#why do we live

[aceteling]

For real tho. My best friend is right it's really hard to get excited about the mundane anymore I need sth to look forward to that isn't just. A fuckin day of rest and that everything all over again

But it all feels pointless anyway

[grizzlyofthesea]

Let's give the Mad Dogs some Night Raven College dorms.

I'm bored and sick (stupid cramps), and I've picked up Twisted Wonderland* again after taking a break from it. Naturally, my interests combined to create this monstrosity.

April - Scarabia

April is, in many ways, open to new experiences. She has acquired many of her skills by trying new things, and she's quite the daredevil. However, she takes care not to endanger herself or anyone around her when she partakes in risky activities. I consider both of these forms of mindfulness, Scarabia's exemplary trait.

Raph - Diasomnia

Raph, above most other things, wants to be a hero. His idea of heroism includes qualities like strength and kindness, and he works every day to step closer to that ideal. I think that fits Diasomnia's manifesto of nobility.

Leo - Pomefiore

He's the face man. The pretty-boy. Naturally, he'd fit in with Pomefiore's fixation on beauty. Pomefiore also places value in tenacity; though Leo may act somewhat lazy and careless at times, his tenacity shines when the stakes are high.

Donnie - Ignihyde

I mean, duh. The boy has techno magic, and he's a huge nerd. Ignihyde fits him like a glove. Putting that aside, this dorm also values diligence above all else. Donnie's got plenty of that. How else would he be able to make so many things in so little time? How else would he be able to devise solutions for even the most difficult of problems?

Mikey - Octavinelle

Though our resident mermen may act in ways that no one on Earth would consider well-meaning, Octavinelle is founded on benevolence. That fits Mikey to a T. He does so much to support his family, and he's willing to give almost everyone a second chance--even the villains.

So yeah. This is a thing.

As for me, the official website "sorted" me into Savanaclaw, but my most common results on fanmade personality quizzes are Ignihyde, Octavinelle, and Scarabia. How about you guys?

*For anyone who hasn't heard of Twisted Wonderland, it's one of many, many gacha games. It's basically Disney villains reimagined as anime pretty-boys by Yana Toboso (yes, "creator of Black Butler" Yana Toboso)...and there's also a weird cat thing with blue fire coming out of its ears. It's just as ridiculous as it sounds. No dating sim stuff, though (thank goodness). It's just unadulterated chaos.

[inkskinned]

it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[biidisaster99]

How do you say the things that are not meant to be said,

How does one feel happy when you are full of dread,

How do you feel something that isn't real but is true,

How does one love and not regret.

[alabasterandpitch]

.

[silenttapestry]

I found a cat lying in the road yesterday on the way to town. I hate seeing that happen. I pulled over on my way back home, parked close to where I remembered seeing it, and walked there. I was kind of hoping animal control had picked it up, but no such luck. I couldn't stand the thought of its body getting mangled if someone's car drifted over the median, so I pushed it off to the side of the road with my shoe (it took a while to find an opening in the traffic). It looked like a Siamese; it had a cream-colored coat and dark legs, with blue eyes. It would have been bad enough to find that a stray cat had died like that, but it had what looked like a flea collar. I wish I knew who it belonged to. Molly went missing when I was about nine, although we finally found her about five weeks later. Finding out your cat has died hurts, although I think it's worse to wonder what happened to it and gradually have your hopes die. Either way, whoever had that cat will never hear it purr again, or get to scratch its ears, or any of those little things you love about a kitty. I still haven't figured out the reason we live if we die in the end no matter what. The Messiah offers another life, yes, but I don't think he cares that much about bringing our animals along.

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[rainyinautumn]

Etho's behavior in session 5 was frankly unhinged. he killed Bdubs' horse IN FRONT OF HIM and managed to get away scot-free in the chaos of the situation. AND THEN he stole the chicken farm hopper while HALF THE TEAM was in their base without them noticing, tried to trade it BACK to them, and finally returned it after GAINING THEIR ALLIANCE? what even. good for him.

[myrkulitescourge]

the way that one line from the new epilogue in an astarion romance is going to HAUNT me

just. what a profoundly intense thing to confess to someone.

like, just these six months of newfound happiness with you exerts a force on his heart equal and in direct opposition to two centuries of endless torment, the gnawing hunger and exploitation. this flashbulb-bright fraction of his long life holds the same gravity to him as years upon years of darkness and suffering.

in all likelihood, he hasn’t even known his lover for as long as his worst memory lasted, that year sealed away to go mad from starvation and sensory deprivation, yet he still tells them this brief time has been so fundamentally and powerfully important that the weight of even that unimaginable hell is vanishingly small compared to this present he has now and the future ahead of them both.

how am i supposed to act normal about this.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Not beating the allegations.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[teaboot]

Sometimes at work it's not my place to tell people the things I want to say, and I find I often go home at the end of the rougher days to stand blankly in my shower and tell myself over and over what I wish I could pass on.

This accomplishes very little, and mostly just gives me a tension headache, but through it all I think I've narrowed myself down to a few solid things I'd like to tell people the most.

You can't change people. Not permanently, not for anythig. You can support them, encourage them, love them, give them tools and opportunities and resources, but you can't make them change. They can change themselves if they want to, but they have to want to, and they have to want it for themselves, because they're the only one that's certain to be with them forever.

For better or worse, you make your own choices, and blaming bad choices on others doesn't only work to absolve you of responsibility- it also robs you of control. Because if you say you only did something because I did something, then you arent only shifting blame- you're admitting that you cannot control yourself, that you cannot truly make choices for yourself, that other people can control you- and as long as you truly beleive that, you'll keep facing the same problems over and over. You'll keep letting others dictate your choices, because you'll beleive that they can, and you'll never be free.

White knights on horseback are from fairytales. Nobody can help you if ou're not willing to help yourself. To try, to put the dirty work in, to belive you're worth that effort- Act as though nobody is coming to save you. From a struggle, from pain, from bad relationships, from yourself. And when you do save yourself, because you will, because failure here isn't an option if you want to survive, you'll never find another dragon that can keep you prisoner.

Don't say anything to anyone that you wouldn't want them remembering forever.

Doing the right thing in bad circumstances is hard. It's the hardest thing. But if you make the choice to do that hard thing anyways, despite your fear, you'll go on the rest of your like knowing that you're the sort of person who did something.

The present only seems the hardest because the past I over and the future hasn't happened.

There's so much joy ahead of you, the kind you can't possibly understand until you see it yourself.

The responsibility of consequences is often disguised as the power of permission. "I won't do this if you help me", "I'll work on my anger if you do this for me", "I promised you I'd quit, but can I have just one?". The unspoken question is, "Can it be your fault if this goes badly?"

You cant make someone love you the way you need to be loved. Someone can love you very much and still be bad for you, even if you love them very much in return. Two people can love each other very, very much, and try their very best, and still be wrong for each other.

Sometimes being near to someone changes you, even in good ways, and the people you become don't fit together as well as the people you were.

Caring takes work. Even if it's real. Especially if it's real. And the most important gestures aren't the grand, poetic, songs-and-flowers-and-tears moments; they're getting out of bed even though you don't want to. Paying attention to things you don't enjoy. Scrubbing pans, or opening a window, saying "thank-you", or helping carry groceries into the house. The small things fill the big things- without the small, boring, mediocre things, big things feel hollow.

Thrre is honour and dignity in humble work.

If you are a cruel and spiteful person, then you will find every place you visit to be full of the same cruel, spiteful people. This is not because the world is as cruel as you, but because everywhere you are, you will be disliked. This is the curse that comes with being persistently cruel and spiteful.

If you are a kind and ppsitive person, you will repeatedly encounter kind and positive people, because as they grow familiar with you, they will be happier to have you near. This is the reward of being a kind and positive person.

When splitting paths with loved ones, briefly or forever, aim for your last words to always be "I love you".

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 331

Demon twins? Demon twins. 

Damian? Good at the assassin side of things, at least for a four year old, but Danyal? He’s okay, but he’s far better at things like poisons and bookkeeping. Which is honestly? Okay. They’re the League of Shadows, and sure a majority of the members are assassins, but it’s definitely not all there are. So? Danyal starts getting medical training. 

Not to say that either of the boys don’t know their fair share of violence and healing- it’s just better to let them play to their strengths. One doesn’t keep a league over centuries if they just have one type of warrior, or even just warriors. A variety is needed. 

So one gets trained more towards the business side of things. Damian may be better at wielding the weapons and killing- even if neither have had their first kill quite yet- but Danyal shows far more proficiency at acting, at masking who he is and gathering information. 

Damian, when he’s first sent to their Father, doesn’t mention his twin. Not because he’s jealous or hates him or anything like that. You just don’t talk about someone in an undercover mission in the League, and it’s not something he realizes isn’t a rule everywhere. 

Needless to say, the Bats have more than a mild freakout the first time Damian mentions a twin who will be coming to the manor now that his mission is over. 

[nadjasnandor]

What We Do in the Shadows | 6.11. - "The Finale"

[hinamie]

congrats on your recovery n all yuuji but unfortunately for you I thought the scars were cool >:/