#when you feel seen understood and loved

[senualothbrok]

"It was easier to stare at the celestial abyss than recognise the emptiness within myself. Easier to pretend my destiny lay among such stars, than work to salvage a life on solid ground. You changed all that.

You see me as I am, and do not find me wanting. With these stars as my witness, I swear - you will always be enough for me."

[dimeadozencows]

This came to me in an early morning queer haze

Kissing my medics good morning (I am your husband heavy and I love you)

[itsafternoonpast5]

thinking about their friendship so hard

[add1ctedt0you]

"Can't you see the look on jiejie's face?"

[taamlok]

who else up crying over dragon age rn

[astarlightmonbebe]

episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.

kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.

taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).

in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level). 

kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.

taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him. 

both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand. 

[suddencolds]

I admire how you treat everyone like a friend. Whenever I see you interact with people on your blog, I notice the transparency and sincerity of your words, and I admire that it shows through your writing as well. I think people who interact with you feel seen with how you treat them.

You are very attentive to everyone and the things that happen around you. This is a strong opinion as an anon (so sorry! I hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable) but even through lurking, I feel like I have known you for years.

!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭 Omg, I cannot properly express how much of a joy it was to receive this ask. This means so much to me, anon!! Thank you so much for your kind words, and for making me feel so welcomed here—I can only try to return the kindness others have shown to me 😭 ❤️

[1hyunjae]

[the-acid-pear]

It's not easy to be a guy with a weird gender and complicated relationships with its sexuality and romantic attraction and fat and autistic and traumatized to the bone but someone has to do it

[lucindarobinsonvevo]

Tabaluga and Leo (2003)

[L] My parents died when I was little. Since then I've lived at an orphanage. [...] [T] I wish you would have told me before. I would have understood. [L] How could you understand? [T] Because I'm an orphan too.

[luvmequmi]

stuck between a carnal desire for intimacy to the point of rooting each other’s souls deep within our cores and an ever-present phantom of the fear of being vulnerably exposed and opening up.

[torgawl]

slightly disappointed - just slightly - that they didn't include fischl in the windblume event because she would fit the legend/fairytale category of the charade so much?!

[barnbridges]

not to say my daily take again, but bunny's specific lack of place, the fact that even his friends don't even like him, and that he lies constantly and can switch from hot to cold and from loving to disdainful but keep acting like everything is fine afterwards is what being highly masking is like and it's terrifying mentally thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

As Always Lu you look like someone I would just really want to hang out with. You're so Cool... you look like you both have opinions on Music and also are unafraid to go stream wading. get-you-a-friend-who-can-do-both kind of look.

I love the clip in your hair, is that something you do irl?

OPINIONS ON MUSIC AND UNAFRAID TO GO STREAM WADING. have you been talking to @fortes-fortuna-iogurtum bc that's a duality that she's experienced from me multiple times ajdjdjakjfakfn you got it 😂💖 so usually I put my hair up in claw clips, but that wasn't an option for that picrew, so I just put a barrette style clip. so not really, bc I DO use clips, just not that specific kind usually unless I need to clip my bangs back for some reason

[mielgf]

having a crush when there’s no chance of anything happening is so fun but having a crush with actual, tangible potential makes me feel so ill

[multi-mess-of-fandoms]