#i know jack was probably 100% gaslighting

[sylvies-chen]

the midwilshire family group chat headcanons

ok so the canon confirmation in 5.13 that the core group have a group chat with each other is probably one of THE best things to come from last night’s episode, and one thing abt me is that I LOVE found family shenanigans so you know I had to make this. so here’s what I think their group chat looks like:

nolan always goes to bailey whenever a phrase, abbreviation, or emoji is sent over text that he doesn’t understand

originally he went to henry but because of the time zone difference henry would be like “dad fuck off it’s 3am here I can’t explain to you what bffr means” so then bailey comes to the rescue

the whole group actually GASLIGHTS tim. like they will send the most unfunny 2012 facebook memes and tell him that it is the kind of stuff kids find funny these days, acting like he’s crazy for not laughing, and he gets so annoyed because he knows they’re fucking with him and he’s insulted they think he’s that lame but also they NEVER break. they commit to the bit 100% and keep at it

lucy sends obscure uquizzes like “find out what famous true crime documentary you are by choosing bts lyrics” or “what kind of wings would you have if humans had wings” or something like that

unless directly mentioned or asked a question (or unless she herself needs something) nyla will not text in the chat. the only exception is when she has an occasional girls’ night to get a break from leah, and then she (and angela) will get super drunk and start sending drunken voice memos and texting the group chat saying really affectionate stuff like how much she loves all of them, and she misspells every word

angela sends one picture of jack. ONE. and lucy responds with 80 different texts fawning over how cute he is, sending little 🥰 emojis and rambling about how nyla and angela have the cutest kids ever. the guys only send like one text each. but it gets to the point where angela only ever sends pictures of jack when she’s had a bad day and needs a serotonin boost or wants to feel like the best mom ever (which is true) because she knows lucy always goes insane and it makes angela feel good about herself

tim will ABSOLUTELY send all-caps messages late at night giving extremely heated commentary on whatever sports game is on and everyone will either play along with it (“nooo, not the lineguard!! (I have no idea what’s going on)” comes from wesley) OR it’ll be too late at night so they will all text him in unison going “SHUT UP ABOUT THE GAME”

there are also several group chats— like one with aaron and celina, one without them, one with all the spouses and SOs (bailey, james, wesley) and one without, one even with grey, one with just the ladies, etc.— and in the ones aaron is in, tim will send recent paparazzi pictures of aaron that he finds online just to fuck with him

celina also sends daily horoscopes to the ladies group chat

lucy and tim also always send out invites to tyler’s little league games because tim is convinced that a bigger audience showing support for the kids will help them succeed (and the litany of post-game snack ideas that they all suggest)

everyone also tries to pump free construction and repair advice from nolan and he’s a sucker for it every time

If y’all want more of these then lmk because I have a whole bunch of them

#the rookie #lucy chen #tim bradford #john nolan #bailey nune #nyla harper #angela lopez #james murray #wesley evers #celina juarez #aaron thorsen

[dogboyjackkennedy]

can you give us dave headcanons (insert the old discord pleading face emoji)

^ not forcing!

here we go! i've mentioned some of these in other posts before, but!! i'll put them here, too. also with a bit of Henry and Davesport sprinkled in, because why not:

i base Dave and a lot of his behaviors off of snakes: he can swallow things whole, he came from an egg, etc.

Dave has dark purple blood.

Dave can purr and have his pupils dilate like a cat's.

Dave's tail wags like a dog when he's happy.

Dave has claws on his fingers, and one of his nervous habits back when he was with Henry was to grab and claw at his arms when stressed. Not The Greatest, As You Can Imagine!

Dave would accidentally call Henry "dad" on occasion. Henry's reaction would either be Entirely Neutral, or he'd nearly make Dave cry.

Dave would never 100% admit it to himself, but he's scared of Henry.

Jack actually worked a bit at the diner before Dee and his' deaths. he may or may not be the reason Dave figured out that he wasn't straight.

due to some of the Literal Mind Fuckery (as i call it), Dave started to forget Jack more and more. Henry certainly didn't help by gaslighting him.

Dave felt bad about what happened to Dee, but he didn't know a lot of ways to help her that wouldn't also, y'know, Piss Off Henry.

by the time the first two games are happening, Dave can't tell if he loves Jack or hates him. like, does he want to kiss him or does he want to kill him??

he feels as though he remembers Jack, but can't remember from where.

Dave has nightmares about his time at the diner, but doesn't want to acknowledge them.

he doesn't remember any of the surgeries (Henry would typically knock him out before hand), and thus isn't 100% sure why his heart is gone

Dave is nonbinary, but doesn't really care. his philosophy on gender is "I Don't Have Enough Time To Care About This Shit." would probably use it/its pronouns if he knew they existed, though. so i guess you could say his pronouns are he/it, if you wanted. mostly only uses he/him, though

that's about it, tbh. i'm sure i have more, but these are the only ones coming to mind.

#dsaf #dsaf dave #thanks for the ask!!

[squishmallow36]

It's all I wish to hear tonight, and you're all I wish to be, and this is how we all fall - Chapter one

Summary: It's the Garvar fic! Wdym you want a summary? It's a retelling of the first chapter of kotlc from Garwin's pov. That's--that's pretty much it. We do have them interact which is pretty nice. There will be more loosely connected chapters to come but I don't know how many or how they'll turn out. Word count: 2730

TW: swearing, drug mention, mentions of kidnappings and murder in relation to the Sophie/Fitz interaction

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @florida-preposterously @poppinspop @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @remember-me-in-another-time @rusted-phone-calls @when-wax-wings-melt @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @hi-imgrapes @callum-hunt-is-bisexual @xanadaus @callas-pancake-tree @hi-my-name-is-awesome @katniss-elizabeth-chase @arson-anarchy-death. Also @frogs-and-flowers-and-faeries @camelspit you two seemed interested

On AO3 (only to registered users because y'know, AI) or below the cut

   If there’s one thing universally agreed upon by high schoolers, it’s this: field trips are fun. Or at least they should be, in theory. 

    Instead of being locked in a classroom for eight hours a day, you get to go outside, cause some havoc, you know, the usual. 

    Your other teachers end up being nice because you cried to them that between all your classes and this field trip, you need an extra week on that paper that you’ve had assigned for three months and you haven’t started and is due tomorrow for a reason. 

    And, most of the time, as an extra bonus, you learn absolute jack shit. 

    The only problem arises when the teacher that is taking you on the trip seems to forget that part and forces you to actually pay attention with the threat of a quiz, and knowing him, he’s going to make it absolutely horrendous. 

    Yes, dinosaurs are badass but having to listen to your teacher read the plaques out loud makes gouging your eyes out seem like a good course of action. 

    Are we completely sure the teachers here have a 100 percent literacy rate? Garwin wonders, rolling his eyes as Sweeney struggles through another scientific name. I mean, knowing this school system, it would not surprise me. 

    There’s a couple of nerds taking notes but honestly there’s no chance. If there is a quiz, it’ll be the type of thing that’s “What year, exactly, did the cretaceous era end?” And the multiple choice options will all be around that 66 million years ago mark ingrained in everyone’s soul but you have to remember that science was able to determine the meteor fell on a Thursday and from that you have to extrapolate what the date would have been. 

    Can a meteor fall on us this today Thursday? That’d be great. No more AP exams.  

    And yeah, AP classes are supposed to have a curve, but with that little photographic memory of Dophie’s only half paying attention and half listening to MCR so loud it can be heard from three miles away, she’s gonna get a perfect score. 

    Case in point: Sweeney finally hears Gerard screaming and catches onto the fact that Sophie is completely ignoring his existence, per usual. 

    “Miss Foster!” He yanks her earbuds out by the cords. “Have you decided that you’re too smart to pay attention to this information?”

    Well, she can probably legit get a zero on the final and still carry a 93 in the class. So I’d probably say the answer is yes. I think we all know that little smartass corrects Sweeney on a daily basis. 

    Between the typos and the shit he gets plain wrong, it was entertaining to see him flounder at the beginning of the year, but at this point she doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that everyone’s given up on the lost cause of a man. 

    This entire class has all had to suffer through more school than she’s been alive. Other than the dumbass sophomores in the class. But it wouldn’t be surprising to find out they were smoking weed in the back of class for a “science experiment.” 

    Ah, the things you can get away with in AP Enviro Science and a teacher that doesn’t care. Except about the toddler in his class who listens to music but hey. Maybe he’s insecure because he’s stupid and he has to maintain control over some aspect of his life.  

    Sophie mumbles something, denying it as she attempts to retract into her shell like a turtle. Unfortunately, humans don’t usually come with a shell, so she isn’t very successful. 

    “Then perhaps you can explain why you were listening to your iPod instead of following along?” Sweeney dangles the headphones in front of her as she rips out an eyelash. 

     Now, Garwin may have only gotten a 2 on the AP Psych exam last year because he only paid attention half the time because those daily quizzes were ass, but that doesn’t seem like the healthiest of coping mechanisms. 

    Sophie simply stares at the ground to pretend like Sweeney isn’t harassing her. 

    “Since you’ve decided you’re above this lecture, why don’t you give it?” Sweeney asks, gesturing to the definitely-accurate reconstruction of an orange hadrosaur. “Explain to the class how the Lambeosaurus differs from the other dinosaurs we’ve studied.”

    You see, one of these was the Pteranodon family’s neighbor on Dinosaur Train. Larry Lambeosaurus was an endless pit that never seemed to fill with food, much like the average teenager. Unlike the average teenager, however, this may have something to do with his diet of tree and its caloric density, or lack thereof. 

    Instead of listening to Sophie rattle off dinosaur facts learned from a lifetime of being a fucking nerd, Garwin chooses to look at literally anything else for some scrap of entertainment. 

    Like, for example, the Albertosaurus. And imagining it coming to life and eating everybody à la Jurassic Park. That would be fun. 

    Sweeney gets increasingly pissed off as she keeps going. He really should’ve learned long ago to not challenge her ‘cause it ain’t gonna go well for him. He mutters something under his breath, and turns to go to the next increasingly stupid dinosaur. 

    Actually, Garwin takes that back. The dinosaurs themselves aren’t stupid. It’s the whole idea of having to get dragged to a place to forcefully learn about them instead of actually studying for the AP exam in less than two weeks. Not that he actually cares about that though. 

    “Nice job, superfreak,” he says to Sophie as she stands helplessly in the middle of the walkway. He pushes past her in an effort to appear engaged enough to not get another detention. “Maybe they'll write another article about you. 'Child Prodigy Teaches Class About the Lame-o-saurus.’”

    Garwin’s gaze lands on someone reading the newspaper with Sophie’s face plastered across it. Yeah, the guy’s kinda cute with dark hair and teal eyes flicking up at Sophie ever so often…but, like, he’s probably freshman-ish years old and that’s kinda weird in the middle of the school day, not gonna lie. 

    And he isn’t in this class, that’s for sure. So he’s probably ditching. Kind of a dumb move to ditch and then go to a museum but hey. That’s his life choice and it’s not Garwin’s fault it’s stupid. 

    Garwin rolls his eyes as he moves into the next room. The desire to cause large amounts of property damage by climbing up the statues is immense, but, alas, one cannot succumb to temptation. 

    Their resident curvebuster doesn’t follow, and, honestly, that is a choice. Maybe if she gets eaten by a dinosaur or kidnapped with the guy pulling a Ferris Bueller, this class might know peace once again. 

    A not-small part of him could not give less of a shit if she disappears suddenly, and another not-small part of him can’t help but see the advantages. Maybe then we won’t all fail the class. It’s not like San Diego City College is going to miss her. Chances are, she’ll be the same to her unfortunate classmates there. 

    As the group shuffles around a reconstruction of a Triceratops, Sweeney begins droning on and on and on and on about the different types of ceratopsians, and it’s a damn fucking shame the one with three horns became famous instead of, like, the Kosmoceratops. 

    That fucker’s got fifteen horns and it’s common knowledge that an animal’s coolness is exponentially correlated with number of things that it has that can kill you. 

    In order to quell the rising tide of complete and total apathy, Garwin once again begins the search for something--anything--interesting to occupy his time.

    And don’t you know it? There’s a hot guy hiding in a corner trying desperately not to be seen. 

    Between him and the kid reading the newspaper in the other room, something weird is definitely going down. So the obvious course of action is to walk up to the guy and see what’s up. Maybe even flirt a little. As soon as he can escape from Sweeney’s torture chamber, that is. 

    In the meantime, Garwin can still stare at him. He has dark hair gelled to perfection and light blue eyes. His eyelashes are visible from this massive distance away, so they must be super long and therefore super hot. Garwin’s fingers ache to trace his sharp square jaw and his skin is a light tan with a dusting of freckles for good measure. 

    In short, he’s absolutely fucking gorgeous. 

    He’s way too far to be certain, but he kind of does look like newspaper boy…for reasons that are as of right now indescribable other than sheer vibes. 

   And he’s wearing a black batman sweatshirt--a foolish decision on a partially sunny day such as today--that hangs in such a way to suggest he’s got some muscles hiding beneath it. 

    The world would be improved in many ways if that sweatshirt was a little less on.

    Then, suddenly, by some miracle, some grace of god, Sweeney lets them explore for themselves. An argument could be made that he realized that no one was paying attention, but the more likely case is that he got tired of teaching and is now allowing them the slightest sliver of freedom to maximize his own laziness. 

    Garwin floats over to the guy in the corner as nonchalantly as possible as his traitorous heart is doing backflips in his chest. He was tall from a distance, but he’s even taller up close. 

    “Hey,” he says. Hey? Hey? That’s the most creative thing you could come up with? A cheesy pickup line would be better at this point.  

    “Hey yourself.” Guy-in-the-corner says with the slightest hint of a smirk. “I’m Alvar, what’s your name?”

    Garwin is almost too distracted by Alvar’s thick accent--almost British, but somehow crisper--to remember his own name. “I’m Garwin. It’s nice to meet you.”

    “Do you really think they looked like that?” Alvar asks. “The dinosaurs, I mean. It’s a little absurd, isn’t it?” 

    “Would you rather have the nerd answer or do you want the smartass answer?” Garwin replies. 

    “Who says I don’t want both?”

    “Ah. Well then. The nerd answer is that at least some of them should have feathers. They are the ancestors to birds, after all. The fact that none of them do is a little yikes. And as for my other answer, I’m not a paleontologist, but,” Garwin points to a fossilized sauropod…or at least a skeleton of one that may or may not be real, “that one might be a tad bit skinny.”

    Alvar laughs, a glorious sound. His eyes wander away from studying Garwin, focusing out of the room, landing on Sophie fucking Foster. 

    Ah, yes. First she gets into Yale without even trying and now she’s gained the attention of multiple people which depending on the intentions could be really fucking creepy. She’s literally twelve. This is complete and utter bullshit. 

    “Is that the kid on the front of the newspaper today?”

    “Yeah,” Garwin replies bitterly. 

    Alvar makes a thoughtful sound and looks back at Garwin, who has begun leaning against the wall. Yes, there’s a plastic fern between them but you do what you can. 

    “Come on, Fitz. Don’t be a total dumbass,” Alvar whispers as newspaper boy--Fitz--begins to step away from Sophie.  

    A swarm of kindergarteners barreled into the exhibit, nearly knocking both Sophie and Fitz off their feet. They hold their heads in their hands like their brains are physically getting stabbed and when they make eye contact again, Sophie watches Fitz in fear. 

    Why that is, Garwin can’t tell, but there’s something in Alvar’s expression that seems like he suspects something, and Garwin would give anything--except a full ride scholarship to Yale--to know what he does. 

    In the time Garwin spends studying Alvar’s features for clues and getting lost in his eyes, Sophie has magically disappeared. Fitz swears, probably loud enough to be heard all the way at the zoo across the street, as he runs after her. 

    Alvar rolls his eyes. “Life choices. Do I run after my dumbass of a brother or do I leave him be? Decisions, decisions,” he asks himself. 

    What the fuck? 

    Garwin looks back at Alvar to find him already watching him. “Would you like me to go tell Sweeney or just…let her skip class?” And probably get murdered just a little bit. 

    It takes a good few seconds for him to process this request. “Eh, I’m sure he’ll notice sooner or later.”

    Oh my fucking god this guy is fucked up. I don’t like Sophie, but I’d rather she not get kidnapped.

    …Is it bad that he's still hot?

        “Why the fuck are you two harassing Sophie?” The question comes out more forcefully than Garwin intends, but not enough to walk it back. 

    “That is one very long story and I don’t think you’d believe half of it. But let’s see--how simplified can I get this?” He pauses, formulating. “We’ve basically got a switched at birth situation going on here except we don’t exactly know who her actual parents are and well that’s a whole thing that I’d rather not get into right now. Also we don’t know if she’s actually the kid we’re looking for. And by we I mean mostly our dad but he isn’t here right now because he figured it would be less creepy for us to stare at children than he would be. And then Fitzy over there doesn’t know I’m here for extensive and even more complicated reasons. And he wasn’t supposed to interact with her. Problems all around.”

    Garwin considers this explanation for a moment. On the one hand, it leaves him with more questions than answers, and on the other hand, he doesn’t really care enough to ask for further elaboration. 

    “Just don’t murder Sophie. I don’t need to see her on the front cover of the newspapers that should already be obsolete two days in a row,” he decides. 

    Alvar smiles. His teeth are brilliantly white, and it’s ever so slightly crooked in such a perfect way that makes it seem practiced. His cobalt eyes fix Garwin to the spot as they turn toward each other. 

    “And, um, before I go, I do immensely apologize if I’m reading this wrong, but would you like to go out with me sometime?”

    “Why the hell else do you think I wandered over here? Absolutely.” 

    Instead of giving Garwin his phone number like a normal person by writing it on a sticky note or the back of his hand with a sharpie that doesn’t come off for a week or just directly typing it into their phone, Alvar comes equipped with a stack of business cards. 

     And honestly, it’s not even that surprising. Like, yes, he’s only known the guy for a grand total of fifteen minutes, but that tracks with what he knows so far…which isn’t much. But it still counts. Bitch. 

    Garwin smiles. “I’ll call you and set up details when I can look at my calendar and I’m not already busy with club meetings and shit.”

    “Sounds good.” 

    After a short pause, Alvar opens his mouth to say something else, but he’s interrupted by Sweeney’s nasal whining before he gets the chance. 

    Garwin rolls his eyes. “I guess I should get back to the fucked up reality that is the American school system. See you later.” 

    “Bye,”  Alvar replies, smiling. 

    Garwin makes his way back to the class reforming around Sweeney like a slime mold, taking his sweet time to not seem too eager to be going back to the hellhole that is occasionally referred to as a school but not dicking around so much he gets left, as making his way back there himself would be mildly inconvenient. 

    And we can’t have that, now, can we?

    Garwin looks back into the corner to sneak one more glance at the indescribably attractive boy who has for some reason asked him out only to find that he’s nowhere to be found. 

    Was he just a figment of my imagination?

    Garwin checks his back pocket, hissing as the sharp edges of a business card leave him with a paper cut. 

    Guess that solves that mess. 

    Now if only all the world’s problems could be solved so easily, we’d be onto something. 

#kotlc #kotlc fanfic #garvar #garwin chang #kotlc garwin #kotlc alvar #alvar vacker

[doom-dreaming]

The Sound of Silence

The gifts of a Vault aren't always appreciated.

(WARNINGS: Suicide, Major Character Death, Vomiting) (Note: This ties into a larger Borderlands fic I have in the works, albeit with a different ending.)

Read it on Ao3 here!

******

“FIONA!”

The gunshot echoed off the surrounding cliffs, ringing in Rhys’ ears. She seemed so far away, caught between his eyes and the barrel of the shotgun. A second seemed like an hour as the bullet sliced through the heavy air. Rhys couldn’t look away. He just stood there, feeling frozen, cold, like all the blood had left his body. She was going to die. Fiona, a Vault Hunter, his friend, his lover...was milliseconds from death.

He could see her twisting away, trying to dodge, but she wasn’t going to make it. He knew it was futile, to reach out to her, to scream her name again, as if that would somehow save her. He did it anyway. Why couldn’t he have been closer? Pushed her out of the way? Taken the bullet himself? No, he was helpless to do anything but watch. The slowly-advancing bullet would bury itself into her skull, directly between her eyes. Those beautiful green eyes. And then she’d be gone. Dead.

Something foreign welled up within him, filling his veins with heat. She didn’t deserve to go out like this. Not now, not ever. He wasn’t going to let that happen. As soon as this thought was firmly anchored in his brain, time suddenly seemed to catch up with itself. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, feel his muscles straining as he stretched across the sand toward her.

And that’s when it happened. All at once. A sharp crack, louder than the gunshot, ricocheted off the stone walls of the canyon. The ground between Fiona and the gunner trembled, then exploded, tossing up a dervish of sand. Fiona was thrown to the side from the force of the blast, and Rhys watched as the bullet whistled harmlessly past her ear. The man holding the shotgun stumbled backward with a grunt, but didn’t lose his balance. Horror and anger boiled in Rhys’ blood as the gunner steadied himself and lined up another shot at Fiona, now lying dazed and defenseless in the dirt.

With a scream that felt like it shredded his vocal cords, Rhys sprinted toward the other man. Instantly, the gun’s muzzle swung around, level with his chest, and Rhys raised his left hand in reflexive defense, even though he knew it would do nothing to stop a bullet. Only he proved himself wrong because the shot never came. As soon as he opened his palm, a wave of piercing heat lanced down his arm and half a second later, hell broke loose. A ripple of energy pulsed across the short distance separating Rhys from his almost certain death, hitting the gunner with a blinding flash of light. Electricity crackled, filling the air with the sharp scent of ozone and smoke.

And then it was over. No light, no supercharged air…no gunman. Rhys stared at the ground where the man had stood. There was no body. No blood. Only a thin sheet of glass in the sand and a few dissipating wisps of smoke. Rhys’ chest was tight, his head was swimming, he felt so nauseous. The world spun in front of his eyes as the heat in his arm ebbed away, leaving behind an equally painful cold. It felt like liquid nitrogen was being injected into his veins. Burning and freezing simultaneously.

He was barely aware of Fiona muttering “what the hell” before he crashed to his knees and pitched forward, throwing up a paste of half-digested drakefruit. God, it hurt. Everything hurt.

Footsteps crunched toward him. “What did you do?!” Fiona demanded. “What the hell just happened?!”

He could only shake his head as his stomach flipped again, forcing hot, bitter acid up his throat. He gagged, spitting it out onto the sand, gasping for breath. “I...don’t know...I think I...killed him…”

Fiona knelt down and ran her fingers over the glass. “Well, whatever that was, it was hot enough to do this…” She stared at him, then pointed. “Look, Rhys.”

He glanced down at his chest. Brilliant blue glowed back at him.

“I’ve got to take you to Sanctuary. Now.”

There was absolutely no sound from beyond the door. Even the air in the hallway seemed motionless. She reached for the doorknob, turning it slowly. “Rhys...?” The hinges creaked as she pushed the door open, loud amidst the silence. The room on the other side was dark, and she could barely make out a shape slumped against the far wall. A waft of stale air hit her, dusty and sour. She grimaced.

“Rhys? Hey...” She focused on the familiar silhouette, trying not to stare at the faintly-glowing patterns pulsing across his skin. “Lilith and Maya said...” She trailed off, choked by the sudden lump rising in her throat, and wished her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dim light.

To say he looked bad would have been a terrible understatement. No, he looked dead. His clothes, normally so clean and precise, were rumpled, haphazard, and stained. His skin was ashen, his hair was tangled and unwashed, his lips were chapped and cracking. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull and he stared straight ahead with an unfocused, glazed expression, as if he wasn’t aware of her presence at all.

She swallowed, taking a step closer.

In a sudden flurry of motion, he was on his feet, backing away. His eyes, now focused, were wild, glinting in the low light, darting around the room. From her, to the door, back to her.

“Rhys...?”

He just shook his head frantically.

She held out her hands to him. “Rhys, it’s okay—”

“D-d-don’t. P-please.” His voice was hoarse, his breathing labored. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me? You saved my life...” She started forward again. “Why would you—”

“S-stop, please, just—just stop,” he pleaded, still shaking his head and backing away from her. “Fiona, p-please...” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Please...please...”

Her gut clenched as he looked up at her, desperation evident in his eyes. “I...don’t get it,” she admitted softly.

Rhys forced out something between a laugh and a sob, but didn’t offer any other answer; just kept shaking his head. After a long minute, he drew in a ragged breath and broke the tense silence. “I can’t control it.” He raised his left hand; slowly, looking at it with distant eyes.

Fiona could only watch, mesmerized by the erratic flashes of bright blue that twisted down her lover’s arm.

“Can’t control it,” he repeated, softer, more to himself.

“But aren’t—”

“NO! You don’t get it.”

The change of tone was enough to snap her out of whatever daze she’d fallen into. He was staring directly at her, and for the first time, she felt something cold creep into her chest at the sight of his mismatched eyes. The intensity and focus unnerved her. He looked...dangerous. Feral.

Yet it passed in an instant. Almost so quickly that she wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it.

“You know about Jack’s daughter,” he began, voice soft, once again watching his arm with that far-off expression. “She was a Siren, too. You know what she did?” He glanced up at her briefly. “She killed her own mother. When she was just a little girl. Because she couldn’t control what she had!”

Just like that, the edge was back and Fiona found that she was the one stepping away this time.

“You saw what happened to him. The man who...” He cut himself off with another strange noise. “There wasn’t even enough of him left to leave a bloodstain...” Again, he made eye contact, but it wasn’t like before. All Fiona could see this time was pain. “I won’t let that happen to you.”

“It won’t, Rhys—”

“You don’t know that!” he barked. “You...you can’t p-possibly know t-that.” He took a few shaky steps backward and collapsed against the wall. “I’m s-sure Angel loved her m-mother...a-and yet...that wasn’t enough t-to keep it from happening, was it!? Sh-she killed...” He dissolved into tears before he could finish the sentence, sliding back down to the floor.

Fiona drifted across the room, falling weakly onto a couch, feeling totally helpless for only the second time in her life. Only this time was somehow worse than the first. The man she loved was literally falling to pieces right in front of her and so far, she hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it, despite being here, with him, capable and willing. Lilith had said he hadn’t eaten since that incident out in the Badlands. That had been three days ago.

“Rhys.”

Nothing but sobbing.

“You’re going to end up killing yourself,” she whispered.

“S-so let it h-happen,” was the broken mumble. “You’d a-all be b-better off...”

She drew in a sharp breath. “You have to help me understand. Please.”

He blinked up at her, tears glistening on his face.

“When Helios crashed, people died. What makes one man so different from all—”

“Because it was me,” he cut in. His voice was surprisingly level. “Helios was Jack’s fault. But that man out there in the desert? I was responsible for that. I…vaporized him. I didn’t even have to touch him! It’s inside me, and I don’t want it—”

“He was trying to kill me, Rhys!” she countered, standing again. “You weren’t going to let that happen! You were protecting me!”

“I don’t want this!” he screamed. “It hurts, okay?! It feels like I have acid in my veins and I would gladly bleed myself dry just to make it stop—” He doubled over onto his hands and knees with a moan, gagging up nothing but raw air and bile.

Fiona couldn’t watch. She shut her eyes and waited until the coughing stopped to open them again. “Tell me how I can help.”

He didn’t answer for a long time. Just stayed there on the floor, shaking, sobbing, looking so small. “You can leave.”

“I’m not leaving—”

“Fiona...p-please.”

She shook her head firmly. “I know you think there’s no way out of this, but you’re not doing yourself any favors by—”

“I already told you!” Hysteria was starting to creep into his voice. “You’re not safe around me!”

“I am not going to leave you here like this—”

“Get out!”

“I love you, Rhys!”

“GET. OUT!”

A hush fell over the room as they stared at each other. That same animalistic intensity was back in his tear-stained eyes, but this time, it didn’t scare her. It broke her heart. He truly thought he was taking care of her. Slowly, she backed toward the door. He didn’t say anything, just watched her go.

The click of the latch was too loud in the quiet and she simply stood there, her heart pounding against her ribs. She'd never seen him in so much pain before. And what made it worse was the fact that it wasn't only physical pain. This was deeper. This was something she couldn't heal. She was losing him because he hadn't wanted to lose her.

Setting her jaw, she turned back, grabbing the doorknob. She couldn’t let him do this to himself. They hadn’t come all this way to—

The knob wouldn’t turn. "Rhys?! Rhys!" She tried again. Still stuck. “Dammit, Rhys, I won’t let you do this! I’m going to get Lilith!”

There was no answer. Even his crying had quieted. However, she heard one last hitched sob before a deafening gunshot pierced through the thick air. When her ears stopped ringing, all she could hear was silence.

****** Tag List: @corpseyb0nes @afterthedreamer @mischiefsilvertongue @marigold-magpie @tricerathotss @vanderlinde-exe @ayilachan @zipp0flare @luxury-of-insanity @omgzakoko

#borderlands fanfiction #rhyiona #tw:suicide #my writing #rhys the company man #fiona the con artist #siren!rhys #rhys x fiona #before you @ me about the angel story: #i know jack was probably 100% gaslighting #and it wasn't angel's fault #but rhys wouldn't know that #he'd only know what he'd heard around hyperion

[blank-space-daisy13]

Why I won’t invite my biological father to my wedding.

I wanted to post this on Instagram or Facebook but I don’t want to deal with people saying I’m “drama.” But I wanted to write this out just in case someone is ballsy enough to ask me.

Let’s start off with the fact that after he got with my step mom, he wasn’t really around. He also never really cared or tried to take care of us (my brother and me) unless he absolutely had to.

Before my step mom and when we still lived in the apartment, On nights he had us my mom would drop us off already fed, he’d turn the tv on and go play on his computer until we had to go to bed. If he had us on a weekend, same thing. We’d wake up and he’d feed us breakfast, then tv with him in his room on the computer, lunch, tv, dinner, tv, and bed. When we moved from the apartment we stayed at his buddy’s house where he rented a room but guess what? He’d send us down to the basement all day to watch tv, and let us up for meals.

When my stepmom came into the picture, we started going to Canada. On every single one of his weekends. She was nice, at first. Sooner or later everyone shows their true colors. But she started slowly to get a hold of my dad. (My dad had no boundaries with us and she wanted to “help” my dad learn to discipline, but she’s a little extreme.) I once got punished for saying the word “butt” because we only say, “bum” and he yelled at me. Yelled. I was about 7 or 8. Then I heard my future step mother telling him how good he did. Also while we were there, I remember very few times we actually hung out with my dad. It was always being shoved into the playroom with my brother, future stepsister, and sometimes future stepbrother. (Step mom never had full custody of stepbrother.) We’d never leave the playroom other than for meals like the TV. But at least we weren’t rotting our brains, I guess.

After awhile he decided he wanted 50/50 custody. My stepmom at this point could be brutal emotionally. I remember getting yelled at for not knowing any of my immediate family member’s birthdays. I was about 8 or 9. Kind of shitty don’t you think? Going back to the wanting 50/50 custody, he didn’t actually want us. Looking back I understand this now. He just didn’t want to pay as much child support, and that’s probably the only reason my step mom agreed to this. They treated us (my brother and i) horribly. He moved close to my mom’s to prove he’d be willing to do the 50/50 custody, and at that point it was hell. If we did something wrong, immediately we’d get soap in the mouth. My brother later on was getting hot sauce. It would be for things such as, “not sharing with your step sister,” (which she would’ve lied about) or “talking back,” when as a kid I was asking a simple question about their rules. They had so many rules to the point you didn’t realize you were breaking a rule until they told you it was one. My *fondest* memory was when they’d send us kids to the basement for a few hours during the weekend and then got mad when we went through boxes and such to find toys to play with. Because when they first sent us down there, they sent us down there with nothing at all. Sure we probably shouldn’t have gone through boxes, where my brother and I found our toys that they never put with our step sister’s toys, but they sent us down there with nothing at all. They expected us to “imagine” things with no toys. I also got yelled at one weekend because they asked us to clean our bathrooms. (Step sister and I shared a Jack and Jill bathroom and my brother had his own bathroom as well.) We went and picked things up and went back to play. They both yelled at us and said, “If I had meant pick up I would’ve said pick up. I said CLEAN.” At this point I had never cleaned a bathroom in my life. They gave us the cleaning supplies and we went to work. I did what I thought was the best I could do and then my stepmom yells at me, “That wasn’t nearly long enough!!!! Haven’t you ever cleaned a bathroom before?!” Uh no ma’am, I was literally 10. But that was her favorite way to make us feel like shit. To yell, “Haven’t you done XY&Z before?” Or “You don’t know (blank)?! So disrespectful! You should know these things!” (That was said about the birthdays. Again I was a decently young kid.) But going forward, towards the end of them living there, they had a baby together, my other brother J.

Luckily for my brother and I, he eventually gave up going for the 50/50 custody. But with doing this, he left and we didn’t see him for a long time. 5-6 years approximately. I was 15 when he decided he wanted to see us again, and because of everything we had gone through before, we didn’t want to. I had a choice but my brother didn’t, and I was forced to go.

At this point he had married my stepmother, and was living in the same subdivision, and one road away, where had had a house with my mom when they were married. Kind of awkward but ok.

And I have to say, they were better. To a point. They wanted us to feel bad that we didn’t want to be there. At the time I had a really old phone, not a smart phone, that didn’t lock, but they expected my phone to be on the counter at 9pm every night. They read my texts and held them against me, but when I called them out on reading my texts, they told me I was crazy. I would text my friends that I didn’t want to be there, and that I was uncomfortable. They asked me, “Why don’t you want to be here? Why are you uncomfortable? We understand what we did in the past was wrong, but the past is the past and you have to forgive us!” (One wrong thing I was always taught was you always have to forgive. You don’t always have to forgive for things that hurt you.) Finally at the end of this period, they sat us down and tried to make us feel bad by saying, “If you don’t want to be here, we don’t want you here. We want you to want to be here.” At 15 I tried to explain why this was hard, but they didn’t care. It wasn’t their way so they weren’t ok with it.

Fast forward to my Senior Year of high school, I don’t remember how, but my father and I got in touch. My step mom wanted nothing to do with me because of a dumb YouTube video I made at 14 where I “talked shit” about her daughter and herself. Yes, I did, but who didn’t do something dumb at 14? I wasn’t allowed around their house because HER son had a “drug problem.” (Marijuana) Whatever, I didn’t care. Slowly we lost touch because I was the only one calling, and I got sick of it. I was done. But I was still young.

Fast forward to me being a sophomore in college. I was 20 or 21. My brother had an issue that got the police and CPS involved. My father decided to text me and ask me what was going on. I called him and told him that he had “no fucking reason to know what was going on” because he was never around. He gaslighted me into feeling bad because I cussed him out for 10 minutes. But we kept contact after that because I had thought about it and I wanted to get to know my little brother J more. We did lose contact again but then we gain it back later on.

Skip forward a couple years and I’m talking to my cousin, (another thing was he kept us from his side of the family and I had lost contact with most of them until I was an adult.) my cousin told me he was going to MY little BABY sister’s 1st birthday. My father had been talking to me for a few months at this point and NEVER mentioned I had a baby sister. He told me, “I thought your aunt posted about it. I saw it on Facebook and assumed you knew!” It doesn’t matter whether I saw it on Facebook or not. He should’ve told me. But whatever, I let that go too.

Here is where I get frustrated. I wouldn’t call for a couple weeks because I didn’t think about it. I’ve only seen him twice in the past 9 years. But he would blame me for us not talking, when he’d never call or try to talk to me. It drives me crazy when people think like that. It’s not just my responsibility and mine alone.

Skip forward to a few months ago when he brought up politics. I hated this because I’m mostly liberal/democrat and he’s 100% republican. He called liberals “libtards” and goes, “you’re not a libtard are you?” And when I tell him it’s offensive he says, “It’s just a joke!” But now we’re here and yet again it’s been 2 or 3 months since we’ve spoken because he’s blocked my number. It goes straight to voicemail and my texts aren’t going through as iMessages. I’ve decided after trying for over two months, he’s uninvited to the wedding. He’s never met my fiancé, ever. We were only inviting him to be civil. But if he can’t even speak to me, I feel it’s not my problem, and it’s one less drama issue to worry about at the wedding.

My family can believe what they want. There are so many things left out of this 15 year drama circle of my father just disappearing. And I don’t care anymore. I hope someone asks why he wasn’t invited because I know for a fact he’ll be at least telling the whole family that he wasn’t invited. And I don’t mind sending them this so they can know why.

[mittensmorgul]

As Above, So Below

I’m still trying to pinpoint exactly why the focus on “heaven is fixed and actually a paradise now!” is just so deeply unsatisfying to me. And I think I need to preface this with a bit of backstory about me, because I think that gives the rest of this essay some relevant context.

I know this isn’t relevant to my main point here, but this is a metatextual and thematically identical example of the exact thing I’m gonna lay out, because context is always helpful. So please forgive this seemingly irrelevant detour, because I promise it will be relevant by the end.

(plus, would it really be an Essay By Mittens™ without at least one baffling tangent? no, it would not!)

Tangent time!

I think everyone that follows me knows how skeptical I was... or should I say how WARY I was of the way Eileen was returned to the narrative this season. We were warned in the PREVIOUS EPISODE how much Chuck was attempting to interfere in their lives. I was accused of some very nasty things, of hating the ship, or hating the character of Eileen, or of hating Sam and not wanting them to be happy. No amount of pointing at obvious warning signs in the text, no amount of yelling about Sam’s God Wound or the absolute klaxon warning that the wound had become “quiet” and his Chuck-O-Vision Nightmares had apparently stopped seemed to matter. I was declared “wrong” and told to shut up.

And then 15.09 happened, and basically everything I’d been wary of was shown to be what actually happened, but there were still unresolved issues. Eileen doubted her own feelings and walked away. She doubted what was actually real. And at the time, I said many times that I would be thrilled to see those issues resolved by the end of the season, and for her to truly know that what she’d felt growing between her and Sam was real. And by the end of the season, despite my personal horror at her previous situation (and having that personal horror compounded by the fandom literally gaslighting me and attempting to bully me into ignoring this basic actual plot detail of this specific growth process which... in the context of what my personal objection was to accepting her return at face value in the first place having been personal trauma associated with gaslighting and manipulation...) by the time 15.18 aired, I was 100% convinced that Sam and Eileen had fully chosen each other, and felt the traumatic pain Sam suffered during that text conversation with her during the snap. She NEEDED to come back, because she had been set up to be part of Sam’s Win. They were clearly each other’s future.

The show literally put in all the work to make even *me* feel this to be True and Right and Good. And then after that point we never even hear Eileen’s name again. We never were told that she was even returned at the end of 15.19. Sam, who had been so entirely devastated by her disappearance in the previous episode that he couldn’t even process it was apparently hit with an amnesia hammer and just... never even thought about her again through a long greyscale life with a blurry baby Dean factory vaguely in the background of a single scene of his life. I can’t credit or justify how after an entire year invested in making us all truly care about Sam and Eileen and the happiness they found in each other if only the cosmos would allow them to choose each other in the end would just... erase all of that in the series finale.

Which brings me to the second tangent, which is specifically about *me,* and how I feel about the cosmic order in the television show Supernatural. Because I feel a lot about it. Probably more than most people ever did. And this is also important to understanding the main underlying point I need to make here.

Something I’ve been most looking forward to, for YEARS, about Supernatural eventually ending someday was writing a book, or a thesis, or even just organizing and compiling all my observations into a cohesive narrative specifically about the cosmology of the Supernatural universe. I’ve been cobbling together my observations and realizations about the nature of heaven, hell, purgatory, the empty, the alternate universes we’ve seen, and yes, even the cosmic function of the mundane level of the story as told by events that transpired on Earth. So of everyone watching this dumb show for the last 15 years, I don’t actually know anyone who cared more that I did about finding a satisfactory resolution and transformation of every plane of existence-- the mortal world AND the “afterlife realms” we’ve experienced on this show. And in the wake of the finale, I feel cheated out of that. Because in the end, it wasn’t about the triumph of free will and a flip of the script, it was just more of the same.

And now that I have those two preliminaries out of the way, I’ll finally get to the point. :’D

(hooray, it didn’t even take 1k words to get there for once!)

The “main stage” of Supernatural has always been Earth. It’s always been “Humanity.” At the very start, we meet two men whose lives had always been dictated to them by higher powers. At first, that “higher power” was their father who raised them in his vengeance mission, who trained them to hunt the supernatural. It was the inciting incident of the entire series, after all, their realization that forces outside of their control had irrevocably altered the course of their lives. It had forever torn down what they’d trusted in family, in personal safety, and would become something they couldn’t outrun or fight back against for long before another wave of cosmic discord would settle over them once more.

We watched this story play out in ever increasing spheres of cosmic significance, until Gabriel laid it out on the table for them in the simplest possible terms (in 5.08).

GABRIEL: You do not know my family. What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner. That's why there's no stopping this, because this isn't about a war. It's about two brothers that loved each other and betrayed each other. You'd think you'd be able to relate. SAM: What are you talking about? GABRIEL: You sorry sons of bitches. Why do you think you two are the vessels? Think about it. Michael, the big brother, loyal to an absent father, and Lucifer, the little brother, rebellious of Daddy's plan. You were born to this, boys. It's your destiny! It was always you! As it is in heaven, so it must be on earth. One brother has to kill the other. DEAN: What the hell are you saying? GABRIEL: Why do you think I've always taken such an interest in you? Because from the moment Dad flipped on the lights around here, we knew it was all gonna end with you. Always. A long pause. SAM and DEAN look down, then at each other. DEAN: No. That's not gonna happen. GABRIEL: I'm sorry. But it is. GABRIEL sighs. GABRIEL: Guys. I wish this were a TV show. Easy answers, endings wrapped up in a bow...but this is real, and it's gonna end bloody for all of us. That's just how it's gotta be. ***

And isn’t that all even 1000x more painfully ironic that it all still happened even 10 years later? It was always going to end with them. And lol, “I wish this were a TV show” because if it was then it wouldn’t have to end bloody.

But this… was a Major Acknowledgement that the meta level of this story was consistent, and was telling us something important. It demonstrated that the Cosmic Structure Itself was the cause for Sam and Dean’s “destiny” in this story. But that’s not what the point of this story has ever been.

Nobody (including me, who is literally obsessed with this aspect of the story) has ever invested themselves in the narrative of Supernatural because they cared about the fate of the cosmic order over and above the fate of the characters who had committed to overthrowing it all, to “tearing up the pages” and writing their own destinies. I mean, we became invested because Sam, Dean, and Cas as characters took us by the hand and invited us to come along with them as they battled against fate for the good of EARTH and HUMANITY.

And certainly, Heaven being a horrific sort of eternal replay of the “highlights” of individual souls greatest hits, where free will didn’t apply as everyone was just boxed away into their individual holodecks to serve as some sort of giant Heaven Battery powering the furtherance of this narrative, this “cosmic order” that had become so powerful it dictated the events and manipulated the lives of people who still existed in the ostensible realm of free will and human life on Earth… that couldn’t stand in the end. But what the narrative (and people I’ve seen attempting to justify the finale as narratively sensible) seems to have forgotten was that all of that was Chuck’s construct to begin with. That without Chuck holding his kingdom in Heaven together, the walls of all those soul cubicles ceased to even be relevant.

After spending their entire lives to this point constantly fighting their way to the absolute pinnacle of the As Above, So Below narrative and pulling the plug on the original creator himself, Humanity should’ve triumphed. And I’d argue that it DID, through Jack restoring the missing essential “humanity” to the divine condition. And, silly me, I thought they’d achieved the promise of “paradise” heralded by Jack’s birth at last, and truly “flipped the entire script of the narrative.”

Ever since they thwarted the original apocalypse, I had hope that they would continue to achieve the same result right up the ladder. Metatron trying to fill the role of Chuck Junior hit his own narrative wall in TFW, while Dean’s battle with the Mark of Cain, and Cain telling him he was “living my life in reverse” and would succumb to destiny by killing his loved ones in the “reverse order” to Cain’s own path to downfall cemented this for me. Dean not only failed to kill any of his loved ones (you didn’t kill your own brother. why?), he SAVED them. He didn’t fulfil the prophecy in reverse, he subverted it. He UNMADE it.

Perhaps I was thinking on too grand a scale, that the ultimate inversion wouldn’t be “God is overthrown and replaced by more of the same,” but “God is overthrown and the entire order of the universe is restructured from the bottom up rather than the top down.

I’d hoped against hope that the conclusion of the narrative would be “As below, so above,” with the fundamental power of human love becoming the new foundation of the cosmic order. It never even occurred to me that “taking back the narrative to rewrite it for ourselves” was not the ultimate goal of Team Free Will, or the ultimate expression of their biggest win.

This whole “well heaven really needed to be rebuilt, there was still work to be done!” seems… irrelevant to me if they’d truly won free of the cosmic narrative. The entire structure of the universe-- including Heaven and Hell-- should’ve defaulted to the paradise state that Jack was literally born to bring to fruition. Wasn’t that the point of his entire role in the story, ultimately?

And if that wasn’t the case in the end, why did we never learn the fate of Hell? Was it just… irrelevant and unchanged after this? Or just… abandoned as a concept entirely? It’s just strange to me to put such a focus on heaven being the sole sphere of import in the end that it undercuts the essential humanity of the narrative for me.

The story itself had kept Heaven on a back burner for years, only occasionally mentioning that the structure of the place was falling further and further into disrepair with a dwindling force of angels struggling to keep the walls in place at all, that it seems like it could’ve been an afterthought at the end of the series rather than a focus so large it required the death of both main characters to make sure we all understood that Heaven Had Changed Now. Because TFW had never been fighting to make Heaven right. They’d been fighting to save the world itself, for humanity to all have a chance to live their lives as their own.

And we didn’t need to see that in the final hope they might get their own lives on Earth to explore. In the end, the fundamental narrative that Life On Earth was dictated by the cosmic structure of creation was never fully subverted. And for me, that’s the main reason I just… can’t accept the finale. It wasn’t a victory of free will and humanity, in the end it was just more of the same.

I appreciate the attempts to take the essential bones of the story we did get and apply a different polish to the surface of the skeleton, but to me it still feels like we’re looking at completely different beasts in the end. Like… to me this was as jarring a revelation as those drawing of modern animals reimagined as dinosaurs entirely based on their skeletons. Like, all along the narrative told me I was looking at a swan. They told me this skeleton they’re building out from is definitely a swan, without a doubt.  I know what a swan looks like-- a graceful feather-covered bird with magnificent wings. I trusted that in the end it would be at least remotely swan-looking. And then the finale ended up looking like this

and I just don’t even know where everything went so wrong. Or maybe all along I just assumed they actually knew what a swan looked like, but weren’t sure they could actually pull it off and settled for whatever the heck this is instead. Either way, I’m actually kinda grateful to the finale for being so entirely disappointing on every level, because otherwise I probably would’ve tried to adopt the monstrosity of it anyway. And I’m really, really glad I don’t have to.

#spn 15.20 #spn cosmology #heaven hell purgatory and the empty #and this is why no amount of narrative defense of the finale is capable of making me feel any better about it #i admit i thought too big... but it was all right there in the narrative to see #oh well at least all i have to do to hold on to my grandest notion of the universe is throw out the finale :'D

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

Tommy’s (and Tubbo’s) Character /rp /dSMP

This is a bit of a rant so like be warned. I have nothing against any CCs mentioned in this, this is all roleplay, lighthearted, and just a bit of fun analysis. Mostly this is a ramble about how I see certain people analysing Tommy’s character on tumblr and twt, and why I think they’re wrong. This isn’t directed at anyone specific, just a trend I’ve been seeing that kinda irks me. I don’t dislike the fandom, just a few ‘takes’ have been really weird for me.

TW for everything below: analysing the effects of trauma, abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, and lack of therapy.

I’m not really liking how victim-blamey everyone is getting currently in the dSMP, both in fandom and canon. In canon with certain characters but especially in fan analysis posts and especially about Tommy and Tubbo. People legitimately celebrating that Tommy might start ‘apologising’ for his actions more and 'growing as a person' somehow don’t realise that hes been made this way through a tonne of negative reinforcement. abuse, and gaslighting. And people blaming Tubbo for actions he had no choice in, rather than the actions he did choose.

Currently, as I see it, Tommy is so scared that anyone would find a reason to be pissed off at him that his fighting spirit has been completely crushed. He was exiled and abused when he should have been helped and given an understanding figure to guide him and teach him how to deal with things non-violently. In everyone’s eyes, the problem was that Tommy was creating violence with no real reason, acting recklessly and commiting crimes. Tubbo, having made him a part of his cabinet, knew that this would only harm the country. So instead of talking to him reasonably, he got angry, put him on trial, and punished him with the logbook (humiliating him by making him report back to Fundy, which he obviously hated). Tommy’s actions were, of course, bad, but did he deserve everyone ganging up on him? No. Especially when Tubbo was supposed to be in his corner, helping him out like he always said he would (”It’s me and you vs Dream” etc). This is the first betrayal of trust from Tommy’s POV. He doesn’t understand what he did wrong to its full extent, and no one can explain it to him. 

However, Tubbo was under a lot of pressure from Dream and George, and he’s a literal child President, so his ‘safety over friendship’ actions are understandable. I don’t believe Tubbo is solely to blame for anything he’s done in season 2, but it can’t all be excused. If you are to blame Tommy for his recklessness, you have to blame Tubbo, at least partially, for his disregard for Tommy’s feelings and mental state. There were other ways to go about the entire thing, including the trial, which was just horrible to watch, and agreeing to give Dream the disc, something Tommy gave him in pure confidence that it would be safe with Tubbo. Yikes moment.

At that time, Tubbo knew a lot of things about Tommy. In fact, he probably knew the most about Tommy out of anyone on the server. He knew the discs were incredibly important and a comfort item for Tommy. He knew Tommy had trauma from being exiled in the past. He knew Tommy was abused, or at least manipulated by Wilbur, in addition to growing up in war. Wilbur once told Tommy to stop being reckless, and Tommy listened, changing his attitude because he looked up to Wilbur so much. Then Wilbur said ‘let’s be the bad guys’ and stopped trying to mentor Tommy. There’s a conflict here, because Tommy was told by Wilbur that he wasn’t good enough to be President (links to the idea of ‘not being strong enough’) but he knows that Wilbur was a bad person. But Tommy is never given the chance to reconsile his feelings surrounding Wilbur, both because of Ghostbur and because of the conflict he starts with George. So he is harbouring a mixture of emotions about his mentor and brother, not understanding how to untangle the ‘real Tommy’ from the manipulated boy he became. 

What was going through his head when he stole from George and griefed him? Perhaps the thought that he needed to show he was still the same old Tommy. Maybe the need to ‘prove himself’ as a strong person? It could have just been an outlet for his trauma. He’s grown up in a world where everyone is either a friend or an enemy. George isn’t a friend. How was he supposed to know that hurting him was bad?

Tubbo was pressured into the actions he took against Tommy, but he was pressured far too easily. There is no moment where Tubbo turns to Tommy and makes sure he’s okay, he views him as ‘selfish’ and overdramatic, and sees his actions that way. This makes sense from Tubbo’s POV, he’s struggling to be President in ways that Wilbur *knew* he would, but in Tommy’s eyes this is the worst betrayal he’s ever known. The moment Tubbo (rightfully, but poorly executed) defies Tommy’s plan to hire Technoblade (ahem, seeing Techno as a weapon again) and exiles Tommy is the moment their friendship shatters. They’re two people who don’t understand each other anymore. Two people who are technically in the right, but only hurt each other. 

What Tommy needed was a therapist, instead he had Dream, who put out the fire of rebellion that made him so strong, and Techno, who was trying to help but doing it in the wrong way. 

People see tommy's change post-exile as a good thing because he's not as rebellious anymore and he’s thinking things through a lot before he does them, but they will soon realise that his rebellion was one of his best traits and the fact that no one saw it as anything but a problem really shows. He now second-guesses himself so much and is so scared of being wrong that everything seems too difficult and too dangerous. Every trait can have a positive and negative side. Tommy's defiant nature would have made him the perfect negotiator with a little practise. In fact, he had plenty of good ideas before he was exiled (using spirit against Dream, though it didnt work in the end, for example). The negative side of this was recklessness and the desire to cause problems on purpose, but what he needed was a friend (looking at you Tubbo) who understood that hes been through several wars, was manipulated by Wilbur, and hasnt known a time of peace where everyone who wasnt on his side was out to kill him. Now that ‘fight’ is gone he's just become easier to manipulate.

He may be getting better (see: telling Dream to go fuck himself) but there hasn't been any long-term growth because he was never told what kind of rebellion was good and what was bad. He was just told it was all bad. By Dream (and by Tubbo). Who he doesn't trust. So he's just going to revert back to his old ways because no one told him what was bad in a way that didn't make him feel like everyone was against him. Dream is the enemy (though Tommy’s feelings towards him are complicated, they make his brain go all ‘flippy floppy’) and Dream told him that rebellion was bad, so rebellion must be good always, right? 

And then there's Techno. Techno did nothing wrong except for when he did. Techno is 100% right except for when he isn’t. He doesn't understand Tommy because Tommy was never fully open about what Dream had done and how it affected him. That's not Tommys fault though, because who the fuck openly talks about their trauma? So neither of them are to blame for pretty much anything up until the confrontation at the community house. 

However, Techno's methods and ideology were not what Tommy needed. He was thrown from one extreme to another over and over again, from complete subservience to total rebellion. Neither of these inforce good attitudes in Tommy. One, as stated before, makes it so that he will regain his negative traits again. The other reinforces those violent traits as good, just like Wilbur did. The only difference is that Techno had good intentions, he wasnt trying to use Tommy, which is why he feels so used when Tommy 'betrays' him (Techno doesnt realise that he himself betrayed Tommy by teaming with Dream, he sees it more as a transaction than a personal thing). Techno feels so hurt by Tommy ‘viewing him as a weapon’ that he goes on with his no-mercy attack, completely dropping Tommy at his lowest point. 

Tommy says he doesn't want to be like everyone he's hated. In fact, he say's he is 'worse' than all the villains. This is very obviously untrue, though he was clearly going down a dangerous path with Techno's influence (see: bullying Fundy, spawning wither, kidnapping Connor, and saying that the discs are more important than Tubbo, more on that later). He's not a villain but who exactly has said he's not a villain. Dream? Techno? Neither of them can be trusted in his eyes. They say he's a good guy, Wilbur wanted to be the bad guy, who's right? He doesn't know. He has a crisis of morality. 

And? Some people want to point at that and say 'aha! Character development! He's finally realising his actions have a negative affect on others!' OH GOD NO??? He's a *child* who thinks that he is worse than his abuser. Does that sound like positive character growth to you? 

Lastly, the discs. We know theyre a comfort item blahblahblah. He hates himself for valuing them more than he values Tubbo. He's literally innocent in this. He’s been horribly manipulated by Dream to believe that the discs are worth anything. Theyre really not worth anything if they are being used as tools rather than, yknow, discs. My poor boy. He doesnt trust people, so what can he trust? The discs. But then he says it out loud and realises he misses Tubbo and he wants to be with his best friend again and and and WAHHHH. This also isnt really character growth its just fucking sad leave me alone. 

Anyways what the fuck guys. @ Niki and Jack what the fuck. Yeah we get it it’s miscommunication but wtf. Kinda worried that the actual lore will make Niki and Jack’s hatred of Tommy justified in some way and take on a big victim-blamey vibe, but I’m hoping that everyone is smart enough to not do that. I cannot praise Tommy enough for how he’s portrayed his character. I’m currently hoping that he himself understands the true complexity of it all. I’m sure he does.

Mostly though im actually pissed off at all the people praising tommy's character for 'maturing' when hes literally just got trauma. Nice one, tumblr and twt users. Thanks. Great job. He hasnt 'learnt his lesson', he’s traumatised. What the fuck.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, leave your responses in the reblogs and comments.

#dreamsmp #dream smp #character analysis #dreamsmp analysis #analysis #critical #tommyinnit #tubbo #dream #technoblade #wilbur soot #tw trauma #tw abuse #tw gaslighting #tw manipulation

[cravingsfromatwistedone]

Getting whiplash going through your feed lmfaoo

People learn new words and suddenly try applying it to themselves and other situations, and usually they’re lying or have no idea what it really means. Happened with feminist, then misogyny, now grooming and gaslighting. I hate assuming they’re lying but how can’t I when a bunch of others have proven to lie on these serious topics?

Whoever that random, idia obsessed 12yo is sounds like an attention-craving child, I said what I said 🤷‍♀️ making an account to “call out” nsfw writers for…writing? Clearly someone is bored bc not only did they take the time to read the works, but also to comment on it. NOT TO MENTION! The kid oh so clearly stated in main that they’re in 8th grade… Oh I see how it is? It’s a big no-no for adults to write nsfw for “minors” but it’s a-okay for the fetuses to read nsfw and telling all how they want to be railed by…the very same characters that wouldn’t even want anything to do with them because the babies are, say it with me now, MINORS?! Seems like we’ve come full circle in this stupidity and madness.

Tell your napping anon to relax, I’m still thinking about that Leona post 😭 now Jack?!

AND EPEL?! WITH CHUBBY MC?! Stop it, my brain can’t take this anymoreee. Epel is such a mystery to me still but now I gotta search through his fic tags

That random kid actually annoyed me. How dare they try silencing works of the very writers who they probably get off on, screaming and kicking the air as they read under their blankets?? Praying they don’t wake up dear mommy or daddy 🙄 I was in 8th grade, I know what tf goes on. Y’all not innocent nor slick!! And 100% not better than adults. Y’all still have to ask to eat at McDonald’s, don’t play. Hell most of y’all just stopped having snack time and recess!!

(…I am the oldest and constantly have to assert my dominance over the lil minions, don’t judge me lol. “Why can’t we have subway” “do you..have the money?” “…” “no? Cuz l do, hah! Remember that next time you wanna be disrespectful <3”)

OH MY LOVE!! I'M SO SORRY! YOU'RE JUST SCROLLING THROUGH SEEING ALL THESE DISCOURSE ONLY TO GET SLAPPED WITH JACK BEING PUSSY DRUNK AND EPEL GOING ALL LOVEY DOVEY WITH HIS CHUBBY S/O 😭😭

SOMETIMES KIDS WHEN THEY READ THINGS AND WHEN THINGS HAPPEN TO JUST ALIGN BY COINCIDENCE, THEY'RE GOING TO BE ALL " IT'S ______!! " TALK ABOUT EXTREME SELF - DIAGNOSIS 🥺🥺

IT'S IRONIC THAT THEY SAY ADULTS CAN'T TOUCH MINORS BUT WOWIE, LOOK AT YOU! YOU'RE JUST GOING OUT YOUR WAY TO BARK AT A CHARACTER WHO'S AGE IS 'CANONLY' AN ADULT. CLOWNERY BEHAVIOR CONFIRMED

OTHER THAN THAT, MY OH MY! MY NAPPING DARLING! LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE WANTED BY THIS DARLING OF MINE! WHY NOT HAVE ALL OF THE SAVANACLAW BOYS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD, HMM? IT'S MORE FAIR FOR THEM TO STAY RENT FREE IN YOUR HEAD, MY DEAR

THE LAST BIT IS RELATABLE BUT I CAN'T BE MAD AT THEM SINCE THEY'RE STILL A KID BUT THEN AGAIN, SOME KIDS DESERVE TO GET DISCIPLINE AT SOME POINT SO I'M HOPING THAT THEIR PARENT ARE GOING TO DO US FAVOUR BY WHOOPING THEIR ASSES TO THE MOON. MINE DID AND I'M PRETTY SURE I WON'T BE AS A SPOILED BRAT AS I DID WHEN I WAS YOUNGER

#answered #twisted talks from hana

[tethered-heartstrings]

@ the other anon talking to you about gas station food. Will would NEVER EVER be buying lemon drop hard candy. He hates himself but not that much. He's not a hard candy guy, he'd buy something chocolatey like Twix if he was going to get candy. Maybe, MAYBE Swedish Fish.

If Freddie smokes she smokes Newport Light 100s or she has a Juul. If Will smokes he smokes Marlboro Reds or maybe red Pall Malls. If Jack smokes he smokes Marlboro Lights or chewing tobacco. Abigail has the good sense to do edibles or marijuana in some other form instead and would never smoke cigarettes, but has probably tried a Juul. If Hannibal smokes, it's Parliaments. Anyone is welcome to weigh in on these assessments.

Ohh, Swedish fish. This isn't like a fishing pun is it?

I don't know much about cigarettes since I don't smoke, but I pegged that fucked on Pall Mall Reds, trust me on that. Marlboros are too expensive compared to Pall Malls and Will couldn't justify it. He's the kind of guy that holds the cigarette in the hand he is also holding his drink in so he can be dramatic with his free hand and flail it around. He uses those lighters they give you for free that you can alter to have a dangerously tall flame and you have to shake sometimes to get it to last longer.

And good for Abigail. She's smarter than the rest of us. Specifically, edible gummies.

Jack only does chewing tobacco when he knows he won't see Bella for awhile so he doesn't get in trouble. He quits cold turkey after he finds out about her cancer.

See, I pegged Hannibal as a clove cigarette kind of guy. It smells nice, and then you have that super dramaqueen aspect of "clove has a numbing component so I do this as an act of self-inflicted agony followed by quelling my own pain since no one else will do it for me. I lit this cigarette myself but someone else had to have put the match in my hand (yeah he doesn't use a lighter like a pretentious shithead). No I would never use these flames after I gaslight the fuck out of someone. I would never use these matches to light someone's brain on fire woe is me."

Alana smokes menthols. Is my guess. But not very often. Only socially and only when she's has a good buzz rolling.

Chilton smokes cigars and is That Asshole about it. Boots on the desk like he's some mafia boss when we all know he's getting scammed out of Cuban cigars for some cheap knockoff. Hannibal can smell the difference and doesn't tell him. Because its funnier that way.

#this is fun as fuck #i love talking like i know things #when in reality i'm dumb as fuck #antifascist-frog #the curious clown

[blue-shaded]

Hey blue! I haven't been on your blog lately and I've tried to catch some stuff too (Been pretty busy to school and for some reason get tired so easily so my free time is pretty short)

So, Mark has been trending on twitter again after he announce that he was home. It was like days ago? Can't really remember doe Djjrjdbebfbd

Second one, I just watched this video titled "Therapist reacted to Tangled" and the therapist said that the movie portrayed or given signs of gaslight. Like, when the mother (IDK what's her name) gaslight Rapunzel into believing that she's way too immature to go to the outside world or making her believe that she can't be anything without her mother. The video is highly recommended if any of your anons want to know more about gaslight. Tangled portrayed it well.

Third one, about Seàn's apology, the fact that Seàn brought up charity livestreams to the apology is weird. I don't know he does it for the sake of covering the bad stuff not because genuinely doing it to help the people in that organization. Some people actually noticed when Sean brought up about the charity livestreams is just sounded off. If you genuinely do the charity livestream, you wouldn't bring it up and make it excuse of the mistake that you made, basically being like, "I'm a really good person! I've done x and y. I won't ever do mistakes like that." I mean just because You've done something good to the people that you've offended, it still not a reason for you for joking about them, mocking, and making fun of them then use the excuse of you've helped people so you won't look that you did anything wrong even though you did something really wrong and should GENUINELY apologize for it without adding excuses. If you brought the good things that you've done to the people that you've offended, it portrayed that you're not genuinely doing the kindness to help people but you're doing it so people think you're a nice person and get compliments from it which is a really shitty things to do. This is my opinion. I'd like to know your thought on this

Fourth off, a lot of people has been getting cancelled this year. Seàn is one of them but I know for 100% sure, you're not cancelling him but you're calling him out and trying to educate him but his stubborn ass won't listen so he just ignored the criticisms that he has received and not genuinely apologizing for the horrible stuff that he has done. Third off, a lot of people has been getting cancelled this year. Seàn is one of them but I know for 100% sure, you're not cancelling him but you're calling him out and trying to educate him but his stubborn ass won't listen so he just ignored the criticisms that he has received and not genuinely apologizing for the horrible stuff that he has done. One of the people that I recognize and has been trying to get cancelled this year are James (Theodd1sout). He was basically making fun off? The tone indicators. I can't really remember what it was but he has apologized about it afterward and deleted the tweet. People started calling him ableist about that even though James himself is an ND person. I don't know if he's getting cancelled or his fans are just criticizing and being dissapointed, regardless, he has apologized about it without any ifs

The fifth one, IDK if any of your anons know what or who any other youtubers that have been controversial lately? I've seen like only Jack mostly, and probably (Unfortunately) Ethan. Also, Dr. Mike? Maybe if any of your anons could help me out? I just want to know more about it.

Last one, I'm still upset because there are still people out there who think that criticize the same as cancel. It's upsetting. Also, there are people who think that past mistakes are only the past and shouldn't get brought up to even though past stuff are the one that build who you are at the present.

I think that's all from me. Sorry for sending this long ass ask. You can give your opinion one by one if you're in the mood too. I hope you have a nice day. Stay safe! <3

~🦄

HI! 1: Yes Mark did a thing again, or well his fandom did. 2: Fairytales often have abuse in their stories. Tangled indeed is not much different, but recommending the video! 3: He didn’t apologize. Manipulation isnt an apology. Point. Sean isn’t a good person and he isn’t charitable. 5: Passing on 6: I’m used to the bullshit by now.

#Anonymous

[wooowthanks]

I willingly chose to listen to Christian music today, so I guess here’s a post on why it’s a Big Deal ™ to me, as I try to sort through my feelings (lol).

It’s been over a year (or at least 268 days since the last post) since I’ve left the traumatic experience that was Grace Youth Klang, and I think that finally, after all this time, only did I actually realise the extent of the manipulation and stress and pressure we were under.

Were we perfect? Nah. But we worked really hard to try to be at least good. And I think people failed to acknowledge that we tried our best, but maybe, at the minimum, they failed to even acknowledge that we tried.

Leaving church was and (still is) a hard decision I knew I had to make at that time. And it was easy for people, I guess, to say that people always leave as if they didn’t care in the first place, or that people don’t try hard enough to stay. But I think that it takes a certain maturity to make either decision - to stay, go through the shit, and make things better, or to realise that an environment is too detrimental to you, and to step out of your comfort zone to work on yourself.

I left church, and didn’t join another one. I left youth and it was a hard decision, even after already having left it. And I guess here’s what people don’t see - that leaders, no matter the adults or the youth or whatever in between, are humans too. But that leader title brings certain expectations, and that results in either one - people being put on a pedestal, or two - people being thrown into the fire pit to be scrutinised.

And lol no gifts for you if you know which one we fell into.

I left church and I was so angry at God. I was angry that even though I was going through a difficult time of my parents splitting up, people seemed to expect me to be nice and loving to every one else outside. Like who cared Samantha was going through a hard time, right? She’s a shit leader because she didn’t pay attention to the youth. Who cared that so many of us were constantly giving, and getting nothing back every Sunday? We fell so deeply into a pit of serving that we never saw the way out, because if we stopped, if we showed a moment of weakness, if we missed a second, “the blood would be on our hands”.

And I think it only got clear afterwards to many of us, when I (or we? I don’t speak for the others I guess) stopped serving because then FINALLY did we actually have the time to get left alone with our thoughts. Finally, did we not have anything to do with our hands and our time. And when I finally did get that time to reflect, this is what I felt - nothing.

I literally felt nothing. At one point, I genuinely did not remember what emotions felt like, and the only two ways I could react to anything and everything was to cry, or to be angry about it. And if I actually had the courage (and money), I probably should have gone to therapy, because at that point of time, there were many instances where I thought, “hey, I can’t feel anything and that’s worrying. If I hurt myself will it make me feel something”? But I guess lucky me for being the type that let depression (if that was what it was) weigh me down to the point of inactivity (and also I guess it was God keeping me safe in some way because I couldn’t get over how the blade I would want to use was the one to cut my uni assignments, and did I want blood and rust all over my prints? No. And did I want paper in my blood? Prolly not aso.)

And that messed with so many aspects in my life, including my relationships. Because how could I feel love when the one place, the church, that was supposed to guide and accept sinners like me summarised everything we did into scathing comments and negative adjectives as if we were just a Twitter scandal?

#rebellious #DoingItForTitles #OnlinePrayerMeeting (to play with phones, not pray!)

Or my personal favourite for myself, #confrontational and #crybaby because people were personally calling up others to rig the camp chairperson votes, and it was extremely vital for outside people to say I changed and like to cari gaduh, or that I was just stirring up shit for the fun of it (guess the cry baby title was true cos I cried into my corn in a cup at the Subang KTM station when I got those texts lol).

And I blamed God, but it wasn’t God’s fault. It was the church’s, or at least select people in it that made it this way. It was the gaslighting and the manipulation and the stress and the never being enough for the select people in church that made it this way.

But that’s where we failed too. We wanted to be enough, but we would never be enough. Parents would allow their kids to drink, but when it came to us, those same rules didn’t apply (like wah, your gossiping equals to 2 sin points, but any of us drinking?? 100 sin points!!!). People would talk about the importance of healthy relationships etc, but when some of us were starting to date, we were judged instead of being given the foundation for a healthy relationship. People would say we never did enough for the youth, but don’t send their kids to youth anyway.

And of course, when we all started to fall apart, instead of being given the grace and support to overcome and to get better again, we were just bad influences that did jack shit. I guess hearing sermons about people rising up from bad situations is cool and inspiring, but when your own youth leaders go through it it’s time to play god and judge ‘em.

But after this time, I guess I realised that while the church is supposed to be the body of Christ, it’s not God itself. We would never be enough for people, but we would be enough for God. And maybe that’s where I lost sight of the whole point/ purpose of why I was serving/ in youth in the first place. I was there because I loved (love?) God. We were there because we wanted to give back to God, it only so happened that by doing that, we had to serve the people. And sometimes, some people might’ve thought that we were there to serve them.

So, I listened to Christian music today. For the first time in a year, listening to it made me feel somewhat at peace. I didn’t feel like vomiting listening to it, and I didn’t feel anger. I still don’t feel ready to go to any church, but I guess this is a stepping stone that I didn’t think I would ever reach. It’s a step above that small thought in my head telling me that despite me maybe not believing in God anymore, that I still kinda do, and that he’s still there waiting for me to get back, if I ever want to.

Today might be a good day, I think, because maybe I want to. But who knows? Let’s see where this goes.

[facepalming-since-chernobyl]

SCs are abuser apologists :)

“Yes, she did.“ And here the story should end but of course there is BUT and you know what they say about BUTs. 

Oh, Lena idoesn’t act as two different people? She didn’t lie about kryptonite, her illegal experiments, Sam and Reign? And boi, they all love to scream how 100th ep was about Kara fighting for Lena, while they totally ignore that in every universe Lena fucked up everything, even when Kara told her the secret. They totally ignore that Kara was RIGHT, by not telling Lena her secret and the universe when Lena still wants to lobotomize people is the best option. What is laughable, especially when you say Kara is guilty of deception.

Yeah, no one has clean hands but the problem is that the rest characters at least feel guilty about the shit they have done or paid for it.  Oh sure, Kelly is innocent but for sure is going to do some shit. Mhm. Because what? She is a canon black lesbian that is in a canon lesbian happy and healthy relationship with Alex? *sarcasm*

Sure, Lena didn’t do shit to Eve. She didn’t kidnap her, forced nanobots into her body, raped her brain, put AI into her and made her a meatsuit for Hope. I haven’t seen a single soul blaming her for Jack. His name was Adam and he was depressed, suicidal and driven by guilt and Lena deceipted him, while not telling him her REAL name, what is one of many violation of law and rules she did during that trials.

And thanks for ignoring J’onn’s brother, Russel, Andrea, Edge’s bodyguard, that girl form shcool that was exposed in front of entire school and sure, putting Kara in a kryptonite cage, torturing her, yelling at her, stealing Myriad from her, gaslighting her, accusing her of some super funny shit, making her feel guilty for Lex’s death and causing her a panic attack is just oops. 

Once again, all of them felt guilty about what they have done. Lena doesn’t. And that’s the biggest and most important difference. 

And here we have the most disgusting shit I have ever read in my life - Crisis erased it, so it didn’t happen? We should just forget about it? We should forget Lena killed, murdered, kidnapped, raped people’s minds, enslaved and lobotomized them? Interesting idea. Her past victims, that suffered becasue of her for sure were very happy to hear that they suffered for nothing. Also, I guess Crisis erased Lex’s shit so he is now a good person?

And you know what is the worst thing here? Lena still REMEMBERS. She still uses the results of her experiments and shit. She still wants to LOBOTOMIZE people and get rid of free will. She STILL DOESN’T FEEL GUILTY. She still thinks she didn’t do anything wrong. But I guess some people are too dumb to realize it.

Plus it’s super interesting how they still go after William Dey for what he has done BEFORE the Crisis. Lena’s shit is cleared but not his?

Oh, we should not  go after Lena only becuase she is privileged, white bitch, who has never paid for her shit like a typical privileged 1% of loaded Americans who do what they want and don’t care about consequences of their actions, because there will be no consequences, no matter what they will do? :)

The fact is - NO ONE stopped her from being happy and loved. She was with Jack in StarCity. She had it all. But then she saw Supergirl and decided she wants to be a Luthor, praised, loved and worshipped by everyone. And she FUCKED IT UP. SHE did it. And then she came to National City and played a typical Luthor. While screaming she was not.

“Lena is the only victim“ :))))))))))))))))))))))))))) Sure, because Kara didn’t tell her a secret that kept people she loved SAFE, what, once again, ep 100 proved.

Sure, your traumatic past experiences give you a free hand to do whatever shit you want. I wonder how many murderes, rapists, abusers should be released from the prisons, because you know, they had sad pasts.

Also, WHAT abusive childhood? Lillian didn’t like her, oh I wonder WHY, but still praised her ass when she fucked up that girl who stole her bf. Lionel loved her, she had a competetive relationship with her brother. WHAT ABUSE.WHERE it was confirmed she was abused? All we have seen is Lex tying her to a chair and explaning his master plan to her - well, two times, becasue she is that dumb and that easily manipulated. But who SHOT LEX IN THE END?

And she is not Luthor by blood? Lionel Fucking Luthor is her FATHER.

Aside of the disguting thing about “Crisis erased it” Hmm, let’s see, who was hurt by Lena:

-Eve, agreed

- some young teenage girl who has stolen her boyfriend and Lena stole her diary and exposed her in front of entire school,

-all the Phorians that were affected during her experiment with the portal in s2 and friendly reminder it was one of the reason why the anti alien movement was created, plus all the citizens of National City who were hurt during Phorians losing their minds

-all the aliens that were affected by her detector that allowed people to recognize them

-workers from Lockwood’s factory and others who were fucked and lost their jobs, because miss businesswoman could not afford helping them, because you know, being a white face of privileged capitalism i so cool

-all people who were hurt by the Daxamite invasion that happened only because she was dumb enough to believe Rhea, and once again, it was one of many reasons why the anti alien movement was created

-Edge’s bodyguard- dead, people on that party - put in danger

-Adam, a depressed, driven by guilt and suicidal boy, deceived by her to take part in illegal experiment - dead. And how about his parents who lost BOTH of their sons?

-Lex - shot with cold blood to death (fuck him, still murdered)

-Hope in Eve’s body - taking blame and landing in jail because Lena Luthor is a coward

-J’onn’s brother - kindapped, enslaved and made a guinea pig

-Russel - enslaved and forced to put a scalpel to his neck

-KARA

Are they going to ignore she still works for Lex and wants to lobotomize whole humanity and aliens? Probably. But oh wait, Kara’s fault. LOL

And Leigh, oh Leigh :’) Interesting how she totally ignore that J’onn’s bro and Eve were real victims of abuse. Eve especially - she was a teen when Leviathan lured her into their organization and brainwashed, right after when she lost her parents. But yeah, sure only Lena is a victim. And no one, at least not the fans, said a shit about forgiving  Ma'alefa'ak or Eve. And seriously, where are the traumas?

-losing mother? yep, horrible thing, almost as traumatic as losing entire planet and all people you love

-stolen boyfriend... well

-being not loved by your step mother?, yep horrible thing, almost as horrible as being not loved by your father who also is a villain and wants to kill you (Winn) or both of your parents, who likes to slap you, put in a cell and promise you brainwashing (Mon-El) 

-being manipulated - you are manipulated by people who openly say they are manipulators and you know them for your entire life, mhm

-being tied to a chair by your brother while he explains you his horrible plan 

-your horrible step mother framing you and putting your ass into a jail

-being tied to a chair again by your brother and see a gun pointed at you by your so called assistant -how many times other characters experienced something like that? whatever

-Kara not tellling a secret

Did I miss something? All I want to say is, different people react differently to bad shit that happens to them. Some are stronger than others, they differently react to bad things that happened to them. 

But the fucking problem is - all the shit that have happened to you DON’T GIVE YOU RIGHTS TO HURT OTHER PEOPLE AND DO EVIL SHIT. Your traumatic past is NOT AN EXCUSE. Other people have traumatic pasts to Lena, and guess what?! They still are not villains who put their so called bestfriends into cages made of kryptonite and torture them. 

And how many traumas were caused by Lena herself? By her ego? How many of all of this could have been avoided if Lena had gone to fucking therapy?

That’s the fucking difference that SC shippers should finally learn. But I guess they are not able because you know, they are blind by her beauty.

And no Leigh, we don’t hate Lena because Kara loves her. We hate her because she is horrible human being. Because she is a murderer, abusive, toxic piece of shit that has never paid for her doings. We hate her because she blames everyone just not herself like a typical privileged asshole. We hate her because she treats people like shit. We hate her because she makes Kara miserable, we hate her because she hurt Kara and doesn’t even feel bad about it. We hate her because she is a typical abuser who paint herself as a victim. We don’t give a shit if Kara loves her, especially because she’s slowly realizing what kind of a snake Lena is. Thanks to that she can finally stand for herself. And that’s what makes her real fans happy. But well, it’s proved you all don’t give as hit about Kara and you treat her just as Lena’s trophy princess.

#antilena #gmo lena #anti sc fando #anti sc #my shit #toxicorps

[dontwannabefat]

Hey guys, let me know if this is a stupid ass idea (I've had waaay too much limoncello and vodka (I'm of legal drinking age in the good ol' US of A, no illegal shenanigans happening here) tonight lmao, don't even know how I can type so well despite not being able to walk in a straight line, maybe because I type w/o glasses on all the time and I'm blind as a bat lmfao).

Not recommending this for anyone else, but I'm imagining a three day fast followed by a 500 calorie day, rinse and repeat until I lose the weight and these dumbass dysphoria and anxiety inducing gazongas that are the useless sacks of fat on my chest that make me look so much fatter than I am.

I should probably start taking my meds again. My ADHD brain has been kicking my ass and I have a couple months supply when I should only have half a month. Wellbutrin barely does anything at all, but it's better than jack shit. I should know better. I'm self aware enough to know that I shouldn't stop taking my meds when I "feel better" because I know I'm not cured of my mental illness(es) just because I feel like a normal human, the medication is what's stabilizing the hormones and chemicals in my brain. It also isn't the "magic bullet" that will solve my problems like my mom seems to think I believe. The issue is working around the forgetfulness that comes with my particular ADHD experience. I have an awful time remembering shit, even if I thought about it mere seconds ago. It's so frustrating, this feeling of not being in control of your own mind. Imagine that blip of drawing a blank when you walk into another room to get something, only to forget what you were grabbing, but for every other thought. Partway through a sentence, you forget what you were saying. Or, hell, even forgetting if you told a customer what promotion the store has going if they sign up for a store credit card. It's literal hell without my meds, and I need to get back on track. I bought myself some pens, and I'm going to pick up a journal to write down what I think are important thoughts. If you've read this far, please dear God blow up my notifs to remind me to get a journal/planner tomorrow (September 10, 2020) so I don't fucking forget again.

I'm done ranting, since I've fucking forgotten what point I was trying to make with this rant. Just...give me motivation/ thoughts for my stupid personal diet plan. Just please don't think I want anyone else to do the "diet" with me. It's probably stupidly dangerous, since the only thing I'll be "eating" on the fasting days is a 5 calorie multivitamin that doesn't make me dry heave into my toilet for an hour. And the fact that a 100 ish calories on my eating day will come from vodka, because what's a mental illness without a little bit of beginner alcoholism to cope with my mentally (sometimes physically) abusive mother whose favorite pastime is to gaslight me and body shame me?

#only pro for me #thiispo #pro anna #pro ana #Emmy rants

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Thoughts on Mary Poppins Returns

I’ve fallen behind on my current-movie viewing due to a number of factors (the only cinema screenings I’ve been to in the last 6 months in fact have been Aquaman at Christmas and twice to see Alita Battle Angel a few weeks ago), but I’m getting caught up as the blu-rays come out. I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse last night and will comment about it later (the tl;dr - good movie, a treasure trove for fans of pop culture, but looks awful on Blu-ray due to the textures used and I still think Incredibles 2 was more deserving of the Best Animated Feature Oscar), but since I actually invoked Mary Poppins Returns in a post I did about Alita yesterday, I thought I’d give some thoughts on this one first.

A spoiler/length break first as I get a bit wordy. I also do touch on some mild spoilers.

The Good

* Emily Blunt. Being unfamiliar with her other musical work, I was not prepared for how good a singer she is. Whether she stacks up to Julie Andrews is in the ear of the beholder, but I thought she was great. She wisely didn’t base her Mary on Julie, in the process giving us a slightly more cynical, world-weary Mary appropriate for someone with a quarter century more life experiences and adventures. I heard some reviewers call her a sexier Mary than Julie’s. I say nonsense to that - they’re equal (the only difference being Emily having a bit more innuendo in one of her songs, which I’ll mention later). One other comment is that when she played Mary, Julie Andrews was not an experienced film actress with only a few TV and film credits prior to Poppins - she was more a stage actress (her lack of screen experience was one of the reasons why Audrey Hepburn got the role of Eliza Doolittle for the My Fair Lady movie instead of Julie); Emily, by contrast, has been making movies and TV shows since 2003, so she has a level of screen-confidence that adds contrast to her performance.

* Lin-Manuel Miranda. Not being overly interested in Hamilton, Miranda has never been on my radar, so I came into this with a clear slate. He is a terrific addition to the film, he commands the screen (even stealing a couple of scenes from Emily, much as Dick van Dyke did from Julie), and director Rob Marshall wisely gives him a couple of Broadway show-like sequences and lets him go wild. This wasn’t his first film role - he has a number of movie and TV credits - but this is his first lead in a major film, and it won’t be his last.

* The kids. The three child actors chosen come off like 25 year olds who have been transplanted into pre-teen brains. Amazing. If they ever decide to remake Harry Potter, they could do worse than consider these three.

* Nackvid Keyd. Although this person’s cameo was I think intended to be a surprise, the trailers and other promotions give it away. Nonetheless, I’m going to keep it spoiler-free for those who haven’t seen it, by using the actor’s pseudonym here. He’s only on screen for about 3 minutes but it’s an amazing 180 seconds - and to both his and the director’s credit, "Mr. Keyd” actually doesn’t upstage the current cast. And his inclusion - as well as a cameo by another veteran of the original film - shows respect to the original film.

* Angela Lansbury. Her cameo (which I don’t think was intended to be quite the same level of surprise as Mr. Keyd’s) was amazing. This was a woman who made her screen debut in the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight. Here, she plays a character equivalent to the first movie’s bird woman (though a little more sprightly). It’s widely believed this part was originally meant to be played by Julie Andrews, but Julie, to her credit, reportedly felt appearing in the film would take away from Emily Blunt (similar to how an alleged plan to have Sean Connery appear in Daniel Craig’s Bond film Skyfall as the groundskeeper was wisely dropped in favour of bringing Albert Finney in for the role. Soon as Sean appeared on screen, Daniel would have been done).

* Replicating the look of the original film. There are some scenes where this doesn’t apply, in particular the use of actual locations in London (the original film was all shot on soundstages in Hollywood), but the attention to detail in replicating iconic locations like Cherry Tree Lane, the Banks’ home, etc., is amazing, even allowing for it not being 100% the same - which is understandable since, after 25 years, you would expect a room to get a fresh coat of paint. There’s a touching featurette on the Blu-ray where “Nackvid Keyd” visits the Cherry Tree Lane set and is amazed at the detail.

The meh...

1. The music. Despite my praise for the cast, I was less impressed by the music (even though I bought the CD). Granted, the original score has had more than 50 years to become iconic, and there are a few songs here that could rise to the same level in a half-century. But, at least for me, they never delivered another “Feed the Birds” or “Chim Chim Cheree”. In fact, some of the songs felt almost like pastiches of the Sherman Brother’s originals. The closest to something that felt brand-new was a rap-like song performed by Miranda during the animated sequence, “Cover is Not the Book” (it actually works, while actually referencing something similar that Dick Van Dyke did in the original.)

The not so good

1. They call it a sequel, but, really, it’s more a remake. I’m not alone in noting that the film duplicates the original almost beat for beat. The order of events is similar, the types of songs are similar. Some of the songs sound similar to the earlier versions, even. Instead of acrobatic chimney sweeps, we have acrobatic leeries who go around lighting street lamps. Instead of Uncle Albert who floats when he laughs, we have Aunt Topsy who, for whatever reason, has a condition where her entire world turns upside down once every two weeks. George Banks becomes dejected over apparently losing his job at the bank; Michael Banks becomes dejected over apparently losing his house due to the bank - and both have epiphanies thanks to someone singing them songs. Both films have big production numbers set in animated alternate universes and another involving airbourne objects in the park. Etc. The only really original thing here plotwise is while the original film actually had no villain (George Banks comes the closest to being an antagonist, but even then he barely qualifies), here there is an actual clearly defined villain, as well as a scene or two of actual jeopardy which we never saw in the original. More on this momentarily.

2. The tone is all over the place ... and too much of it is kinda depressing. We know a film set in the height of the Great Depression isn’t going to be all goodness and light, and the ironic tone of the opening number, “Underneath the Lovely London Sky” sets that out clearly (and quite effectively - it’s one of the best scenes in the film). When Mary arrives, Jane and Michael assume she’s out of work and destitute so they take her in out of kindness. And the whole film revolves around Michael possibly losing his family home. Yet ... I thought too much of it was downright sad. Ben Whishaw - another actor I had no idea could sing - gives an amazing performance of “A Conversation” in which Michael talks to his dead wife. But as that description suggests, this isn’t “I Love to Laugh Redux”. In fact it’s such a sad sequence that it takes you right out of the film - which is a bad thing considering the song is performed only about 10 minutes in. They might have been better off saving it for later.

3. There are also aspects of the film that I think violate the spirit of the original Mary Poppins - and possibly PL Travers’ books too. The “Cover is Not the Book” sequence, which is great and probably the closest to a truly memorable original song (I’d have chosen it for the Oscar nomination over “Place Where the Lost Things Go” which was an attempt at replicating “Feed the Birds”), contains some off-colour jokes delivered by both Mary and Jack that really felt out of place. I’m not being prudish on this, and the off-colour bit is mild, but this being Mary Poppins it was still jarring. And a chase sequence, although well done and exciting - and for fans of the original film providing a dark bookend to 1964′s steeplechase sequence - likewise felt like it belonged in another movie. It was almost as if Disney - in a stark contrast to the days when the reverse was true - refused to release a G-rated movie so they had to add a few bits to get the PG. Sort of like how an F-bomb will sometimes pop up in scripts to ensure a movie gets bumped from PG to PG-13 (which famously allows for one F-word before triggering an R rating). Because no one is possibly interested in watching a G-rated movie in the late 2010s, apparently.

So, I guess, I am rather critical of Mary Poppins Returns. I feel not enough was made of the opportunity to create something new, rather than a rehash of the original.

But - don’t get me wrong, it is still a quality film and I’m glad I have the Blu-ray. The cast does a fantastic job, the music isn’t bad (I just felt they didn’t come up with anything as instantly iconic as the songs back in 1964), and once you get past some of the depressing bits it’s a fun film. So I’d still give it a solid 7 out of 10 and I do recommend it. Just maybe don’t watch it right after the original.

#mary poppins returns #armchair movie criticism

[delusion-of-negation]

Hey dude, do you by chance have any experience with learning how to open up? I have tremendous problems with being vulnerable and I realise that that's something to talk about with my therapist, but, you know, for that I'd have to be able to open up, the thing I have a problem with. I usually have an outright physical reaction when trying to be vulnerable, nausea, hot flushes, intense sweating, the works. I thought that you may happen to perhaps have some experience with something similar or may know some relevant skills.

yeah, but I'm still in the process of learning it. there's a couple of different "kinds" of inability to open up for me - there's the stuff from when I was tortured that I can only vaguely talk about (due to a combination of hazy memories, gaslighting, threats, and so forth, leaving me feeling like there's a physical barrier between the words and the world, and I just can't push them through... it's hard for me to not backspace this very sentence), there's stuff that I can talk about vaguely and with specific people (ie I don't tell one person everything, I drop one part of me with one person and another with another, so I'm never truly and wholly vulnerable with any one person), there's stuff I won't even hint at or say with anyone at all and often push out of sight from even myself until it punches me in the face again after a trigger (then I push it away, then trigger, then I push... and repeat), and there's stuff that I'll panic and all that jazz but eventually I'll spill it if I'm comfortable (or drunk, or in the midst of a breakdown). there's probably more, but I'm struggling to put the exact experience into words. there's also the fact that different situations may also trigger it for different reasons - talking to a therapist is harder for me than tumblr, because I was the victim of severe abuse in a psychiatric facility, so I find it hard to trust them with anything even slightly untoward in case I get sent back. being vulnerable is hard for me because of that (ie I can't be vulnerable about things if I can't say them), and because I had to be tough and strong and unbreakable to protect somebody when I was very young, then a guardian used to say that showing weakness (even after we'd escaped abuse) was allowing the abuser to win - she taught me to always be strong, to always be in control of every situation, that the best way to hide weakness was to deflect with other perceived vulnerability, maybe expose an inconsequential vulnerability, make them think that they're in control, that you've opened up to them, that they can get to you, all that shit, but actually they have no power and you're safe, and all that jazz (ie basically raised me to never be vulnerable, because if you're vulnerable you're weak and the abuser has won, and exactly how to always hide it). the point is that different memories, emotions, experiences, facets of myself, and so forth, cause different reactions and are contained for different reasons, including entirely circumstantial reasons, and thus require different strategies to start to dig up. 

with my current therapist, we spent months talking about jack shit - and I mean sports, politics, boardgames, computer games, writing, literally anything but me. after a while, we started to prod into her opinions on psychology, my opinions on psychology, and her opinions on certain conditions, experiences, feelings, etc - I tested the water a bit to see if certain topics would illicit a reaction in her, and if so what, to see how "safe" she would be to open up to. then bit by bit I started to leak bits of information out, and over the course of more months we gradually transitioned to actually talking about me and my past and my feelings and my thought processes. but there's still a shit tonne that I haven't told her and that I can't push out, even knowing now that she's 100% safe to talk to, having a good relationship with her, all that jazz, some things still won't come out. it's not something that you can force, I think, it's an internal sense of comfort and safety that needs to just keep building and keep being reassured by evidence that you are actually safe. as stated, my two primary coping mechanisms (both unhealthy) when it comes to vulnerability are avoidance and deflection - ie I will fragment my vulnerabilities and spread them across people, I will use something smaller that's bothering me when venting to friends but not mention the biggest issue, and I'll bury things with drugs and drink and media and anything to avoid thinking about it. to learn to become vulnerable I don't just have to learn to feel safe, I also have to unlearn those coping mechanisms, unlearn how I was raised (both the fear from abuse and the pressure to not be weak), and I have to change basically my whole lifestyle. what you need will differ for you, because you're a different person with different feelings and reasons, so I'm not sure how good my advice is - but I guess the tl;dr version is to work to gradually uncover what it is specifically that is stopping you and scaring you about it, where that may be coming from, and how somebody can accommodate you in your process of changing it, don't rush yourself because that'll only end up hurting and thus reinforcing the underlying fear. 

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

what do you think about lena and james relationship that the writers are gearing towards?

I think a Lena/James relationship could have serious value. I do. It may not be the queer ship we’re hoping for, but it is an interracial ship featuring a black male lead of a network show. If it’s done right, it could lead to growth for both characters and explore parallels previously ignored. 

For example, we could address the fact that James displays more prejudice than the woman related to a mass murder. They could also use the possible reveal of his identity as Guardian as an interesting precursor to the Supergirl reveal (not to mention that Lena would probably process the reveal by griping to Kara-- which would put Kara in a deliciously awkward position of her own making...).

Furthermore, there are the similarities between them. All last season, James struggled with finding a way to leave his mark on the world, and what kind of identity he wanted to have in it. This quest led him to becoming Guardian. Meanwhile Lena has spent her season crafting an identity of her own, reshaping her company and family name into a force for good.

Ultimately, they are two human characters who only want to do good, and to help people. They have also faced similar losses, and have been massively mistreated in the world of love. James was abruptly dismissed by Kara after S1, while Lena lost Jack, and had her mother and Rhea manipulating her before S2 was over.

That said, it’s not unreasonable to say that what the writers have presented so far this season has been a mixed bag of what to expect. 

James has been largely absent so far this season, but some of the moments he does have with Kara have been so beautiful and poignant. But on the other hand, some of his moments have been used so the writers can tick off some boxes in setting up their intended plots (most notably in “Wake Up”, when discussing Kara’s relationship with Mon-el, and in “Damage” when Lena accuses him of coming to gloat after Edge’s stunt at the hospital). 

In the interest of this ask, let’s focus on the “Damage” example. When Lena snaps at him, he responds with the following: 

“Miss Luthor, despite our differences, I would hope by now that you would recognize that I see you as more than just an extension of your brother.”

Keep in mind that up until this point, James and Lena haven’t exactly been enemies, but they are definitely not friendly. The majority (if not entirety) of their onscreen interactions have had them pitted against each other in how CatCo operates and how Lena fits into that as the new CEO. So we as viewers have no reason to think that James has changed his mind about Lena since last season, and we have to assume that Lena doesn’t either. 

The fact that James has to state this for us, instead of us seeing it happen for ourselves, is just plain lazy. Not to mention, it comes off as very gaslight-y, because with this comment James turns it back on Lena, and makes himself the victim of her unfounded accusations that he has misgivings about her being a Luthor (hint: they’re entirely founded, as clearly demonstrated later in the same episode).

They could have avoided the heavy-handed ‘this is how things are’ approach easily. Instead of the gaslighting, James could have lifted his hands in surrender and said “I’m just here to help.” No denials, no passive-aggression. Just his innate instinct to help people in trouble. Instead of the awkward exchange in James’ office at the end of the episode (was it supposed to be flirty? I can’t tell anymore), they could have added just a few more lines to tie back to their earlier gaslight exchange: “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier, the news at 11 crack. It was unprofessional, and then you went and took a bullet for me. It made me realize that while you may not know me, I definitely don’t know you. I’d like to change that...” with the implication being that they would continue to explore a tentative friendship off screen. 

The fact they chose the dialogue they did makes me worried that they’re not particularly concerned with nuance or tact. And THAT makes me worried that the James/Lena relationship they present will do more harm than good. 

I hope that they choose to do it right, with the care it deserves. If they do, I will 100% support it because they both deserve to love and be loved. If they don’t, I will continue to write my fix-it fics and dwell in the land of ‘maybe supercorp will still come true one day’.

tl;dr: if they do it right, it could be amazing. if they screw it up and establish yet another unhealthy relationship as the pinnacle of romance, they’re only going to lose more viewers.