#this is Not Great

[neilljcsten]

in high school, andrew read a quote from e e cummings.

i will live my life if it kills me

he takes it to heart. he risks it all to kill tilda. fights the men that attacked nicky. places himself between kevin and riko. he focuses on protecting his family, even if it kills him, because that is what his life is for. his life wasn’t made for joy, he’s certain of that. his time on earth is temporary - why should he prolong the inevitable.

then he meets neil. neil who knows his days are numbered; his life isn’t killing him as much as it’s a bomb with all the wires cut. no matter how hard either of them try, they’ll never find the kill switch. when it blows, neil will be lost in the blast.

and for the first time andrew understands. it isn’t about living life as a slow march to death. yes it’s the destination, but it isn’t the objective. for once, he looks at death and challenges it to try and take him. to try and take one of his.

his perspective shifts. even if it kills him, andrew lives. he clings to life with white knuckles and drags himself forward. even if it kills him

[cave-n-dish]

Parabola changes. It is in its nature. It changes when you least expect it to, when you least want it to, but there are some things one can rely on, even in such a mutable land. One such thing, Emon has learnt, is that there are places where entering Parabola is easier, where the boundary between Is and Is-Not becomes soft and malleable. There are mirrors, of course, but sometimes bodies of water can also become passageways if everything lines up as it should. These passages are not as reliable as still surfaces, and perhaps for this very reason they are much more powerful, dragging dreams and memories and emotions through their gaping maw. Normally, one would want to avoid such a thing. Unfortunately, Emon doesn't have much choice. They have been walking and swimming and falling through the currents of the zee for what feels like days, weeks, months, with no sight of land. No mirrors here. And now that their desire to return is strong, they start realising that parts of them are fading, drowned out by the memories and dreams all around them. They don't have time to spare. The opening they found will have to do. If only the currents weren't so strong. This is the third day Emon has spent trying to approach the boundary, diving into the depths of memory to reach for the faint light of the fake stars from the Is, but it seems a hopeless effort. They allow themself to rest for a moment on the surface of the reflected zee, staring up at the cosmogone sun. They can feel it pulling them upwards even now. It will only get worse as soon as they dive down below. And yet… They have to try again. With a deep breath that will be useless under the waves, Emon pushes themself down into the cold. There is a light at the bottom of the zee and despite the strain on their limbs, they swim towards it. The first thing that flows past them is sensations brittle salvage under your fingertips / slimy algae touching the bottom of your feet / the warmth of a shared celebratory meal and those are easy to ignore. They push Emon's hair into their face, impairing their vision for a moment, but they're a trifling thing compared to what follows. Words, sentences, impressions of conversations are next thank goodness the fish are / I still think I ought to have had a bigger role in the play / you got WHAT from exchanging some random coral? and that's harder, Emon's curiosity makes them want to linger and listen to those scraps of conversation. Then the currents pick up. The memories push against Emon's limbs like waves crashing against the sides of our creaking fishing boat, dragging us towards the scraggly cliffs and bring them off-course as the light of their objective seems to grow dimmer. Emon grits their teeth, refuses to breathe them in and letting them cloud their mind. They need to swim, they need to push aside the gripping hands of a thousand strangers as they try to grab the fish from the stream and pull it up out of the water, where they can eat it, devour it, they are so hungry. The memories are bad. The dreams, are so much worse. Just when the light grows stronger again, almost within reach now, a wave of hate, so strong it knocks Emon into the rocks at the bottom of the zee, crashes into them. They are surrounded by stars and meteor-rocks cut their clothes and skin as the currents whip them to and fro. Spikes and vows and curses bear into Emon's mind, yelling for them to get out get away go to the surface see the stars again and yet another force pulls them further down towards love too ancient to be understood love willing to give up the light the wind and life itself to be with the shade of what your darling used to be. It's too much. They don't understand. They can never understand how something like this could even exist. They grasp onto the sharp rocks but the skin of their fingers is tearing and their grip is slipping. They will be swept away once again and so will their mind with every new attempt.

aka, Cavendish attempts to escape Parabola during the Fruits of the Zee festival

[icarus-suraki]

It's not even October yet and I'm already looking up warm, green, spring pictures.

[kvtnisseverdeen]

i can't have froggy nelson die and have to deal with an isr*eli character in the mcu. marve please

[crypticpara]

I THOUGHT COFFEE IS GOOD FOR PRODUCTIVITY

[creature-from-unknown-orgins]

The frustration of not having time to be sick

[wormbraind]

i dropped my coil model on his head

pls send 1k to help with medical bills!!1!

[spongynova]

I see you people liking & rebloging my little fanarts and I love you.

That's all ❤️

[shutupdevvie]

i’ve just realized that i am incredibly unstable

[leaguetraining]

Umm I need to crowdsource some ideas. How do I cross an ocean in acid rain without getting wet?

[macbethz]

Well I like it but it’s not very well written. Also it’s a visual mess. The plot doesnt make any sense and the creators suck and its politics oscillate from mildly problematic to frankly baffling. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. However. the character

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.