say some of the horror comes from trying to do good but ultimately failing, Curly's state after the crash is meant to be tragic horror not revenge/punishment

Thank you and this is what I want to get across.

A lot of information we have to supplement when it comes to how long things have been happening on this current ship. I think people try to add on to the horror and negligence by making things more obvious so it can feel like it was easier to avoid when, true to life, its not. Jimmy clearly didn't deserve or appreciate what Curly did for him in getting him the job, but do you think if Jimmy was that big of a menace on Earth he would've given him a position where he could have that level of power over people's lives? There's something in the fact he specifically chose to pick a position so close to himself where he could watch Jimmy.

I hate the bro code argument because that is a whole can of worms people really don't get. That sort of mentality is born from the general respect and preference of male matter over female ones. Curly is clearly not that guy, he is absent minded about the issue and inadvertently dismissive but he clearly believes Anya, he just can't understand what she's going through. It's an onslaught of information that no one really reacts right to. Additonally, the entire discussion of her assualt plays to heavy into the idea that there is fault outside of the perpertratior when it comes to SA. It's too close if she only did this or if Curly had protected her better but the fact of the matter is Jimmy did what he did. He did it before any of the conversations with Anya about it and it's why her behavior seemed to change so drastically in those last two days.

He has other conflicting thought and while his role as a Captain should've taken over, people act like it's not a very human thing to have such a toxic presence cloud your judgement. It is never easy to separate friend from coworker once that connection is formed, you want to help them, especially if they were friend first and for a long while like in this case. It's not right, but people act like it would be easy when the game clearly points out that no choice is easy to make, especially when you have to make it for more than one person. You have the weigh the consequences, look at all the options and make a plan. People can headcanon and decide how long things where happening, but if we look at what we were presented through the characters eyes, the only person given time to do that was Jimmy.

He waited two months after the crash to appoint himself Captain. Every time a problem was brought up he immediately took action and refused to sit on it and find a better solution. I think it's important to look at the warped way Jimmy takes initiative where Curly didn't as it works as a good contrast of why you don't just run in to "fix" things. The quickest and easiest option may not be the safest or most beneficial. I think some thoughts on the game suffer from the black and white thinking the game doesn't operate on along with us being voyeurs. We see what exactly led to what but the characters don't. They don't have the hindsight and foresight we do and even ours is scrambled by the non-linear story telling.

Like it's hard to talk abuou those grey zones without sounding like an apologist because you're explaining why taking responsibility isn't easy. It's not and it's weird to act like it would be in a scenerio that led up to the events of the game knowing what we know. We see all these characters in such isolated moments with various things before, in between, after and even during we aren't privy too. The idea that Jimmy is worse than Curly heavily banks on the words Jimmy was saying to Jimmy before he crashed the ship. That whatever happened on the ship was his responsibility to bare, which is true due to his position. But, are they not still not responsible for taking the actions Curly then must bare?

Like i feel like people think that these are situation that become easier with age or when you are in a postion of authority and they aren't. You don't lose your biases or gain some sudden knowledge that makes it easier. It just becomes more tiring as you keep dealing with it. I would be first in line to say Curly fucked up and should've done more but the idea he knew how bad it could get or he really saw the worst in the people around him and ignored it pretty much ignores a huge aspect of his character and the game.

[wickmitz]

— THE ELECTRIC-FEVER REMEDY.

[sesamenom]

Ar-Pharazon from the Reverse Gondolin AU and as Witch-King of Numenor - thanks to @who-needs-words for helping develop this idea!

[arolesbianism]

Time for more eternal gales isat au, this time featuring Sier as Isabeau, creating a sprite I can never use next to Aris’ because despite my best efforts it would make them look tall

[skitskatdacat63]

Some contemplations on the matador au...sorry, I'm like a child with a new toy 😭(I've not abandoned my other stuff btw obv but at certain point, it gets a bit hard to build an AU cause I'm like, I have so many ideas but idk how to post them in a cohesive way???? So it's a bit more relaxing and fun to play with a new one for a bit bcs everything is new :) )

This au mostly exists bcs I rly like drawing ornate things, such as the matador costume. But I've been thinking a lot lately abt the actual content of it. Vettonso(of course.) I have a few ideas abt the actual avenue of it. I have one main one, and then two jokey ones.

○

The first(and actual) one would be the original thought that both of them are matadors. And Seb retires after injury(btw jfc bullfighting injuries are such body horror. The one guy I was researching was impaled in the skull and lost his eye and some of his hearing. But he came back to bullfighting, and at some point was impaled in the chest and injured his lung. And still kept competing I think??? Somehow there's athletes more insane than f1 drivers, shocking, I know.)

I think Fernando would be renowed for his resilience and Seb for his agility. And both for their exceptional showmanship and flair 🤭 There's actually more than just matadors! Seb would prob start off as Fernando's assistant, a banderillero(kind of an assistant to the matador. They stick these flag things in the bull, and have to be super agile and fast.) And then becomes a matador in his own right(surpassing Fernando's achievements????) But as mentioned, gets a pretty bad injury and has to retire. But he still feels a lot of admiration and respect for Nando and comes to watch his matches. And Fernando *always* dedicates his kill to Seb, throwing his hat at him, hoping he'll one day come back. Seb is like: "what do I do with this box of hats..." Fernando is crying in the corner bcs he's lost a lot of his motivation.

It's really !!!!! to think about their suit designs and the evolution of it. They're pretty united when Seb is Fernando's assistant(Nando wearing light blue with gold, Seb darker blue with silver.) And then Seb becomes a matador(dark blue and gold), and Fernando suddenly changes his suit to bright red(he is upset, he is seeing red, haha get the bull joke?) Seb would start wearing that circa 2010 bull hat after successful matches, thus cementing himself as the "red bull" and Fernando, his rival, "bull-killer." They're not directly competing, but thematically they are. In traditional bull matches, there's 3 matadors vs 6 bulls. So vettonso are often in the same matches, indirectly competing against each other, but fighting to have the most flair and success. Fernando sees defeating Seb to be just as important as defeating the actual bull. He slays the bull, and then conquers the other.

Sobbing to imagine Fernando abandon his hatred for Seb after witnessing him getting injured. Cradling his bloody, torn up body. Pressing his hat to Seb's chest, soaking up his blood with his own cape. By that point, Seb had had a dark green suit. And ever since he retired, Fernando now wears the same shade, as an homage to his once great rival, dedicating every kill that Seb never got to have to the man himself.

Hahaha okay silly versions:

Two is just bullfighter!Fernando being driver Seb's wag 😭

Everyone notes the irony of him being a Red Bull driver who constantly has bull iconography(2010 bull hat, petting the bull on his car, "riding" the bull at the end of 2012, etc.) dating a man who kills bulls for a living. But it turns out Fernando is the only one who can tame the bull 🤭, and also Seb is the only bull he can't bring himself to kill. Seb makes a helmet for the Spanish gp based on the embroidery of Fernando's suit. Fernando tries to incorporate Seb's logo and rbr logo somewhere on his cape. They share a trophy shelf 🥰 and Fernando brings one of his hats to the Spanish gp to publicly bestow upon Seb.

The third is so stupid 😭 Basically: Seb becomes the human physical manifestation of one of the bulls Fernando is meant to kill, and tries to seduce him into leaving the bullfighter life. So he's a bull-boy: tails, ears, horns and all 😏 So Fernando comes home from a match, and Seb is there, kneeling, when he opens his front door. Fernando now must conquer a bull in a *different* way. Bull-boy out who is out to ruin your livelihood by seductively splaying himself across every surface in your house and encouraging you to tug on his septum ring, and forget that you have a match to go to this weekend, and wouldn't you rather enjoy a bull rather than kill one?

[bookshelfdreams]

the soup is a lie

(this isn't a Portal reference)

Soup is so nice. It can be warmth, comfort, trust. Community. All those different things coming together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. Something beautiful.

But not all communities are made equal. Not all relationships are like that, safe, nourishing, gentle.

Sometimes, it's this.

Ed has it right when he says that it's poison. That's all Hornigold ever had for him. Lies and poison and cruelty. He didn't plant the seed of self-hatred in Ed, that was his father's doing, but he watered it and let it grow until it was big enough to choke him.

How do you make sure smart, talented, capable kids like Ed grow into adults who will do your bidding? Break them down until you're the only stable thing they know. Smother independence as soon as it shows its nose. Loyalty is hard to win, but dependency? That's easier. So you feed them a fucked idea of what it means to be human, make sure they never develop an inherent sense of worth. Make sure the only thing they know is the struggle for power, the danger of weakness.

Framed as getting some nutrients into Ed, making him eat his vegetables: To make it into this world, you have to understand pain. I am the only one who cares about you. This abuse is all the love you'll ever get.

And even after everything Ed has been through, his first instinct is still to reject it. He recognizes the poison for what it is, and has to be forced to swallow it.

The soup is a lie. Hornigold is not capable of care or nourishment.

And Ed knows it's a lie.

[hiswrlds]

The themes of abuse in this one are so ????

[deiscension]

I've mentioned before that S.hi Q.ingxuan has codependent tendencies and usually said so in a light-hearted "haha yeah watch out she'll latch onto your muse like a leech" manner but it really is a major problem that sets her up for nothing but failure.

Everything she does, from the way she dresses to the way she handles her responsibilities, cries "look at me, look at me!" Some of it has to do with vanity and having been spoiled by her ge's attention, yes; she's pretty, she's kind, she's the lady wind master, so why shouldn't she be admired and adored? A good majority of it is just naturally how she is; even when keeping face, she's never once thought to hide the heart she so openly wears on her sleeve. If it were just those two facets of her personality, it wouldn't be so debilitating. But it's not. She does not know how to exist without being seen. It's not a lack of confidence in who she is as a person (she knows who she is- she thinks she knows -and she's so very confident in who she believes herself to be). But that confidence has a foundation based in there always being a hand to hold, always a back to hide behind, always a pair of arms to catch her when she falls, and if there's just one thing she knows how to do it's to be a persistent presence. Everyone needs someone else around, so it all works out quite nicely, doesn't it? She has no reason to believe otherwise.

[itwoodbeprefect]

flashbacks to dialogue that happened less than a minute ago are annoying and a little insulting for obvious reasons, unless it's in bad buddy episode 5 [2/4] and pat is having entirely serious sepia toned flashbacks to fifty seconds ago while almost shoving a set of drumsticks he hasn't even paid for yet up his nose. then it's brilliant and world changing

[fragmentedblade]

Just how big was Teng Xiao if Cirrus calls Jing Yuan a "lightweight"???

[inimitablereel]

I have so many feelings about hands of the emperor/at the feet of the sun, not all of which are positive (which does unfortunately limit ways to share these feelings) but I'm guessing the ones that are way more than the average reader are the ones specifically about Kip's house. What do you mean, he just RANDOMLY STUMBLED ACROSS a house that has nice living space for FIVE ADULTS with SHARED COMMON SPACE and SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL SPACES with a good amount of room for everyone but not so much that it's unwieldy

[polyamoryprincess]

You know when they said “not counting fast food” they were literally talking about fucking Applebee’s and the Cheesecake Factory and other chain restaurants that are essentially sit down fast food lmao (to be fair I genuinely think those 2 users might be young teens)

[qulizalfos]

having a fantasy au moment it may or may not pass

[leidensygdom]

i love finding poetry in the mundane, and yesterday i stumbled upon something that just hits that spot

So, my partner has an old phone- It served them for many years now, but it has one issue: Charging it is hard. Their current charger is hanging on by a thread (literally), and can barely do its job. The phone and the charger came together: They've never used another charger for said phone.

Now, they've tried to replace the charging cord several times. But it doesn't matter how much they've searched what damned specific charger the phone uses, none of them work. They finally decided to bring it to a phone shop and ask what should they use.

The guy at the shop looked at the phone for a bit, and explained: "The port itself is broken. The charger you have works with this phone because they've mutually broken each other into the same shape, in a way that no other charger is shaped. The port itself has corroded in a way that only accepts the charger that shaped it like that in the first place."

And while this is of course a frustrating situation for my partner, I feel like there's a metaphor here. I could write a goddamn story about this. These two half-broken old things have been together for so long they've destroyed each other in a way that keeps them from working with anything else. They've hurt each other in a way that barely keeps them functioning together, and have been rendered useless with literally anything else.

This too is toxic yuri to me-

[autisticlee]

I don't understand why so many religious weirdos claim dinosaurs never existed and the bones/fossils dug out of the ground were buried under rock by scientists and then dug back out. it makes no sense at all. does their religion book tell them they were fake? is that what it is? because they seem to love letting some old mistranslated book dictate their entire life, thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. they even make up stuff the book supposedly says to excuse their behavior and justify horrible things, which makes them hypocrites for not actually following their book they claim tells them exactly how to live their lives that they must follow exactly or they will go to hell. but they sure like to pick and choose what they follow and make up new rules. but anyway, why do they hate dinosaurs lmao