#trauma central

[meg-noel-art]

Dropping my new Arcane fic here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62239564

Please be cautious of the tags if you choose to read!! 🙏

[burr-ell]

What I love about Spy x Family's recent chapters concerning Martha and Henry—two secondary characters with little direct connection to the plot as we've known it—is that Endo's taking the opportunity to once again hammer home what the story's actual stakes are. The idea of potential conflict between Ostania and Westalis isn't just window dressing for a wacky wholesome badass family gimmick—the previous wars are real events that various characters lived through, and all of them are in some way affected by it and have good reasons to want to avoid another one. This is primarily an action-adventure/slice-of-life manga with a lot of sendups to spy movies and pop culture of the 60s, but I think those things hold much more weight with the thematic underpinning of the horrors of war and the ruin it leaves behind.

[mollysunder]

There is a theory that the way children play serves as a means to simulate and prepare them for the tasks they'll take on as adults. So for all the narrative weight both Jinx and the story give the boxing machine at the arcade it would never have prepared her or the kids to take on Piltover.

What are the two things that Piltovans excel at over their Zaunite counterparts to keep the hierarchy? Weapons and technological development.

When you look at the way Piltovans invest in their children, they don't prioritize hand to hand/melee combat training. Piltovans focus on giving their children experiences in handling firearms, a pursuit that is both leisure sport for the wealthy and a key offense against dissenting Zaunites.

And from the show notes even Jayce, whose family occupies the upper middle class, was sent on educational excursions across Runeterra to explore the world and learn what it had to offer. Without Jayce's education abroad he would never have been inspired to pursue the concept hextech.

It's no wonder that the two figures that are set to be Piltover's biggest threats from Zaun are Jinx and Viktor, becasue they engaged in the same kinds of games and activities as their Piltovan counterparts.

Jinx didn't have an entire forest preserved to help her practice her sharpshooting like the high houses of Piltover, but she did excel in the few games at The Rift (the arcade) that built on her talents. She's the only Zaunite thus far who's long distance offensive is a strong counter to Piltover's forces.

Viktor couldn't travel the world like Jayce did, but for better or worse he managed to stumble into an opportunity to get real opportunity in research not offered to his peers through Singed. It was through that experience that Viktor knew to turn to Singed when he was at the end of his rope, and the consequences of that will be fully realized in season 2.

Ironically, the kind of skill the boxing game champions is only good for keeping other Zaunites in line. Vander's days of fighting Piltover were way behind him when we first met him, and Vi spends season 1 primarily fighting other Zaunites. It's no surprise the Zaunites who embody the old ideal of strength in Zaun that the game portrays, Vi and Vander, are largely at the mercy of Piltover and end up collaborating with them to avoid further harm.

Zaun's future as an independent city-state couldn't happen if they stuck to their old ideals. The people who stand a chance against Piltover are the ones that not only succeed but excel at playing Piltover's games against them.

[essektheylyss]

I am once again knitting which means I'm back to the Nein rewatch and happened to be on Midnight Espionage, and truly INSANE episode. The egg dick, both break-ins, the Zauber Spire attack, and the first time a beacon is on screen in like four hours flat. Trent Ikithon is there. The episode ends with Liam and Marisha yelling, "TRUST THE PORN."

[blood-orange-juice]

More Childe analysis for the gods of Childe analysis.

While I definitely headcanon the boy as a person with a PTSD, I think a lot of his traits that people in fandom interpret as signs of troubled personality are just an archaic system of values.

Honour and glory being more important than compassion, an open fight being more honourable than scheming, etc.

He was trained by a 500+yo fae being, it's only natural.

[incorrect-green-lantern-quotes]

do you ever think about what it was like for the Green Lantern Corps during Emerald Twilight? I try not to do it too much because when I do I wanna punch holes in the wall and cry

Hal fights at least eight of his fellow Green Lanterns on his way to Oa. Some of them, like Boodikka and Kreon, he'd personally recruited to the Corps. All of them, he strips of their rings and leave them floating in the void. Geoff Johns might've brought them back as the Lost Lanterns, but before that retcon, there was no way for them to have survived.

How many other Green Lanterns died like that when Parallax destroyed the Central Battery? Their rings suddenly shutting off with no explanation, cutting off their life support and leaving them to choke in the cold vacuum of space. Some, I imagine, were on their way to fight Hal, and they die wondering if they could have stopped this if they'd just been faster, stronger, better...

Others however, had no clue of what was happening on Oa. Adara, a former Green Lantern that Kyle meets on his first venture into space, says as much. Her ring died while she was fighting Corellian privateers, and she only survived because her enemies wanted to capture her.

Green Lantern (1990) Issue #56

Dozens, perhaps even hundreds of her fellow GLs aren't as fortunate. Their final thoughts are of bewilderment and pain and terror. But perhaps the ones who died early are the lucky ones.

Adara is tortured by the privateers before she's able to escape. Later on, Kyle encounters Fatality, the last survivor of Xanshi. Her ship is filled with trophies of the former Green Lanterns she'd hunted and killed.

The Green Lanterns had many enemies as a result of both their successes and failures. The fall of the Corps would have been a golden opportunity to exact revenge on its now-powerless members. And they likely wouldn't have had much trouble finding them.

Old habits die hard. Green Lanterns are heroes after all, with or without their abilities. The Oath is not just a passphrase to charge their rings, it is the promise that they keep with every breath. They would have continued to help others and protect the innocent because that's what they do. But without their power, without the protection of their Corps, one by one the former lights of the universe are snuffed out.

And of those who remain, at least a few are forced to sacrifice the principles they had once sworn by, just to survive in a universe that is now hostile to them. Fear and desperation drive even the best of the universe's heroes to allow evil to escape their sight, and for at least one, the shame is too much to bear.

Adara seduced Kyle and stole his ring while he slept, trying to reclaim the life that had been taken from her. Neither knew then that this last ring was keyed to his DNA and would never have worked for her. For all Adara knew, the ring rejected her because she'd broken her oath, and this is the final straw that breaks her. She rejects Kyle's offer to start a new life and instead turns herself into yet another casualty of the Emerald Twilight

In the end, it is impossible to name all of the Green Lanterns who fell with their Corps, whether it was in the initial slaughter or in the dark years after. It is easier to count the survivors, the lucky few like Salakk or Rot Lop Fan who lived to see their Corps reborn and helped rebuild it.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will

YA contemporary in 2nd person

a teen’s abusive mother dies and they have to figure out how to heal and survive the final year before they turn 18 to stay out of the foster system, without CPS finding out

when they’re cleaning out their mother’s room, they find letters from their old foster parent who was planning on adopting them before their mother claimed them back - who is still searching for them, and they’re desperate to find her again

autistic, agender, demiromantic acespec MC, genderfluid love interest, SC with tourette’s

[delawaredetroit]

I'm glad you brought up the victim-blaming in camie's appearance in this arc. She's a lovely character and I think she's a nice part of the comic relief in this arc, but it's really a shame how she's treated like she's stupid for like... being ambushed. Something completely out of her control. And then it's somehow also her fault for no one noticing it. Like that just hurts, man.

I think its something similar to that that makes a fair few of the other gags in mha fall flat to me, especially stuff like everyone making fun of midoriya or monoma being knocked out anytime he tries to talk. Like, sure, on the surface it's just supposed to be a silly slapstick gag, but you look just a little deeper it makes me feel bad for the character who's always the butt of the joke.

maybe it would feel better it the comic relief characters actually had more non-gag interactions with others, but there's just not a lot of breathing room in an already fast-paced manga so most of their positive connections end up being tell rather than show.

Yeah, actually allowing the characters to interact without relying on slapstick gags would have helped.

To be honest though, what is even better is when something that starts out as a slapstick gag or a catchphrase turns out to be a warning sign of something deeply serious/meaningful about the character.

The problem with BNHA's slapstick is that it often feels divorced from the plot rather than a part of it. And this wouldn't have been so bad if the slapstick wasn't undermining some of the main themes of the manga.

[xxflutterinax]

[the-nonsense-is-mine]

nothing will ever make me angrier than Netflix taking Jacques and Jerome, with their incredibly compelling and thematically important relationship that is never explored in the ASOUE books because it's already over and it's the recollection of it that deeply affects and reveals their characters, putting them in the same room in the same conversation in TEE part 2 and not even acknowledging that they know each other

[bpditch]

i don't want to become better i want to never have been born

[y-rhywbeth2]

Self-indulgent oc moments again. About the brat and the old man and the gender issues and slightly the reproductive horror trauma. I can never quite work out how it works in the details but it makes my brain itch.

Ketheric - and by extension Isobel - sets something off in Vel badly. Like femineity and father-daughter relationships in general fuck them up deep down. Faerûn is still very cisnormative in the sense that the identity of 'woman' is tied to biology and motherhood, and that was all very well and fine until you reach 15 years old and your father is threatening you with life as a breeding mare as punishment and suddenly it all gets very tied in with trauma and you start only identifying with masculinity/as a 'cis'man to feel at least a little safer (and because as an extension of Bhaal, you must be a man too, right?), even though by the cultural values you were raised with (and technically according to Toril at large) you are both.

And then there's Ketheric and his daughter who he loves and mourns and is extraordinarily unhealthily obsessed over, and now the Bhaalspawn is a mess of envy and disgust (on top of the general disgust of a fundamentalist zealot looking at a cyclical apostate who sees the gods through the lens of 'how can you serve me?') who will take every opportunity to dig their claws into any opening they can find and twist and tear.

Not to mention the double daddy-issues because 'hello dead foster father I killed who loved me dearly and whom I still feel crushing guilt and self-hatred over and need to be punished by for being such a horror and a disappointment!' Foster father who was an elf. Hit me harder, O'Su...

And then there's Ketheric with his guilt and pride and disgusted pity-scorn looking at this broken, brainwashed 'child' desperate for parental love and attention. Who reminds him simultaneously of Isobel (even though they're not really alike) and Thisobald, as well as Aylin (spite), and the issue with divinity in general - you might not be able to fight a full god, but choking an upstart quasideity will do. Also the appeal of humiliating the brat and putting it in its place. (You kneel to him at his own hearth, damn you!) But also the sheer blind faith is somewhat reminiscent of Isobel and Selûne...

In some ways I wish I'd made Vel a white-haired moon elf just to make them look a bit more like Isobel. Still there's always breaking into her room/tomb and wearing her old clothes or just using illusions.

[vigilskeep]

... what if Justice knows how to cook because of Kristoff (I can imagine long-time wardens being fairly self-sufficient), but nobody asked because who wants a corpse preparing their food?

they let him try but there are some things (finger in soup) (whole finger in soup) (whole disembodied fallen off finger in velanna’s soup that made her scream and full body leap at sigrun) that you just don’t come back from

[grimxark]

I keep thinking about the fact Nyon’s destruction is one of the main reasons Optimus got the Matrix and consequently why Metroplex woke up. i think about it being possibly a major religious central. The Acroplex possibly being a temple dedicated to religion and study. something that should have been and possibly was considered a safe haven and a sanctuary being turned into a symbol of death and despair. A last resort for the desperate.

[septembersghost]

my queue was supposed to run out tonight (11/19) - i'm nothing if not someone who clings to dates and anniversaries, and exactly a month ago, i realized i had enough posts stowed in it to last until today. of all the days. kismet. you know when it's time to go. but i ended up adding some posts from my (still copious) drafts, and no matter how i finagled it, it was impossible to make them all fit by the time today ended. so it gets a little bit of extra time. maybe, in honor of this blog's existence, that's fitting.

you all know this, i've said it, typically in gratitude, many times already. this blog was never meant to last. i came back in november 2020 expecting a couple of months, maybe to be here until the new year. i told very few people, anticipating the goodbye, not wanting to cause anyone undue anguish when i had to vanish again. something i didn't expect was the sheer (admittedly devasting) emotion that would tie itself to those two weeks when i started interacting again, nor that it would have any outreach or impact, but somehow it did. then time kept spinning on, extending itself, gossamer threads unfurling each day. my following kept growing, far beyond what i could have anticipated, greater than i'd ever established on any of my previous blogs. moving around is unfortunately a pattern at this point, every time for reasons that felt quietly catastrophic. not being able to pay bills for a while. angel's death and the ensuing difficult circumstances. so here, i kept anxiously imagining why i'd eventually have to leave, how to plan for it. poverty issues. the homelessness we were facing through the entirety of a couple of years until last august (and my dad having to be the saving grace). worsening health issues. i never knew, i couldn't predict it, i just worried about it. often tried to brace for it. maybe i got too comfortable this year, because this was when i started to think it wouldn't happen, that i really could stay. little did i know. and the reasons...are not reasons i ever fathomed, why would i have? how could i have? i wish it weren't so. (i wish a lot of things.)

i thought sometimes about the words i would leave you with, none of which are suitable now. i almost wrote nothing, yet found that feeling wrong, couldn't leave without something about parting.

thus it turns out i'm leaving before it's strictly necessary, before it's the fear of personal catastrophe coming to fruition, not knowing what i'll do or where i'll metaphorically go, as that is the downside of chronic illness and isolation narrowing this to my sole outlet. (lyrics keep running through my mind, there are always lyrics stuck in my head. no matter where i go, there'll be memories that tug at my sleeve, but there will also be more to question, yet more to believe...teach me to be more adaptive...help me say goodbye). my body is in such a fragile state right now (my mind not far behind) that maybe what i need to do is rest. just rest for a while.

this blog was never meant to grow the way it did, to take asks and have conversations like i did, that was a somewhat new (sometimes scary! often fun) experience for me. it's one that will never be replicated. to my loyal and lovely anons, i'm so sorry that i had to cut you off unexpectedly and couldn't reinstate communication - i know that you weren't able to reach out to me as soon as i did that, and that certainly wasn't your fault, it was a response to the tenor of this website. i apologize for the hundreds of messages i never had the chance to answer. i'm appreciative of the things you shared with me and all the times we got to talk.

i sincerely hope some of you learn to be kinder and wiser and less reactionary and more willing to learn and to listen rather than to attack those who have never wronged you and who do not deserve that. i'm being too nice, but i hope you learn that misusing your supposed social justice to do harm and foment hatred and stew in ignorant cruelty makes any principles you purport to have utterly void. my hope for that is low at the moment, but it's still got to be there. waiting to be found.

to those of you who have never been anything but kind, you are true treasures, the lights in the darkness, the loving and compassionate embodiment of human spirit. some of you have (quite literally) helped keep my mom and me alive, and i can never repay that or do enough in this life to quantify it. some of you have been here for me every single day, to listen and laugh and cry and understand. i don't think i would've bothered to fight through these past three years had i not had your presences in my life. i wouldn't have had as much of a reason. there are times when i still haven't felt like i had a reason, i struggle through so many varied griefs, but then i continued to wake up, and would come on here and find something joyful or beautiful or affirming that someone had sent or posted, and it gave me an anchor. there are passions and interests i shared or discovered here that were so uplifting and enlightening, and i will carry them in my heart always. being here to find those was such a blessing. being here with you to indulge in them was such a blessing. thank you. i pray your continued paths have more of that ahead. look at all the things you've done for me. there are certain things that once you have no time can wear away.

you know that line from the wizard of oz?: hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable. maybe that isn't true, maybe our hearts being broken is proof of something. there are people who hurt me on such a profound level who i know weren't affected by it at all, but i refuse to define my sensitivity as a negative. my softness (too soft for all of it, indeed) does not quite provide me with a weapon, but it doesn't crumple. hearts can be broken repeatedly and still beat, which i've thought about a lot lately. shattered souls just make a new mosaic. it's a different picture than it was before, but the color and light persists. and in the remains of that, a handful of people have shown me depths of caring and resilience that i wouldn't have gotten to hold onto otherwise, which is an extraordinary thing. the precious rarities have to mean something more, don't they? i would think so. i believe it. or i'm trying. i keep trying with all my might.

maybe i stayed too long at the fair. maybe this is a consequence of overplaying my hand, gambling a little too much with time to where it had to teach me something. maybe i needed the reminder that sometimes we have to fight to retain our spirits, and other times we have to retreat. maybe i needed a reminder that all that extra time was a miracle. i don't take it for granted.

whether we've spoken directly, be that consistently or in scattered flurries, whether we've interacted in very personal ways or simply in liked hearts on the dash, i hope there was goodness and light in it. i hope there's a memory i leave here that's sweet. (as long as i'm borrowing phrases, i hope you'll think of me fondly sometimes.) i hope there was something warm and enriching here. i hope you know what you've been and meant to me. i said so many times that this blog was my cozy haunted house - the ghosts will linger here forever, and i know they'll never mind if you want to step in and visit.

with all my heart, i love so many of you so dearly. i am so lucky to have your friendships. please move gently through life. please hold onto the things that illuminate it for you, and provide that where you can. please do your best to repair even the smallest of tears in the world. you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

there must be lights burning brighter somewhere.

something yet remains. i remain. and i do my best to be brave.

[lospassairport]

ppl who complain about the silver case being “confusing” is always the one thing that will immediately fill me with rage like Yes that is the Point the game is about how politics are made intentionally confusing to the average person lol you’re not supposed to get it…. You’re a cog in the machine & you have no agency until the very end and even then the characters’ actions are personally impactful and do very little to change the political climate. And anyway it’s not like there’s an exam or anything so if you don’t get it I have good news: you can press buttons to progress to the next scene