#wasting another day

[james-harmony]

I spent the better part of 3 days (4???) thinkering with a really cheap android phone. I swear those things have gotten more locked down since the last time I used one

[ideeylic]

so why didn't you stop me? why didn't you stop me

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 4 - Nuthin' but Boothill Edition

[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[sacriou]

Can you tell I can’t stand him

[balsee]

okay normally i like the way oda writes a story, but man oh man do i hate how sanji and nami part ways in whole cake island. it just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. like i get it, nami doesn't understand why sanji is leaving them, and she has every right to be hurt and upset when sanji and luffy start fighting. how could she be anything but? however, i think nami's decision to slap sanji was completely uncalled for. and even then, i can still see why she does it. nami is deeply afraid for her captain and her crew, and in this moment, she probably thinks that sanji really isn't coming back to them. after everything they've been through together, she still sees someone she loves hurting another person she loves and leaving, and she's helpless to do anything about it. all of those emotions manifest themselves when she hits him. it's not a mature or logical or compassionate response by any means, but it is just a tad bit understandable when you try to put yourself in her shoes.

or, at least, it would be, if oda had resolved this particular issue differently.

once nami finally understands why sanji decided to leave in the first place, once it finally clicks for her that sanji is sacrificing himself for the sake of his true family, it would've been so great to see anything resembling some sort of an apology or heart-to-heart between the two of them. but we don't get that. obviously, nami being there with luffy when sanji leaves the crew is done on purpose, and how amazing would that purpose be if nami, at some point, (be it before or after she discovers why sanji left), tried to reach out and tell him that she knows exactly why he's doing all of this. if anyone can understand why he decided to push them away, it's her. she understands his mindset of cutting ties with the crew, because the darkness he's spent so long trying to run away from feels so much bigger than them at their best, and all he's trying to do is save them from it. it would've been such a wonderful call back to nami's own struggle with arlong, and would provide an important piece of character development for the both of them. nami would be the one to give sanji that verbal and emotional support he so desperately needs, and luffy would be the one to give him the tangible proof of it.

a lot of people say that the whole altercation between luffy and sanji would've been way better if zoro or usopp had taken nami's place, but i don't think so at all. i think that nami had to be there, because who else could've given sanji that comfort but the one who had been the first to pull away? who else could've told him: you saved me. you didn't let me go, now let me do the same for you. only nami, in my opinion, could've been the one to give that to sanji.

or, at least, she would have, if oda had written it differently.

[lilidawnonthemoon]

[plantsjustwannahavefun]

I used to think that the reason I wasn't satisfied with Izzy's death was because I was too attached to his perspective as a character and couldn't focus on the big picture of the season and the main Gentlebeard relationship enough. I mean, I was still convinced that his death and the way it was carried out was a shit writing decision, but everyone else outside the Izzy Canyon circles seemed fine with it, so I was starting to think that maybe they were right.

So I looked back on the rest of the season and rewatched the finale... And realised something that I'd been trying to ignore because it was too painful to admit. A huge part of why Izzy's death hit so hard (in a bad way, not that delicious masochistic pain of having a beloved character die a good, narratively satisfying death) was because throughout this season he was the only character who actually had a satisfying arc and development. Practically no one else did. I didn't actually care for Gentlebeard this season, not the way I cared in S1. From episode 1 to 8 and a half, Izzy's arc was crafted with more care, kindness, subtlety and narrative weight than the main Gentlebeard arc which, in comparison, felt like a string of choppy beads badly tied together in an approximate shape of an arc, but collapsed as soon as you looked at it too closely.

Yes, we all know this season suffered for being 2 episodes too short, but I don't think that's all there is to it. This is starting to feel like GoT season 8 all over again. Would it have been better if it wasn't so rushed? Maybe. Or maybe it would have been even worse because this season just didn't seem to know what to do with itself or the characters. The themes and symbolism are all over the place and completely inconsistent. Ed and Stede's characters are practically back at the same place they left in S1. All they did was bounce off the walls back and forth with no real growth. As soon as they took a step towards fixing their relationship or growing as people, they either tool three steps back or it just got dropped. Stede letting fame get to his head? Interesting and realistic development. And how was it resolved? It wasn't. Stede and Ed being whim prone? I'm glad they brought it up. And then they just fell for another whim and it was presented as a satisfying ending.

Ed went from the Kraken, to taking the first steps towards being Ed, then suddenly all the way to being Ed by way of a Night of Magical Healing Sex that he he didn't actually want to happen because he wasn't ready. And then all of a sudden he pivoted to abandoning Stede and piracy and becoming a fisherman... for 5 min. And then back to Blackbeard again because two fishermen were mean to him for 5 minutes. And then abandoning it again to open an inn. How was any of this even remotely coherent or satisfying? They didn't even have a single conversation about any of it. Ed had more proper closure and communication with Izzy during his dying scene than with Stede and the rest of the crew put together. Izzy's arc got sacrificed to do the heavy lifting for Ed's arc and became nothing more than a shortcut to speed run his character growth. Except it didn't even lead anywhere. "Ed, they're your family, they love you" no they don't, he didn't even have a single positive conversation with any of them except Fang. Of course this could have been the point, and Ed could have seen Izzy's death, his own discovery of found family and his dying words as a pretext to repair his relationship with the crew. But he just left them and stayed with Stede instead.

Sure, you could say this was only the second act of the story, and S3 will resolve everything. But the second act is still meant to move the story and the characters forward in some way. Yes, of course if we get S3, I imagine Stede and Ed's life as innkeepers won't exactly be idyllic. But the problem is that the conflicts they'd have will only be a rehash and repeat of the same conflicts they've already have, or were supposed to have, this season. Multiple times, even. We already know that Ed is simply unable to live with himself no matter what life he chooses. The title of S1 was literally "wherever you go, there you are". We already know Stede's love isn't enough to fix him. We already know their goals in life are completely opposite. Maybe they could have shown Stede realising, after his humiliating in S7, that piracy wasn't all it was cracked up to be or he isn't suited for it, and that's why he chose to leave it behind and open an inn, but that's not the explanation we were given. It was just another whim. They literally didn't learn anything this season. They had two baby conversations in E4 and E5 and didn't take anything from it, just kept doing the complete opposite of anything. "We're both prone to whims, let's take things slow" became "let's take things extremely fast by moving in together permanently and becoming entrepreneurs". They never talked about the actual, deepseated, longstanding trauma issues they needed to resolve before they could even begin to have a proper relationship. They literally got a heavy-handed glimpse in what their life would become if they just stuck together without addressing their own personal issues, and chose to do that very thing. It that's what S3 is going to address, then why were Anne and Mary part of this season instead of the next one?

I remember everyone saying they wanted Ed and Stede to reunite as quickly as possible in S2, and I get why. They have great chemistry together. The season is about them. But for it to work, spending more time apart is exactly what they needed. They needed to learn how to live with themselves and others, first. Romantic love alone can't fix you as a person. You have to fix yourself first. Community can help (as with Izzy's case), but you still have to put in the work. In retrospect, I'm glad that Izzy didn't get a love interest this season - because he wasn't ready yet, and had to learn how to have normal relationships and friendships with other people before attempting an intimate romantic relationship, lest he ended up falling head first unit another toxic mutually dependent relationship. That's what Stede and Ed should have tried too. Instead the show just ended up using Izzy's death as a quick surgical fix, robbing Ed of his agency and having to do the hard work repairing himself and his relationships with other people. There's a sad irony in getting exactly one character's arc just this, and then using it as a sacrificial lamb to patch over the main character's arc.

[anywayxstarchild]

mustique demo came up on shuffle again and i've had my head in my hands for the past hour because truly what was this insanity. why does noel sing his song with a completely different set of pronouns than what he made liam finally sing? and i'm not even thinking about the lock all the doors lore right now. i'm just speechless because truly... whose confession am i listening to? i need to study noel's brain so bad jfc he was so insane for this. i'll never get over this song.

[anxresi]

Hey, you know what else I think….

Miraculous would be a MUCH better show if…

Whoever was responsible for putting together the Instagram accounts for the individual characters…

…Was in charge of writing the actual show…

…And not unceremoniously fired the second the producers decided they weren’t profitable…

ESPECIALLY if you were a Chloe fan. 🙃

[zegalba]

Yoshitomo Nara x Stella McCartney (2023) 'Don't Waste Another Day' Knit Sweater

[wonder-worker]

I've been thinking about the tragedy of Elizabeth Woodville living to see the end of her family name.

I don't mean her family with her husband, which lived on through her daughter and grandson. I mean her own.

Her sisters died, one by one, many of them after 1485. When Elizabeth died, only Katherine was left, and she would die before the turn of the century as well.

All her brothers died, too. Lewis died in childhood. John was executed. Anthony was murdered. Lionel died suddenly in the peak of Richard's reign, unable to see his niece become queen. Edward perished at war. Richard died in grieving peace. For all the violence and judgement the family endured, it was "an accident of biology" that ended their line: none of the brothers left heirs, and the Woodville name was extinguished. We know the family was aware of this. We know they mourned it, too:

“Buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”

Elizabeth lived through the deposition and death of her young sons, and lived to see the end of her own family name. It must have been such a haunting loss, on both sides.

[xnotxyourxbabyx]

Looking this good and no one took me out dancing 🙄

[8x06eddie]

if i speak…

[kingkatsuki]

Specifically thinking about long distance relationships today.

So tell me how you and your f/o would first meet online?

[itspileofgoodthings]

my seniors have been so quiet all year and it’s been fine cause we’ve had a lot of writing/research to do but I need them to talk to me now so i was hit by a bolt of inspiration two days ago and I made them all tell me their comfort level with sharing aloud, rating themselves on a scale of 1-10. I then averaged the class score and they’re a 4.5. I then told them yesterday we needed to raise the score the tiniest bit. And the 1’s and 2’s didn’t need to be 10’s just maybe 3’s and 4’s. And they tried! They talked more 😭

[afro-elf]

can a therapist explain why my mom saying she loves me and doesn't mind having me around during this extremely prolonged and fruitless job search because she loves me and just wants to make sure my needs are met makes me SOMEHOW feel worse about being an unemployable little shit?