#what is wrong with me T-T

[ryllen]

tbh i agree with this one

[keferon]

THIS FUCKING MOMENT

[bullseyelover]

i’ve been thinking about dex’s story in born again.

how, in universe, the world saw dex after the events of josies, and after his trial. how quick everyone was to believe he just snapped and went on a revenge fueled rampage at josies. and the sad thing is, that makes sense in the worst possible way. because the world is always going to be more comfortable writing someone like dex off as just another mentally ill guy who lost control. that’s the story people are used to. it’s easier, simpler, and it doesn’t require any deep thought or empathy. it doesn’t ask them to look at who failed him, who used him, who broke him down. it doesn’t ask them to understand the difference between someone being dangerous and someone being made into a weapon. and most people just don’t care enough to look closer.

and what gets me is how many people refuse to hold both truths about dex at the same time. that he’s a victim and a perpetrator. that he did horrific things and was still deeply, painfully used. i hate how often people online will reduce it to “oh you just like him because he’s hot” when you try to talk about him with nuance. like no. dex is complex. he’s the wound and the knife. he is someone who’s suffered, been manipulated, abandoned, used like a tool, but that doesn’t erase what he’s done. it doesn’t mean people weren’t hurt, or that his violence didn’t matter. you can see his pain and still hold him accountable. you can understand where it came from and still be horrified by the outcome. none of that is contradictory. it’s just real. he’s a character full of contradictions, and that’s part of what makes him so compelling. reducing him to one thing, victim, villain, psycho, it just flattens him into a version of himself that isn’t true.

and even in the show, it’s like no one really wants to see the whole truth of who dex is. it’s easier for them to believe “crazy guy goes violent” than to admit that someone vulnerable was groomed and turned into a weapon by someone with more power. for example in episode 8 where matt slams dex’s head into the table, and when the guard walks in, matt lies and says dex did it to himself. and the guard doesn’t even hesitate to believe it. he just immediately goes, “you crazy asshole.” he doesn’t even question it. because that’s already the version of dex they’ve decided is true. they don’t need proof, they don’t need context. they hear “he hurt himself” and go “of course he did.” and that’s what’s so brutal about it. even matt bought into that narrative at first. even though he knew dex had worked for fisk after the events of season three. and he listened to dex’s tapes. he believed that dex was a man who woke up one day on impulse and decided to kill foggy eight years after the events of season three. because he believed dex to be a violent and disturbed psychopath. because that’s the story society already believes. many people believe that mentally ill people are inherently dangerous. quiet violence is scarier than loud chaos. so people don’t ask questions. they just assume the worst. so dex being quiet and restrained in his rage in the trial scene just confirmed what they already thought about him. and that kind of widespread erasure makes dex’s story even more tragic. not just what happened to him, but how no one really sees it. not fully.

and that invisibility messes with him too. dex already struggles with identity. he barely knows who he is when no one’s giving him a script to follow. so when the whole world reduces him to nothing but a monster, a rampage shooter, it probably confirms the worst things he already fears about himself. even if he knows deep down it’s not the whole truth, it gets in his head. like maybe they’re right. maybe he really is just broken and dangerous and beyond saving. that he is an animal and nothing more. and that’s what hurts him. because he tried. he tried to be good. he tried to follow the rules. for so many years because he genuinely wanted to be a better version of himself. he tried to be useful, to matter, to be someone. and in the end, none of it mattered. no one remembers that he tried. they only see the end result. they only see the damage.

and that weight, the failure, the guilt, the grief of never being seen clearly, that’s something he has to carry alone. it’s what makes his story so heavy to sit with. and none of this is to say that dex isn’t still responsible for what he’s done. evidently he knew what he was doing. even if he was manipulated into it. he made choices, and those choices hurt people. he’s not innocent. he’s not good. he’s a villain. that’s who he is, that’s who he’s becoming, and he’s also someone with borderline personality disorder. someone who was manipulated, used, pushed to the edge, and weaponized. those things can all exist at once. he’s not either a tragic victim or an evil monster. he’s both. and when people act like empathizing with him or understanding where he came from is the same as excusing what he did, it’s just dishonest. like no one’s out here saying “my poor baby” and pretending he didn’t kill people. it’s just acknowledging that there’s more to him than what most are willing to see. that doesn’t absolve him. it just complicates him. and if that makes people uncomfortable, maybe they should ask why it’s so much easier to believe someone like dex is just a psycho killer than to accept that he’s human. flawed, dangerous, and human.

if people are saying that about comic bullseye, then yeah, it makes sense. that version of him is literally written to be an unstable psychopath who kills people for fun. he’s meant to be scary and empty and cruel, and that’s it. that’s what makes his character so fun to read. the needless violence, the grin on his face while he commits it. but dex isn’t only that. dex is bullseye, but he’s a version with so much more nuance and humanity. he is capable of everything that comic bullseye is capable of. but he has more contradictions, more depth. he’s not just evil for the sake of it. he’s broken and angry and used and spiraling, and all of that is still his responsibility, but it’s layered. he’s not just a killer. he’s a person. comic bullseye is the foundation, but dex was built on top of that. same character, same legacy, just finally given complexity. he has all the traits of his comic self, but there’s pain behind it now. there’s grief, there’s loneliness, there’s a desperate want to be seen and loved. he’s bullseye in every way, but now he’s also human and real.

[funsizedshark]

this point has been made before but santos and langdon are 100% written as mirrors to each other and if santos had been a man there would have been 15000000 meta posts about his snark and impulsivity being a cover for deep-seated emotional issues and his childhood but since santos is a woman she's a huge bitch who needs to get humbled. which by the way has already happened multiple times over the course of the past 10 episodes but i guess to appease the masses foaming at the mouth to see a woman crucified we need a full scene of idk robby yelling at her that shes a fuckup in front of the entire ER

[hausdellamorte]

veilguard having woke necromancy but still sending skeletons to work in the necropolis' corpse gulag - ghoulag if you will - is such a bizarre choice and also frankly quite hilarious because you can tell that they didn't want to commit to anything fucked up and unethical because why would they

oh no we don't *actually* resurrect dead people against their will. these are just wisps who have no prior memory of being a sentient being. skeletons are just empty vessels because the essence of that person left so it's not actually questionable for us to use people's remains. also people fill out consent forms to be resurrected and used in the ghoulag. also yes only good people can become a lich because the lichlords - that we somehow have now - do some serious soul sifting and ONLY the people with good intentions - like reading books for the rest of all eternity - are allowed to become a lich. no emmrich having a little skeleton servant isn't unethical because he wasn't a person before, he was a wisp - you know our new ex machina - and he really wanted to be a necromancers servant and learn and it was HIS choice all along.

because we at bioware are all about informed and consensual necromancy because why would we have something morally ambiguous going on? or even actually question the ethics of our companions? have challenging discussions about morals? what do you expect us to do? make things actually interesting?

[morsmortish]

i think we as a fandom need to stop villainising barty crouch senior. that man was put through HELL and back. imagine doing nothing wrong your whole life and then getting everything blown up by your sociopathic son. you lose your family, your career, then your life! poor, poor man.

it’s a common consensus within the fandom that barty senior was some sort of monster, controlling and abusing his son to the point of insanity, and whilst i acknowledge this is a compelling and accessible way of constructing barty as a morally good character who did Bad Things because of this traumatic childhood, i personally find it so much more interesting if bcj is just. a bad guy. there is equal amounts of canon evidence to the idea that that barty had a good childhood and that he had a bad one (none). sure, it’s easier to gravitate towards the latter, but for me, the idea of barty being raised in a loving??? environment makes his character so much more interesting. imagine these two well-to-do, respectable members of wizarding society who have followed all the rules, done everything ‘right’ their whole lives (including the way they raised their son), and yet. and yet they end up with this morally drained, completely unredeemable sociopath of a son. and it’s no one’s fault, he’s just Born That Way.

reducing a character down to their Trauma is such a limited way of thinking about it. saying that every evil character is actually inherently good, just desolated by circumstance, is not that interesting! humans are all flawed, and some more than others. thinking of barty as someone who is just a Bad Person, for me, makes him so much more powerful. and therefore, thinking of barty senior as less of the villain, and more of a victim, also makes him, and the father-son relationship, much more interesting. we know barty senior isn’t perfect- absent father is probably the most reasonable read of his parenting skills- but in my opinion, if there is any character in this dynamic who IS the inherently good one corrupted by circumstance, it’s not bcj, but his father. to me, it’s not plausible that the man who went against his entire belief system out of love for his wife (and to some extent, his son) is the same man who abused his kid. barty’s trial scene becomes so much less interesting if he had been harmed by his father prior- to give him a ‘reason’ for his actions, to say he was lashing out or rebelling against his abusive father, is changing the core of his character! he did it because he felt like it! he’s simply just Not A Good Guy!! and whilst barty senior might also not be a good guy, it makes much less narrative sense for him to be the one assigned the role of ‘villain’.

yeah, he kept his son under imperio control for years, but who can really blame him? the dude was an absolute menace. and even if we do acknowledge his actions as morally wrong, surely the logic that barty joined the death eaters and committed horrible crimes because of things that happened to him in childhood, surely that logic can also be applied to barty senior? let’s say he controlled his son BECAUSE of the things that happened to him- barty betrayed him, turned out to be a monster, destroyed absolutely everything in his life. the trauma of that is surely enough to justify imperio.

i’m rambling on now, and so. to conclude. barty crouch junior as a much more two dimensional Bad Guy, and his father as the unsuspecting victim of his son’s betrayal, reprehensible actions, and complete heartlessness, makes BOTH of them more interesting. argue with the wall!!

[marlynnofmany]

Why isn't there already a shirt for sale out there that says "I'm as normal as I want to be"? I feel like that would be wildly popular in certain circles.

[ryllen]

their confession dynamic of all time

[theinfinitedivides]

live footage of Taemin outside of the SM headquarters

[rexonalapis]

it is very telling that average genshin players cannot comprehend seeing an actual mature, qualified leader that is actually good at taking her job seriously after meeting archons who either is still childish, clowning whimsically, or straight up incompetent.

[tart-miano]

Hatsune (Christmas) Tree-ku 🎄

[sceebybeeby]

⚠️AA3/T&T spoilers⚠️

i've been feeling artistically bankrupt recently so here's another redraw from 2021

[transmasc-peoples-party]

Title

Somtimes a transandrophobe will make a post that's so incoherent I don't even know who's side they're on until I look at the tags for "transasndrobabies" "transandrophobia isn't real" or some other shit

[hatterofthelabyrinth]

sending you by vsco girl blue clout sunglasses as I have in my pfp to you:)

These'll work perfectly. Might need to carve a blue one out a bit, but this should still work.

[iamhereinthebg]

Seeing Akane reacts so strongly seeing Kako being destroyed was already a big shot at my heart but Mirai and Akane protecting each other absolutely annihilated me in the last chapter.

Akane is a character who is really blunt about his opinion and stands his ground, he said right away in his introduction chapter how strongly he hates the clock keepers, and insists on how much he isn't like them.

In this new arc, he is forced to face this part of him he doesn't want to acknowledge since the beginning, he has been forced to do it a lot since the grim reaper arc (and I think it's really starting to get to him but this is for another day)

Aoi Akane, the human forced to be a supernatural who hates his contract and the clock keepers so much he wants nothing to do with them. But what does he do when fighting Tsukasa? He keeps the latter's attention on him so the threat can't get to Mirai.

Akane is mortal and human. The only mortal clock keepers and supernatural, and he still risks his life to protect Mirai. The yorishiro of the clock keepers yes, but mostly Mirai.

He shifts his attention from Tsukasa to her because he knows what she represents for the clock keepers and he waits for the moment to let her free, even if it results in him getting hurt.

Akane is the character of the cast who shows the most how he loves life, he definitely doesn't want to die. We can see it in how he defends himself, his last movement in this fight being one of protection (and fear). Something he has been doing more since coming back a second time from the far shore. Even if he doesn't want to die, he is still at his core a nice person. He is distressed at the idea of death, disappearing for good, no matter who it may concern in the end. Finding a way to protect Mirai (and the yorishiro) goes before his own safety.

And then Mirai gets the blow for him. She knows it means Tsukasa will get the yorishiro. Kako has been the mystery the most alarmed about the yorishiros being destroyed by Hanako. But Mirai, n°1, who knows how dangerous it is for another yorishiro to be destroyed for the land, sacrifices their seat number, herself and what is supposely the most important thing to them, for Akane.

Akane is a proactive character who rarely stops in his actions. Even when Aoi was "dead" he was activaly searching for a way to bring her back and when he learned she was gone he was quick to try to find a way to go where she was. When he stops, it's because he is physically unable to move. But here, even if he is still concsious and has Time's power he doesn't do anything, like he is the one being stopped in time, unable to move on from Mirai's body.

Mirai may be made of gears but it's been clear since the beginning that she has a real attachement to Akane. Wearing the name he gave her like a medal, jumping on him whenever she can, having a personality where she clearly has fun when he is present, and actually being the one noticing him on his first day at school.

And what does it mean after all for a yorishiro to be sacrified to protect something else? That maybe Akane is in the end more important than what the yorishiro represents for the clock keepers.

If this follows the pattern of a lot of mysteries it may mean that Mirai and Kako have strong regrets/resentment towards the story/person behind their yorishiro.

It's kind of beautiful in the end to see Mirai sacrifiying their past and future to focus on the one representing the present.

[skunkes]

i need more time to draw for me and do comms and make stickers and practice waterkolor and learn blender but unfortunately every day i need 10 hours of lay in bed time