#today should be better

[violetsareblue-selfships]

good morning!! <3

[hinamie]

7/3: pov u r nanami kento pleased that i managed to pull smth together in time for your bday

[junkanimate]

First post of 2024, keeping it real, keeping it gay

This is very much a recreation of this post on tiktok, and a big thank you <3 to @helsensm for basically putting the worm in my head to do this (luv u)

[the-littlest-goblin]

Something that's stuck with me from the Arch Heart's appearance, which highlights a major underpinning of my frustration with C3, is the "Big Doors don't work" comment.

In what way exactly is the Big Door not working?

The purpose of the Divine Gate was to mitigate the gods exerting undo influence on mortal affairs, and according to everything we've seen in all 3 campaigns up to this point, this was a demonstrable success: the Calamity ended, and despite multiple potentially world-ending catastrophes cropping up since then, it has been up to mortals to deal with these threats. They've often done so with divine aid, but I fail to see how that's overreaching on the gods' part when accepting said aid is still dependent on mortal choice.*

Part of the Arch Heart's reasoning for wanting to "let go" is, as I understand it, because mortals continue to rebel against and resent the gods even from behind the Divine Gate. Which, yes they do, but like... the customer is not always right. Not every complaint needs to be catered to, especially the ones based on faulty postulates.

I get that this is not how the Arch Heart is thinking about it; my issue is not with the roleplay of individual characters, but with the narrative whole and the sheer amount of time it has spent, both in the text and extra-textual framing, sincerely entertaining the base axioms of an argument that is so poorly constructed Ludinus wouldn't make it past round one of a middle school debate club. None of the anti-god arguments have given any tangible evidence for the claim that the gods are an oppressive force or that Exandria would be better off without them that is not either:

A. Aeor, which was pre-Divine Gate and in fact the catalyst for the gods to pull back on interfering with mortal affairs, and therefore not all that pertinent to the current status quo;

or B. an event or action that, while it may be done in the name of the gods (e.g. Hearthdell) or directly encouraged by a god (e.g. Opal and the Crown) is nonetheless still contingent on mortals making choices, and therefore not a convincing argument that the gods are infringing on free will,** nor that removing them would prevent these types of situations.

An ongoing motif of C3 has been showing perspectives which challenge the prevailing narrative about the gods as established within Exandria's lore to this point. As a story enjoyer, I normally would eat up this sort of reversal—I love a metatextual play with in-universe narratives. But to do so convincingly requires more substance than a handful of characters going 'Trust me bro.' I'm going to need to see some peer-reviewed studies on Exandrian metaphysics before I take Ludinus "17 ulterior motives stacked in a wizard robe" Da'leth's word over what I've seen with my own brain over thousands of hours worth of game play.

If the message of the narrative is telling me to question the diegetic information it presents, then I am going to do just that. So far every argument that the gods do more harm than good for Exandria has been rampant citationless behavior. I find it baffling and borderline infuriating that we're approaching the denouement of this campaign and I still have yet to see evidence that the core conflict of the story, the central debate which has plagued every in-game and fandom discussion for a year now, is based on an actual problem. Like, at all.

*If you think Vax did not exercise his own agency and free will in every step of becoming Champion of the Matron, you are simply wrong.

**For real, we know there are magical means of straight-up mind control in Exandria. Like, you don't have to approve of it, but the gods engaging in standard issue verbal manipulation does not constitute a violation of free will, and it certainly doesn't make the argument that they are so immeasurably more powerful than mortals that they should not be allowed to exist.

[sweatermuppet]

[Image ID: a black and white typography edit that reads "start living... transition!" In the middle of the image are two rows of three circles. On the top row, from left to right, inside the circles there is a butterfly, an apple split in half, and hands being held. On the second row, from left to right, inside the circles there is a sprout in a small pile of dirt, two flamingos with their heads facing each other to almost form a heart, and a branch with several leaves. the entire image is textured to look aged and photocopied. /End ID]

click for quality (instagram) (my shop) (get it as a print) (get it as a shirt)

[expelliarmus]

[iamenits]

Screenshots of McCoy smiling (and a few where he isn't) from every Star Trek episode in production order.

[steddieasitgoes]

Firefighter Steve sits outside the firehouse late one night, soaking in his first day on the job. Sure, he didn't fight any fires today, but he did get to help with a medical emergency case. So far, it's everything he'd hoped the career choice would be. 

He's making a mental list of things to tell his boyfriend, Eddie, about when he sees him tomorrow when a small figure materializes at the end of the driveway. It's a girl. A young one by the size of her shadow, and she's clutching something in her arms. 

Not wanting to spook her, Steve slowly rises to his feet but doesn't take any steps toward her. He lets her do that. Watching as the girl takes one cautious step after the other. It's only when she's a few feet away does Steve notice she's clutching a newborn in her small arms.

The girl takes a moment for herself. Brings the baby to her cheek and nuzzles its small face before she starts walking again. This time she doesn't stop until she's right in front of Steve. 

"Do you need help?" 

She shakes her head before extending her arms and the newborn out toward him. 

It takes Steve a moment to realize what's happening, but then his training kicks in. He takes the newborn from the girl's hands without question and takes a moment to glance down at the tiny thing in his arms. When he looks back up, the girl is gone. 

The baby stirs in Steve's arm, and he adjusts his hold on them. Brushes a thumb against the baby's soft apples of their cheeks before clutching the infant tight to his chest. 

Steve calls the Chief as soon he's back inside the station. The older man is annoyed at first until he glances at the small baby in Steve's arms. 

"What do we do?" 

The Chief sighs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Take 'em to the hospital. Get 'em checked out, and then CPS takes over." 

Steve knew that. Remembers it from the brief lecture on the importance of safe surrender sights. The same lecture the retired chief preferred by saying “never happens.” 

And yet…

Steve glances down at the baby in his arms again and this time he’s met with two tiny brown eyes staring back at him. There’s a moment of calmness before the baby scrunches its small nose and begins to cry. Instinctively, Steve rocks the newborn in his arms and the crying subsides. 

“Are we uh,” Steve hesitates, looking down at the baby in his arms. “Are we allowed to intervene before CPS.” 

The Chief stops dead in his tracks and slowly turns around to face Steve. “Are you asking if you can keep the kid?” 

Steve nods. “My partner and I we uh, we always talked about having kids. And well, uh this feels sort of like fate in a way, sir.” 

The Chief nods, “The hospital will know more about this than I will. Let’s get you two over there, yeah?” 

-- -- --

It’s three in the morning when Eddie runs into the hospital in his plaid pajama pants and threadbare shirt. He’s seconds away from screaming at the poor woman working reception when he spots Steve around the corner. 

“The station called; they said you were on your way to the hospital!” Eddie nearly sobs, taking Steve’s face in his hands. “What happened?”

“M’okay,” Steve says, moving his own hands so that they rest on Eddie’s hips. “They should have worded that call better.” Steve looks over his shoulder, glaring in the direction of the Chief.

“Then why are we here?” 

“Come with me.” 

Steve leads Eddie down the hallways and straight into the nursery where their baby girl is being swaddled in a new blanket. Eddie gasps, turning to look at Steve with tears welling in his eyes. 

“She was surrendered to me an hour ago and I— I don’t know, Eds. I just though, maybe it was fate? Maybe she’s—“

“Meant to be ours?” 

“Yeah.”

[xoxoemynn]

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Hello OFMD crew, I know this isn't how we wanted to be spending our Pride month but I'm so happy to be spending it with you.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[ghostespresso]

staff logging on to tumblr dot com today

[sophiethewitch1]

dick grayson who needs to be useful and needed to feel loved vs reader who is hypervigilant of their own fault and tries desperately not to be a burden: fight

it ends in tears. unstoppable force versus immovable object. you don't want to make his life any harder because you can see he's struggling. he's just straight up begging. i said in last post tags he'd moan if you ask him to get you a glass of water. ask him to make you a snack and he'll just straight up come in his pants.

[the-crimson]

I need everyone to understand that q!Tubbo, q!Bbh and q!Aypierre spent seven hours fighting a psychological war today and they lost… but it prevented both teams from dying and no one will ever know.

(All talk about character not ccs etc etc)

Tubbo wasn’t there during the egg battle so he doesn’t feel the betrayal and humiliation that the other two do. He looks at green team and sees his friends. People he cares about. He doesn’t want them to lose especially not like this! He’d made up his mind the moment he learned of the event. No one was going to die.

Aypierre looked at green team and saw the snakes who broke their promise to tie the previous challenge. Why would they agree to tie this time when they’ve already proven to be untrustworthy? They betrayed him. They humiliated him and his entire team. This was his opportunity for revenge. Why shouldn’t blue team take it?

Bbh is much more in the middle. He agreed with the premise of a tie because he wanted to give green a fighting chance. He had a gut feeling it wasn’t going to work but he was willing to try. However, he didn’t trust green either. The whole time he was paranoid about green logging in at the last minute to scrounge together the quests to beat them. He was constantly reminding the group to stay together so they couldn’t be killed in case green logged in. He did not trust green to keep to the deal but he was willing to try.

For the first five or so hours of the streams the three had too many conversations to count where Aypierre would try to convince them to just say fuck it and turn in their tasks. To break the tie and be done with it! But each time bbh and Tubbo manage to hold him back and keep to the plan. It was only when bbh and Aypierre were in green’s secret base standing in front of green’s merchant that Aypierre finally caved and turned in his missions.

This was one battle lost. The next was Aypierre and Tubbo pulling bbh in two different directions and Tubbo choosing to give Green the quest items to rebalance the score. Two different battles that culminated in the single decisive moment of bbh claiming all of his missions. But what happened leading up to that moment? Chaos.

Various members of green team were logging in and out for the next two hours which only fueled bbh’s paranoia even more. Aypierre was trying to convince him to just claim the tasks the games already over! While Tubbo was confident they could still tie the score. It all went to shit in the last fifteen minutes.

Bbh and Aypierre discovered the quest items were gonna from the chest and Tubbo was lying to them about where he was. Tubbo made an executive decision to try and balance the score knowing the other two were too on the edge and chaotic at the moment. They’d discussed potentially giving green some items to tie the score but this was never agreed to and bbh and Aypierre had no idea what Tubbo was giving them.

They arrive at the center and the score starts changing and bbh starts panicking. Aypierre calls Tubbo a traitor for going behind their back and bbh is trying to mediate and figure out what’s going on - what did Tubbo do? Tubbo doesn’t explain fully so bbh assumes he gave both ElQuackity and Roier the quest items. Then Mouse logs in and bbh’s paranoia goes into overdrive. Did green have the items stockpiled and ready for Mouse to turn them in to sweep the victory last second? It’s happened twice before so it’s not out of the question. Bbh looked at the being Coco that acted so much like his son and asked, and it told him to cash in the quests. So he did.

At this point, everything was pure adrenaline. All bbh was thinking was save Dapper. “Run over anyone you need to to win”. If it ended as a tie or if blue won, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was he could not LOSE.

All three of blue fought so incredibly hard today it’s incredible. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ccs aren’t completely emotionally exhausted. Aypierre gave into his revenge after fighting it for nearly five hours straight. Bbh gave into his paranoia after fighting it for SEVEN HOURS straight. Tubbo gave into his need to do the right thing at any costs by going behind his team’s back which lead to the miscommunication that lead to that pivotal moment.

Blue failed today. They fought an internal war for seven hours and they lost at the very last moment. But in so doing, they saved their entire team. And they’ll never know. And no one will ever know. They will continue being the villains in this story even though no one on red or green knows what they went thought mentally today. None of them understand that it took seven hours of constant stress for them to break when they could have cashed the quests and secured victory within an hour.

In the end, Aypierre said it best “Either we win a fraud or die a villain.”

[borderlinereminders]

Can you share what your qualifications are for helping people? I’d love to support your blog but I’m curious what degrees you have or where you may be published in a peer review journal!

If you don’t want to support my blog or follow me, then don’t. It doesn’t affect me one way or the other.

I’ve never claimed to be a professional or offer professional help. In fact, I’ve always said that you should do your own research. My blog is meant to offer peer support or a starting point for someone because it’s overwhelming when you’re trying to figure all this out.

Professional help was not available to me so I self-taught myself all my coping and DBT skills. Every single one of them. I taught myself how to navigate healthy relationships and change my behaviours. I taught myself how to handle my urges and emotional crisis. When teaching myself, I found a lot of the information online was inaccessible due to fees or the language used. A lot of the “peer reviewed” stuff you speak of isn’t written for people with the disorder. It’s written for other people in their field.

Also, did you know that a lot of therapists or other professionals will refuse to see clients with certain disorders? My point is that the information was not easily available to me and I had to teach myself or not learn how to recover. It was a nightmare for me to navigate through so I try and offer explanations and advice that I would have found helpful in hopes others find it helpful.

I can also use my lived experience to empathize with people struggling with the behaviours I talk about which allows me to explain them more gently. And I think that’s important. Harsh and accusatory language is more likely to lead to someone digging in and getting defensive rather than examining their behaviour and working on it.

I also want to say that something being peer-reviewed doesn’t mean it’s good. It just means more people with similar views agree with them. A lot of research makes really shitty and harmful assumptions about the people with the mental illnesses they talk about.

[separatist-apologist]

I cut your username out of this post because I don't want to unintentionally direct anyone over to you. I do believe you're sorry, and I also believe you didn't intend for any of the things that transpired TO transpire.

I want to answer this, though, because I genuinely believe a LOT of the people who logged out last night to flame the fic are on this website watching, and I want to speak directly to them. I'll never know who they are, and thats unfortunate because to me, it looks like a lot of other people are content to let you be thrown under the bus while taking no accountability for their actions.

I want to share this comment FROM the fic writer who responded to me when I left a comment this morning both condemning the actions of fellow gwynriel/eluciens and encouraging her to continue writing. Look at what she said. She had a mini-breakdown because a small but obnoxiously loud group of people took it upon themselves to not just leave unkind, unnecessary feedback, but to start whole threads about it, take it to other platforms, and otherwise talk shit because a story had *checks notes* conflict.

The fic is tagged: slowburn, eventual romance, AND the elain x azriel relationship. She did her due diligence as far as what she owes people- ya'll don't read tags and engage with the story like it was written specifically FOR you. First of all- it was written for ME. But lets pretend it wasn't, because I think the only reason people are backtracking is because I took offense. You shouldn't do this to ANYONE.

EVER!!!!

And I see a lot of ya'll writing your first fics and your comments are always something to the flavor of "be kind, I'm new/nervous/worried" and then you turn around and do this stuff to other writers like you're OWED your very specific vision of what these characters are, should be, or should act like.

This happens TOO OFTEN in this ship, and frankly, I'm tired of it. You guys will turn on people writing in your own ship if it doesn't adhere to YOUR specific, NARROW vision of "canon" (FANON) and wholesale bully people out, and whats left? A bunch of chronically online assholes whining that no one wants to draw art, write fic, or participate because they're afraid of you. Ya'll act like this is some moral crusade and if you ship the "right" thing, you can't possibly be a bully.

But its just bullying, dressed up as passion for the ship.

This isn't directed at you, OP- I'm talking to the other people who are letting you fall on this sword, who are absolutely watching this, who participated, and will likely to continue acting like this. But they'll be the first to scream and sob when another anonymous blog pops up to talk the same shit, and there will no irony or awareness around any of it. This is the culture some of you have created. Shocking you get it back in ten fold.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

This election day, I'm thinking of my Nana.

I'm thinking of how as a young woman, she fled political violence in her native Colombia to build a new home in a more stable country. I'm thinking about how she lived a long life, but not long enough to see her home country elect its first ever progressive president (just a few months ago!).

Coincidentally, I was living in Colombia at that time (in the very city she grew up in), and I was able to witness what felt like a miracle. A very conservative country, suffering from the violent inheritance of colonization and catholic invasion and the war on drugs, against a backdrop of the dangerous global rise of the far right--this unlikely country managed to elect one of the most progressive heads of state in the world, in 2022. That's a pretty big deal.

And I'm thinking about this, this election day, because that election was won by a very thin margin. I'm thinking about how it almost didn't happen. I'm thinking about how it was only possible thanks to the highest voter turnout in 20 year. And I am thinking about the countless number of voters who chose to vote for the first time. I am thinking of the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens who showed up at the polls. I am thinking of the indigenous women who rode 12 hours on public buses to vote at the 'nearest' polling stations. I am thinking of all the money and corruption that went into preventing minority citizens from voting, and I'm thinking about how they showed up in the millions and voted anyway.

I am thinking that I would like to see a miracle like that in my own home country.

So if you're on the fence about waiting in line today to cast your vote, I hope that you will think--about the country you want to live in, the future you hope will unfold, and about all of the people it takes to make a miracle.

Because history may deem us nameless and faceless, but when we show up en masse, we are the ones who make history happen.

And yes, maybe also spare a thought for my Nana. Who was in fact a very angry and judgemental woman who supported the republican party for 50+ years, and who would be turning in her grave right now (if the family hadn't had her cremated). Think about the mean angry ghost of my Colombian grandmother, who very much wants you to not show up at the polls to support abortion and other sinful progressive values. Think about her. Do it for her. Do it for Nana.

[raplinenthusiasts]

soft bois 🫶