#should have been easy

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

#writeblr #warm up #this is longer than i wanted i really considered removing that part about myself and what i went thru #but i think it really fucking bothers me that EVERY time i talk about being an artist #ppl assume i just like. had the skill and ability to drop everything and pay for grad school. #like sir i grew up poor. my house wasn't a safe space. i gave up a FREE RIDE TO LAW SCHOOL. for THIS. bc i chose it. #was it fucking hard? was i choosing the hard thing?? yes. #but we need to stop seeing artists as lazy layabouts that can ''afford'' to just ''sit around and create'' #when MANY - if not MOST - of us are NOT like that. we have to work our fucking ASSES off. hard work. long and hard work #part of valuing artists is recognizing the amount we sacrifice to make our art. bc it doesn't just #like HAPPEN to us. also btw it rarely has anything to do with true talent. #speaking as someone with a chronic condition i hate when ppl are like u have it easy. like actively as i'm writing this my hands r #ACTIVELY hurting me. i haven't been posting bc my left hand was curled in a claw for the last week #this isn't fucking luck. after a certain point it's not even TALENT. it's dedication & sacrifice. #''u get to flounce around and do nothing with ur life'' is a narrative that is a direct result of capitalism #imagine if we said that about literally any other profession. #''oh so u give up 10 yrs of ur life to be a doctor? u sacrifice having a social life and u get SUPER in debt? #u need to work countless hours and it will often be thankless? well i wish i was that lucky'' #we should be applying that logic to landlords ONLY #''oh ur mom and dad gave u the money to buy a house? and all u did was paint it white and rent it? huh.''

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

#dc comics #dc #damian wayne #dick grayson #talia al ghul #batfamily #dc robin #nightwing #anyway. yes im a self-indulgent ''dick as damians secret third parent'' truther #like i DO think it's way more complex and nuanced than the schmoopy affectionate fan portrayal of it #they're brothers they're father and son they're partners they're the dynamic duo except only in past tense etc etc #but consider! I'm not immune to schmoopy affection in fanworks. it compells me despite itself #anyway it's technically not that crazy when it comes to dick and damian. they hug! often! at least they did #it's not as big a leap to these types of scenarios #also talia ''somewhat absent for complex reasons on both her and damians part but very loving and loved by her son'' al ghul #you will always be famous to me #son of the demon origin...bwahhh #anyway. someone made a comic kind of like this/like a post i made abt this topic #but way funnier bc dick and talia starting trying to beat each other up #so go look at that as well #anyway. it's been a somewhat difficult few weeks so I'm. desperately trying to take it easy #i got some reading with me (first vol of kevin smiths GA run that i found second hand and jaimes BB run vol 2!) #so we'll see how far i get through those. considering there's demons in my head telling me to re-read things (LET ME OUT!!!) #when i finish GA and BB i do plan on rereading robin 2021. as a treat to myself #it's a run I've really warmed up to as time went on #I'm keeping up w/ the current b&r run even though it is. admittedly very slow w/ some weird dialogue #i read it for the damian content more than anything. also nikas back so that's neat :] #idk I have a feeling that after absolute power shakes out we might get some more creative team switch ups #so if anyone at dc is interested in taking over the reigns on b&r...that could be very neat #(it's me they should hire me. please DC i have ideas listen to my red hood pitch PLEASE-)

[beybuniki]

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

#DONT COMMENT ON THE BACKGROUND I KNOWWWWWWWWWWWW #anyway this is day 1. they take a bus. the bakugo household has fishing gear so ´deku is wearing bakugo's onesoe (?) and bakugo is wearing #his dad's. and notices he has grown :') #anyway they take a BUS and don't feel like doing this at all it's awkward for so many reason #also trying to relax after everything is neurologically just really hard they might be hyperivgilant dik #and there's so much they never got to unpack bnut they have to and they have to start somewhere and with someone #deku makes that flower crown while bakugo preps everything and they both look at it and are thrown back into their childhood 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ #and at first they just sit and wait for the bavarian fish to bite (rody should make a cameo tbh) but then bakugo breaks the iceeee. #and he starts with their moms because their moms have been such a stubbron connection between these two :') #and deku answers with the usual 'good :) how's your mom :)?' and to everyone's surprise he actually opens up #and tells deku about his mom's insomnia because she watched her son die (that shit was live streamed tpo 10 bnha tweets btw) #idk i love to think of their moms being a very easy subject to connect through i think it's easier for them that way to be more vulnerablei #and then some fish biteeeeeeeeeeee #but like 3 small ones so they have to gather berries and mushrooms and make stew (dw there's an aldi this is bavaria after all) #but yeah day 1 is a bit weird like it's just them in the woods with no distractions #which is so different from whatever went on during their 1st year of high school #don't read this i will throw up i just need this somewhere this is my public scrapbook #bnha #deku #midoriya izuku #bakugo katsuki #the flower crown on their knees makes this a bit homosexual but fishing is always homosexual im not fighting against that #au: #fishing

[chromaherder]

Byler week day 4: Summer Love During which Mike vows to never do sports again after swallowing a good handful of salt water.

#byler #byler fanart #bylerweek2023 #i've been listening to a lot of Beach Boys lately so yeah #also I recently learned how to surf and let me tell you it's not easy #also been feeling very soft the past few days with all the amazing art and writing being posted #so you can have a little smooch as a treat #if you realize now mike has freckles like he rightfully should is bc 2 days later i realized i uploaded the wrong image lmao #fanart

[scificrows]

i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way. but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.

idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word). in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is. the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares. but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care. tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.

#sorry i'm rambling i'm a little depressed rn (hah) and i've been thinking about murderbot again #at least writing this got me out of the adhd/depression paralysis :) yeah this might be self-indulgent so what #the murderbot diaries #murderbot #𓄿 #i just love martha wells' writing for things like that #and i love murderbot as a character so very much #also i'm pretty sure some of this could be read in a way i did not intend #i'm not trying to say that depressed people have the option to just not be depressed #or that it's as easy as going “okay well i can either care or not care... i guess i should care! done!” #listen i know it's not like that; i know that first hand #but murderbot had just enough energy and fight in it to try and it had people in its life that cared about it and helped it #and it managed to get out of that deep dark hole #and we see it struggling with trauma etc in the later books #things are not magically better #just yeah #okay imma add #tw depression #tw suicide #(this is not about suicide though; this is about sitting on the couch while the dishes and the laundry pile up #and watching netflix because getting up and taking care of yourself and calling a friend or going outside are too difficult) #(but i can see how this might hit a little close to home if that is something someone's struggling with&better safe than sorry) #also sending lots of love to everyone who this resonates with

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

there is a difference between “parentification” wherein you abdicate your fundamental responsibility to raise your younger children into well-rounded souls,

and older siblings doing the

basic, ancient sibling duty

of looking after their younger siblings

#- HK #‘I should not have been expected to dress my baby sister when I was 12!! I should’ve been allowed to be a kid!’ #THAT IS BEING A KID. THATS BEING A KID WITH SIBLINGS. #i swear. #am I the only older sister who reveled in the responsibility of being the oldest? #and it’s not like it was easy. I was rebuffed at every turn. I still am #it’s still one of my favorite things about being alive #mobile #x #the point of parents is that they must do the things only parents can do #if there’s something the older kids can reasonably do (and that’s not very much!) they should do it

[ask-the-rag-dolly]

As a person who knows how to deal with trauma I’ve just been fucking sitting here and waiting for people to not be forceful and just

HXJXKLX I KNOW ITS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER BUT LIKE DAWGGG YOU DONT FORCIBLY PUSH PEOPLE TO THEIR PROBLEMS

Aaaaaaaaa I’m gonna lose it 💃

but the backstory crumbsssss

#[ ooc ] #jokes aside it would've been . so easy to just have ragatha go “ yeah you're right i should face my fears !! " when the hard reality is tha #it's not that easy #and it is definitely going to be Not Easy for someone who has untreated trauma for years #oops psychology autism at it again

[the-chaos-crew]

when you're crushing for your roomie but you've never felt this feeling before

drown it out with (totally) fruit punch

#prohibitedwish #prismo the wishmaster #scarab the god auditor #its late at night and I should have been in bed by now #but this idea just came to me and I had to #why must it be so easy to just half ass a comic #but fully coloring and lining a comic makes me want to do anything else #anyways enjoy #I can see someone turning this into a fic #and I would love to see the day that comes into fortition #adventure time #fanart #fionna and cake fanart #fionna and cake prismo #fionna and cake scarab #scarab x prismo #prismo x scarab #they're so gay I love them

[lorephobic]

been thinking about how in a couple of different interviews, barry has brought up that he played five different olivers chronologically thru the movie. i've been fiddling with my theories as to where each oliver ends and a new one begins and have roughly landed here but would love to hear other ideas:

oliver 1: oxford, watching and wanting felix. an outsider, batting up against the window, just desperate to get in. begins observing everything: details of felix's life, details of farleigh's life, begins orchestrating his performance for felix, setting the stage for whatever will get him into the spotlight.

oliver 2: saltburn, pre-bathtub, the best few months of his life, living in felix's light. this is the dream. he will cling onto it and comb over it and jerk off to it and wonder how he could ever get it back.

oliver 3: saltburn, post-bathtub, post-pamela, understanding how precarious his position is, losing felix quickly, making risky, desperate moves in an attempt to regain his attention. eating holes in everything and becoming a toy that felix doesn't want to play with anymore.

oliver 4: saltburn, post-confession, post-licking-the-fucking-plate, confused by his own obsession and pivoting toward preserving and not letting anyone remove him from what he thinks is rightfully his: felix's space and felix's role and felix's memory

oliver 5: post-post-saltburn, monologuing to his final victim, justifying his actions in any way possible, an obsession that has festered for more than a decade, re-realized in his obsession with his self and his work. oliver in his most catton-like state. denying that the desire was ever there. has a complete and utter horror of the ugliness he's committed. a beautiful man in his beautiful house, surrounded by beautiful things. finally free from want.

#saltburn #i think it'd be super easy to make the argument that theres actually two different olivers presented in oxford #but i think this is like. an opinion you have while you're watching the movie for the first time. #your first impression SHOULD be that oliver is changed. but by the time you finish the movie #you know that he's always been this way. always dying to get in. #he was simultaneously always and never the quiet scholar that we thought he was in the beginning ykwim #he was something else entirely #saltburn posting #okayyyy #finally got this stupid post out thats been rolling around in my brain for days #thats enough work for today i can go to bed now #love u all mwah

[ultimateinferno]

My opinion on the matter in as few words as possible and why I want Moash to persist as a character through the second half of the series.

#stormlight #stormlight archive #cosmere #cfsbf #i don't even mind the depiction of killing elhokar as a bad thing. phenomenal moment #but my issue with it is it says ''DONT DO WHAT MOASH DOES'' and doesnt even humor the respond ''then what should you do'' #my amaram essay is still floating out but currently the Moash plot is entirely defined by: #''YOU KILLING GUY YOU HATE BAD. ME KILLING GUY I HATE GOOD.'' which is such a nothingburger of commentary #killing amaram was an easy out to avoid answering the question on how you bring a man protected by the system to justice #words of radiance said killing isnt a viable option and then the following books dont tell you what is #oh just wait for the guy you hate to betray everyone and become possessed by a demon then killing him totally chill #it would have been particularly effective if it also looked at what made killing sadeas permissible #anyways. don't care that moash is a villain. only care that the books refuse to properly engage with him

[zeb-z]

There’s something so important about Gillion - who never heals himself, who rushes into danger, who hides his wounds- facing death and realizing he isn’t unafraid as he was raised to be. He uses his magic on himself to help with the exhaustion, to keep his life intact. And still he tries to comfort Jay and Chip while he’s coherent, being realistic about his chances but refusing to make it painful. Wanting their possible last moments to be light, to be about seemingly inconsequential things, small favorites that still mean the world to him purely because they’re Chip and Jay’s favorites. And then when all is said and done, he makes a raccoon for Jay. He talks about raspberries for Chip. He uses his last saved up arcane energy to try desperately to stay awake, and it works, and it saves him in the final hour.

It’s just. There’s something about how he hasn’t had a chance to rest since the Feywild, really, truly rest. How this whole time he’s been down on himself and taking extreme risks. And now, at what might be the end of it all, he realizes he doesn’t want to die. He wants to live. And not to be able to save others, not to fulfill his destiny, not out of obligation to anyone else - but purely for himself. For all the little things. And though it’s not quite healing in the literal term, his nearly final act was spent trying to save himself - and it worked.

#tw again for tags I’ll say and let me know if I gotta tag any more #but the past 30 episodes have been gillion tidestrider gets the shit beat out of him by the narrative #gillion tidestrider faces passive suicidality and faces old trauma and fresh new trauma #he goes through a shift of his foundation as a person he loses his sister the whole filipe thing and then this Curse #and he goes through with a mindset of ‘these problems exist because I do’ with some heavy implications behind that #it’s been getting easier and easier to choose his own destiny and break from expectations but it’s still not easy #but facing real death. slow and creeping and painful. he realizes he wants to live #not live because destiny demands it but because his friends do. because he does. because he wants to know more and share more of himself #I just. there’s something about all of it yknow #jrwi riptide 98 #jrwi 98 #jrwi #jrwi riptide #gillion tidestrider #z speaks #at what point should I start tagging spoilers like. 100 maybe?

[rillette]

government mandated jay portrait hours 

#jason todd #basketball #i typed his name wrong twice its been too long since ive drawn my boy #i absolutely BLASTED this one out listening to the chromatica album bros #like i started the album when i started drawing and plastic dolls started right when i finished #chromatica workflow hacks #i love 911 so much bros. the fade in from chromatica II? UGH #iconic even #will i ever draw adult jason in not a portrait. no lol. i love drawing portraits #i think i drew a little jay portrait like every day during the fall semester last year. i wasnt like even into jason really at the time #he is just so easy to draw. #OH. I SHOULD HAVE DRAWN HIM SMOKINGGGGGG AUGHGGGGG #next time. o7 #im going to go listen to 911 again #EDIT: APPARENTLY THE FIRST TIME I DREW HIM EVER WAS IN FEBUARY??? #its been a long year apparently #jeeeesuss its only been a couple months huh

[mithrun-house-of-kerensil]

Kabru is so funny to me because he is always SWEATING, he’s so stressed all the time I KNOW his hands are clammy as hell

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #kabru dungeon meshi #It was truly so easy to find examples because it's almost every panel #get him OUT OF HERE #he should have been at the club #my posts #kabru

[banamine-bananime]

my concept of donut is like, he should be on a 1960s white america boyscouts poster but like, goofy about it. do you get what i mean.

like to me donut was basically cooked up in a lab to be a parody of the Good Ol’ Boy Back When Boys Were Real Boys who played outside all day with friends smacking each other with sticks playing space cowboys and aliens, rubbing dirt in all his cuts and knowing big boys repress all their emotions except Boisterousness, always says his yes maams and yes sirs and never questions authority (but also, y’know, boys will be boys so of course they’re up to Mischief when unsupervised, a bit of chaotic and violent rule-breaking fun is all fine and good as long as they’re respectful to authority and just accept their punishment with an “awwww, man! Shucks!” in the end).

a parody because it plays up how someone genuinely like that probably must be pretty stupid/oblivious/gullible to be so pliable to authority and follow dumb norms of “what is a nice polite young man supposed to act like” without any thought into “wait, what makes this something it’s important or nice to do? are there perhaps other things i could focus on doing that would actually be more important or nice to do? do i actually get or care what being nice and doing good is, or do i just like doing whatever i want without having to think about Ethics and then having a very easy set of rules of How To Be Nice to follow”.

and also a parody because he also is like, extremely gay, and he literally just does what he wants and acts how he wants and it’s simultaneously ^that whole Good Ol’ Boy thing and the most flamboyant stereotypically gay mannerisms and hobbies you’ve seen in your life. and he just fully lacks the interest in doing any reflection that would lead him to conclude anyone might see these as rather contradictory or subverting expectations. he’s exposed both to norms of good behaviour coming from conservative places and from progressive places and doesn’t really think about these perhaps being conflicting ethos, he just grabs this random patchwork of “hey this is something someone told me yayyyy :)”. he can enthusiastically follow the letter of many laws rooted in heteronormativity and toxic masculinity and also the letter of laws coming from Progressive Ideals but he fully does not give a shit to consider whether there might be a bigger spirit to any of those laws. dumbitchitis got him immune to internalized homophobia (no he isn’t actually. but he is quite certain that just Not Thinking About It means any negative emotions don’t exist. this is a foundational truth to donut’s understanding of the universe)

what i’m saying is donut should simultaneously give the impression of walking straight off a cheery WWI Join The Troops poster or 1960s boy scouts ad, but also of being absolutely A Pansy of the same era, but also of being the kind of modern queer who says “be gay do crime” not because they’ve given two seconds of thought to prison abolition but because they find doing crime really fun

#i know this is in line with neither the popular fandom interpretations of donut nor where they went with his character in later seasons #but his character has been so all over the place chaotic over the years which to me really speaks to just having no firm sense of ideals or #self and being highly highly impressionable and easy to influence and changing depending on who he’s with and Whims #and overall really my favourite donut is early seasons donut. i do not think he should be liberated of gender norms due to wokeness #he should be liberated of gender norms by how Soundly Fucking Asleep he is. zzzzz mimimi 💅 #rvb #red vs blue #donut #donut rvb #alexa send post

[birb-tangleblog]

Everyone look at my pretty shiny metal 🐲💎✨

It's… very very late of me to do so, but I'm starting a Disney pin collection! I'm going to be focusing on TTS and especially series style pins tho, b/c I think a general Tangled/Rapunzel collection would get bonkers fast.

(Also, if any of you guys have old pins that you're willing to sell/trade if you're no longer collecting, you should lmk! 👀✨)

#if anyone would be interested in trading art for pins you should def lmk! #I'm equally happy to buy them! but I don't want to buy too much too fast to take it easy on my wallet lmao #(ahhh there's dust on the thing I took a picture on... don't look at that) #also I didn't have any good sun it's been grey 😭 #I'll take a better updated pic soon! #also trying to decide on the display... some fantasy pins are BIG like 3-4"+ and Idk if that'd work well for a bag... 🧮 #tangled the series #disney pins #tangled #merchandise

[yusuke-of-valla]

The thing about mean rivals is that like there's kinda a reason we stop having them the second the plots started getting world-ending in scope and that's because you do not have time to deal with some whiny asshole who you've beaten over and over again's shit when a space chinchilla is about to suffocate everyone in the region

Like if they're a dick to you the entire way through they quickly become all bark and no bite because narratively they're going to keep losing to you, and again progressively destroying the ego of a small child is second to whatever this year's eldritch abomination is (and if they went so far as to help the eldritch abomination it raises questions about why they're friendly enough to battle you in the post game).

So like. It's simpler if they're just nice? And have arcs where the fact that they keep losing to you is the point? Your rival isn't the final boss anymore you don't have to build up to finally being able to defeat them for good (except not really) (I guess Hau in USUM arguably but LBR the final boss is Ultra Necrozma)

Like I guess I get annoyed when people don't acknowledge there's a point to how the rivals have been handled since gen 3. You don't have to like it per se but there's a reason the rivals are like this and it's not just the devs don't want to upset little kids.

The fact that the adults care about your safety on the other hand...

#I'd have to go play through it properly but like. the plot of Gen I is really weak and for narrative sake I think we should not be holding #ourselves to its tropes #(i don't say this to be disparaging to Gen I I respect those games so much #I mostly say it to like make a point) #also like the rivals didn't start exclusively choosing the Pokémon weaker than you until the one stronger than you showed up elsewhere #what's more intimidating Kukui and Leon having the stronger starter or the weaker one? #meanwhile Hop and Nemona are like. explicitly going easy on you. Nemona was about to waste you with her champion level team like a Pokémon #player stumbling across a bug catcher they missed while having god in their party #yeah of course when clavell points that out she chooses the weaker starter #Hop also has two Pokémon on you and is not ready for you to be as good as you are that's why he takes losing so hard later #he's being cocky #ANYWAY THIS HAS BEEN YOUR SEMI MONTHLY ALTO RANT ABOUT CERTAIN POKÉMON FANS #Pokemon