#not entirely but the whole hope/despair thing made sense to me even if it was pretty intense

[mikanotes]

COMEBACK/APOCALYPSE

eunhyuk x gn!reader — 577 words.

genre: angst/comfort, (probably) established relationship

warnings: mentions of death, grief, and swearing. nothing else i think!

synopsis: Eunhyuk returns. You don’t know how to deal with it.

author’s note: i miss him so have this. also me when you’re coming back and it’s the end of the world and we’re starting over and i love you darling and i am done

“You’re dead.” you say, “I’ve finally made peace with that. You should not be here.”

Steady as your voice may be, you’re unsure how much of your carefully crafted detached exterior manages to hold up in the face of Lee Eunhyuk’s apparent return to life. He looks as calm as usual. The way he stares at you feels somewhat unnerving— A gaze that refuses to let go, one that pierces right through you.

You feel the walls around you crumbling before you can do anything about it. You never stood a chance. “Eunhyuk.” you sigh, tone almost pleading. Please tell me you’re real. Please tell me you’re alive. Even if it makes no sense, say it, please. You hold his gaze as he takes a few short steps towards you.

“I’m sorry.” he says. Your throat feels tight and your eyes sting. “That you grieved for something that wasn’t gone.”

This is so much worse. But there isn’t a good way this situation could’ve gone.

This is one year and some months of sinking into a void of growing despair, with nothing to grab onto to stop it. It’s one year and some months that really feel like a decade of your very heart withering away. It’s one year and some months of surviving a monster apocalypse, and somehow having the sight of the person you craved to see the most be the thing that truly breaks you. The floor feels like it’s disappearing under your feet. You’re falling again, and it feels ten times worse and more instant. Like death. You’re dying and he’s saying sorry for not ever truly leaving.

“No, I,” you pause, forcing yourself to actually breathe, “I grieved over someone that was gone. You were gone. This was over a whole year without a single sign from you. An entire year of forcing myself to believe everyone’s words. ‘He’s dead’, ‘He’s gone and under the crumbled building’, ‘You’ll never see him again’, that was real.”

Eunhyuk doesn’t say a word.

“I didn’t want to believe it. I was so sure of it— That you weren’t really gone. You wouldn’t leave so easily. I didn’t believe it at all.” you shake your head, gaze moving aimlessly, “I eventually had to stop believing, and I’m sorry that I did. But you can’t just come back this way.”

“Should I leave?”

He’s dead serious, the fool. Polite and conscious of the boundaries he might’ve pushed by simply making himself known to you again.

“No. Are you kidding me?” you take a step forward, but it’s awfully hesitant. Like if you get too close you’ll see his skin is translucent and he was never really there and you’d been yelling at the wall. “You can’t leave. Not again.”

What are you supposed to do with all these feelings? It’s terrifying. He really is here.

“What can I do?” he asks, tone as steady as you’d hoped yours would come out. Every moment you practiced that false image of calm, your reference had subconsciously been Eunhyuk. Calm and level-headed, mature, the perfect leading figure. You’d never see Lee Eunhyuk slip up over his own emotions. That’s what you strived for.

But as it turns out, it’s not easy to be like this.

So out of touch. You need to make sure.

“Take my hand.” you say, ask, “Please.”

He looks down at your hand, then back up at you when he shortens the distance between the two of you. His hand is careful when it takes yours, slowly bringing it up between both of your chests. His skin is just as cold as it was, as cold as you remembered. Rough, contrasting how gentle his movements are. You stare at him and he stares at your hand.

“Now?”

“Now you promise not to die without me.”

That’s not something he can promise, you know it already. His expression tenses for a moment, like he’s in pain, but it’s gone just as fast. “I can’t promise you that.” he says, looking up at you, “You know that.”

“You’re the worst person I know.” you say, lying through your teeth. Eunhyuk carefully reaches his free hand towards your face, pressing his palm to your jaw.

“I am, aren’t I?” he says quietly, expression unchanging. “I’d usually call bullshit, but I admit I sort of believe you, all things considered.”

You scoff but it’s hard for it not to turn into a laugh. It’s light and not the definition of happy but it feels somewhat comforting. Your heart feels painfully tight. There’s something inordinately scary about allowing yourself to hope again.

“You know, once it actually clicks in my head that you’re really here, I’m going to cry like I never have before?”

“Don’t waste your energy on that.” he hums, “Still, I’ll be here through all of it, if it happens. I’ll be there. I won’t leave again. Not like last time.”

You lean down until your forehead hits his shoulder. He moves his hand to the back of your head, and the other just tightens around your own. There’s no need for more than that to say I love you, silently, in your own way.

“You will?”

“I can promise you that much.”

#lee eunhyuk x reader #eun hyuk x reader #eunhyuk x reader #lee eun hyuk x reader #lee eunhyeok x reader #eun hyeok x reader #eunhyeok x reader #lee eun hyeok x reader #sweet home x reader #x reader

[foone]

My one bit of advice I think every gamer should hear:

GO PLAY OUTER WILDS.

Seriously. It is easily one of my top 5 games of all time, and that's mainly because I'm being cagey about if it's the #1, because it probably is.

It's a game where you're a little alien who is taking their first flight into space, in their little spaceship. You go to space and find a mystery, and have to figure it out.

It's a game entirely about learning things about the world you're in: it's a tiny solar system modeled amazingly well, with varied planetary environments, archaeology, and quantum fun.

It's a game that's hard to talk about without spoiling, because it's about solving the mysteries. There used to be some other aliens here, they're long gone. What happened to them? Their whole society was built around trying to find something: what was it? Did they find it? And there's a weird disastrous event that keeps happening, why? Can you stop it? Should you stop it? Is it connected to the other weird things that keep happening? What happened to that ice planet that exploded with vines? One of the astronauts who came before you was the best pilot who ever lived, but they vanished. What happened to them? And why can you sometimes hear their harmonica over the radio when you point it at your own planet?

The game is wonderful and non-linear and the most unique approach to a Metroidvania I've seen years: it's basically "what if we did the Metroidvania idea but with no items or power ups? What if the thing that you got to unlock new areas WAS INSIDE THE PLAYER'S HEAD?"

Because you don't unlock the next area by picking up the high-jump boots, you unlock it by learning something new. Now you can do something you didn't realize you could before, but now you know you can.

And that's only one of the amazing concepts they stuffed in this game. The itemless Metroidvania, the tiny simulated solar system, the quantum mechanics... Each of these alone could be enough to carry an indie game. They stuffed them all in one game combined with a great story, and that's in a gamewith relatively little dialogue!

There's like a dozen people to talk to, but you spent a lot of time reading conversations left by the long-gone aliens. You get to know them, what they were working for, how they interacted, and what happened to them, thousands of years later. It's less the bioshock style audio-logs, and more like going over bits of ancient writing, making connections and correlations from the fragments you can find.

And don't get me wrong, this might sound like this game is going to be dry and boring: it is so very not. It is a game about mysteries in the void of space, the death of a civilization, and the potentially world-ending dangers that face a living one, and even bigger concepts. It could so easily be a cosmic horror, about the cold death of space and the universe itself, and the nihilism of realizing that even a race that could cross the gap between the stars and bend spacetime to their will... They too died out. If they couldn't make it, what hope do you have, in your little spaceship that's primarily made of WOOD?

And yet... The game is always engaging. It has a few scares, and space is never a safe place to be, but it maintains a sense of humor and wonder. Yes, the universe can be scary, but it's also amazing. And you're just a little salamander-guy who wants to see it all, and figure out all the things. Maybe you don't know something yet, but tomorrow is a new day, and you can go blasting off to another planet, find some writing in a city suspended upside down over a black hole, try to fly into the core of a water planet, dodge giant anglerfish inside the warped space of an exploded planet, and try to explore an ancient city that's slowly filling with sand. It is a game about Things Ending, and it refuses to give into despair. It is one of the most relentlessly optimistic games I have ever played.

And the experience of playing it is so unique. This isn't a game where you could watch a letsplay and only get spoiled on some plot points, it's a game where the fundamental gameplay loop is about learning things. You should try it for yourself. It's got hints and many different avenues to explore (and it even keeps track of them for you, in case you forget!), so you don't have to worry much about getting stuck for too long. You can always put aside a "puzzle" and come back later, after you've learned more. (I put puzzle in quotes because it's not exactly a puzzle game. It's more of a mystery game. You aren't solving a logic puzzle or putting the pegs into the right holes, you're asking "Why is this like this? Where does this go? What is this for?" and then figuring that out from clues)

It's like 25$ on steam, and you can get it for Playstation and Xboxes as well (sadly no Switch version. They were working on one but it seems that version has stalled, with no announced release date)

You can probably get it for like 10$ if you're patient and wait for a sale.

One final note: there's also a DLC. The DLC is fully self-contained, in that you won't miss anything playing the main game without it. It basically adds a huge side-area to the game which goes and fills in some gaps in the history, explains some things, and introduces some more variety to the Outer Wilds universe.

It's utterly amazing, too. It's basically Outer Wilds 2 in everything but name, but it's totally fine to just grab the base game and play that. You can always come back and grab the DLC later if you want more Outer Wilds.

Seriously. To sum up, Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games ever made, it won a ton of awards, and it should have won more. They should invent more gaming awards just to give to Outer Wilds. This is one of the games that is going to be talked about in future "history of gaming" classes and put on lists of the 50 most groundbreaking and influential games, alongside things like Myst and King's Quest and Zork and Mass Effect. It's just that good, that groundbreaking.

#Outer Wilds

[tealclover]

This Way Out

So, Tails slipped up. Not only did he manage to get himself snagged, but he dragged Belle into this with him. To make matters worse, Starline was unbearably smug about the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, he got the Sonic the Hedgehog’s sidekick. Whoop-de-friggin-doo.

Just when Tails was starting to prove himself again. Ugh. How embarrassing. 

Well, enough of that. He promised Sonic he’d be fine, and he intended to keep his word. All he had to do was find a way to get Belle and himself out safely. … But who exactly were those two Mobians hanging around the facility?

(Alternate ending to Sonic IDW Issue #36, featuring a snarky fox. Some angst, some crack.)

Even before fully regaining consciousness, Tails knew he was in for a headache. And not just literally, though the pulsing in his temple was certainly noteworthy.

For starters, before even opening his eyes, he was lying stiffly on his back of all places. Tails never slept on his back if he could help it – his namesakes made resting much more reasonable on his side or belly. Sleeping on his tails was both uncomfortable and impractical. Impractical because it left his belly and other more vulnerable parts exposed. Uncomfortable due to the cold and the fact that his namesakes trapped underneath him, occasionally numb from lack of bloodflow. Which they were. But so were his arms and his legs, and, oh, he couldn’t move at all actually. 

It was probably too much to hope that that beeping indicated that he’d spent the last fifteen hours on a stone-hard hospital bed, seeing how his last waking recollection involved him and Belle separating, tons of snow, and…

Starline. Who wanted to kidnap him. For supposedly scientific purposes.

Ugh.

With no small amount of trepidation, the fox bleerily opened his eyes. He was immediately rewarded for his efforts with too much light why couldn’t he live like the nocturnal creatures foxes were meant to be and a sinister chuckle that grated on his nerves.

“Ah, Young Master Prower. I see you are awake.”

Yup. And he wished he wasn’t.

“Starline.” Oof. Voice crack. That wasn’t doing his credibility any favors. How long had he been out? He coughed, trying to get his voice back before roughly continuing: “I hope you’ve got a five star meal on the way; otherwise I’m going to have to give this stay a poor review. Don’t tell me this is a hospital bed,” he grimaced at the surface he was strapped to, arms, tails, and all. He was trapped for the time being, but appeared to be intact, at least. If the bindings were ignored, he could have passed for a patient – the presence of the finger pulse oximeter amongst other diagnostic tools were certainly intriguing, if not concerning. Were those vials of blood his? “Or do. Cause I’m not sure there’s much I can do for you if you think it’s acceptable to let your guests sleep on tables.”

The platypus stared at him for a few seconds, like he hadn’t expected the witty response. It was actually kind of funny to watch him visibly reboot and reassess the fox. Finally, he sighed. “I suppose you were raised by Sonic. It makes sense that you would share his poor taste in humor.”

“It clearly beats your taste in decor,” Tails sniped back. Starline hummed at that.

“Public perception of you paints you to be a polite boy genius. It seems that isn’t entirely true.”

Tails shrugged. Or tried to, anyway. “The general population wouldn’t consider strapping me to an examination table. Care to explain that, by the way?”

Starline smiled a sweet-sick smile. “Oh, you’re curious, are you? To be quite frank, I want to see if you can find out. Why don’t you and Miss Belle take a moment to catch up?”

Tails froze. “Belle?”

“I'm here, Tails…” the voice came from his left. He peered over as far as he could to see the robotic marionette on a second table a short distance away. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, but from what he could see of her… she looked distraught. Not fearful, necessarily, but despairing, which was somehow even more worrisome. 

“Belle, are you okay?” He asked gently. She sniffled, ducking her head into her chest as best as she could. Were those… tear tracks on her cheeks? She could cry? Why was she crying? He took a second to shoot a gleeful Starline a sharp glare before refocusing on his newest companion. “Belle, are you hurt?” 

“... No,” she whispered.

Tails didn’t know if he believed that, but he didn’t know how to press the issue with the correct amount of sensitivity, especially with Starline hovering over them. What a creep. Couldn’t he leave? “Okay… okay. It’s going to be alright, I promise.” He waited for Belle’s tiny nod before continuing. “How long have you been active?”

“About… twenty minutes. I’ve been offline s-since the avalanche. I… I’m sorry, Tails. You came back for me and now-”

“I’m not worried about that, Belle,” he told her, firmly but not unkindly. “We’ll figure it out. Can you tell me what you remember?”

“I…” She made a strangled sound, but forced herself to continue. “My d-d… my creator was Mr. Tinker.” Tails gut sank. He wasn’t surprised, not with their matching attire, but it was still a sad confirmation to hear. “That… that jerk figured it out. He, he told me-” she hiccuped again. “It’s his fault Mr. Tinker is gone. He changed him into Eggman.”

“... I’m sorry, Belle.” What could he say to that? This wasn’t something he could fix with a wrench and a bit of mechanical know-how. Belle was a robot, but her feelings were hardly artificial. After Emerl, Gamma, and their successors, Tails was very well aware of that. She was just as much of a person as anyone organic; something that was clear to him from the moment they met. He couldn’t just reprogram her to feel better. Or, well, maybe he could, but that wouldn’t be right. To do so would likely be robbing her memories and cheapening her experiences, changing who she was in the process. It wouldn’t truly fix anything; frankly, it would likely lead to an identity crisis later on.

And so, all he had to offer her was kindness, and time to recover once they escaped.

“I… don’t know how to help with Mr. Tinker, but my friends and I would be happy to have you, if you want. I have space for you back at my workshop, and the Restoration accepts anyone who wants to to have a part of it. If you want a home, we’ll give you one. We can try to figure out the rest in time.”

Belle was quiet. Finally, she tearfully confessed, “That would be nice.”

He offered her a smile even though she still wasn’t looking. “I’m glad you think so. We’ll do our best to make it worth your while.” He hesitantly continued. “Did Starline do anything else?”

She shook her head. “He just… listened to me talk a-about Dad. About home, Windmill Village, and how the villagers kicked me out after the Metal Virus cleared up. I got so mad, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. He doesn’t care at all about what he did. He only wanted the code.”

“Code…?” At that, Tails shot another glance in their captor’s direction, though the platypus had since turned his attention to the monitor at Tails’ side, turned so that the fox couldn’t read any of the details. Were Belle’s readings stashed away in that device? … No. At least, it wasn’t just her information. Starline was gathering his vitals as well. But why? From the sounds of things, he was trying to get a reaction out of Belle earlier, and now, he was… testing Tails? Did he truly want him to uncover the motivations behind their kidnappings or was he simply fishing for another set of reactions from a different subject? He wouldn’t put it past Starline to have something of a sadistic streak – most villains lately did – but not one without purpose. If that was all he did, there had to have been some sort of incentive, something to be gained…

Why him? Why Belle? Her thoughts and feelings, and his-

Was he trying to record them both?

Was Starline in his head right now? 

A delighted laugh at his side told him that yes, he probably was.

“Positively remarkable, young Master Prower! You are truly one of a kind.” The platypus’ hands clapped together. “It is no wonder Sonic has prevailed for so long! He is powerful on his own, but you, you can keep pace with him, you adapt to his spontaneity and can plan in the heat of the moment so that he is successful in his every endeavor, no matter how foolish or impossible.  It is little wonder that the two of you alone keep Doctor Eggman on his toes, despite his armies, his keen intellect, and his prowess…” He stood to approach Tails again, looking down upon him with glee. “You truly are the greatest of combinations.”

That would have been a heart-warming compliment, had it not come from the mouth of a madman. As it stood, the fox had to resist the urge to squirm under that predatory gaze. He would not give Belle another reason to be afraid. 

“And, in spite of knowing all of that,” Tails mildly remarked, “you brought me straight to your base.”

Starline was likely to overestimate himself. In his eyes, he had a useful enemy at his mercy. He was less likely to seriously consider the fact that, in the process, he had invited that very foe into his base, to say nothing of the others that would come knocking down his door later.

… Let him read those thoughts.

“Is that a threat?” The doctor mockingly inquired, unfazed and clearly quite confident. “You hardly have the advantage, fox.”

“I've gotten out of stickier situations.” This wasn't even the first time somebody thought to make a labrat of him, his first encounter with the Deadly Six coming to mind. … Hopefully, this wasn't going to become a trend. 

“Perhaps, but I've taken precautions. Escape won't come easily for you.” The villain adjusted his glove with a self-assured smirk. “You are now quite the valuable asset to my plans.”

“Which are…?” Tails pressed, earning him a condescending pat on the head that made his skin crawl.

“All in due time, little specimen. As it stands, I've already shared too much with you, and I really must get back to work. You have such fascinating insights; it’s a pity we won’t be discussing this further, seeing how you will have no recollection of this conversation,” he coolly lamented, hand shifting from his bangs to his eyes.

“Now, it is time for you to go back to sleep.”

So... yup! Here's a glimpse of a brainworm I've had for a little while regarding Issue #36. It's a little rough and is absolutely a WIP (the end is particularly prone to change), but I felt like sharing a bit of it! Hope whoever finds it likes it! :)

#sonic the hedgehog #sth #miles tails prower #tails the fox #sonic idw #starline #starline the platypus #dr starline #belle the tinkerer #sonic idw issue 36 #fun to write! but also this is not a comfortable situation for anyone here haha #sonic fanfiction #fanfiction #wip

[frownyalfred]

If this too much or too personal please ignore!

But I was just wondering if you had any advice for grieving? (I lost a close family member very recently)

I'm so sorry for your loss, anon. I don't know your exact situation, but I hope your loved one's memory is a blessing to you and your family. I'll leave my thoughts below the break, since I'll discuss death and dying a little.

I am, as many people on here likely know, still grieving the loss of my father. It was sudden and unexpected. It was bloody and somewhat traumatic for our family. Thinking about it still leaves me dazed and unfocused.

Grieving is such a strange process. I've been talking about it with my therapist weekly, and her main takeaway has been that there is no right way to do it -- and that it is far from linear. There are positive moments and regressions. There are funny memories and difficult truths to grapple with. There is anger, confusion, sadness. Despair. So many unanswered questions and moments that hover on the edge of veneration simply because they are the only ones you have left.

How did I grieve? I cried a lot, at first. I took off work and sat shiva with my family. I answered a thousand well-meaning messages and played one singular song on repeat on my phone. I barely slept. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. I woke up crying without remembering exactly what I had been dreaming about.

Then, as if in reprieve, my brain let up. I slept somewhat normally again. My body was no longer on the edge of tears at any given moment, nor was I entirely numb. Slowly, I began to think of normal things again; new television shows, updating a chapter, irritation at the banal things like traffic and work.

And anon, I thought to myself, this must be it. I'm no longer "grieving," or at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I was eating, sleeping, going to the gym and work, updating my works and hitting the club again on the weekends.

But I wasn't done. And I'm not sure I ever will be. I wanted to be done, in so many ways. I was mad at my father for dying, for making me grieve, for keeping me in this state where I couldn't be confident in anything I was feeling, any progress I was making. Where I could remain silent and resolute at his burial, but sob like a baby in my apartment when the concert t-shirt he gave me was stained by some soup.

But that's a lot to put on the dead. And sometimes I have to keep reminding myself that -- that he is dead, that there is a gap in my life I keep trying to skip over, like avoiding tonguing at the aching tooth in the back of my mouth. And when I forget, the world is more than glad to remind me, whether through well-meaning neighbors, colleagues, etc etc.

I suppose that's a long way of saying, I think I'm still grieving anon. I'm not sure I'm doing the best at it, active or involuntary as this process seems to be. I have an amazing support network, but so much of this work seems to be solitary, even when someone is sitting right next to you, crying with you.

The Jewish saying "May their memory be a blessing" has been a good focal point for me, I think. It dovetails nicely with the Mandalorian saying "Not gone, merely marching far away." I've thought about both a lot in the last few months, because I'm a huge nerd and also because I don't think the cultures are too dissimilar.

Let your loved one's memory be a blessing in your life, anon. Remember the happy moments, and speak them out loud if you're able. Don't let their name remain sacred. Don't sanctify them, for we are all humans and humans are complicated, but don't leave their life behind you.

Those memories of them, those funny moments and sad days, fun trips and strange conflicts, those are all yours now. No one else has them. And when you and your family are gone, those memories are gone too.

Other small things that have made this whole process easier: Starbucks and DoorDash giftcards (seriously, some days are too hard), letting myself take time off hobbies (gym/writing) without penalizing myself, naming my grief and allowing myself to sit in it (I'm sad today about x, and I want to lie down for a few hours. I'm lying down because I'm feeling sad about x, and I'm allowed to feel that way). Going to the gym and running until the natural endorphins help. Talking with my families about good and complicated moments with my dad. Writing, when I'm able. Reminding myself it's okay to not be very functional, that it's okay to not be perfect and you would never expect someone who is grieving to be so. Talking to a therapist and getting treatment for what I experienced. Accepting the kind words of others, even if they hurt or are unintentionally difficult.

I'm sorry you're going through this anon. I know how you feel, or at least some of what you feel. I hope you have support and loved ones around you who can help shoulder some of this process.

<3 Jay

#tw grief #tw death #tw dying #tw grieving #personal #about me #forgive me for being terribly emotional and personal for a moment #asks #anon

[piedpiperart]

You Could Know Me pt 1

AO3 

Summary: Peter Parker gets magically transported to the DC universe where he wakes up in a lazarus pit. Unbeknownst to him, Ra's has a plan for him that the newly captured Jason is trying to go against.

Peter blinked back tears at the view atop the Statue of Liberty. Knowing anyone he’d ever met would forget him wasn’t something he could truly process at the moment. It was heartbreaking, filling his chest with a heavy feeling that made it hard to swallow. 

Aunt May is gone. 

Just like his uncle. His parents.

Mr. Stark…

And now Peter was going to lose everything else too. His life, his friends, and his family. It hurt worse to know the only one carrying these memories would be Peter himself. Would it have been better if he forgot too? 

Looking down over at the rubble, his eyes stung when he thought about the people most important to him will forget him. MJ and Ned, they were there for him, supporting him for most of his life, and especially with Spider-man. It hurt to know that everything they had been through together would only live on in Peter's memory. 

It hasn't fully sunk in yet, that he is losing Ned, MJ, and Happy. The only people left in his life could be counted on one hand, and yet, he couldn't even manage to keep them. Made him think that maybe he wasn't meant to be happy. Peter wondered what he did to deserve this constant loss. Maybe he was cursed. 

Sadness clouded Peter's mind, more than it had since the start of this whole mess. It felt like despair, with how his wounds ached less than the pain of losing his family over and over again.  Holding his breath, no, holding back the tears, the young man watched Dr. Stephen complete his spell. In the end he couldn't contain a stuttered sigh, breath hitching when he looked away to find the image of MJ and Ned at the base of the statue, stumbling their way to safer ground. Maybe they’d be safer without him, Peter thought, trying to find some way to rationalize the situation. He thought of all the times Ned and MJ had been hurt around him, every time he couldn't protect them. Would they be safer without him? Peter hoped so. 

Peter took a breath, returning his gaze to Dr. Strange more determinedly, ignoring how his hands shook. With each passing second, the wizard closed up each and every portal that had opened, all the silhouettes of people from other worlds disappearing like smoke. But of course things wouldn’t be so simple. Alarm bells rang in the back of Peter’s mind, air caught in his throat as he tried to take a breath. In between the next blink his vision blurred, then changed abruptly to a glowing toxic green.  His spider sense went off like a bell, giving him a sharp pain in his head. Peter gasped, blinking again to find himself back at the statue with Dr. Strange.

Stephen caught his eye, and Peter was confused by the alarm in the wizard’s eyes when he looked at Peter. His mustache dropped with his frown, eyebrows pulling together as the man tried to figure out what was happening, and Peter suddenly felt like something had gone wrong. Peter blinked to get rid of the fuzziness, frowning when he could see Strange saying something but couldn’t hear. 

Peter’s gaze unfocused, the green taking over his sight again and Peter took a  stumbling step back. His whole body seemed to tingle… It felt like slipping in and out of unconsciousness. Blinking rapidly, Peter was able to bring himself back to the present when abruptly, he felt like he was suffocating. His feet lost purchase on the heavy metal of the statue and he flailed, trying to grasp onto something, anything. He opened his eyes to see the toxic green consumed his vision. He was immersed in it, endless green that not only covered his eyes but his entire body.

It hurt, his body strained with wounds and his lungs were begging for air, his spider sense blaring in alarm inside his mind. Peter fought to get out but he was stuck in the green. 

He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, he just wanted out of this water.

Bubbles escaped him, and he accidentally inhaled some of the water, burning as it went down his throat. Peter tried to cough but only ingested more of the water. Finally, after what felt like forever, Peter breached the surface with a ragged gasp. He coughed, struggling to stay above water as his arms and legs threatened to give out on him. He fought to crawl his way out when his fingertips finally brushed something solid and soft. Dirt, Peter though absently. Struggling for the edge, he managed to pull himself to the side of the horrible glowing green pool. Fighting with all his might, he was finally able to drag his wrecked body out. He could breathe, panting, and clinging tightly to what appeared to be a rocky, wet surface, but breathing. 

Peter coughed, vomiting out whatever water he’d swallowed in his panic. His mind raced but he couldn’t land on a single thought through the panic overwhelming him. Everything was so loud, too bright, and he gulped in as much air as he could through his scratchy throat. 

Before Peter had a chance to collapse to the ground, half in and out of the pit of green, he was suddenly grabbed harshly by the arms and hoisted up. He tried to speak but nothing but a raspy croak left his mouth. Whoever was holding him didn’t let him get his feet underneath him before he was being dragged. To where, he didn’t know. His spider sense was ringing still, like it hadn’t realized he’d been free of the water yet. Vision still blurry, he tried to focus on his surroundings only to pick up slightly muffled voices. 

On the verge of unconsciousness, Peter couldn’t help but be reminded of when he was dusted. Tony’s arms around him, Peter unable to hear the words his mentor was saying as he crumbled, only to be brought back what seemed like seconds later and thrust into another fight so soon. Everything was going too fast, he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, and everything faded to black before he could get a good look at the room he was in. 

CHAPTER 2

#you could know me #spider-man #batman #dc x spider-man #jason todd #peter parker

[kreideprinz69]

I don't think they were going for anything angsty. The writers were probably just catering to the fan perception of Nagito, and being incredibly ableist by having him received "justified" scorn from his classmates. But of course it kind of backfired in that made the rest of Class 77-B come across as uncaring at best, and unsympathetic and meanspirited at worst. To the point that I'm actually wondering if the 2.5 OVA was written by someone else. Because that genuinely is the best part of the anime, in that it's one of the few things that adds extra layers and depth to Nagito. Still...the part of me that has a hunger for angsty fanfic can see some potential. Like I actually could imagine a scene where the others are trying to put him at ease with the idea that he deserves a second chance just like they do. Only for that to backfire and royally piss him off. "...Are you kidding me? None of you gave a damn about me before we were Ultimate Despair. Hell, you didn't even give a damn about me when you were all just as filthy and despair-ridden as I was. And now you're pretending that I'm part of the family? No. The only thing you people want from me is validation. If I decide that I'm too far gone to deserve a second chance, well that would mean the rest of you are irredeemable now wouldn't it? And you can't stand for that. All that you want from me is to hear me say that you're shining symbols of hope once more. After that? I could keel over the next day and none of you would bat an eyelash."

honestly, i wish i knew what was going through the heads of those working on that show. though i don’t really think they ever made his classmate’s treatment towards him look “justified” in any way, it always felt like they treated it as a grey area or an attempt to make people feel bad for nagito. which, i guess worked, because i’m here. but that was such lazy writing, and it did the whole class so dirty. It didn’t come off right at all (assuming there is a right way for it to come off) and just felt… so weird. that’s really the best way i can describe it. weird, out of place, did not make sense. the reason i don’t think they were trying to make his classmates look justified and nagito look bad, is because of how ineffective it was. the treatment started off before he even did anything wrong, and he was noticeably much more polite/normal(?) but that’s just how i interpreted it, i 100% get what you’re saying. whatever they were going for, it was not accomplished. with how redundant it was, it’s entirely possible they weren’t even going for anything specific. man.

the 2.5 OVA was much better. i did some brief digging and from what i could find, its the exact same people working it as the rest of the show. which again, really makes me wonder what exactly is going through their heads. i thought the OVA was a great expansion on nagito’s character and his worldview. not only that, but it was very refreshing to see him get along with the rest of the class. they could still recognize his abnormal behavior, but they treated it like they treated the other oddballs in the class. it felt much more in character to me.

i definitely get that angst craving too. i imagine that after they woke up, there would have been a discussion about his treatment in the class. they’re all working together to build a future, where everyone has a second chance. i’m sure nagito would need a lot of encouragement to take that second chance, and he’d probably be quite upset at the class having a sudden change of heart and attitude. i think he’d have a lot of confusing emotions to sort through though. first, he’s starting to see the class as actual people, since they’re no longer symbols of hope (and the whole hope thing comes with its own giant baggage.) second, there’s the difference in treatment he’s getting from them, which is probably confusing. especially because of what happened in the game as well. but i think on some level, he must care for them. i cant quite say whether it’s personal, or lingering feelings of admiration for his idols. i say that because im thinking back to the hug he gave fuyuhiko and kazuichi after waking up lol. so maybe he did learn to just strive for the future.

but i think i’m starting to get a little off topic, so, yeah! theres definitely a lot of angst potential there and it would for sure make for some interesting fics!! theres a lot that can be done with that whole idea.

i really hope this was coherent and made sense, i am fighting insomnia demons at the moment and i’m not even going to acknowledge the time right now!

#nagito komaeda #sdr2 #danganronpa 3 was such a mess man #ive seen a lot of interesting takes on it though #but i think the one agreed opinion is that nobody really knows wtf was happening there #sigh

[elliewiltarwyn]

Top 5 memories!

i think i kind of cheated and put a couple of them in the top 5 mounts answer lol. but nevertheless! let's see what i can think of!

-------------------

5. Clearing savage raids with my static

i'll be fair and put this at the bottom because i already rambled about a bunch of them in the top 5 mounts post, but yeah, super meaningful to me. mmo raiding always seemed so out of reach in every other mmo i've played, so being able to not only challenge and conquer them in FFXIV but do so alongside friends has been some of the most rewarding feelings I've ever experienced.

4. the end of Endwalker

Endwalker MSQ in general, honestly, but the ending really put a fine point on it. I think I still would put Shadowbringers at the top, but Endwalker in general being about hope triumphing over despair just felt really salient at a time when it was really, really easy to despair over stuff happening IRL (both in society at large and individually). experiencing a story that just unambiguously unashamedly goes "hope is the most powerful force in the universe and it will win" is just. really nice.

3. attending friends' ingame wedding

i just think it's really sweet that you can do this ingame. i've been to a fair few (including my own! :V at one point, at least...) but my favorite was after a recent major advancement in the, ahem, crime technology scene, and we were just hanging out in discord and playing Among Us before the ceremony before actually going and seeing the super-cute ingame ceremony "as we see ourselves" and the whole thing just really felt like we were having an actual party. it was a good night.

2. Dark Knight 50 and 80 quests

still some of the most emotionally powerful moments in the whole game, and both resonated deeply with me, and maybe even helped me come to terms with parts of myself IRL?? when i was watching my best friend play through 50, there was a moment after the end where we both just sat there in silence and he eventually said "Damn, how do you even follow that up? Where do you go from there?" and the writing finds out ways of course. especially in Shadowbringers. but damn, if that ain't a mood. plus I'm a sucker for evil/dark twin/clone shit. >.> and turning that into "it's just you, trying to make you love yourself in the ways you never let yourself do before" was, again, kind of salient.

Patch 5.3 day

5.3 was the first time I was caught up and able to experience the new content on the same day as everyone else. i had also just managed to cap out DRK on Ellie, meaning she was finally the canon job I had decided for her. so going into the new MSQ content on that day, completely unspoiled, experiencing that part of the story alongside everyone else, as my canonical self, and ending up main tank-ing the Warrior of Light trial who is basically an encapsulation of all the heroic imagery across the entire damn Final Fantasy series... i've had emotionally meaningful moments that got to me in other games before, and some of them mean even more to me than this. but experiencing that tidal wave of emotions in that way alongside people just as into this shit as I was... i'm not sure anything else will ever hit in quite the same way again.

(it was also the day where, after I had finished the MSQ bit and just went to some random place to hang out and process it all, i got recruited into the FC where i met most of my ingame friends with whom I'm still friends today, so it was also a good day in that sense too ;u;)

thanks for the ask @sasslett!! i made it extremely emotional and sentimental and i'd apologize but i'm pretty sure that was exactly your goal :P

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #wol questions #ask games #it's “being EMOTIONAL ON MAIN” day i guess lol

[gayleviticus]

Better to Serve in Hell than Rule in Heaven

Kyubey: I don't believe it. Your tainted Soul Gem should have disappeared with your soul, but it hasn't! Why? Homura: Because I remembered why I repeated time and suffered over and over again; my feelings for Madoka, they run so deep that even pain has become precious to me. And as for my Soul Gem? A curse isn't what's tainted it. Kyubey: Then what is? Homura: Something you can't understand, Incubator. It is the pinnacle of all human emotion. More passion than hope, much deeper than despair. Love! - Rebellion

 I rewatched Rebellion today for the first time in about 5 years and was really struck by just how juicy Homura’s character is in the film – her selfish selflessness, her turning the whole way of the world upside down even as she perpetuates it. She’s heartbroken and guilty over leaving Madoka to sacrifice for the good of the world, so her solution here is to make herself the sacrifice instead.

If Madoka was to be a goddess, Homura’s fate is to stand against her and become the Devil. And so, she creates a paradise where no more magical girls have to suffer or become Witches or die, and where Madoka and her friends can live in peace. What’s so bad about that? The Incubators suffer, but they had it coming. Homura suffers, but it’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make.

But in the end, have things really changed? A magical girl becomes a godlike being and rewrites the entire universe to bring about her ideal happy ending, sacrificing her normal existence in the process. Madoka didn’t quite break the cycle, but rather softened it; magical girls still commit themselves to lives of endless fighting, but instead of rotting into Witches they instead find peace in Madoka’s arms when time runs out. Homura, in turn, smashes the cycle entirely, placing the burden of the world’s salvation on the Incubators’ backs… but at the cost of her own happiness.

In a sense, her Rebellion changes everything, but the logic of sacrifice endures. But perhaps this Rebellion against the world is a necessary step. For all the struggle and sacrifice, all Madoka could do was cheat a cold, cruel, impersonal cycle last-minute. But what Homura does is prove that love is stronger than such systems. And yes, it’s a twisted, flawed, unsustainable love, built on trapping Madoka in a pretty little cage as Homura tears herself apart from the inside. But it’s love nonetheless, triumphing over rigid laws and the cruelty of fate.

I’ve seen some complaints that Rebellion mischaracterises Homura – she would never do something as evil as rip Madoka out of heaven. But isn’t this basically the logical extreme of her entire raison d’etre throughout the series? Homura rewinds time again and again and again to prevent Madoka making a wish and becoming a magical girl, no matter what Madoka thinks. She takes it upon herself to become Madoka’s protector, and the painful truth is that the greater this love grows, the further she becomes from Madoka in truth.

So when Madoka decides on her final wish, Homura is terrified.

Madoka: I finally figured it out what I wanna wish for. I know what I want now more than anything else. And I'm ready to trade my life for it with no regrets. Homura: But you can't! If you do then, everything I've fought for, it's all for nothing! Episode 12: ‘My Very Best Friend’

Is it really such a surprise to think that the Homura who spent endless cycles fighting to spare Madoka from the pain of becoming a magical girl would hesitate to do the same to spare her from the pain of becoming a goddess?

At first, Homura tells herself that it’s OK. This is what Madoka wanted. But then when in Rebellion she tells Madoka about the terrifying ‘dream’ she had, where Madoka went far far away, never to be seen again, forgotten by everyone except Homura…

Homura: I was so lonely and sad... But no one understood how I felt. I started to think all my memories of you were just things I'd made up... I thought I was going crazy... Madoka: You're right... That dream does sound awful. But it's okay now, really! I'm not going anywhere, especially if it's so far away I couldn't see you again. I'd never do something like that. Rebellion

Everything falls apart. The sole consolation Homura had clung to – that Madoka was happy, that the sacrifice was worth it – comes undone. Madoka would never do something like that. How could Homura let her best friend throw her life away like that?

Madoka has no idea, of course – she has no idea how brave she’s capable of being, how much courage she has to spare for the sake of the world. But for Homura, this is where she realises that she’s made an incredibly stupid mistake.

For Homura, anything that causes Madoka pain is automatically her enemy. And when she realises how much pain becoming the Law of Cycles caused her – well, the logical conclusion is that the greatest threat to Madoka’s wellbeing is Madoka herself.

Homura: Well then, I suppose one day, you'll also be my enemy. It's fine, I don't care. I'll keep wishing for a world where you can be happy. Rebellion

So Homura selfishly chooses to override Madoka’s wish, out of pure, selfless love. Out of love for Madoka, she turns herself into the Devil, a suitable foe to fight a Goddess. Out of love for Madoka, she has imprisoned the girl within a prison of illusions. Out of love for Madoka, she has essentially renounced Madoka’s love.

There’s something utterly selfless about this. Homura is willing to make Madoka – her little pet bird singing sweetly in a silver garden – her enemy. She puts Madoka’s welfare first and foremost, even if it means someday Madoka might reject her, or fight her, or perhaps even hate her. In order to prove her love for Madoka, Homura is happy to never be loved by Madoka in return. Without hope, without witness, without reward, she takes the burden from her shoulders. Better to serve in Hell than rule in Heaven.

But there’s something undeniably selfish here. Who cares what Madoka wants? Madoka comes all the way to save her from her self-inflicted hell within the Soul Gem, and yet Homura refuses because she knows best. Madoka’s job is sing sweetly by the window, never leaving, trapped within a never-ending beginning, with the door to adulthood firmly closed. Madoka is not really a human, a girl, a friend – she’s an idol, to be cherished and protected by any means necessary.

If witches are born of the selfish wishes of magical girls (such as Sayaka’s wish done in hope of having Kyousuke fall in love with her), and goddess born of pure and selfless wishes, then it’s no surprise that Homura’s selflessly selfish love would create the Devil herself.

#i never write long posts but i had a half-decent one from years ago i wanted to edit #not that this is a deep novel insight tho i just think homura's neat #pmmm #madoka magica #madoka meta #homura akemi #homura #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm rebellion

[autisticcassandracain]

Not to be a Tara stan on main but like…I feel like survivor of abuse who’s made a lot of questionable (at best) choices but still gets to live and recover from all the things people have done to her without ever having to be easy to get along with or palatable is… significantly more subversive? Not that being subversive on its own is inherently good but like. The version of her that gets to live and have a complex relationship with gender and sexuality is… really important to me? And I feel like there’s so much more potential there than “what if good girl… was BAD girl” or even “what if bad girl was SAD and DIED TRAGICALLY for good boy’s character development”

Look, I agree with you, but, and I'm truly not trying to be insensitive here, that is not the conversation I'm having right now. Anon specifically argued that the trope Tara was intended to subvert - ie the 'good girl' trope - should fundamentally never be subverted because doing so is innately harmful, at least as far as I understand it. This isn't really about Tara, as she is written. This is about writing, storytelling, and narrative as a whole, and I simply cannot agree with the idea that you inherently cannot subvert the good girl trope (or superheroes as a whole, as they also seem to be arguing, considering the constant comparisons to superhero subversions with no bearing on the good girl archetype).

I am not arguing that the only problem with Tara's character is that she does a bad job at subverting that trope. I am also not arguing that having a character tragically refuse to move on from their trauma is the best or most satisfying way to write abuse. I am also not arguing that 'what if the good girl was bad' is even a particularly interesting concept, because it really isn't. Literally all I'm arguing right now is that I don't think it's fair to say that subverting the 'good girl' trope is innately harmful or doomed to failure, and should never be written. I believe there are very few writing ideas that are inherently off limits, and something as banal as this one certainly isn't one of them.

For the record: when we talk about writing abuse, rather than trope subversion, I agree that having a character recover is more subversive than having them, you know, not do that. Abuse is often butchered in media in various ways, and one of the ways in which this is done is presenting the trauma of it as something inescapable, something that makes one doomed. Actually having a character work through it an achieve a happy ending (especially if said happy ending doesn't come with the caveat of having to forgive your abuser first) is more subversive than having them spiral into doom and despair.

When talking about Tara specifically, I not only think that having her work through her trauma and come out the other side happier and better for it is not just 'more subversive' than she was in canon, but in fact, I do not believe that the way Tara is written in canon subverted much of anything. That is the point I was making in my original post. Tara fundamentally failed at subverting the 'good girl' trope because of the unfortunate introduction of victim blaming and pedophilia apologism to her character. Keeping Tara as a bad person, in canon or in fanon, is almost guaranteed to play into this victim blaming and apologism, because her entire character, her entire trope subversion, is built on it. In trying to subvert the 'good girl' trope, Wolfman and Perez simply stumbled into a different one: the lolita, the nymphette who corrupts steadfast grown men. And this archetype is inherently harmful, and should never be used un-subverted. So I'd argue that reframing Tara's character as the victim she was never intended to be is, in and of itself, already subversive, and moreover, that giving her a happy ending is better than making her a tragedy, because of the nature of the trope you are subverting.

(I hope any of that paragraph makes sense bc I'm rapidly running out of braincells)

But again, the conversation I was having was not about how to write abuse. The conversation I was having was about whether or not the core idea behind Tara's character - which, once again, was a very simple 'what if the good girl was bad' - is fundamentally harmful and should inherently be off limits for writers, which I really, really don't think! There were a million ways Wolfman and Perez could've decided to handle that trope subversion, and they chose to do the one where they made the teenager a 'slut', which is what fundamentally kneecapped them. Not the idea of subverting that trope to begin with. It's ultimately irrelevant to this specific conversation whether Tara would be a more interesting character as a maladjusted abuse victim who extracts herself from her abuse, or as a simple 'good girl' trope subversion. I agree that Tara the abuse victim with a recovery arc is more interesting. But it doesn't matter, because this conversation is about what Wolfman and Perez were attempting to write, which was very, very clearly not that.

That said, “what if bad girl was SAD and DIED TRAGICALLY for good boy’s character development” is not the arc I used as an example a few posts back, and if it was intended to reference that, I feel like it's a deliberate misconstruction of what I was talking about, and I do not appreciate it. A genuine tragedy is not the same as killing off a character for manpain or fridging. I agree that a maladjusted abuse victim getting a happy ending is far more subversive than not having them get a happy ending, as the latter currently oversaturates media, but completely dismissing unhappy endings and tragedies as inherently shallow is unfair, in my opinion. You can compare this to the following example: a gay couple getting a happy ending is more subversive than them dying, but that a gay couple's death doesn't have to be a shallow usage of the 'bury your gays' trope. And there's reasons why someone may prefer to write or read the tragic variant. It's not terribly relevant to the conversation at hand, but I knew it would bug me if I didn't say that, so, here you go.

All this to say, TL;DR I agree with you that for a character like Tara, an abuse victim who doesn't act the picture-perfect well-adjusted or sad abuse survivor getting a happy ending is far more subversive than any 'good girl' trope subversion, or a tragedy. But that was fundamentally not the conversation I was having; I was arguing about whether the 'good girl' trope subversion was the fundamental issue in Wolfman and Perez's writing, whether the 'good girl' trope subversion can be written well in the first place, which I believe it absolutely can be.

Also, this is super not intended to be aimed at ravens-wings the asker, but just to nip things in the bud: I am uninterested in having in-depth discussions about how to write abuse on this blog. There are a lot of nuances about it, and by god, is fandom bad at those. If you have specific questions about how I, personally, believe specific issues of abuse should be written in fiction, you are free to ask them, but I really really really really REALLY don't want to have a fucking repeat of my BNHA fandom experience, which consisted of me repeatedly arguing with a bunch of anons (and randos in the replies of my posts) about whether demonizing abuse victims while redeeming the abuser is bad (it is). #JusticeForTara and if even one of you fuckers comes into my inbox talking about Deathstroke I'm dropkicking you from orbit and blocking you.

#once again not directed at ravens-wings your ask is polite and makes good points #but this is getting too close to comfort to my arguments about todoroki family bnha and i REFUSE to do this again #i may argue that tragedies are a valid way to tell abuse stories but i swear to god #do NOT confuse that with me saying certain behaviours of abuse victims make them inherently evil #i WILL NOT have this fucking argument again i will not i will not i will not #my posts #asks #abuse // #csa // #ask to tag #tara markov

[bisonofyesterday]

Attention freaks, it’s me, Bison the Great, half of you following me probably only know me from Monument Mythos fanart, the other half know me from discord, but unbeknownst to most people I'm actually pretty fascinated with the ancient and archaic history of humanity! As it happens, they made a whole show about this, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal wrapped up its second season about 4-ish weeks ago to much deserved tumultuous fanfare and much less-deserved angst over its finale (which I won’t be getting into), but my main point is that it just won’t leave my head! Such a fantastic show both in animation and story, I've been deep-diving into surface-level videos and articles about the olden days of our species ever since the show’s ending and I thought “Say! Why not post a couple poorly done first-thought essays to Tumblr dot com about Primal Season 2 specifically!”, at the very least I hope these next couple posts provoke your thought glands the same way the show did for me!

First order of business is the show’s beginning, essentially its first three episodes, Sea of Despair, Shadow of Fate, and Dawn of Man (lot of Ofs here). Many folks, fans included, lamented the major lack of prehistoric fauna within season 2 compared to season 1, I get this sentiment entirely, but I think it’s a bit of a short-sighted critique, for I believe the lack of dinosaurs and other creatures is intentional. Primal Season 2 turns its setting of inaccurate savage creatures into one of inaccurate human history, essentially uplifting the Primal aspects of it to a new level, and this is not just thrown in overnight either, the first three episodes do a fantastic job at nudging us into a world that not even Spear and Fang are familiar with, let’s look at Sea of Despair, which I've come to think of as season 1′s last hurrah in a sense. Spear and Fang, immediately after the end of season 1, build a raft to go save the former-slave-turned-slave-again Mira from her captors.

This episode has all the Primal stops, hunting for food, unreasonably antagonistic wildlife, some funny moments, the works, which is saying something as the entire episode takes place in the middle of a goddamn ocean. Our heroes are already in a life-threatening situation before they even reach land, but more interesting is our selection of baddies.

Our first evil-doer, if you can even call them that, is the star of a moment I personally find hilarious, whales. Spear and Fang, being a caveman and a dinosaur respectively, have most likely never seen a whale before, so the sight of these titans TERRIFIES them, of course the whale does nothing to them, but it’s a nice bit of brevity and realism, as well as arguably sets up the task to come, more on that in a bit.

Now to someone that does a lot more evil (the crime of Living), we come to a giant turtle! Most likely an archelon from the size, a species from the late cretaceous and also the largest turtle to have ever lived. Our poor turt friend becomes the prey of two angry carnivores, but it also has some fight in it, as it tries to kill Spear after Spear tried killing it, eventually our duo wins however, by how else? Working together, Spear forces the thing to breach near the boat and Fang kills it instantly with a bite to the neck.

The next few creatures solidify my point here much better, as Spear and Fang (after eating THE ENTIRE TURTLE) meet some flying fish and a dunkleosteus, only to be immediately threatened by what the Primal Wikia tells me is a ornithocheirus and a MEGALODON!

Look at the picture here, notice all these little things and details, these are, in-fact, accurate reconstructions! Sure they might be exaggerated in some ways (dunkleosteus is kinda shrinkwrapped and has a weirdly long lower jaw), but notice the skin over dunkleosteus’s armored skull, the proto-feathers on ornithocheirus, megalodon! Uh, being a giant shark.

This isn’t the first time Primal’s been weirdly accurate, in season 1′s The Night Feeder, the smilodon is accurately stocky, and I'm sure there’s other moments as well. What I find fascinating here however is the fact that they chose to leave our main characters’ homeland with these creatures in this manner, this along with the next episode are going to be the last times fauna has a major antagonistic position in Primal, so why not go with all the shots? Hunting creatures, fighting creatures, and a titan the main characters seem hopeless to fight against. Side-note, it’s always annoyed me how people dismiss Primal as just dumb fun when bringing up its scientific department, while yes, stuff like Fang’s wrists and Terror Under The Blood Moon’s featherless raptors are woefully inaccurate, as are some blatantly fictional creatures before and later on (the saber-toothed wolves in A Cold Death, the man-bats and the giant spider in Terror Under The Blood Moon, the giant vultures in Vidarr, they’re NOT argentavis), but to write off the ENTIRE SHOW has having nothing of scientific substance in it it is a bit absent-minded I think, though of course I'm not saying it’s actually secretly scientific genius either.

After defeating the mega shark, Spear and Fang are washed ashore on a new land, which immediately segues us into the next episode, Shadow of Fate, ominous title! I want to clarify here that I’m NOT trying to recap episodes word-for-word here, only to point out moments that help my greater point. And with saying that, the count of prehistoric creatures is EVEN LESS in Shadow of Fate, ultimately relegated to a poor arsinoitherium and a male t-rex that the fandom has affectionately named Red.

The REAL stars of this episode are, instead, a Celtic tribe! Of humans! They speak Gallic so I guess they’re French. The tribe has recently taken in Spear, who has also just awoken deeply confused, Spear’s never dealt with another person before, he’s only dealt with things either below/the same as his own level or with Mira, and with Mira he witnessed personally the kind of things a whole group of smart-people could do to innocent smart-people, so naturally our hero is terrified of the implications of his current state in this new, weird place.

The Celts aren’t bad though, in-fact, they’re much better off than Spear, being kinda bronze-age, the technology level of Primal season 2 is something I’ll get into in another post, point is, in the times of the Roman Empire, the Celtic Tribes were spoken of as savage barbarians, here however, Spear is the barbarian, note how the Celts have buildings, agriculture, how they ornately decorate their bodies and clothing, compare this to Spear, who in this scene is depicted as a scared animal backed into a corner.

A continuation of Primal’s “unprimaling”, Spear is disconnected from his animal buddy, who’s attitude is the only attitude he’s ever truly known, individuals fighting for their survival all the time and following where the food is, he has NO idea what to do against an established tribe with an army, a doctor, and a leader, and thankfully he doesn’t get to find out right now, as the Celtic Chieftain calms down the situation and Spear.

Meanwhile with Fang, she and Red have been hanging out, being lovey dovey, doing what it is that animals do, they even go hunting! Unfortunate for everyone involved however, it’s a hunting trip into the Celtic Tribe village and a battle erupts. Note here that Red doesn’t seem to comprehend that Fang cares for a person, neither does Spear comprehend Fang’s love for Red until it’s too late. Red, a being from a different walk of life and time, much like Spear and Fang, is killed in the whole scuffle, Shadow of Fate ending with Spear solemnly leaving the Celtic Tribe to be with his grieving friend. Goodbye Red, you were truly a complicated end to the animalistic antagonist of Primal, much more thought-provoking than the megalodon anyways.

When I say “unprimaling”. I do not mean Primal has lost the focus it had in season 1, far from it, the things that happen in these episodes are in-fact an evolution or at least a spin on season 1′s formula, just now set in a place dominated by, compared to Spear, much more advanced humans, instead of very angry animals and monsters, Primal isn’t being un-Primal’d, it’s still Primal, but it’s being unprimaled, as in lifted up out of the land of beasts Spear and Fang hail from, Spear has to deal with people who bypassed where he is loooong ago, and this is nowhere better shown than in Dawn of Man, a truly fitting title.

In this episode, Spear’s hanging out with a still grieving Fang, thankfully their relationship hasn’t been strained at all despite the village fight, but that’s unimportant information at the moment. They find a cave and rest there for the time being, and Spear decides to do some exploring both inside and outside the cave, where he finds remnants of an ancient people, people like him.

Throughout the episode, Spear imagines how these people could’ve functioned, how they were so like him as they lived alongside ancient beasts of their own, bison latifrons, Irish elk, pterosaurs, theropods, hunted by and battled with prehistoric people, primal people.

Spear’s kinda lonely if you didn’t pick up on that.

At night, Spear even tries to worship the moon, the same religion he observed the much more advanced Mira practicing, but it doesn’t give him anything, he doesn’t know what to do with it, all of the things these folks do now either confuse or scare him, they’re not like those old people, who lived a much simpler, albeit a much more dangerous life, Spear’s just kind of a lost soul now even next to his best friend. And speaking of being scared of the new generation, Spear and Fang are happened upon by what they quickly realize are Mira’s captors...

The Scorpion, in reality a Viking clan, filled with Vikings! And they ride cave bears!! Another major example of just how advanced these people are in comparison to Spear, taming untamable animals to be their mounts (I mean, Fang, but Spear and Fang are equals so-). These guys are more advanced than the Celts even, having intricate weaponry and clothing, even shields! Uh, again, I’ll talk about cultures and technology in another post. For now, this is the true end of Primal’s unprimaling, as Spear and Fang defeat the Viking intruders and track their scent back to their village, to Mira’s location, which leads into the next episode and my personal favorite, The Red Mist, but that’s off-topic, just remember that after this point there's never really a major animal villain again when the Vikings introduce a whole new breed of villain to the show.

The beginning of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal takes to a slow buildup of tuning out the animalistic side of season 1, giving creatures a final spotlight as antagonists, and into the barbarity of ancient man, mingling with both good and evil tribes. People who, while primitive compared to you or I, are basically aliens to our favorite caveman and dinosaur. Folks on the road to getting where we are today, but who’ve also left a lifestyle like Spear’s behind, Spear is now as much as a living fossil as we thought Fang was to him, and this is accentuated the more season 2 goes on and even in its ending.

Tune in next time where I hope I talk about the cultures and technology of the bronze age/ancient/medieval age world of Primal season 2!

#genndy tartakovsky's primal #bisonprimal #genndy tartakovsky's primal season 2 #primal

[ronpatrash]

okay here is my danganronpa 3 anime experience post. tl;dr it wasn't great and i really didnt need to watch it, but i have to...complete the plot in its entirety? I gUESS??? and this was...painful

first off let me say that my watch of this was with my danganronpa friends. it's already a biased opinion you're about to read, cause we're watching it dubbed, and for the most part we weren't paying full attention to it, because the plot fell off very quickly

the english dub is alright though! for the most part it's not bad and not too jarring, though some lines can sound ridiculously funny, like yukizome talking to chiaki and asking "you think no one will like you cause you're a gamer?" or junko actually saying "kamukura yaas queen" and "he's gonna burst a blood vessel cause i dissed his waifus" I CANT BELIEVE THIS BAD SHOW MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD AT SOME POINTS. junko's english VA is a delight and i'm so glad i sat through it for her to show up and be a horrible girlboss <3

and also the future arc is so skippable that my friends and i still got the gist of the plot while we watched almost all of it at 2x speed LMAO the only part that was a great time for me was when toko and komaru showed up (what a nice continuation from ultra despair girls!!!) and when makoto was about to be brainwashed into committing suicide, cause we get to see a glimpse of what his mind was experiencing. that shit was really cool cause of all the dr1 characters and makoto going through survivor's guilt? i was fascinated UNTIL WE ALL SAW MONDO, IN BUTTER FORM, WITH HIS JACKET ON THE FLOOR THAT SHIT WAS HILARIOUS)

actually the whole story,,, the whole thing with the despair that led to the end of the world shit is just so,,, shallow in the end? it would have held more weight to me if being in 'despair' wasn't actually just brainwashing through watching an animated film. i think the concept of mitarai being so good at animating that he uses hypnotism methods in his films to manipulate the emotions of the audience is... far-fetched but makes sense? animation and film directing is in a sense about making your audience feel things, and everything plays a part in that (from character movement to composition of the shot and colours, sounds, etc etc if you've been to animation school you know this stuff).

as cool as the idea is, I JUST DIDNT EXPECT IT TO BE THE BACKBONE OF THE ENTIRE TRAGEDY, and as much as i want to hate it, i cant bring myself to. im just disappointed, but it's very danganronpa to do this

OH AND I DIDNT THINK MITARAI'S GRAND PLAN IS TO JUST HYPNOTISE EVERYONE AGAIN WITH A HOPE FILM INSTEAD OF A DESPAIR ONE, DUDE, YOU WERE THE REASON WHY EVERYTHING WENT TO SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE

AND I DIDNT THINK HE WOULD JUST BE STOPPED WITH UHM I DONT KNOW, THE FUCKIN,,, POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, FROM HIS CLASSMATES THAT HE BARELY KNEW OR INTERACTED WITH. THIS PLOT IS SO UEHJDJGJF

also the new characters are mostly very boring. i kinda called it early on that there's sorta a throuple thing going on with yukizome, munakata and sakakura dOES ANYONE EVEN REMEMBER THESE PEOPLE'S NAMES FOR REAL?? I SURE DONT, I KEEP HAVING TO LOOK EM UP CAUSE THEIR PLOT WAS SO UNINTERESTING, AND MUNAKATA AND SAKAKURA ARE BOTH ASSHOLES

the throuple ended really badly too????? oh my god the adult characters are all terrible, only great gozu, the guy with the bull mask in the future foundation, was amazing, bUT HE LASTED LIKE ONE EPISODE. future arc bad,,, you can tell characters were created just to be killed

if you cant tell already by how incomprehensibly angry this entire blog post was written, i'm relieved to be done with the anime. there is no more mystery, the writing is just really bad. it's comparable to my experience with following the kingdom hearts timeline in that it's good in the beginning (because many questions are open and unanswered and your brain fills it in with theories you enjoy), and gets worse towards the end (because every question is answered badly, established plot points are rewritten for bad reasons, and the work is clearly rushed so they can try to beat more money out of this dying horse)

#ronpatrashtalks #danganronpa 3 anime liveblogging #spoilers #extreme spoilers. i will be dissing everything very angrily #if you genuinely love the danganronpa 3 anime you need to keep scrolling. do not read. i hated this

[an-asuryampasya]

[venting into the void]

screammm. It's been two weeks and I still don't really feel like I've properly accepted this master's program I'm doing. Sure, I'm attending classes and stuff but I keep catching myself feeling it's all a bit unreal, and not in a good way. In a 'hmm this was a fun experiment, I'm ready to go home now' kinda way. Sort of? I really don't know how to describe it. But I just. Don't know if this is it. And that is Not Fun because getting here was a pain. Choosing to walk away from engineering, or my dad made sure to impress upon me, "wasting my seat at one of the country's best universities that could've gone to someone who would've at least done justice to the seat and been more deserving of the heavily subsidised education you received" was not a decision I made easily. I really wish I made it knowing WHAT I wanted to do instead, and not this nebulous idea of "something in the arts". I know it was a decision I made at the time since it felt the only way I could stay sane, but aaaaaaaah I really wish I had had something more concrete to base it on.

I can just walk away from this degree, but I really wish I wasn't even contemplating it. I won't drop out, because I'm a coward, but sweet fuck how I wish I didn't even want to. I don't even know what I'd go towards anyway, so might as well do this I suppose. Aaaaaah how I hope I feel more excited about this course soon.

I hate it here. Hate /everything/ about this stupid place. Delhi can go die. I mean the sheer number of museums and historic buildings is very nice, I'll give it that, but that's about the only thing that's even passably nice about this stupid place. fuck, within a week it managed to make me feel comforted by hearing sodding Tamil just because it was a language other than fucking Hindi for once (nothing against Tamil, the cussing is because it really makes no sodding sense to be comforted by a language even more alien to me than Hindi. I know Hindi but don't know a lick of Tamil and yet I was ready to CRY when I heard full sounds and not the aborted consonants (in Hindi you'd say Shiv as opposed to Shiva, etc.))

I don't get it though. I never felt homesick during my undergrad, despite that being a much longer stint outside of home and when I was much younger. Heck, I never even imagined I'd miss Telugu in the first place, given how fucked up my relationship with my own language/culture is. And YET. Took less than a week over here to get me, someone who's already used to living away from home in a land with very different languages and culture, to want to cry because I just wanted to freely be able to say the Telugu equivalent of "my foot" when something annoying happened. It's messing with my brain because I still don't feel comfortable with Telugu and yet I crave it and I don't know what to make of that. I suppose it's nice that since literally nobody around me knows shit about South India (no really, they know NOTHING, can't even tell whole-ass states apart) I can be more telugu-y than I usually feel comfortable being because there's no one around to make me realise how bad at being telugu I am? Like I can gush about pickles without fear because no one will know what basic knowledge about them I lack. I can actually explore how I like presenting myself when there's no one around to test how Well I am doing at being Telugu. And I guess that's sorta nice? I find myself writing in Telugu far more now when I'm writing random stuff to stay awake in class, because no one can judge my shitty handwriting or realise that I don't know how to write some pretty basic stuff in Telugu. Turns out I like some things about being Telugu after all and I feel both joyful and abject despair at this discovery. But whatever, that's something I can work out in time, as I learn to be more forgiving of my past self.

But for now I don't know if I want to continue this course. And it's the first time I /chose/ something entirely on my own and had to really pigheadedly push to get here. So it's terrifying to regret my choice now. Where would I go? And who do I have to blame except my own useless indecisive self. But I don't know how I feel about this place. Hate the city, am not reassured by the university, and the course content isn't exactly blowing my mind or even making me sigh in relief at how different it is from engg. On the contrary, I'm wondering if I should've just stuck to my plan of doing concrete tech - at least that I actively enjoyed to a significant extent.

I may have made a pretty big fucking mistake, aaaaaah. I desperately hope I feel differently soon.

also delhi sucks so much.

#placeholder tag #rhys if you're seeing this mayhaps look away because I am Not Ready to have this conversation and make it more real yet #also it's long and you'll anyway get a more dramatic version when I finally get around to acknowledging these thoughts properly #and need to sound off with you #but for now i'm still hoping it's just teething troubles with my new degree

[project1939]

Day 36- Film: Clash by Night 

Release date: June 16th, 1952. 

Studio: RKO 

Genre: Drama/noir 

Director: Fritz Lang 

Producer: Jerry Wald, Norman Krasna, Harriet Parsons 

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe 

Plot Summary: Mae Doyle returns home after 10 years when an illicit romance breaks up. No young woman anymore, she is now bitter and reclusive. When she and childhood friend Jerry begin dating, Mae tries to break it off, saying she would never be a good wife to him. Eventually she gives in and marries him, hoping that she can feel secure and learn to love him. It doesn’t take long for her to tire of his simple pragmatic ways, however. Jerry’s best friend Earl, meanwhile, falls desperately in love/lust with her. Will the temptation be too great to resist? 

My Rating (out of five stars): ***½ 

Damn, until about the last 10 minutes, I was going to give this 4 stars- even though I hated almost all of the characters! The ending nearly completely ruined it, though. Until then it was an unusually cynical and bleak movie for Hollywood in the early 1950s. It seemed obvious that it was an adaptation of a play, which it was, and it seemed obvious that the original ending was changed, which it was. I really struggle to even understand why this was adapted for the screen if a “happy” ending had to be tagged on to it. It completely compromises the entire thing. 

The Good: 

Barbara Stanwyck was impressive. She is definitely of the old school acting style, before the more naturalistic style we’re used to today became prevalent. Even so, I thought her performance was very effective. And my god, she played bitter and jaded well here! She gave me chills sometimes. 

Paul Douglas was also wonderful. A Letter to Three Wives is one of my favorite films, and I fell in love with him in that. He plays earnest everyman characters so well, and he’s always so likeable. His character in this is a bit weak and gullible, but also a genuinely good person. 

The main love triangle in this is between people who are all in their 40s! That is exceedingly rare for a Hollywood film even today. I loved the way that added a different layer of maturity and complexity. 

A lot of dialogue was really good, again, so no surprise that it came from a play. I usually try to jot down interesting quotes while I watch a movie, and there were so many, I kept having to pause this to get things written down. 

The cynicism and darkness were pervasive and engulfing. There was a kind of claustrophobia in all three of the main characters' lives, and it really made you feel trapped in a kind of hell with them. 

I hated so many of the characters, but they were real and made the despair of the story intense. Earl repulsed me on a physical level- I could barely stand to watch him. Mae was not a good person either. Jerry had a mooching uncle that I could barely stand. Even Jerry himself, generally being a good guy, was a bit annoying in how much he tolerated being around these terrible people. 

The Bad: 

The ending! The ending! I don’t know if I could ever tire of ranting about how stupid the ending was. Spoiler ahead: When Mae suddenly decided out of nowhere that she should go back to Jerry, it was ridiculous and totally out of character. When Jerry takes her back, I even said out loud, “Well, this will probably last a week!” Nothing about the film made sense with this kind of ending. 

Hating so many characters was a plus and a minus. The minus was that it made the movie hard to sit though at times. I could care less what happened to Earl or Uncle Vince or even Mae. 

If I didn’t hate Earl enough, he had a whole repeating segment about doing his “Chinese impression,” where he pulled at his eyes and made strange noises that sounded nothing like Chinese. I am SO SICK of these scenes in movies, radio, and tv shows! I hope they get less frequent as the project goes on, because I’m barely more than 1/3 finished. 

#project1952 #1952 #project1952 day 36 #100 films of 1952 #barbara stanwyck

[edwardcullenisadilf]

Undiagnosed depression.

I see a lot of people on this website talk about the struggles of depression. i think we've all seen at least one post that talks about going to therapy, or antidepressants, or something along those lines. but i never, ever, see anyone talk about the struggles of having depression, but not having it diagnosed.

my whole life, i've always felt this darkness. just lingering in the background of everything that i do. no matter how much im smiling or laughing or having a genuinely good time, as soon as that good time stops, this overwhelming feeling of sadness and despair just washes over me. and this feeling wasnt just "aw boo hoo im sad that was fun" its being sad for absolutely no reason. you dont know why your feeling this way, theres no way to stop it, and that just makes it 10x worse.

i've always known what depression was, but i didnt know the actual symptoms and full definition of it. so, when i finally learned what that was, everything clicked. it made sense now. i felt the chains that wrapped around me loosen. i finally saw a shred of hope.

Before i continue, i want to get a little bit into my history.

the first true depressive state i was ever put in, was when i was 10. my grandma had just died. my grandma and i were really close, and she was like a form of comfort to me. when i got the call.. it was like the darkness came flooding into my mind. everything good seemed to disappear, and my whole life seemed to turn upside down. that started to seep into my self image, and i got really insecure about my body. i wouldn't eat, take care of myself, talk to anyone, and barely even leave my room. Then, my dog died. i still hadnt gotten over my grandma, so this just fed the "darkness" even more. this time, i tried to be okay. it didnt work. since there was a lot going on at the moment my mind was occupied with a lot of other things. here is where the story gets dark. about a year ago, i moved across the country. me and my family drove, so it was an endless cycle of driving, and sleeping in a million hotels. this was when i started struggling with self-destructive actions and behaviors. i took a pocket knife to my arm almost every night, just because i felt it was all i could do. this then repeated when my other dog died, and sometimes just for no reason at all.

After reading all that, you can imagine how happy i was when i FINALLY found the cause for the thing that's been holding me back my ENTIRE LIFE. and then when i finally talk about it... this is the response i got.

"that's not valid"

"you need to be diagnosed. stop faking for attention"

"you dont act depressed"

"you just dont have any friends"

"you're just lonely"

"you're just overdramatic"

"you're just sad"

You're just

sad.

I dont think anyone realizes how crushing, and invalidating it feels to be in SO MUCH pain ALL THE TIME and then being told that you're faking it, or attention seeking, or that you simply dont count. Yes, a professional diagnosis is helpful for some people so that they can get help, and i too want to get a diagnosis so that i can start therapy or take antidepressants. but please, please, PLEASE dont be an asshole and invalidate people that haven't gotten a diagnosis. NEVER say that they are "faking depression" unless you have concrete fucking proof. i never wanted to be depressed. i dont want to be depressed. god, i would give anything not to feel like this, but i just.. haven't been able to do it yet. It's too sides of the same coin, but one is getting help, and the other is not.

thanks.

#depression #dont be an asshole #spread awareness #sad girl #please just take 7 minutes out of your day #reblog #thanks if you read #love you #goodnight

[love-starved-gen-craft]

wanna be ana buddies? we can stream supersize vs superskinny, encourage each other and talk about life :) idk if this is weird I just started using Tumblr lol

i would have jumped at this opportunity a year ago. this is the first time i've been on tumblr in a while hence the lack of response. my answer is no because obviously i'm in a different place i would still love to be friends & talk about life but i get that talking to someone who isn't in the depths of an eating disorder when you are in said pit of despair is like conversing with a fidget spinner. i'm now gonna cut to the whole schpiel you don't need about how i'm better & you can be too but i'll try cut the cliche so stick around if you want:

i wouldn't consider myself recovered or in recovery i never tried to recover but stuff happened in my life that made me feel happier & so i don't continually starve myself anymore i dip back into those habits occasionally but they aren't my lifestyle. i am very lucky & privileged that external factors pulled me out of this self destructive behaviour & i get that's not possible for everyone to have this experience although i would like to note that recovery is still possible in shit circumstances. however, most people will continue with their disorder until they get a wake up call & my words will never be powerful enough to be that wake up call but i optimistically hope that they are. so here goes:

you may be doing this bc you feel as though it's the only way others will love you. this isn't true. i wasted months of my life in miserable ignorance to people who loved me. anorexia is ironically all consuming, devouring all thoughts you have other than ones about food, weight & calories. it leaves no room to think about all the people who love & care about you. had i spent more time attempting to starve myself i would have missed out on a wonderful relationship with someone i have loved since i was 11.

you may not believe that this can apply to you but nothing i can say will be able to convince against this viewpoint so i won't try but i hope against hope you realise that people are not so superficial that they can only love you when you look a certain way & not so obsessed with weight that they only find unhealthily skinny people pretty.

now maybe you think this doesn't apply to you because you're doing it for yourself. to this i would say that you are going about becoming better in the entirely wrong way. when you look in the mirror at your goal weight you will see a husk of what you used to believe was yourself. you will not love yourself because you are thin because there will be nothing left 2 love; behind your flesh there will be no personhood or sense of self. when you love others you do not love them as an object to be looked at, you love them for the intricacies & beautiful complexities that make them human. when it has nothing else to eat, your body will devour those wonderful parts of you leaving only you as an object with nothing left to truly love. thinking about all of the times i have stepped back & thought wow i actually like myself all instances were because of some personality trait i was emulating even if i did so through my appearance it was not the appearance that mattered it's who i was as a person. anorexia prevents you from being all those things you want to be & like in other people. you can't be funny, charismatic, quick witted, bubbly, intelligent or any other word you would like to describe yourself as when you barely have the energy to keep your brain working. you are not yourself when you are starving you are simply your eating disorder. the psychological effects of starvation are well documented & devastating. now when i get up in the morning i can read books, i can engage in my hobbies, i can be creative & present, people find me interesting & i have things to say & think. i look at myself in the mirror & i see a healthy head of hair i cut myself: it is bouncy & full of life & i love it, i see clothes which express me: they are creative & unique & they don't exist solely to hide or emphasise my body they are nice in & of themselves. beyond that i see relationships i now have the time & energy for, academic opportunities i have the cognitive ability to achieve, literature i can fully enjoy, passions i had once abandoned because i felt that they were not a priority when they were really the things that made me me. now there's a distinct possibility you hate yourself that you focus on improving your body because you can conceive of a method to improve it unlike your mind & soul which you abhor with no perceived means of improvement. it does take time & it's hard to love yourself or change as a person but it's possible. do nice things, smile at people, be kind: you can't hate a nice person. do stupid shit like having a dumb catchphrase, change your name, watch weird movies, make cool art, music, anything, do anything that helps you to build an identity. there's research to suggest that people suffering from anorexia have diminished sense of private self consciousness meaning you can't understand how you feel about yourself, your emotions & lack introspection. it's unclear wether this is a cause of anorexia or symptom of starvation, probably both i think building back that sense of self consciousness & identity can break the cycle. if you define yourself in terms other than your weight it can no longer define you.

thank you if you read through all my stupid ramblings & i wish every single one of you the best. i may post more about recovery, harm reduction, online ed communities, medical effects of ed's, how my life is going, what im up to, stuff im reading, maybe sm philosophy etc. etc. but idk if anyone wants to hear that or if it would be helpful idk let me know if you would be interested. sorry to the person who asked me a simple question & received an essay on a separate topic around 8 months later.

p.s. one more reason why you should attempt recovery (& this is the most important reason) your farts stop smelling like the the 3rd stage of bodily decay & decomposition!!!

here's sm links to academic articles talking about the psychological effects of starvation:

#an0rexya #an0rex1a #anamia #proannnnna #pr0 4na #ana tag #th11nspo #pr0 ed #pr0 ana #pro aana #thigh gab #ed tw #ed ramblings #ed rant #ed disorder #thinspiracja #thinspx #thin inspo #thin inspiration #pro annnnna

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been utterly lost in the Richard III sauce the last week or so, and just... this scene at the beginning of the play:

RICHARD

Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have Some patient leisure to excuse myself.

LADY ANNE

Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make No excuse current, but to hang thyself.

RICHARD

By such despair, I should accuse myself.

LADY ANNE

And, by despairing, shouldst thou stand excused; For doing worthy vengeance on thyself, Which didst unworthy slaughter upon others.

And then Richard at the end of the play:

. . .

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And if I die, no soul shall pity me: Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself?

*elmo surrounded in flames gif* WILLIAM!!! BILL!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD

the way 'despair' winds through this entire play, actually... not to put too fine a point on it but holy fuck

#he knew what he was about that good ol' shakespeare huh #shakespeare #richard iii #because the thing is I think richard has *already* despaired by the time the play starts and this is just one long violent finish to it #not to go all psychoanalysis on you here but I think he's acting out of having despaired entirely of ever having love or human connection #'love forswore me in my mother's womb' #and the only thing that has ever granted him recognition (even from mama york in a roundabout way) or a feeling of control is violence #having gone through the other history plays before getting to r3 is such a fucking ride fdsfsaj like ah okay yeah I see why he's like this #he's awful but it's not that hard to see how he got there lol #'For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell #bad luck with the getting killed off girl but I hope she got popcorn and a good seat in the afterlife to watch this mess go down haha #hey motherfucker what's it like to be in a hell of your own making #I don't know about worthy but he's certainly doing vengeance on himself #also almost all actors I've heard so far put the stress on 'despair' -- as in 'I shall *despair*' #but I always thougth it makes much more sense if he says 'I *shall* despair' since he's sort of responding to all the voices #that have been telling him 'despair and die' (whether he's responding to ghosts or his own conscience still an open question lol) #and it also makes it feel like that's what he's been doing this whole play; putting off the moment when he has to admit to the despair #also 'despair and die' could be a nice counterpoint to 'live long and prosper' hahaha it's the vulcan statement of war