#this is the life I've chosen to live

[carlyraejepsans]

i think i found my people

[wee-english-fella]

have realised all my current comfort media is about people escaping big cities and building lives they love and finding their people in small mostly coastal communities....... much to think about........

[ID in alt text]

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[soizoukoi]

Currently studying the 'Trafik!' video frame by frame instead of sleeping

[romanscool]

oh to have time to write loser teens farmers!maxiel,,, instead im stuck listening to people talk all day of things I do not have an ounce of care for

[blue-thief]

kaiser and dice are kinda two sides of the same coin. of two sides of a one-sided die. which is a coin. to me

[littlestickfish]

I had a dream that I had found another Mark Twain song like the New Battle Hymn of the Republic

But it was written in vegetable pizza--all my favorite vegetables, mind--and I was trying to eat it... but it wouldn't all fit on my fork. And I said to my mom, "If I had to rate this song on a scale of Fuck You, 1-10, it would get an 11." And I think I was probably right

And then I tried to remember the words to the New Battle Hymn of the Republic, but I can only remember the first and the last

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the sword

He is searching out the hidings where the strangers' wealth is stored

He has loosed his doomful lightning and with woe and death has scored

His lust is marching on /

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel

As ye deal with my pretensions so with you my wrath shall deal

Let the faithless son of freedom crush the patriot with his heel

Our God is marching on!

I used to know all four verses. I used to sing them in my 20s while I was doing yard work, back in my 20s when I could still do yard work. That seems... like another life, now. In a way that makes the world tonight feel like the unfinished dream, not what I just saw

Anyway

Happy July ig

[nobodieshero-main]

i'm having more side quest ideas

[wildhumanhasappeared]

lmao I just read a line in a fan fic that made me check the author's age and was not surprised to see "21"

[oldmanlusting]

My list of fandoms I keep denying myself because of my thesis just keeps growing. First it all started with Deltarune Chapter 2 and then it grew to Encanto and now Scrooge (2022)™

[fionnaskyborn]

I wonder if there is like a quota for how many fuckups a man can make in life. I don't know where I was going with this. I guess I just wish every step I made wasn't one in the wrong direction, or that I could at least backpedal out of bad decisions without any fatal consequences like damaging someone else. Life sucks.

[bhaalsdeepbat]

just to add:

Using Poe rather than any other Dark Romantic writer that was his contemporary to pull a quote from was such a good choice. Of his sotries, "The Tell-Tale Heart" was the perfect one for Astarion, but Poe very specifically believed stories should be written in a circular manner - like a snake biting its tail - which fits so perfectly with all the little ways Astarion's story and romance references itself.

Direct quote from my source:

Poe believed in “fashioning a tale like a kind of ouroboros, with its tail in its mouth, beginning with the final effect and working backwards to that the story’s beginning is a natural derivation of its conclusion.”

It's the setting up of the Romantic Astarion in act 1, finding out he's not as fine as he keeps insisting as the narrative swings into Dark Romantic territory, the paranoia starts to really come out (relating back to tell-tale heart), and then he is literally given a choice: continue the cycle or break free. The cycle of abuse is literally a circle here. He can take up Cazador's place in the ritual and step into his role entirely, reentering the ouroboros I mentioned earlier.

The "Thank you" when he first bites the player being referenced later when they see past his paranoia and how unreliable of a narrator he is about his own feelings and seeing that he doesn't want power. He wants safety in a world that he believes isn't capable of kindness or good.

I love how Astarion quotes The Tell-Tale Heart every once in a while. It's a rarer line, and initially I thought it was out of place (Neil is very well versed in theater, so I assumed it was a riff from him), but since reading an analysis of the work I think it was pretty purposeful.

The piece is all about fear and paranoia, things we know Astarion is plagued by despite how he might act. Similarly, the narrator of the story also tries to convince the reader that they are not as troubled as they seem. In the end, the narrator is consumed by the beating of the heart of the old man he killed and dismembered, the sound growing louder and louder until in a fit of rage he reveals the body to the police to absolve himself from the persistent beating.

Except the police never heard the heart beat, because it wasn't the old man's heart at all. The narrator was consumed by the sound of his own heart beating more and more rapidly in his chest from fear. He was the owner of the thing that forced him to reveal his true nature, he is the owner of the tell-tale heart.

And what happens with Astarion after you romance him? He realizes over time that, while he tried to deny his feelings and was initially only interested in manipulating you for his own means, he actually has grown to care for you. You have done something to his heart that hasn't happened in centuries, you have made it feel as if it has started beating again.

Therefore, his tell-tale heart leads him to admit his transgressions, which were committed out of fear and paranoia for his safety.

So the line is actually very, very apt. His confession during Act 2 is his own version of "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!" Except, of course, it is his own heart that he is unearthing for us (and it's not so hideous, after all).

[littlemissprettyprincess]

2024 revised, 2025 dream life ♡

We're going to be treating 2025 as a blank canvas, so have full faith that this is going to be the year where you finally get everything you want. For this challenge, revision will be the key. You will be revising the entire past year. You can even revise the years before that if you'd like. After revising, you will go into 2025 knowing that you are living your dream life and that this is going to be your year. (You can use this challenge for the void state too!)

Create a list of all your desires. You can do this on a Google Document, in your Notes App, wherever you want. You can even include pictures, or make a Pinterest Board. Many of you have already done this, but if you haven't yet, I definitely recommend that you do!

Choose a few affirmations that you will stick to. Some affirmations that you can use are:

I am living my dream life, I always have been.

I have already manifested my dream life, and I am currently living it.

I have already entered the void state, I enter every night, and I've manifested my desires long ago.

Feel free to make your own!

Listen to this subliminal and follow the directions below:

Take a few deep breaths and let yourself relax. Play the subliminal, close your eyes, and repeat your chosen affirmations in your mind. If you like to visualize, do that too. Now, when you repeat your affirmations and visualize, I want you to have full trust that these affirmations are true, the scenes that you are visualizing are real memories that belong to you, and this is the life you've always been living. Do this for however long makes you feel fulfilled. My recommendation is around 10 minutes, but feel free to continue for longer if you'd like! Once you are done, accept that the old story has now officially been revised.

That's it! It's done. The old story has been revised and all you have to do now is accept that and persist in that fact. Keep reminding yourself that IT IS DONE. You can't fall back to the old story now, because there literally is no old story, it's been revised! You are already someone who is living their dream life, you always enter the void every night because you always have, you manifest instantly because it's been a skill that you've always acquired. By accepting this, you will get your desires, you will enter the void, your dream life will be yours.

Want some motivation before you start this challenge? Here:

how i manifested my dream life with extremely hard circumstances + how you can too ♡

HOW I CHANGED MY LIFE WITH THE LAW OF ASSUMPTION

my long awaited void state success story ˘ ³˘

2025 is going to be your year, I know it, and I want you all to know it too. ♡

[werepuppy-steve]

corroded coffin does one of those interviews with puppies and before eddie leaves, steve warns him that he better not come home with one of them. eddie promises him he won't.

he wasn't expecting the littlest basset hound puppy he's ever seen to curl up and fall asleep between his crossed legs at the beginning of the interview. he wasn't expecting to fall in love a second time in his life.

and the rest of the guys already decided they were going to adopt one of the many puppies they played with, so what's the harm in eddie doing the same?

the distance between their home and the studio is only an hour car ride, so when eddie gets home that evening, he quietly closes the front door and finds steve in the living room, sprawled out on the couch and watching tv.

as gently as he can, eddie places the puppy (galadriel, he named her on the ride home) onto steve's chest. he doesn't startle too bad, thankfully, but he does stare at her in bewilderment.

"hello...?" he says to her, confused. "where did you come from?"

eddie clears his throat and he gives a little steve-like finger wave when steve snaps his head up and their eyes meet.

steve lets out a sigh, deep enough to send galadriel rising and falling, and flops his head back on the couch cushion. "i knew this would happen."

"i really did try, stevie," eddie tries to plead his case, leaning against the back of the couch and reaching to scratch at galadriel's little noggin. "i held out for as long as i could, but she caught me in a moment of weakness."

galadriel's mouth falls open in a yawn, her tongue lolling out, and then shuffles further up steve's chest to curl into a ball in the space between his neck and shoulder

eddie's bottom lip juts out and his eyes go wide.

steve feels his heart melt and he brings a hand up to cradle her little butt. she's so warm, how are puppies always walking space heaters?

he looks back at eddie, finally breaking. "puppy pads are in the hall closet. i've already made a rotating schedule for potty walks and baths."

eddie makes a giddy sound and leans forward to peck steve's lips, careful not to wake the sleeping pup.

after the interview comes out, eddie tweets a photo of galadriel (who has quickly chosen steve as her favorite) wearing a puppy battle vest and a colts hat.

[ckret2]

I've seen some folks saying that the reference to The Great Gatsby in TBOB was just a joke Alex didn't put deeper meaning into—which might be true, IDK the man's motives for choosing Gatsby specifically—and that there's no way the book has any deeper relevance to Bill's character beyond the eye doctor thing—which is totally wrong. Whether or not Alex intended parallels, there ARE parallels. So, for those of you who didn't read or didn't pay attention to The Great Gatsby:

the book's about a guy who started out as an unimportant loser with starry-eyed dreams, who very quickly gained a lot of power/gold and now presents himself as this dapper fancy well-dressed super important guy.

He constantly throws huge parties, he's got a reputation for being THE party host. But it's a sham, he's pouring all these resources into this party to make himself look so cool but he's living at the very edge of his means.

He lies about his history, lies about how he got his money (spoilers: he's a criminal), lies even in how he presents his personality—he's a con artist, he's always wearing a mask.

The reason he's doing all this—putting on the mask, making himself look so great—is because he's trying to reach across this very thin boundary to a better life he can see, JUST out of reach, so close but something he's never quite clever enough and rich enough and persuasive enough to reach. Every night at his parties he stares at his goal, he can LITERALLY SEE it, he just can't reach it himself.

The best he can do is briefly charm and dazzle someone on the other side of this social boundary, but he can never quite persuade that person to help him cross over; in fact no one on the other side of the boundary thinks he has a right to cross it.

He finds somebody—the guy narrating the book about him—who's very lonely, socially awkward, and disillusioned, whom he can easily awe with his stories and persuade to help him reach his goal, come on please, it'll be harmless! (It is not harmless.)

He loses control over the act he's putting on and over the people who only follow him around as long as he's still got the resources to keep them entertained and loyal.

It ends with him getting murdered by a guy he has LITERALLY never met before—by which point everyone has realized that he's a nobody making it all up as he goes along who was just desperately chasing the illusion of a good life and the admiration of everyone around him.

The narrator ends up disillusioned with him and the whole culture around him of grasping and clawing for a glitzy glamorous life at the expense of the regular people who are manipulated, trampled, and discarded in the process.

Now tell me that Gatsby doesn't have any parallels to Bill's character. And this is just based off reading the book a decade ago—there's probably tons of little details I don't even remember. The book may well have been chosen as a coincidence, it did recently hit the public domain. But if so, it's a VERY GOOD coincidence.

[suiana]

thinking about a yandere who was cursed by the gods (something similar to medusa), not because he did anything wrong, but because they found him too beautiful and too tempting.

what was once a god of a man was now but... still a handsome man, just with cursed eyes. with eyes that turn anyone into stone the second he gazes upon them. everyone who he once knew were now nothing more than mere statues, having glanced upon his beautiful eyes that now bring death.

he has chosen to live in solitude, away from everyon- well, not really. it's just that the once lively place he lived in.... wasn't so lively after all. i mean, they all turned into stone 💀

anyway, he shut everyone out because #1 they were all dead and #2 he didn't want to lose another person that he loved. what better way than to just... not interact with society and become a social hermit?

enter, you.

little ol' you who accidentally wandered into his place. he was flabbergasted and terrified. shit, he didn't want to kill an innocent person! so he tried to scare you away by making weird noises and blockign off your path while simultaneously not showing his eyes.

but wow, you just kept coming closer and closer!

"stay back! i'm warning you! you'll regret it!"

he tried to cover his eyes, tears threatening to spill from them as he absolutely majestiv form trembled on the spot. man, was he really about to take the life of another innocent person who didn't deserve to get turned into stone??

then you told him you were blind and he felt the fear leave his body as fast as it came.

from then on, the two of you chatted daily, talking about your different lives and such. it helped him regain a sense of... normalcy that he thought he'd forgotten. it was nice having you around.

so much so that he actually started to develop feelings for you. feelings that were so deep and obsessive that others would've probably ran away. not you though, never you. you were the only one to stay by his side despite his unusal predicament. perhaps the gods were sorry for playing such a cruel fate on him and decided to give him a blessing?

wrong.

"sweetheart! sweetheart! it's a miracle!"

your voice snaps him out of his daze, filling him with a giddy feeling that he's come to love and crave. oh you are just so delightful! he swears he could just lock you up to coddle you in hugs and kisses for the rest of his miserable little life!

"darling? what miracle?"

he pauses, feeling his heart drop into his stomach the second you enter his room without your usual glasses on. wait... what are you-

"i've regained my sight! bless the heavens above i-"

"no! no! no! don't look!"

but it was all for naught. you had already turned to stone.

"fuck! why did this happen?! no no no.... please wake up. please, you can't leave me too!"

the beautiful man sobs, cradling you in his arms as his salty tears fall onto your now stone cold cheeks. he cries and begs, voice growing softer and softer as the sun begins to set. how could the gods be so cruel? what had he done so wrong for them to subject him to such a fate? fine! take away his friends! take away his family! but why did they have to take you too?

"please come back...."

things were only made worse because today was the day when he'd finally decided to ask you to spend the rest of your lives together.