#though we may have similarities.

[lesbianraskolnikov]

I love fixating on some fake guy youll think about him for anything

[macksartblock]

Normal take my hand we’re going to therapy

[notmoreflippingelves]

I need to ramble more about Esteban Flores, because everything about this character and his arc seem as though it was tailor-made for me and specifically designed to make me absolutely feral.

This going below the cut, both because I do not want to spoil the entire show for my friend who is think of watching Elena of Avalor and because I go full-on apologist here and I feel like that will annoy some people.

Imagine making the absolute worst mistake than anyone could possibly make, because you are 18 and scared and stupid and tired of being ignored. And it results in you losing your family and your freedom and what little self-respect you had left because you know all of this is very much your own fault.

 And so you proceed to spend the next 41(!) years eking out a miserable existence in an oppressive state. Upon fear for your life, you are forced to be the reluctant right-hand of the evil witch-queen who conquered your country, killed your aunt and uncle and trapped your cousin in magical prison. In spite of this, you nevertheless do everything within your limited power trying to hold the kingdom together and make sure the people don't starve, because the queen certainly doesn't care about anything except greedily bleeding your country dry.

And no exaggeration, this is just what canon explicitly gives us outright in the pilot. Like that's not even getting into head canons/interpretations/common sense of what exactly this sort of life entailed for you. Because this is a children's show so there's only so much they will let us imply about living under that kind of system. Especially as a young, attractive, terrified person who is the last living member of the previous royal family who is likely being kept alive partly as a combination trophy/punching bag for the evil queen (even if the show never actually states this outright).

And then by some miracle, what's left of your family comes back after all this time. The evil queen is overthrown, partly because you yourself finally stood up to her at a critical moment. You and your country are finally free again, and what's more, you and your family are finally together again after over 4 decades. But you still feel like an outsider--partly because you always were an outsider in your family even in the better times and partly because  over the past 41(!) years, time stood still for all of them except you.

And as a result, no one ever cares to ask what those 41 years were like for you or even just if you’re doing okay. Not only because your family can’t even begin to comprehend what it must have been like, but also because they don’t care to even *try* to understand. Because the narrative has decided that everyone else’s respective traumas is worth way more than your own.  (Though tbf the narrative really doesn’t dwell much on anyone’s trauma in general but yours gets especially neglected , except to briefly play it for laughs or to remind you that your trauma is *your own fault and only your own*).

For a little while, life is pretty okay. It’s weird not having to watch your step every instant to make sure you’re not putting a toe out of line. And so you never really fully break out of your “survival mode” conditioning, making sure that you are still considered important and valuable enough to keep around.

But all the while, you know that your past—and especially your terrible little secret—is eventually going to come back to haunt you. And it does. First via blackmail and then via the return  of the evil witch-queen herself. Fortunately, she is defeated for good before she can take avenge your “betrayal of her” but you still have to deal with seeing the ghost from the past who terrorized you for 41(!) years.

And then, your secret finally comes out in the open and you are disowned by your family—the family you *just* got back a few years ago—for an admittedly super bad decision that you made over four decades ago and have regretted ever since.  Rather than face the rest of your life in isolation (as though you didn’t already have enough of that during the previous regime), you escape before you can be sent into exile. This puts you directly in the path of *another* terrifying, evil magical milf who you are forced to ally yourself with. Because you have 40+ years of conditioning that when a woman like that says “jump,” you say “how high?” if you are to have any hope of survival.  Especially given that the only people who could’ve protected you from her are the family and friends who have just definitively washed their hands of you.

Despite this, you are still trying to seek your cousin’s forgiveness and to protect her in the little ways that you can. But you are constantly getting rebuffed over and over again, and if anything, your attempts at reconciliation only seem to make your cousin angrier, and she now hates you just as much as—if not MORE than—the woman who actually murdered her parents.

Your cousin is so angry at you specifically that she actively ignores the greater threat of Witchy Milf 2.0, because she happens to see your face and is enraged. This ends up backfiring spectacularly for you both, though it does indirectly lead to the defeat of said Witchy Milf 2.0.

But guess what?  There’s no time to breathe or celebrate, because her defeat occurred during the successful summoning of a third power-mad, feminine-presenting magical humanoid and her allies. At least, this one treats you with some initial respect and actually gives you outright what you-think-you’ve-thought-you-always wanted. But she also turns your family and friends to stone in front of you as a warning of what’s to come if you dare to defy her.

But this time, you are finally done with this, have finally lost enough that you have paradoxically found your courage. You sacrifice yourself to save your cousin, and she is finally able to accept that you’ve sacrificed and changed enough that she can forgive you. And her forgiveness is so powerful and pure that it not only restores you to life but also undoes all the other evil magic. Together, you defeat this final enemy, paradoxically by banishing her to the same Underworld where your mistakes accidentally sent your aunt and uncle and her parents long ago.  Peace has been restored. You have returned for good and are finally secure in your family’s love.

And after all that, there are *still* people (both presumably in universe and in the fandom outside of it) who say it's too little, too late and that it would've been better for everyone if you'd simply stayed dead.

Like I'm just... are we really victim-blaming the character who has 45 years of unprocessed trauma and guilt (both survivor's guilt and guilt in general) because of a decision he made when his brain was still developing and he was being manipulated by an older, much more powerful person?

[bonefall]

why would righteous thunderstar say "sure moth flight, we'll help you defend against my insane father who's trying to steal your children but only if you give Me one of your children"

Years ago, Sunlit Frost nearly died, receiving permanent nerve damage, from having an untreated burn that went septic. During the First Battle, his good paw was injured and he was permanently left unable to build, hunt, or fight anymore.

If, back then, Sky's Clan had a medic, Sunlit Frost wouldn't have chronic pain to this very day. Gray Wing's breath rattles within his lungs, growing worse by the day. Battles are still constant. Thunderstar knows the importance of having someone who is capable of healing around; and Dapple is now dead without a successor.

Moth Flight and her children are the only cats left with the ancient knowledge of healing that came from their Tribe ancestors.

In his mind, he isn't being cruel. He's negotiating. He is giving them a choice, and why would he risk his cats receiving injuries defending against Skystar, only for them to die of infection as a reward?

He needs one too. Perhaps Spider Flight realized this, and that's why he chose to come to ThunderClan after seeing the writing on the wall.

[ottiliere]

oh my goodness your dios.. what a delight to see someone so fully invested in phantom blood dio wow. i am very happy. i love your 3D dios. really makes me want to sculpt him as well

Do it... clay is cheap bake it in the oven paint with 10 dollar set of acrylics your life will never be better. I adore phantom blood Dio so very much... years ago saw someone coin the term “phantom blood purist” and it's so funny I think about it literally every time I enter a Dio cycle. There are many aspects that go into this preference of course, and upon a great amount of time pondering i can say confidently that this is because mainly that:

1) I love history (especially the fin de siècle) and I love thinking about him in relation to Victorian values/etiquette/sociology in general... there's something so special about a society that enabled such a gross disparity of wealth&poverty while being so inherently pretentious that its asinine etiquette rules would completely elude you unless you were raised in an aristocratic family or had access to etiquette books. Dio absolutely read a great amount of these before going to the Joestar mansion btw, even before his father snuffed it I think. God help him he would not be doomed to look like a slovenly ill-bred gamin if and when he needed to manipulate the upper classes. I really can't think of a way for him to have developed these skills enough to outclass Jonathan otherwise. god and like thinking about him as a barrister too with his profligate fashion sense you just KNOW he gets drawn that way into all of the court sketches that go in all the newspapers since everyone loved to read about crime and there were a million papers for this in England alone... he'd get caricatured so bad sometimes and he is NOT happy about this.

2) You can probably tell from my indifference to the rest of the parts (except sbr; I call this the "diego rule") that I'm not the biggest fan of fantastical elements and I'm much more interested in interpersonal conflict/relationships in general... PB is extremely unique to the rest of the series because for five WHOLE chapters absolutely nothing abnormal happens and we just get to see Dio harassing Jonathan and his girlfriend until Jonathan snaps and humiliates him so bad in beating him up that he makes Dio cry. and then Dio kills his dog. Like it's literally just some impoverished child abuse victim bullying a spoiled rich kid who wanted to be his friend because lalala sunshine daisies only knows what "poverty" is from reading Oliver Twist and has no conceptual understanding of what the real-world implications of that are. That was the character development that needed multiple chapters to develop it's so fucking awesome. like yeah I'd read an entire novel of just this alone happening and how it impacts their relationship as adults no vampirism needed. I reread "dio the invader" so frequently I'm surprised the spine of my jojonium copy isn't cracked at the exact endpoint of it. I just adore him interacting with Jonathan so much it's hard to remove him from that… that's his FOIL... all the stories (some "AUs") I make with Dio involve the way he and Jonathan gravitate each other to some degree. we get the clearest view of who he is in the face of someone who is the polar opposite of himself. 🤯

2) This iteration of him is the closest degree of separation he has from his "humanity" (childhood), thus

3) I find him to be the most interesting, endearing, etc., version of him walking around, given that... well. behaviors stem from somewhere... the thematic & active severance of himself from a species he is fundamentally incapable of connecting with due to the way he adapted to help him tolerate his childhood... from his point of view I can't imagine that there is one convincing reason for him to continue being human after given the opportunity to deviate from it (despite likely still being inebriated when he vamped himself — very much an impulsive decision since he had, what, an hour or two to think that through? drunk?). If everyone's underneath him, yes, after the fact the choice seems extremely fitting. Maybe he'll cultivate a vast swathe of worshippers and disciples that obey his every command. Maybe he'll rule the world. And then, maybe, he will start to feel genuinely content for the first time in his life. But probably not. That's the drawback of having something fundamentally missing from within you.

4) He lacks a certain type of introspective awareness that 100 years alone in a box might enable him to develop... he's very animalistic to me and possesses a precarious/immature/nonexistent grasp on his emotions just given the fact that he exhibits enraged outbursts from perceived ego wounds (in both childhood and adulthood) + struggles with alcoholism due to an incapacity to self-soothe any sort of negative emotion that makes it past the self-aggrandizing filter he can't help but see life through; he really isn't in conscious control of anything happening inside of him despite needing control over everything and everyone so he can get exactly what he wants, and deserves, always. PB paints a very dim and pathetic view of his character by allowing us to see when he's most "vulnerable", which is the thing he likely hates being the most, so getting to see scenes where he's walking around publicly intoxicated and disparaging himself for acting like his father (implied: again), who he hates, and attacking men with a wine bottle for evoking the concept of his mother, who he also kind of hates but lacks the cognizant cogency to dissolve whatever cognitive dissonance is causing this mental incongruence, rules. he rules

tl;dr SDC dio is "iconic" but I feel like he misses a lot of the charm he had in part one, removed from the context of the society that had such rigid social boundaries and rules of decorum, in addition to his maladaptive approach to interpersonal relationships, his substance abuse issues, his humbling foil... he's too "cool" for me. In the end SDC dio is simply not my Dio... he is someone else's Dio. And that's okay.

[blujayonthewing]

at the oral surgeon and barely spent any time in the waiting room, where I could have been fooling around in my sketchbook and Vibing. I have, however, spent a LOT of time sitting here waiting in the exam room after watching their friendly informed consent video about how all procedures involving sedation include a risk of death

[timeclipsed]

♡ ?? ( change attraction to cool level or smthing idk whatever you like best <3)

Send ♡ to see what my muse thinks of yours (status — accepting!)

●○○○○ | AESTHETIC ●●●●○ | AFFECTION ●●●●○ | INTEREST ●●●●● | LOYALTY ●○○○○ | TRUST

[phoenix-drop-guard]

What's your opinion of Garroth's unmasked face? Have you ever seen it before?

What's your opinion of Garroth and Aphmau (cause apparently, they're raising the chest baby together?) Do you think he has a thing for her?

Also- WHERE TF IS DALE?? Why isn't he helping patrol?

Were going backwards order on this:

Dale started doing my patrols back when Garroth had gotten better.

I had no idea aphmau and him were raising levin together? Me and zoey are watching the kid so I never heard any of this from Garroth.

Speaking of him, I wrote awhile back about a 3 am tea incident where I heard something and immediately turned around to a helm-less Garroth. Was kinda funny because we both wear our helmets unless alone so that situation was awkward on both ends.

We kinda look alike.

[sisterdivinium]

There's a lot of stuff I'd love to do but then there's only so much time and only so much external interest regarding such events too.

Some sort of short fic exchange for non-juggernaut WN ships or some funky comment fic place or a capslock community for all your unhinged commentary needs or a WN bingo... I don't know, something.

[spaciebabie]

I don’t think I’ll be on this platform anymore, at least for now, due to everything that’s happening. I’d just like to keep away from it and supporting it at all. See you later, maybe.

-heartbeat anon

i understand heartbeat!! safe travels wherever you find yourself!! thank you for sticking around <3333

[rivilu]

disjointed fandom posting sorry but it just hit me that pwotr is like. the only rpg where a companion never once left my team

[amelikos]

Something about the way the narrative keeps using food as a means of connection between the main group and Sango and Onyx, just like how Dot's arc of opening up included food (and how Dot helped the restaurant's owners with their menu to make food enjoyable for everyone and that "everyone" included someone from the antagonist side too).

[theredwallrecorder]

outcast: opening thoughts

i think i may have mentioned in tags or briefly in other posts that outcast of redwall is very special to me. i am unceasingly grateful to mister jacques for writing this book, not only because it is a vital fictional case study in family dynamics, child behavior, and the influence of environment on human development, but because of mister jacques’ fundamentally honest approach to narrative.

if there is anything you can be convinced of in regards to all of redwall, it is that you can always trust that mister jacques will never attempt to sell you a “falsehood” in order to bring his story in the direction he intends. what do i mean by “falsehood”? for the sake of avoiding spoilers from a show i in full transparency have actually never seen (game of thrones), i would instead like to use an example from a similar recent adaptation of the works of one of mister jacques’ contemporaries: amazon’s rings of power.

again, to be fully transparent, i abhor rings of power, and not for its misguided multi-ethnic pandering that at times borders on insensitivity. in robust confidence and unfailing ego a pair of men undertook the writing of this show, and the shallowness of the narrative they have birthed betrays their lack of experience and their emotional immaturity. rings of power alone is the biggest reason i am low-key relieved that netflix’s planned redwall movie and tv show have effectively been shelved for the time being. i cannot quantify the amount of grief that would fall over me if we were given a version of mister jacques’ world that had been mindlessly adapted in such a way as to make it a brutal mockery of mossflower. far more eloquent critics and devout middle earth scholars have broken down the aspects of amazon’s rings of power that have fallen far short of tolkien’s vision, and i encourage you to peruse their think pieces, but i will simplify my point by picking out the treatment of the character of galadriel. the narrative rings of power attempts to sell you is based entirely on an interpretation of galadriel that has nothing to do with the infinitely wise, long-suffering figure of galadriel that tolkien wrote. tolkien’s galadriel is soft and powerful, containing the narrative depth of living through thousands upon thousands of years of the cultural height and decline of middle earth, and every word she speaks is laden with conscious discernment and meaning. true, galadriel at the time of rings of power is much younger than the galadriel tolkien presents in the lord of the rings, but it is canon that she had already been married and had had a daughter by the time rings of power is meant to take place. in comparison, the galadriel of rings of power is a petulant, rude, self-serving, overbearing child, carrying none of the life experience of the equivalent canon galadriel of this time. i believe the choice of the show’s writers to remove completely galadriel’s life partner celeborn and her daughter celebrían speaks volumes about their true intentions in regards to galadriel’s character within the narrative of rings of power. 

to fashion their narrative into the shape they desired, the writers of rings of power eschewed canon and distorted the character of galadriel. i am sure you can easily think of other stories where character psychology was sacrificed on the altar of The Ending Or The Twist The Writers Wanted. to the best of your memory, your readings of outcast may have come across in a similar way--mister jacques mangled the characters of bryony, abbess meriam, bella, and even veil to, perhaps, smooth over the bitter sting of the abbeybeasts’ treatment of veil. i will be the first to admit that veil’s foul behavior is exaggerated almost to the point of comedy, as is the nature of stories intended for children, but mister jacques was never in the business of pursuing extremes in order to make a point. adolescent drama is as tumultuous as the myriad changes of puberty, and jacques has gone on the record stating that he writes from what he has observed. the naked fear or disgust brought on by a reading of outcast of redwall is based in the fact the characters are true: true to themselves, true to each other, and true to the beliefs under which they were raised. it is sobering to discover that a children’s book can prompt one to grapple with the reality that cruelty, albeit wholly unintended, can come from goodness.

[krenenbaker]

Mushroom Risotto :)

Made with white button mushrooms and mixed wild mushrooms. I think Jade and Silver would both be pleased ^u^

This is the recipe that I used, slightly modified to suit my personal tastes. Nothing fancy, but it's always a delicious dish.

[balladeersbell]

bsd prediction: tanizaki transfers to the mafia. the family naomi is a part of is mori’s.

[genderfluid-druid]

Hmm.