#warning: this is long and sad

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[sysig]

Wuh oh (Patreon)

Bonus:

The novel experience of being crushed by a giant rock, a visual metaphor

[stopper-my-heart]

Nothing like Heartstopper S2E8 removing some of Taylor Swift's "seven" lyrics just so that the singing can specifically come back in at "Or hide in the closet" while Isaac is processing difficult emotions related to the book he's reading (i.e., Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen).

Did I mention "Or hide in the closet" hits just as the camera focus finishes shifting away from Isaac?

This is fine

[unordinary-diary]

Blyke in Season 3.

This is my prediction. With the way Season 2 ended, I think they’ll find Blyke months later looking something like this.

Shit happens to people in prison. Terrence was murdered in his cell, Rein was worried about being killed by other inmates, hell, Blyke’s already pretty banged up in the finale and he’s been there for 2.5 seconds. Not to mention that the Authorities seem to have no problem torturing kids *COUgh* Keon.

Perhaps it’s a bit pessimistic, but the story’s been getting a lot darker lately. I doubt Blyke’s getting out of prison without a little extra trauma at least.

Latest Chapter as of Prediction: Side Story — Triple Threat (1)

[philomisia]

this is really horrible, i get maybe the website wasnt designed to be a bunch of shitposting 14 yr olds but its rlly shitty to just remove that without notice; people made friends on there, u literally added groups back not long ago too; rp is writing

[sualne]

Sualne: ofc they know each other, otherwise it'd be too sad

Also Sualne: Makes Ace suffer alone

Btwww it's not a hate comment or anything I just found it very funny, the duality of Sualne ✨️✨️✨️

ace IS a very sad character! :'D he says something in his light novel (that i havent read but really need to (law's too)) about how he probably would've killed himself if it hadn't been for sabo and luffy, im forcing him to survive till he can meet luffy in the au, but i have to keep that passive suicidality of his in there! ace even in canon was not doing fine at all!!

the duality of sualne, lol, i havent even started the angst yet.

here a lil ace ive drawn for concepts art and planning reasons:

[brookbee]

Maybe one of these days I’ll make an edit that isn’t sad

Song: Muse — Ghost (How Can I Move On)

[dneelyam]

[yakny]

Knight Bobo, wearing some of the patterns I drew :D!

[howdoyousleep3]

i'd love some positive vibes sent to me and my little fam if you've got some to spare 🥺 we've been looking for a house for a very long time and we finally found one we love. the market is absolute shit right now and i have yet to feel like a house is for us, and i just love this one 🥺 maybe i'll get a house for my birfday 💕

[tathrin]

Ehehe, hello, I am here to feed the procrastination gremlin! Those prompts all sound fun, but 21 and 28 are speaking to my heart rn.

Maybe 36 to if you feel up for it but it's your writing and you decide how many you wanna do<3

The procrastination gremlin thanks your mightily! Because I tend to Get Too Long when I write thing, I'm going to preemptively separate these out into their own posts and just assume that I'll ramble too much for it to make sense to do them all in one lmao. Also I will definitely do all three because yes more gimleaf yes. This is an ask meme that I will literally always be accepting prompts for (although if somebody sees this in the tag in like a month or so and wants to send one in, maybe include some context so that I know what that random number I just got in my inbox means? lmao). So, prompt taken from this; anyone can feel free to send other numbers in at any time. Literally.

#21....on a place of insecurity.

Gimli stared at his reflection in the round silver mirror, his hands paused even though his braids were still half-undone. "Do you ever wish that we had crossed the Sea sooner?" he asked.

Legolas blinked at him, cocking his head in that familiar birdlike tilt of confusion that Gimli knew so well.

"Sooner?" Legolas repeated. "How could we have come sooner?" A frown furrowed his smooth, beardless face; a temporary crinkling of skin that would never show the faintest wrinkle. "You mean before Aragorn died?"

"You're right," Gimli sighed. He tugged at his braids, their once-bright copper laced so heavily with strands of silver that he sometimes felt like he had just walked out of a snowfall. "We could not have, of course. But...do you ever wish..."

"Leaving sooner would not have spared us the pain of his death," Legolas said quietly. "It would only have meant that we would not have been there for him when it happened; only have meant that we would not have been there for Arwen or their children either. Knowing of his death only from stories brought by later travelers would not have spared us anything, I do not think; knowing of his death without having been there ourselves would, I think, have only made it hurt the worse, my dear."

"Yes," Gimli said, "yes, of course. I did not mean—"

He stopped. Legolas had walked up behind him and bent down to look over Gimli's shoulder into the mirror. It should have looked awkward, the sight of Legolas's long spine arced at such an angle, but elves were spindly, lithesome creatures. Wood-elves in particular seemed to be as supple and spritely as saplings, and Gimli had yet to witness Legolas contort himself into a position that strained his pliant bones.

"Gimli," Legolas said, "what is wrong?"

"Nothing," Gimli said. He lowered his eyes and his fingers both, twisting his remaining braids into place as quickly as he could without mussing the pattern of the plaits or dropping strands. He scowled, even though he knew that doing so would only deepen the wrinkles that already lined his eyes. "Nothing is wrong."

Long, smooth fingers pressed gently on his own calloused ones until they stilled. Gimli looked down at the overlap of those long digits across his own, the one set brown and spindly as twigs yet unblemished by time or strife; the other pale as underground mushrooms and gnarled by both time and heavy forge-work.

"Gimli," Legolas said. "Tell me."

Gimli turned his hand so that he could enfold those long brown fingers in his own and gave Legolas's hand a reassuring squeeze. "Nothing is wrong, my love," he said again. "I am only feeling melancholy this morning, it seems. Think no more upon it."

He raised the elf's ageless hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to those smooth knuckles, then released it so that he could continue with his braids.

Legolas did not rise. Instead he dropped lower to fold his arms across the back of Gimli's chair, his bright eyes studying the sight of the dwarf before him in the mirror. Gimli avoided his gaze, focusing instead on the intricate plaits that hung from his chin, but he could feel the weight of Legolas's eyes passing over his face, searching for the answers that Gimli would not give him.

He did not find them.

"Will you not tell me?" Legolas asked at last. His voice was soft, his eyes full of sorrow. "Please?"

Gimli sighed and let the braid in his hands droop loose and unfinished down his chest.

He looked up into the mirror again at last and met Legolas's searching, worried eyes there. He looked at that smooth, beardless, beloved face waiting there behind him; unchanging and unchanged from the day they had first met so long ago and far away in Rivendell.

His eyes flicked sideways to his own reflection, to the wrinkles that time had carved beneath his beard; to the strands of silver that wove through the bright copper braids that hung before him. He reached out and pressed his fingers to the mirror, to the sight of the lines around his eyes, and sighed.

"I would not be so old," Gimli said quietly, "if we had come sooner; that is all. I only wonder if you wish, sometimes, that we had. That is all."

Time did not pass in Aman the way it did in other places; or if it did, then it did not feel as though it did, and it carried no trace of decay with it. Gimli had not aged a day since they had first set foot upon these white shores—but he had aged two hundred and sixty-two years before that.

He was still hale and hearty, for dwarves—especially the dwarves of Durin's line—often lived many years longer than that, and rarely weakened before the very ending of their days came upon them. But he was no spritely youngster of sixty-two, either, moping because his father had deemed him too young to go along on a Quest; nor was he a mature youth of not quite one hundred and forty, boldly striding forward at last upon a Quest of his own, all bright brown eyes and ruddy copper beard.

Gimli was old, now, and he looked it. He could see it every morning when he looked in the mirror to do his braids, or every afternoon when he caught sight of his reflection in the cooling barrels at the forge or in some clear, still pool that held Aman's crystal waters. He could see it, and he knew Legolas could as well; how could he not, when he was surrounded by the contrast of all the smooth, beardless, ageless faces of his people?

"Are you tired?" Legolas asked, and his light voice was a dry croak. Shadows as thick as Mordor's fogs filled his eyes, and Gimli turned from the mirror with a cry and caught Legolas's hands with his own.

"No!" he cried. He knew that Legolas was not asking after Gimli's slumber, or weariness from working the forge; was not asking about anything as simple as a day's ordinary exhaustion. He was asking if Gimli was tired of life; if he was tired of eternity. If he was ready, at long last, to claim the gift of his own mortality.

"Legolas, no," Gimli said, squeezing those spindly fingers so tightly that had they been the frail twigs they seemed they would have snapped beneath the pressure of his grip—but elvish flesh was strong, so much stronger than it looked. So were dwarven spirits, and Gimli had no intention of ever growing weary of the world, not so long as Legolas was in it. "I promise," he assured his elf, raising first one hand and then the other to his lips. "Never, Legolas. I am here with you, and I always will be."

Legolas's smile trembled, but it was a smile. Gimli counted it as a victory, and pulled the elf up out of his crouch and into Gimli's lap. He had too much leg to fit on such a short chair, of course, but the two of them were used to that problem; it was no effort at all to fall into the long habits that had his ankles curling sideways under the chair, his elvish flexibility making easy work of the awkward position.

"Then what troubles you?" Legolas asked. He snaked his long arms around Gimli's shoulders and leaned his beardless cheek down to rest upon Gimli's head. "My love, please. Tell me."

"I am old, Legolas," Gimli said. He unwrapped one hand from the elf's slender waist to press his fingers to the cobweb of wrinkles beside his eyes. "You can see it plainly on my face. Old, as no one else in Aman ever will be."

"Bilbo is old," said Legolas.

Gimli rolled his eyes. "Yes, all right," he said. "And Sam, too. But aside from them, everyone else here is an elf—"

"Or a maia," Legolas interrupted. "Or one of the Valar. Or—"

"My point," Gimli cut him off loudly, "is that age is writ across my face in ways that elvish faces do not age. I am only sorry, my dear, that I can do nothing to erase those lines, these streaks of silver; only sorry that you cannot spend eternity beside a dwarf in his prime of life, but must instead contend with these wearisome wrinkles."

Legolas drew away far enough that he could gape down at Gimli. "Wearisome?" he repeated. "Sorry? Gimli!"

"I know, I know," Gimli soothed, "it is a little enough thing, I suppose, and I am not ungrateful; I am only sorry for your sake, my dear—"

"Sorry!" Legolas said again. "Gimli, you everlasting fool of a dwarf! Is this what you've been fretting over all this time?

"...Yes?"

"Gimli!" Legolas squawked. "Oh, my beloved idiot! I feared you were growing tired of forever, and were going to have to leave me! Instead you've just been pouting over how handsome you are?"

"Handsome!" Gimli exclaimed. "Legolas, enough. I am sorry beyond words that I made you worry, but that is no call to mock me—"

"I do not mock," Legolas said. His lilting voice for once was as firm as stones. "I adore every inch of you, Gimli. Yes, even the wrinkles; yes, even the silver in your beard!" He shook his head, scowling down at his dwarf. "Perhaps especially the silver in your beard, for it gleams like mithril in the moonlight, even as the ancient lights of lost Trees are said to still gleam in the locks of the Lady Galadriel, oh Lockbearer!"

Gimli sputtered, heat rising fast in his cheeks. He tried to push the elf away, but Legolas tightened his grip upon his shoulders and refused to be budged from Gimli's knees.

"And your wrinkles," he continued in a softer voice, "are the signs that our years together have etched upon your face, even as your clever hands carve beauty into simple metal and plain rocks. How could I help but love them, when they trace our story out upon your face for all to see?" Legolas leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the sparkle of crows-feet that framed first one eye and then the other, then traced the deep tracks that lines Gimli's mouth and nose beneath his beard. Finally he raised Gimli's hand and pressed a long kiss to those ruddy, wrinkled fingers.

"Legolas, I...I feel I've been a fool," Gimli murmured. He found himself once again unable to meet Legolas's eyes, this time because of the blush that darkened his cheeks with a blaze of hot mortification.

"You have been," Legolas agreed, "but fortunately I knew you for a fool long before I knew you for anything else, my love, and so I am not bothered overmuch."

A watery laugh spilled from Gimli's lips, and he could not help but smile. "And you are as irritating and irreverent as ever," he retorted.

"Of course I am," Legolas agreed, and hopped up off Gimli's lap and the low chair upon which he sat and grinned down at his dwarf with a twinkling smile. "Some things do not change with the passage of time—but even though my face does not show it, I have very much been changed by knowing you, my dear Gimli, and I would not trade a second of it in exchange for a single lifted wrinkle or silvered hair."

"Well," Gimli said, "I am glad to hear it, and sorry now that I did not voice my concerns sooner."

"So am I!" said Legolas. "But I cannot hold it against you when I did not voice mine either, although in my case it was because I feared to pressure you into extending your time in life beyond your own comfort for my sake alone."

Gimli stood and took his elf's hands in his and held them tight. "Forever is only barely enough time to spend at your side, Legolas," he said, "but as it is all the time the world will give us, I will take it; but I will accept not a second less than that, and would not see that time shortened for any reason even if it was only for your own comfort, and not my own. I can think of no greater purpose for one's life than to bring comfort to one whom I so love."

Legolas beamed down at him, his pale eyes bright with unshed tears. "Well!" he said. "That is all sorted, then!"

"Indeed it is," Gimli agreed. He knew that the smile spreading behind his beard was the sort of soft, misty-eyed grin that Peregrin Took had always labeled "absurdly sappy," but he could not help himself; he felt as though he was fairly brimming-over with love, and he could not contain himself from letting it show upon his face, erstwhile sappiness be damned.

"In that case," Legolas said, his damp gaze dancing suddenly with dry mischief, "let me get you out of that tunic and into our bed and I will find all your other wrinkles and properly express my love for them, too."

Gimli decided he could finish his braids later.

[fayeandknight]

Personal post in which I am processing old trauma.

It's weird how you can clearly recall an experience but have no emotional response/true comprehension of it until many years later.

My relationship with my ex fiance happened during my first three years of college, if you don't count the stalking and harassment that went on for several years after. I'm in my 30s now, that was a long time ago.

It took me a few years after breaking up for the last time to realize that the relationship wasn't just "really shitty" but had in fact been extremely abusive. To this day when I think of him I think of screaming and crying, breaking glass, blood, absolute terror, and the inability to breathe.

Over the years I've been processing the truth of things he'd normalized/minimized/gaslit me on and trying to give myself grace for the long term effects it's had on me. And for a while I thought I'd acknowledged all of it. But recently (last year or two) it's hit me like a sack of bricks that he tried to murder me. I don't mean going too far in a fit of anger, I mean he planned out and followed through on a deliberate plan to kill me that I survived by sheer luck.

That day has always been a cold, stop motion memory since it happened. I can recall it in a series of snapshots, each clean and neat and utterly detached from each other.

He tells me we'll have the house to ourselves.

He's drawn me a bath in the big Jacuzzi tub with rose petals in the water.

I undress and get in.

He is sitting on the side of the bathtub.

He is cupping my face for a kiss and whispers something about Ophelia.

My head is underwater.

I am flailing and grabbing at his hands, the side of the bathtub. Water is going everywhere but I can't get out from underneath his hands.

I can't breathe. My lungs are burning. I am beyond terrified. This is the inevitable end. This is how I die.

His hands are off me and I am able to get my head above water.

He is taking keys off the counter and handing them through the cracked open door.

I am soaking wet and holding my clothes against me in a bundle that mostly covers me.

I shove past the person on the other side of the door and run barefoot back to my dorm.

He gaslit me hard about this that it never happened. I didn't even get a chance to bring it up. He just showed up the next day to take me on a date (which he very rarely did) and complained about how outside of sex we never had one on one time because there were always people in the house. I was still in shock I think and don't really remember what happened in between my running out of his house and him showing up at my dorm apartment. I do remember being in the living room of his house after the date and having a very public fight that he pulled out of nowhere.

For a long time that memory has been something I shied away from even thinking about. It was a cold spot in my brain that gave me mental frost bite.

And then when I did acknowledge it, it was framed as 'I almost died' in my mind. But the more I think about it, the more clear that this was a planned murder becomes.

We were in college and he lived in a busy frat house/known party house with four other guys. He either dedicated significant time to tracking people's coming and going to find a long enough window of time to drown me and dispose of my body. Not a small feat considering the near constant foot traffic in the house. Or he engineered having that house be empty.

The tub, which wasn't normally used due to being disgustingly dirty, had been spotlessly cleaned.

He never got undressed or into the tub with me. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt with shorts and angled his legs away from the tub.

He referenced Ophelia, who dies via drowning. I was a theatre major at the time.

He very much intended to murder me by downing me in that bathtub.

The only reason I survived is because someone forgot their keys on the bathroom counter and had to come back for them. That's it.

It's so wild to me how long it's taken my brain to feel, I don't know safe??? enough, to really put the severity and full implications together. I didn't repress the memory, just avoided it. And I'm not even shocked that he tried to kill me, more that he tried to murder me - though I'm not sure how much sense that distinction would make to anyone else.

Seeing romantic gestures between couples makes me feel cold and frightened and grief stricken. And for a long time I attributed that to my most significant/serious relationship being an epic shit show and a half. But I'm starting to realize that it's also because one of the few romantic gestures I've received was actually part of the plan to murder me. So I'm trying to be gentle with myself when I experience those feelings.

I'm not some bitter shrew who hates seeing happy couples. I am experiencing the fallout feelings of an extremely traumatic and very nearly fatal event.

Anyway I'm not really expecting for anyone to have read this whole mess. But if you did, here's a picture of Forte snuggling me from this morning as thanks for sitting with me for a bit.

[blushweddinggowns]

Did I just finish a 160-page Steddie fic that tried to literally murder me every month? Yes.

Am I going to start two brand new ill-advised Steddie WIPs at the same time literally right now? Also yes.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Just applied for a summer childcare position (like for a camp type thing) that pays 20–28 dollars an hour based on qualifications (I should be towards the end of that scale because I work in a school; and the only requirement the job lists is to be 16 and have experience with children). So hopefully they’ll consider me. That would be wonderful.

[lovecoredeity]

guess who’s back on their bullshit with this, lmk what you think!

[ourladyofomega]

Trigger warning: obscene sexist language.

I woke up one morning to open my social media. I was in panic mode because a “friend” chose to out me right after going to bed. Eight hours for everyone to see exposed secrets about me. And I knew who it was. He had a thing for putting other’s personals out in the open. It’s his “freedom of speech” where it gave him license to be cute and then take it back with a “just kidding!” Not funny at all.

I didn’t appreciate him manufacturing drama. He was up to his old games again. I messaged him asking what in the fuck was he thinking? According to him, I posted something desperate (I didn’t). That prompted him to sell me another hare-brained scheme of his. Here we go again.

He had a female friend of mine who, according to him, “was back on the market”. Great choice of words. Every one of his other friends he’s tried setting me up with never clicked. Hands to the side while lazily saying “hi”. No self-care. Feeble-mindedness. Wrong vibe. Social miscues. They were instant disqualifications for me. It’s left me keeping both my silence and distance from them throughout the day, then never to see them again. Now, he wants to set me up with her.

I was absolutely reluctant to go for it, because I knew how this was going to go. I pushed back and told him multiple times that I was not interested. But, like any forceful person who automatically becomes deaf when they hear the word “no”, kept shoving harder. Then came the pitch.  

The way that he described her; truly disgusting and tasteless:

"Dude! She has two kids. Just got divorced. I’ll invite you over and introduce you to her. You both talk to each other for a bit, then go right in the bedroom with her. A little on the meaty side. She’s got some flabby tits. You both do your thing and be in-and-out in 15 minutes. 1-2-3. That's it. You’re done!"

(Sigh.) Seriously?

Not only had he used such “colorful” copy to describe her, but he also tried coercing me into sleeping with someone I had zero interest in. And for what? So he can announce a special update for all of his friends to see? Is my life that much of a spectacle to him? He can fuck right off.

I remember when I had a girlfriend in high-school and my circle of friends came over to congratulate me. Ten of them...including him. High-fives and pats on the back. Looking back at it, it was real distasteful of them to make my (later) ex- look like a victory or conquest. These days, my dating history is absolutely no one’s business.

This was who I once considered a “friend”. (There were other things he's done that made me distance myself from him.) Never in my life had I felt ashamed being associated with anyone, ever. They say having certain people in your life lowers your worth. At that point, I was embarrassed knowing him. He’s that intrusive gossiping aunt who shows up uninvited, whom no one wants anything to do with.

But, that's the type of person he was. A once-divorced American sex pig with a porn collection and an anti-feminist sentiment. A total degenerate. No wonder why his then-wife left him for a better man (after he paid in full for her lap-band surgery), divorced him, kicked him out of the house, and won custody of their kids.

The sad part? He's even worse off than before. You really don't want to know. But, every day I do a huge favor to myself. The more you're repulsed by someone, the more of an effort you'll make to never turn into them.