#this isn't particularly happy

[radiantmists]

im obsessed with how, in the beginning of episode 1, it's charles who says "do you ever think about death catching us and splitting us up", and it's edwin who says "I will never let that happen".

because of course edwin is the one who objectively has the most to lose if they get caught, and they're both very aware of this. when the night nurse ambushes them, charles steps between her and edwin immediately, and the second time he explicitly says do what you want with me, but leave edwin. it would be natural for him to be the protective one-- and a lot of the time he is!

but the very first time we're presented with the idea of running from death, it's charles who expresses anxiety and edwin who reassures him. because what scares charles most is the thought of being separated from edwin-- and, as always, edwin doesn't want charles to be afraid.

[trappedinafantasy37]

One of the things that had my mind spinning for a while is that in the Shadowheart origin, if you reject Shar, Minthara will apologize. She will believe that she and the rest of the companions held Shadowheart back from achieving her destiny. She blames herself for Shadowheart making a choice completely on her own, thinking that Shadowheart's concern for herself and others held her back. Minthara feels it to be her fault that Shadowheart is not as powerful as she could be and she is to blame for Shadowheart walking away from her destiny. Minthara sees herself as having failed for Shadowheart making the choice that she did.

I know it is cut content and cannot really be considered canon, but she does something similar in the breakup. Where she's yelling at Durge and asking why they rejected Bhaal. And Durge can tell her it's cause they love her. When the breakup was slipped in, I was initially so angry because Minthara calls Durge stupid for choosing love over power (when Minthara herself chooses love over power). Especially since the breakup happens like 10 minutes after the alurlssrin confession where she says the two of you have an unbreakable bond. I used to be so confused on why she would be so upset that you actually loved her. Then I realized that she's not upset that you love her. She's upset cause she fears that your love for her held you back.

Even though she sees you as her equal, she keeps putting herself as less than you. Where your wants and desires are more important than her own, and your greatness should be put above any affection you have for her. She wants you to love her of course, but she does not want to be what holds you back from reaching for power. To Minthara, power is safety and she has never felt safe. She wants you to keep elevating yourself cause the stronger you are, the safer you will be and by extension, the safer she will be. So you picking her over power means you are less safe and by consequence, she is less safe. And as much as Minthara loves loves, she needs to be safe first. It's why it seems like she keeps making the same dumb mistakes over and over, getting herself into precarious situations. It isn't because she's necessarily blinded by love, but she feels her proximity to power should keep her safe.

I also had a discussion with someone on Reddit, talking where it almost seems like Minthara keeps putting herself in positions of servitude, despite having some pretty ambitious goals involving world domination. We are talking about someone who has been a servant of Lolth her entire life. She tells us she was raised to be a soldier in Lolth's army and that was all she was meant to be. For 200+ years she was a servant and has never been anything else and doesn't know how to be anything else, and I believe she is too afraid to try to be anything else.

As a paladin, she was responsible for keeping social order, follow the word of whatever Priestess was in charge and enacting Lolth's will, partake in surface raids, and kill any of Lolth's enemies. There was very little room for her to achieve what she wanted, because Lolth had to come first. And even if there were things she wanted for herself, they still ultimately had to please Lolth in the end. Her time in the Absolute is no different. She just swaps the Absolute for Lolth and keeps up with the same shit (although she is too brainwashed to tell). So of course she is stunned when Lolth abandons her and the Absolute attempts to kill her and throws her deep into a crisis of faith. 200+ years of service has always bought her safety, until it didn't. So when you come along, she just swaps you for the Absolute. Telling herself, "I just need to be better than I was for the Absolute, better than I was for Lolth, and I should be okay." And her little rant about the gods, Lolth, Bhaal, the Absolute. Minthara is not anti-god. Minthara is anti-gods who do not reward their followers for their service. Because to her, service should be rewarded with something (other than death). She plays both sides when it comes to Shar because although she does think Shar is a poison in Shadowheart's life and believes Shadowheart is better off without Shar, at least Shar did reward Shadowheart for her service by making her a Dark Justiciar and elevating her to Chosen.

You would think she'd learn, but she doesn't. Not because she's stupid, but because her basic need for safety isn't being met. And so be fair, her "mistakes" with Lolth and the Absolute were relatively recent. So she keeps pushing people down the path of ruin and never going down the path herself directly, thinking that if she helps you become powerful, she will be safe. Where if she stands beside as you walk down this path, you will reward her for her service. Where she does not believe you would betray her because she helped you get that power. Where she thinks her service to you should buy her safety. Because to her, the most important thing she can be to you is useful. And she is terrified of being useless. So she provides you with unbreakable loyalty, devotion, and servitude, (and perhaps love). Where she will help you achieve your ambitions, whether it be to become a Dark Justiciar, the Vampire Ascended, the Slayer, or a god. Her path to safety, and greatness, and true power is forever lost to her down in the Underdark. So all she can do is help you walk down yours.

She keeps doing the same stupid shit over and over, making the same mistakes with people over and over, cause her fundamental need to safety is never being satisfied. And her service to various gods and entities technically did buy her safety, but only for an unknown period of time. And when she loses that safety, she thinks that the problem is her. That she was punished because she was not a good enough servant. That if she was a truly good servant, she won't lose your safety and your protection. And she thinks love interferes with your perception of her as a servant. She wants you to see her as a loyal servant first, lover second, because the only things in her life to be truly rewarded was her service, whereas her love got punished.

[ziyechs]

“ja’marr, outside of the obvious—winning the national championship—do you have a best memory with joe? whether it’s on the field or off the field… do you have a best memory that you look back on with joe burrow?”

— “i’d probably say ole miss game when i put on some icy hot. it was pretty cold that game, i actually put some stuff on my arms and joe didn’t like it. he told me: ‘take it off’, cause i was getting the ball too slippery. so i’d probably say that was actually a funny moment for me cause i wasn’t expecting him to go off on me about that.”

anyway, here is him mentioning it again, four years later :)

[lord-squiggletits]

Y'know I kind of feel like when Megatron killed Tarn and said 'I want you to spend your final moments thinking of this: that everything you've done has been for nothing' he was kind of self-projecting onto Tarn? Mainly because at Megatron's statue, M and T had a conversation where Tarn explicitly asked if all the Decepticons in service to Megatron died for nothing, if HE did everything he did for nothing. (And I think M even gave an answer along the lines of 'idk I think we basically did'). And then after Megatron killed the DJD and Rodimus teleported in to rescue him, there was that silent moment where Megatron just stared at Rodimus not moving at all before he finally took his hand at the last moment.

It honestly feels to me like for a while, Megatron fully intended to murder-suicide himself. Murder the DJD, his monsters and his creation, and then take himself out alongside them, because he is also a monster. Because he also feels that everything he's ever done has been for nothing.

Goddamn it's no wonder I liked that scene so much LMAO, as someone who thinks villain Megatron > Autobot Megatron, literally one of his key traits is that Megatron basically took his pain/trauma/worldview and used it to lash out at the universe and try to subjugate it to his vision. So the fact that he took his own pain and brutally murdered the DJD while telling them the very same thing that puts him through so much agony is so very deliciously ironic. And a return, however brief, to the Megatron characterization that I know and love.

[guppygiggles]

////

[corvus-frugilegus]

if you still wanna do first time asks, first time nazri and lucanis felt "at home"

because i love a mercar who picks treviso over minrathous

Ohhhhhhhhh this is a great Mercar who picked Treviso topic! It's so fraught. Especially both of them finding alignment in this.

They fight about this. About where they'll be when it's all said and done.

He's hurt when they insist they need to stay in Minrathous after the battle. He's home in Treviso and they're all the way across the sea. He knows, because they told him, that every moment they spend in Minrathous is like driving a jagged shard of glass deeper into their heart. But they feel responsible. Like they need to make amends. They'll never feel at home there again.

Villa Dellamorte doesn't feel right either. First of all, it is so much more his grandmother's house than it will ever be his. In this house, he's 14 again, the weight of all her expectations on his shoulders. The ghosts of every other Dellamorte chilling the air. This house was never really his home. Not since he was a boy. Even when he finds Rook asleep in his bed beside him, one of the rare nights of reprieve from Minrathous, it doesn't feel right. Someone so warm and vibrant doesn't belong in this monument to grief.

None of this is as simple as it was in the lighthouse.

They spend a month in Ventus. Nazri loves it, the bright sun and sea air- it's all them. It makes him happy, seeing them feel so in place. Nowhere else has really fit so far. But here he doesn't fit. They notice the way he misses the canals, the rooftops, the language. He loves his home. He loves them. If he cannot have both, having to choose one might crush him. Even the coffee isn't quite right. Nazri loves Ventus, but with the dozens of aunties and uncles and cousins the two of them will never have a moments peace.

It's nice to visit.

When at last Tarquin forces them to move on, adamant that Minrathous had been, and will continue to be just fine without them, that Ashur will be fine with out them, they give up their self inflicted days in one city and nights in another.

They like Treviso. In many ways it's a lot like Ventus. Similar climates, the water, the markets. The cities proximity has always meant there are good Ventine Imports available- a taste of home without the gammut of relatives. They love Ventus. Ventus is exhausting. The Ventus they love is when they're 16 and determined to change the world.

They're 37 now. They've changed the world. It turns out the bigger struggle is living in it.

They're scraps of the tapestry that used to be themself. The foundation of the home they've built within themself starting to give way. They don't know where they belong anymore.

His own foundation has never been so sturdy. Sinking into the waterlogged soils of his city for so long.

When they're together, it feels like the task of staying upright might not be so insurmountable after all.

It's the way their arms feel around him and the scent of his hair pressed into their nose that finally, after everything, lets them both feel at home.

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

sorry for only saying this type of shit lately but i kinda wanna drive a car straight into a brick wall at the highest speed possible

[olliepurples]

mdarc chapter 4 spoilers (tw negative)

i'm a couple of doors into the mystery labyrinth, and it's getting a little annoying having shinigami and yuma go "but how could this have happened? who could have done this?" when i literally knew it was yakou as soon as the game told me that the poison had a delay. this is so silly like "how could anyone have got past this, they would have died in thirty minutes!" ok! narrow your suspect pool to people who die in the next thirty minutes then! damn!!!

[pe4nutastic]

Counting Odds and Ends

More practice stuff! I haven't written much of my iteration of Giegue's early days after everything went to shit with his adoptive human parents, so here's another crack at it.

Testing.  Testing.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Four points that meet at perfect right angles, at equal distances from each other, far above the monochromatic and featureless floors.  A smooth featureless square above a smooth featureless square, connected by exacting straight lines to…

Unnaturally sharp blue voids swivel off the ceiling and towards the cold floor that his back is pressed against with a resolute motionlessness that had persisted ever since…–

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Four additional points, wrought with engineered precision just as much as the ones above it.

Another shift of his gaze, over to the side where a door could materialize, but as of this moment remained as blank and virtually featureless as the rest of the room; a blank in a blank, but he remembers where it is.  While the time spent here, every time it punctuates the monochromatic sequence of things his life had become, is never permanent or very long-lived… he knows the location of the door well.  In-between corrective education efforts and integrative procedures, tests had become commonplace enough for the small Psion to become well-acquainted with this place:  a sort of ‘quarantining’ zone, to ensure that the mysterious sickness?  he had been afflicted with for quite some time, would continue to be under control.  Incapable of spreading and going on to infect anyone else.  He really hopes so–

‘Wasting time’.  Giegue himself is wasting time.  He looks back up.

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Four points that form the ceiling’s outline.  Still a neat little square motionlessly hanging above him, integrated into the structure of the room.  An isolated cube that lets nothing through unless its creators will it.  Not even sound.  Peaceful.  Uneasy.  But peaceful so long as he keeps himself occupied with counting the parts of this room.  He glances down.  Four points that form the floor’s outline.

Now he looks at his hands, small clawed digits to match the small proportions of his petite useless body.  Still shaking a little bit through the remarkable tension that simultaneously permeates it.  Still cold, inconceivable as the notion is for Psion physiologies. 

Not good enough.

With great effort, against the insurmountable weightiness that had plagued him for what feels like an eternity, the alien child attempts to force noise out of his mouth.  Anything at all.  But, all he can muster is the frustrated grinding of teeth against the effort.

Still incapable of speaking.  Inconceivable as the notion is for Psion physiologies.  But, that had been a problem ever since momma had…–

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Four little corners.  Familiar notes that drop down to meet their counterparts.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  A perfect matching set that never ever fails.  Never strays or becomes undone.  Never changes.  His nose twitches.  The once assaulting scent of chemicals that had filled the air in concentrations that might have killed anyone else have eased up and become a muted memory; suspended in place and maybe even welcome, in the absence of sound.

But, that’s how it’s supposed to be isn’t it?

He’s a Psion.  And Psions are not like how he is.  Not sick.

Psions always choose the most ‘logical’ route forward.

Inconceivable.

Psions are efficient and unemotional.

How?  His own feelings fill every fibre of his being.

Psions do whatever they need to… they complete goals given to them… they become the roles they were born with… and they succeed above all else.

It’s sad.  So sad…

They aren’t concerned with things like dreams, personal wants, or happiness.  Their duty is to the species and no one else.  Nothing else.  Not now and forever more.

But, he doesn’t want to give that up.  Any of that.  It’s part of what makes him who he is, even if it hurts a lot now…

He’s tense.  Stiffer than before somehow.  Less cold.  Less numb, but in its place something else equally daunting had taken hold.  The crushing weight of expectations.

Psions are supposed to be Psions.

But he isn’t.

Why not?  He’s supposed to be.  Even though he doesn’t want to be.  Is it because of… momma?

Momma.  Momma.  Momma.  

The Psion sharply sucks in some air, a touch too fast, while small hands curl into tight fists against the intensifying shaking.  His eyes screw shut; a desperate hope that it would somehow rectify the decline in his condition.  Against the very thing that had been welling up and down that he had been trying to push back.  Just like he’s supposed to.  To be… ‘normal’ right?  To be normal like he’s supposed to be.

A harsh tip-tap of his rat-like tail’s end across the barren floors.  That’s already bad enough as is, but he had also failed today.  Been very ‘bad’ today.  He couldn’t do what was asked of him.  Couldn’t use his powers to… to… –hurt a living thing.  How could he?  The Psion had never liked the idea of intentionally causing others pain.  Of doing something that would cause, potentially irreversible, damage on purpose.  It just.  Seemed so needlessly cruel!  Why would anyone even want to do something like–

His eyes snap open.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  And just like that, like every other identical effort he had made before to contain the very things–deep-down, maybe there since the day he was created–that make him so bad...  So unliked.  So unwanted.  So abandoned… –his train of thought is thrown from its tracks with reckless abandon with the paradoxically comforting–a desperate facsimile of warmth in a place that has none to be found–distraction of counting the same things in the virtually featureless room over and over and over again.  He pulls himself to sit up–off the floor for the first time in… who knows how long–before hunching over, head plopped on his knees as stubby arms and tail wrap around his legs.  Another desperate motion as a truly awful thought, too awful to even entertain, enters his mind with a domineering force of its own and latches on.  The very thing that’s been trying to loop through his mind this whole time, just beneath the already-turbulent surface.

With everything that’s happened so far… with how much everyone seems to believe that he’s sick–afflicted with something that makes him ‘irrational’–had… had any of what he thinks happened with his parents really happened at all…?

A sudden and harsh lash of his tail against the floor before it resumes its more comforting position.

Happiness.  He thought he had known it.  Love.  He thought he had it.

His mouth tightens as sharp teeth start to grind, his hands clenching and unclenching.

But, maybe he never did.  Maybe it’s been a symptom of his sickness the whole time.

An eye twitches and then the other in disjointed and uncoordinated motions, as if to facilitate something the body was never designed to dispense, but ultimately failing to produce anything of use at all.  He reluctantly unclenches–somehow against how exceedingly tense he had become, a living statue here and now–an arm wrapped around him to rub at a temple as the telltale pinprick of a headache starts to creep up on him.  The other arm merely remains glued to its position, the only motion to it being the unsteady clenching and unclenching of his free hand.

Maybe.  He had.  Made the whole thing up.

Not normal.  Not normal.  Not normal.  Not normal.  Not normal.

An abrupt escalation of the budding headache straight into almost unbearable pain and with it, a desperate uptick in the rubbing motion.

Giegue doesn’t want to believe it.  Just as much as he doesn’t want to hurt anyone or anything.  But, it’s… it’s true isn’t it?  He isn’t normal.  With how things are now, it seems crazy to think that it was ever any different and maybe it wasn’t.  Maybe he’s been in a sickness-induced haze this whole time and now?  he’s slowly, but surely recovering. It has to be. How else can he explain the disconnect between what's expected and how terrible everything has been so far? How strong the belief is that there is something horribly and deeply wrong with him?

The rubbing motion stops and he fully buries his head into his knees, his arm limply falling to the wayside as he does so.  Despondent.  Dejected.  Resigned.

Not that it makes him feel any better.  After all, he’s still sick.  Still riddled with inborn defects.  Still not good enough.  Still not normal.  

An abrupt tensing of his entire frame anew, cutting through the dejection with renewed ferocity, before throwing himself back to his original position with an almost chaotic energy to the motion.  A desperate force to reverting back to the point he had gotten to before everything had come undone. Rinse. Repeat. Just like every other time, of many here, from before.

One.  Two.  Three.  Four…

[myplaylists-angeli]

nightmare before college - twstween playlist

ft. Happy 200th Angeli's Playlist

[moonmoonthecrabking]

i have to be so brave rn and do readings for this fucking group project (the group isn't the problem. the class is.)

[imitor]

hey - so since gege never thought to tell us why the inumaki clan had been outlawed and why jujutsu society was happy to let their entire bloodline die out along with, in my opinion, one of the strongest techniques in the entire lore, i've taken it upon myself with my own original character (inumaki no sukeyasu) to say that at one point in time they were considered in line with the big three until their inherited techinque holder of the period was killed by another sorcerer and nothing was done about it, so they closed their doors to jujutsu society and developed a strictly "them or us" attitude in which they only cared for and extended their hands for the people living within their lands. this changed roughly two generations before sukeyasu, in which their forbearers once again thought to open themselves to the whims and orders of jujutsu society, but after sukeyasu's death in the war against sukuna (being that sukeyasu's twin brother was head of the family at this time, and in his grief he dealt the extreme) they once again turned their backs on society. closed their doors, made it very clear they were not to be involved with any future disturbances, and in anger against their defiance to fall into order, they have been outlawed ever since.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i'm sorry i'm not being fun enough on my personal blog which is the only place on the internet i get to just be a person and not have to be professional because it's the only place my colleagues and employers don't follow me but also i'm not sorry because sometimes being grumpy is part of being human and i'm so goddamn tired of having to perform perfection on the internet

[thebarefootking]

format borrowed from @gallusrostromegalus

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[spaghett-onaplate]

new years vibes