#we all got blindsided

[stbot]

And many a knee weakens, and pulse quickens, at the mere mention of Thraxus Relaxus-

Boorman!

#thraxus boorman #willow 2022 #willow #willow spoilers #this episode really spoiled us in so many ways but best of all was how much boorman we got #i love this man?? #i really got blindsided by how delightful he is #somebody get this man a shampoo commercial deal! #once again a disclaimer: #someday i'll get 1080p but until then i'm giffing off potatoes and idc! #good ol' third wheel thraxus #i really love that he has become council for all the kids' relationship drama #he's just full third-wheeling fifth-wheeling #i think i need a gif tag

[ccarrot]

Why tf is chuuya a vampire anyways BRO HOW DID YOU GET TURNED

#he EITHER #a. got jumped by someone he trusted or. #b. got bit on purpose. #hear me out! in almost ALL of his appearances in the main manga chuuya shows up to carry out mori's orders or to service mori in some way #chuuya is also the port mafia executive we see on the field most frequently #(verlaine's in the basement. kouyou came out like twice just to be weird about kyouka and ace was a bitch) #and like. mori and kouyou... and verlaine too ig.. are conspicuously awol since ch 89 or smth. perhaps. #perhaps they sent chuuya out on some kind of mission. maybe TO bust out dazai. and they need Fyodor to be blindsided somehow. #so chuuya needs to be a vampire. #and they're relying on dazai filling in the other half of the plan and soukoku's unbreakable gay bond to prevent it from going haywire. #now the next question why's chuuya in civvies? #was he like. 'fine boss i'll go with your plan. but if i'm getting turned into a mindless puppet monster thing at least let me look cunty.“

[rithmeres]

finishing up a painting for oct 14 (real ones know) so i put on my [REDACTED] playlist (real ones know) that i haven’t listened to in a year and i got halfway through one song and just started crying at my desk

#FRAN THIS IS YOUR FAULT. FRAN WHEN I CATCH YOU FRAN #so many songs that absolutely kill the man #you were a kindness when i was a stranger….. i just want to say thank you for all the times you stood by my side…. etc #but i got blindsided. dumbfounded even. by: #oh my captain oh my captain / now it’s time for me to part / rip the needle from my heart / we were so wrong from the start / oh my captain #WHY WOULD YOU SING THAT. AND WHAT WAS I ON WHEN I MADE THIS

[schmweed]

Background Roman & Gerri | S03E01

#Gerri Kellman #Roman Roy #I love all their background moments just the two of them! <3 <3 <3 #He must have been on TOP of the world before Italy. #The smitten besotted apprentice who got to have her almost all to himself #while still soaking up knowledge and skill and all the goodness of her experience #and basking in her protection #How her approval must have made his heart soar and his senses sharp and his smile blinding! #Wow. At the very top of the world right before it all came crashing down with pic gate and then Logan dying #I bet if this wasn't a show and we could read an internal monologue we'd read #about how he was utterly blindsided when he fired her in 406. #I mean he immediately took it back and asked Kendall to smooth it over #and yet... and yet! He got the BEST ending out of them all besides her. And they WILL get their happy ending. #Succession #my gifs #Background Roman & Gerri

[freebooter4ever]

my 'ive given up on life but i cant live off maple syrup marshmallows and peanut butter sandwhiches i need to get groceries' outfit. for some reason it looks like i took this in daylight but its dark as night outside despite only been 6 and its the most depressing thing i should have gotten groceries in the sunlight ugh hindsight.

#journal shit #see here's the thing and its a thing specific to LA. #all my friends here need two weeks of notice to plan anything because everyone is so damn busy #so me keeping this entire weekend free under the assumption that we would do something was big for me lmao haha im so dumb #like i knew i wouldnt have time to see him during the conference and i planned no volunteering this weekend to make up for it #he must have known in advance he was gonna do this or had some hint??? a text message that cold is not a sudden decision #meanwhile i was still daydreaming about airplane museum trips and bringing him to the rest of my favorite running spots and blah blah blah #i got blindsided and i get to be the one stuck without plans #i guess you cant really give two weeks notice for the Hey This Isnt Working Out text though lollllll #im not mad at him i dont even really blame him that much im just lonely

[unnecessarilygrandiose]

buck really said 'she sees me' after 6x12. 'she sees me' after he showed up to eddie's to escape the rotating cast of visitors. 'she sees me' after maddie probably tried to enlist eddie too because he knew buck was getting all those visitors that wore him out but he happened not to be one of them. 'she sees me' after you died, buck. you're going to feel a lot of different ways about that. sometimes all at the same time.

'she sees me. y'know like she really sees me for who i am and what i've been through. i think she might see even more in me than i see in myself.' after eddie sees him for exactly who he is, after he expects buck not to be anything for anybdy else's sake.

like, okay.

#i would apologize for making like the hundredth post about this but i've accepted that i cannot shut up #and i think it is in everyone's best interest that they accept this too and simply unfollow me🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 #911 fox #buddie #i just. i'm having Way too many feelings about this. and if buck had said this Any other episode it'd have been fine #but for him to say it in the episode where they show us that eddie is lonely? a plotline that completely blindsided me btw because #i did not expect an eddie storyline at all when we got one just last episode #yeah i am. not okay #thank god i wasn't around for season 5 i'd have died from seeing the eddie breakdown

[wizardnuke]

what is in the water today. everyone is so irritable. i am included in this

#started the day w a migraine. had an argument w mom that really wasnt that deep but we were just not agreeing and i was blindsided by it n #started crying. went to class. half of us were pissy. boring ass documentary in a freezing classroom. the sammich i got is soggy. went home #sibling is irritable. mom is better but just not thrilled with the vibe in the house and also tired. no one is at fault here #alls well just aaaagh. and i have an assignmence to do #also overslept and missed my first class but prof said its fine so thats a win #also i just. i just watched esports in class. sentinels won! #the crying thing isnt a sign of serious emotional distress btw i cry very very easily its more of an annoyance. headache inducing on top of #already having a migraine. alls well w that

[sonsband]

I had to send a screenshot to my dad and deliberately left in that I was listening to music about Palestinian identity with a particularly obvious title so he gets a little bit of a warning of what's coming for him when I get home tomorrow

#we talk about politics all the time this isn't out of nowhere #he identifies as conservative but he definitely isn't so I've got hopes but I don't want to blindside him with it #he's in a group honoring Marpiya Okinajin so I'm not too worried about any conversations we'll have #plus we always eat SWANA foods for Christmas dinner for as long as I can remember #specifically to be a reminder in the very center of the celebrations of the wars and violence happening in SW Asian

[rachiller]

We had an absolutely insane dinner service planned yesterday that required us to magically conjure tables out of thin air (we have an incredibly small capacity in our restaurant) & I have been worrying about it for two weeks but it turns out the worrying meant I would be planning like an evil scientist to make sure that everything had a contingency and it also turned out my coworkers did not want to spend the night in a blind panic so we actually. We actually pulled it off with minimal issues. Everyone was happy nobody had to wait three hours to eat and all my running around yesterday afternoon (and all the days before honestly) to make sure it was all set was not actually a fools errand. Unbelievably relieved lads

#exhausted though it was such a long day and we’ve got a wedding on Tuesday to worry about now #my manager’s approach to the last wedding was a nightmare (he disappeared at one point and we couldn’t find him to ask what the fuck was #going on and I was led after this to insist that I am present at meetings about these things so I don’t get blindsided because our #runsheets are notoriously vague) #anyway all that anxiety is like leaching out of my body through my orifices and my bones feel like jelly hahahahaha

[mars-ipan]

i think i’m always gonna be a little bit insane about aziraphale asking crowley to dance. yaknow

#marzi speaks #he NEVER makes the first move !!!! EVER!!!! #he almost NEVER lets himself want things!!! #but lately he’s been relaxing around crowley. he’s been HAVING FUN!!! #he got to take the bentley for a drive!!! crowley basically spends all his free time in the bookshop! #they get to go out to lunch or breakfast or dinner whenever they want!!! #and i mean he’s been flirting for the whole fucking season don’t get me wrong. the touches the looks it’s all there #but he ASKS crowley to DANCE with him. he doesn’t hide behind any pretence #he tells crowley exactly what he wants and feels no shame in asking for it #and it CLEARLY blindsides crowley. ‘we don’t dance.’ he’s SHOCKED. it feels like smth aziraphale’s turned down in the past #but he ASKS!!! and even though crowley’s shocked he knows that (in a normal situation) he’ll say yes!!! #so he takes his hand all giddy and pulls them to the rest of the dancers and oh my fucking GODDDD #AAAAAA #look i am not immune to two characters dancing. there is a magic in dancing with someone and we all know it #they fucking. DANCED!!! and AZIRAPHALE INITIATED IT !!!! #and even though crowley was freaking the fuck out he was clearly into the dance!! his fucking hand like wrapped around aziraphale’s!!!! #GODDD. if they don’t get a proper happy dance in season 3 #i will respect neil’s writing choices and resort to fanfic for it. #but regardless i do want a s3 dance scene. even if they’re just swaying side to side in the south downs in the final scene i don’t care #i just want them to be able to do the little things… so baaaad

[afieldinengland]

no more comfort all i deserve is self flagellation from here on out. might make me work harder

#got my last essay from last year back and it's totally blindsided me because it's the worst grade i've had on anything. #it's fine. it's a 2:2. it's fine. it just means i need to work even harder this year. all my other marks have been firsts or 2:1s #but after the day i've had already i want to vomit blood #i can't tell anyone can i. they'd be so disappointed #no no. we work ourselves to the bone now and if we fail we kill ourselves

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

Fun fact about us! We have precisely No filter for "how much gore is too much gore", because we just... don't get squeamish about it almost at all.

Part of this effect is that we spend ages waffling over how to tag things because we just... don't have a point of comparison for things, and trying to find them results in us running into a lot of stuff we wouldn't consider gory at all being tagged as gore. We'll sit there like "this is a skeleton! this is bones!" and we'll feel like it must be, like, overtagged "just to be safe" type stuff, because, well, it's not gore, it's just a skeleton arm! Maybe a cartoony cross-section! It doesn't read as gore, it just reads as, like, cool character design to cartoon violence.

Part of this is that we'll click on things with "MAJOR GORE SUPER UNSETTLING CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK" and end up just... underwhelmed. Like, we know in theory that we have a much better gore tolerance than most people, but in practice, like. It's utterly baffling to us that people will be that sensitive over blood. It's just, like... you're calling this "major gore"? It's one arm with a slightly messy disconnect! Like, sure, put a gore warning on it, but we expected more than just one slightly messy arm! They barely even look anything more than surprised about it!

#the lines get even blurrier with writing like. what on earth counts as major gore??? how hard does an author have to go to get into there?? #does blood count? how many physical descriptions make it count while we're describing an injury? we're trying to sell the wound here #and we have no damned clue what the hell and fuck people call “gore” out here #the perception of gore that goes into tagging it is beyond any comprehension we've got we're afraid #necessary note for this: we have prior experience working at a veterinary clinic and have had perhaps a few too many hospital visits #and we are of the flavor of person that is also completely blindsided on a regular basis by what people consider inappropriate #every day we discover a new think of the children argument and every day we have literally no idea what they're talking about #for it to be considered major gore for us it has to have at least a bit of gristle to it and its gotta at least TRY to sell the impact #like. its not major if its just a clean circle with a bone in the middle and some blood slapped on top #its not major if the wound just cleanly removes a slice with no meaty bits or bloody bits #flesh is messy! if youre going for gory stuff then you have to pay at least a bit of mind to the little gristly bits! #we're sorry but the impossibly clean anime cut that people use for like. gashes and scars and whatever just... isnt that graphic #we are certain that this is a complaint that maybe like three people have had but if ur working with mammals n such like #it honestly just feels cartoony to have a gut spill going on. YKINMKATOK we just dont understand how its treated #theres membranes! theres connections! your guts arent gonna just spill out loosey-goosey the second u get an abdominal wound! #we all love a good like. “hobbling around trying to keep your insides in” scene ofc #but its very clear that some of you people dont even know how butchering a pig works #my posts

[filthyjanuary]

i've been talking about this with friends over discord but i really need to say it publicly that i think it is entirely unproductive to sift through years of old video footage to look for signs that wilbur was and is an abuser or run his statement through (very inaccurate) AI detectors to argue that a human didn't write it when it's just your average lawyered corpospeak

i think a lot of people, especially younger people in this fandom, feel blindsided and want to find some kind of secret damning evidence that was hiding in plain sight that they missed but that's just not how abuse works most of the time. abusers are people that can and often are perfectly pleasant to most people. there isn't some secret trick to detecting them around you. and while a lot of what we've seen can be recontextualized knowing what we know, it helps absolutely no one to work ourselves into a frenzy to pull out of context clips to paint a narrative of victimhood on every single person he's ever interacted with. there's stuff he's done on camera in the past that we can be uncomfortable with especially knowing what we know now but it is revisionist to act like the same acts people cooed over and called 'brotherly' 2 weeks ago are suddenly smoking guns of abuse.

wilbur is not some disney supervillain who is rotten down to his core he's a human person who definitely wrote or got his team to write his shitty apology and definitely manipulated the people around him but there isn't some film reel of his abuse that we can play or people can look to to say they somehow knew he was a bad person all along

we have actual stories from actual victims to uplift and focus on, we don't need to dig for more things and slap a victim label on people who have not come forward to do so themselves and if they do come forward we can support them then but for the love of god can we stop circulating clips of wilbur and tommy's staged antics or wilbur yelling during mcc

all my love to shelby shubble and everyone else who is affected by this man's actions and is now being exposed to some of the most infuriating discourse conceivable. and fuck that man sincerely.

#mcyt #wilbur soot #wilbur situation #ask to tag #idk lmk if theres some tag im missing here #**

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Breakfast Time

My son’s stuck in a time loop again.

He thinks I don’t know, of course. He’s never told me that this happens to him (or that he can do this, possibly; I’m not sure which it is.) Maybe I’m a bad mother, if I haven’t proven myself worthy of that trust. But there is only so many times that one can watch their son trudge through a day with bored impatience, anticipating everything you say just a little too quickly and showing no surprise to even the most surprising event, and then come downstairs the next day disoriented but rejuvenated and with a new zest for life and a tendency to get blindsided by even the most predictable things, before one makes the obvious connection.

I don’t think he’s lived through this day too many times yet, because he’s not frustrated by my good morning joke but not surprised by the monster attack being announced on the news. He eats his toast makes polite conversation that sounds just a little too rote until his sister comes down, and he puts his toast down in that distinctive way that make her eyes widen in sudden realisation, a reaction I never would have noticed if I wasn’t looking for it. He told her about three time loops ago, I think, although it might’ve been earlier and I just never noticed the signal until then. I make sure to keep the smile on my face as I push a plate of toast towards her.

The thing on the news is some kind of flying beast, and my son’s eyes don’t leave the TV screen. I expect that calm, solid determination that I usually see in his expression on days like this, but instead he watches it only with a wary sort of calculation. I suppress a sigh – it looks like I won’t be remembering today, then.

The pair exchange glances and look to me. “Hey, mum, I figured we should go to school early. We’ve both got these big tests coming up and – ”

“Yes, fine, whatever. Go.” I know what you’re thinking – obviously they’re off to do something dangerous, and obviously they’re far too young for this sort of thing, and obviously I shouldn’t enable this, and I’m a terrible parent for letting them run off to maybe get themselves killed someday. But I put this to you:

How, exactly, do you expect me to stop them?

As my son heads for the door, though, I almost stop him. I consider, not for the first time, just telling him what I know, what I’ve figured out, and asking him to explain everything, to say where he’s going and what he plans to do about that thing and if his sister is involved and if they at least have help, to put my mind at ease. I don’t, though. Because, logically… I must have done that before, right? In at least one of the countless days that never happened. I must have gotten worried or angry or just fed up with this ridiculous charade and told him that he wasn’t as good at hiding as he thought he was. He has to know that I know, right? And yet, he still chooses to let it play out like this.

Or, perhaps, he told me once. That must have happened, right? I must have been there to help, to patch his wounds and dry his tears and listen to him confess his fears or his worries or his regrets about this big responsibility, about whatever he’s doing out there. He must have told me, at some point, at least once, in one of those nonexistent days. And afterwards, he chose not to tell the me that stuck around. Meaning that I must have given him some reason to keep this secret.

What did I do to him? What did I say to him? How bad a confidante must I have been, that he chooses instead to keep me in the dark?

They leave, they ‘go to school early’, and I start on the dishes. As I wash my daughter’s breakfast crumbs away, the plate slips from my fingers and shatters on the tiles at my feet. I sigh, and turn to get a broom.

Then stop. Pick up all the other dirty plates. And shatter them, one by one, on the tiles.

Then I leave the mess behind me, pull a full tub of rocky road ice cream out of the freezer, and resolve to spend the day eating junk and watching youtube videos. After all, it’s not like it’s going to matter tomorrow, right?

[chappellroansdreamgirl]

ellie with a mean gf!

(prjoecting like a mf rn...)

a/n - i have been very unmotivated to write full-fleshed stuff so i'm deciding to write drabbles/headcannons for now. also THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ATTENTION ON CH.1 OF GOOD LUCK, BABE! it makes my heart smile that you guys love it so much... also😭😭...: @sweetcici11 srry that i lied and said ur fic would be out a few nights ago. i'm really trying to finish it but i don't want to rush it and it be shitty. i really want it to be enjoyable and as good as it can be. but i PROMISE you it WILL be posted... sooner or later! i also have a few more drafts to finish too, so, i hope you guys like them when they come out!!!!!

content warnings - fluff, i'm a bitch and i want to feel loved and think that someone can put up with my cuntiness😝😝 , over-usage of commas probably, i think they're low-key kind of toxic?!?!?!?! , guys i promise i'm not this bad i've just been pretty insufferable these last few days and need an outlet 😭😭 .

i wrote way more than i thought i was going to...

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

- you both hated each other at first. ...well actually, you hated her, and she was like, "😞😞" and then got used to it after a while and started being mean back 2 u!!

- dina introduced ellie to you when you both were hanging out with her. "you guys are going to love each other🥰!" ... you didn't 🤗 !

- ellie said hi to you and all you did was look her up and down, stare at her for a few seconds and then turn your head.

- everytime ellie would (attempt to) strike up a conversation you would give an overtly enthusiastic response or just stare at her like she had two heads or just blatantly ignore her. dina is over there like, '😟😟 . can we not have one good day...' when dina would leave for short periods of time and ellie was sure that you didn't like her, she would just talk about anything to get your blood boiling, our girl lllloooovvveessss to push buttons, we know this to be true.

- it got worse yet more tolerable after that. whenever she'd see you at gatherings or parties, you'd do your damnest to stay away from/avoid her. and she'd do her damnest to get you as upset with her as possible. it always ended with not-so-playful not-so-friendly banter!

- you were talking with jesse about something on the couch, and ellie came over and DELIBERATELY, DELIBERATELY... interrupted you 🤗 ! :

you shoot daggers at her face with your eyes, your jaw set hard and your eyes narrowed.

ellie tried to feign innocence, raising a brow at you after she looked over to see your facial expressions long after she felt them.. "what are you looking at me like that for🤨🤨?" , "i was fucking talking, you're being rude." , "if i have to get used to you being a bitch, you got to do the same." , you just huffed at her response and crossed your arms before walking off a few minutes after, realizing that the conversation you were having with jesse earlier was indeed over. ellie smirked to herself, victory was her's!

- she started calling you the nickname brat out of the blue... it blindsided tf out of you. here's the origin story!:

you look at ellie with a disgusted look on your face as she exhales smoke. her glazed over eyes meet yours before she offers the joint to you, out of genuine kindness. "want a hit?" she asked, forgetting how much of a bitch you were for, like, 0.2 seconds. you glare at her for a moment longer before plastering a sarcastic smile on your face, snatching the joint from her fingertips and dropping it onto the floor. you kept her eyes on yours as you stomped and smushed it into the ground.

now she remembered.

she stood up instantaneously, she was pissed. "what the fuck?!" she shouted, earning a few looks from some friends across the room. they strained their necks for a little bit before they saw you, it made sense now, and then turned back to the conversation.

you close your eyes for a slight second as a satisfied smile graced the corners of your lips. "you know i don't smoke, ellie." you responded with in a condescendingly sweet voice.

she didn't even argue with you. "you're such a fuckin' brat." she muttered under her breath before walking away. you had to try your very best to ignore the heartbeat in your pussy. (🤗!)

- she didn't get to see how much effect that title had on you that night, but she noticed afterwards.

- one time you didn't say anything to ellie during a hangout, distracted by someone you disliked more than her. ellie kind of missed it☹️☹️ .

you were brought out of your thoughts when you felt her cold hand touch your shoulder. when you noticed it was her who was doing it, you pulled back with a furrow of her brows. ellie smiled. there she was.

"you haven't said one mean thing to me since i've gotten here. are you dying?"

you scoffed as you pointed in the direction your anger was radiating from. it was a girl ellie saw here and there in jackson, sometimes she was paired with her during patrols, she wasn't crazy about her but she paid no mind to her existence.

"what?- what does this have to do with me-"

"what it has to do with you, is that you should feel honored that i can tolerate you... can't fuckin' stand that bitch."

ellie scoffed before speaking up once more, "oh, c'mon you're being dramatic. don't be a brat."

your eyes went wide for a second and as you turned away, she could see the cheek that was facing her turn an embarrassing shade of red. she found your weakness.

- when you guys started dating, no one, and i mean NO ONE, believed it. (i don't feel like writing how u two got together maybe if y'all like this enough i'll make a full-fleshed oneshot abt it😭.)

- joel saw you guys together... like, not arguing, and HER head on YOUR shoulder... he thought he got laced with acid for a quick second there... jesse felt like he missed a couple chapters and felt very sad that he hadn't caught onto it quicker... and dina was so proud of herself, "told you, you guys would love each other 😁." she's so smug, I LOVE HER!

- she constantly has to reprimand you like you're a child when you guys are around someone you obviously don't like for whatever reason. once whoever left the room, ellie'll pinch your shoulder or your thigh, whatever skin is on display at the moment, not too hard, just to get you to wince a bit. you'll make a face at her afterwards. "ow, what the fuck was that for ellie?" , "we can talk shit when we get home, don't make a scene🙄." you stress her out sometimes...

- just bcs you guys are together DOES NOT mean your attitude has gone away.

whenever ellie and you have gotten in an argument, you're always being extra sarcastic and EXTRA BITCHY just to get on her nerves.

"baby, have you seen my gun?" she asks you, breaking the silence voluntarily as she's two minutes from being late to patrol.

you don't look up to her, you keep on looking at the pages of an old magazine. "idk ellie, did you check to see if it was shoved up your ass."

she just stands there for a second like this 🧍‍♀️ , before sighing and walking somewhere else to find it. "i'll fuckin' deal with you later." she mutters under her breath, obviously annoyed. you smirk to yourself as you flip another page.

- she does love, however, that you've gotten gentler with her since the relationship blossomed between you two. very few people (dina and ellie... sometimes jesse.) can get you to stop, and ellie is proud of herself that she could add beast-tamer to the top of her list of many skills and talents.

- sometimes she has to calm you down, sometimes all it takes is a stare in your direction. ... well, it's oftentimes a glare... you're your own woman/person and a relationship will not restrict you from showing off your talents!!!!!

- ellie has to constantly keep you from getting into arguments that could harm you physically. although your craft of bitchery is amazing, you can't fight to save your life.

she'll be pulling you back like an angry barking dog on a leash.

"i could've fucking took h-" , "you overestimate yourself a lot, baby."

#ani's ellie🎀 #ellie x dina #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader #ellie x abby #ellie the last of us #ellabs #ellie williams smut #ellie williams #ellie tlou #dina tlou #dina woodward #tlou art #tlou2 #joel tlou #tlou #jesse tlou #dina x reader #dina x fem reader #dina x you #dina x ellie #dina x y/n #joel miller #🎀 ani's writing 🖊📚 #abby tlou #abby anderson smut #abby anderson x reader #ellabs x reader #abby anderson #abby anderson fic

[lgbtlunaverse]

This page from the adventurer's bible makes me want to cry

Like basically any neurodivergent dungeon meshi fan, I see a lot of myself in the Touden siblings. But I was blindsided by just how much I suddenly related to Falin in this little comic from the adventure bible's complete version.

It's about the Touden siblings' differing relationships with their parents, and why Laios still holds their treatment of Falin against them, while Falin herself doesn't.

We know that Falin was isolated and ostraziced by their village after she saved Laios from a ghost, displaying her uncanny affinity for magic. Her parents, instead of defending her, sent her away, which angered Laios so much he ran way himself before Falin even left for magic school, hoping to make a living so he and Falin could live together alone.

He tells Marcile this, but when she goes to Falin, she says she sees things differently. Her father sent her to magic school to protect her form the rest of the village without having to cause a conflict. He didn't explain that, and we actually see her burst into tears when he says it.

But, well... Laios was gone for a year before Falin went to magic school, and everyone else in the village avoided her. The understanding Falin has with her parents to me looks like one borne out of necessity, she literally didn't have anyone else to talk to.

And this is where we get to the page that made me want to cry

Like I said, I relate to the Toudens because I'm neurodivergent myself. that feeling of suddenly realizing you're disliked, but not knowing what you did wrong or what you should have done instead? Yeah... that's one I recognize.

When I was around 9 years old, the same age Falin is in this comic, a bunch of kids in my class decided to make a "game" where you lost if you touched me. It was basically the 'cheese-touch' from diary of a wimpy kid, except I always had it and couldn't pass it along. They'd pretend I was poisonous or disgusting and run away from me screaming or gagging. The point was to make fun of me. But my autistic little 9 year old ass thought "Oh I get it! It's tag but I'm always it!" So I... played along. Running at a boy and having him fall on the ground screaming in fake pain because you tapped him is, in isolation, pretty funny.

It wasn't until months into the "game" that I realized it was meant to be meanspirited. That the reason I was the one who was always 'it' wasn't an arbritrary rule but the whole point. Because I was weird and gross. I wasn't in on the joke, I was the punchline.

Falin may have come to understand her parents' intentions, but she didn't always. The adventure bible actually tells us that she at first didn't even notice that the rest of their village disliked her. She clearly knows now, but she had to be told. So when her mom tried to exorcise her, she just saw it as an activity she got to do with a mother she usually didn't get to spend much time with because of her poor health. It's only Laios who notices something is wrong.

(Sidenote, Laios being hyper-aware of people's poor attitudes towards Falin but completely blindsided when he's in the same spot, like with Toshiro, is also very relatable as an eldest sibling)

It probably also took Falin months, until after her brother had left and she had no one but her parents, to realize why her mother had been doing all those things.

And I know they're not the same. Even misguidedly, Falin's mom was trying to help her, not make fun of her like those boys in my class. (Though, as a queer person who also cares a lot about the queercoding in Falin's storyline, a parent trying to 'exorcise' their child of a fundamental part of them the parent thinks is evil or corruptive? yeah... that's not perfectly wholesome)

But do you know what I did, when I finally figured out the game was always meant to make fun of me?

To me, it looked like I had a choice.

See, those boys eventually figured out I didn't understand that they were being mean to me. I'd laugh every time I managed to catch one of them, I was visibly having fun. And while it no doubt only made me more of a weirdo in their eyes, they never informed me that I shouldn't be enjoying myself. That the point was for me to feel hurt.

So now that I did know, I had a choice. I could either get upset, and let the insult land as it was supposed to. That wouldn't stop them, because making fun of me was the original goal. Or I could ignore it and go on as usual. They had already accepted that I didn't get it, and they weren't gona stop me from having fun, so why should I?

And the thing is that I had... one friend, in that whole class. One person who actually liked talking to me and hanging out with me. I was lonely. And the 'game' provided me with another social interaction, mean-spirited as it was, that I desperately needed. And it was so delightfully simple. Navigating actual friendships as a kid with autism and adhd was so fucking complicated, and I'd never know when I might break an inivisble rule. But I knew the rules to the game perfectly!

Sometimes, if I was chasing one of them, the others would trap him and hold him down so I could tap him. In those moments it actually did kind of feel like I was playing with them, rather than against them. And it didn't change much, they didnt start actually liking me. But they were willing to roll with the fact that I wasn't upset, and I took advantage of that because I needed to.

So you can look at Falin seeing the best in her parents as her being naïve, but I look at this page and I see myself, at first unable to differentiate between playing and being made fun of. And then later, when I did see the difference, deciding not to get mad about it because that'd mean losing that social interaction, and I couldn't afford to.

Like I said, Falin probably first realized this in the year she spent with her brother gone, and everyone else avoiding her like the plague. If she refused to talk to her parents, like Laios did, she'd have no one left.

I see a lot of people relating to the fight between Laios and Toshiro. that frustration when you realize someone you thougth was your friend actually hates you, and they never said anything, never gave you a chance to fix it because you had no idea that you were even doing something wrong! And I can see that, too. But sometimes, when people don't fully hate you, it feels better to go along with the pretending. Because adressing it won't fix it. Because the problem isn't a specific behaviour, it's you. And if they're willing to tolerate you, despite the fact that it's you, then you'll take it. Because other people do hate you, so this is the best you'll get.

#dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi meta #falin touden #laios touden #neurodivegent #autism #adhd #long post #this one got REAL personal oops