#and all of my effortful/better posts in

[freckliedan]

please forgive me for being wildly late to this party but how did we become so sure there will be a hard launch.. at all? all I know is they joked about soft launching the gay before really coming out so I thought the coming out videos were the proper launch. how does that translate to hard launch meaning confirming they're a couple?? 😅thanks

no sorries! i have a few points i'm going to hit in replying to you and i'm going to number them for convenience's sake.

1: imo, use of soft/hard launch to describe both them coming out as individuals and as a couple is just bc it's a common phrase

you're right that they've only ever talked about hard launch/soft launch in terms of their coming out videos! but it's clear that those did not function as a relationship hard launch, because there's still loads of people assuming they're not together. so coming out as a couple would have to be a separate event if it happens, which is why people also discuss it in terms of hard/soft launch .

as far as i know hard and soft launch get used often to describe people announcing they're together—someone might soft launch their partner on social media by including glimpses of them in insta stories for a while before explicitly saying they're with someone. explicitly saying it would be a grid post where the nature of their relationship is mentioned in the caption.

2: not everyone is certain there's going to be a hard launch!

a lot of people think they will maintain their privacy and commitment to the ambiguity bit. and they might! it's clear they're having fun with it, & i forever admire queer people who say "none of your business" & stick with that.

3: i personally do think they will hard launch for a number of reasons, but also just enjoy playing in the space of speculation.

reasons i believe in a hard launch:

they've been engaging in the same pattern of behavior re: escalating openness and queerness as they did in 2018, and a relationship hard launch is the only thing that they could be coming out about jointly. i talk about this at length here. part of the repeating pattern is the build up to tour, but that was guessed separately based on an entirely separate pattern we collectively recognized.

i am mostly serious about thinking they want to get married, though do play in that space sometimes just because it's fun to do so. marriage is public record, so necessitates a hard launch. my engagement theory tag is here, i answered some asks on it earlier this year, but i'm not confident that everything i've said recently about a hard launch/engagement can be found there & i do not think i've comprehensively written about it post dapg return.

i was actually starting to shift into thinking it was less likely before @pseudophan acknowledged it as probable in late april, but nora is never wrong and i don't think they'd be joining marriage hill for fun. this deserves its own bullet point.

i have an insanely good track record of being right about dan and phil. i am often wrong if i try guessing timing or the details of something, but have never been wrong about the big picture. this is big picture. i'm trusting my gut on this.

you can check my jam thoughts & den thoughts tags for more of my theorizing, if you'd like. i am a thorough tagger and also collect things in a number of tags, including meta, analysis, & history.

[sciderman]

well - webtoons is over, gang

[sallymew4]

anime Mob not being as sassy as manga Mob was truly a loss

look at these

it even looks like he’s kind of grinning

[lightgamble]

DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN | 1.01, 1.02 & 1.03

I'm not him anymore. And, I won't let myself be.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Bulky Vendor

[pyrepostings]

Whumpee who goes in a slightly different direction mentally than 'caretaker is new master. New master won't give rules. Means punishment is around every corner, landmine of unsaid rules.'

It initially go through that phase, but quickly realize caretaker isn't punishing it for following whumper's old rules. Which obviously means they want it to continue following those rules.

So it does. It keeps calling them sir, keeps it's eyes down, doesn't eat without asking. Clearly caretaker wants this, and what they want is all that matters, right? If they didn't want whumpee to continue, they would have made that painfully obvious.

Just, a whumpee who is so sure of its ability to follow the rules, the habit. It's easier to follow the rules it knows than to find out they were lying, or testing it by telling it that its free.

[piecesofchess]

Tartarus is still a little broken and that's Fun !

[shadelorde]

cant hold my silence any longer im sorry. mako was a dick to korra in s2. i know we're having this resurgence of mako love but i could not stand the way he treated her in that season. "maybe you wouldnt have to fix things if you didnt keep messing it up" and ratting korra out to raiko and being dismissive of her and LYING to her about their breakup after he kissed asami. korra was dealing with her uncle grooming her and colonizing her home. and he treats her like this when shes confused and upset like idk. idk

[goldensunset]

[brainrot-jikan]

im not the biggest alhaitham/kaveh shipper (because im a rare pair ho) but it seems to me that in alhaitham/kaveh getting-together fics tend to be... unequal.

the beautiful thing about alhaitham and kaveh is that they're both equally right and equally wrong and equally dicks about it. but the writers for alhaitham/kaveh much more frequently seem to give alhaitham the burden change (the burden of the character flaw) instead of kaveh.

in any good character arc, the main character has a fatal flaw or misconception, and by the end of that arc they have addressed that flaw in some definitive way. scrooge was a scrooge and learned that being that way was detrimental; merlin from finding nemo was overprotective to a fault and had to learn that he couldn't (and shouldn't) control everything and to let go; the wolf from little red riding hood learns that you should stop while you're ahead.

stories centering around romance tend to lean heavily on character arcs, which makes sense. and since romance generally requires two individuals to be vulnerable and open and emotional with each other, it makes double sense that alhaitham/kaveh authors zoom straight into alhaitham's lack of emotional vulnerability.

this bothers me.

in society, individuals are expected to experience and present emotions in a specific way. if someone dies, you cry. if someone smiles at you, you smile back. if you're at a party, you're supposed to be having fun. if you don't do these things, you're seen as impolite at best and a inhuman freak at worst. when these behaviors are frequent it's often viewed as emotional immaturity, or a lack of ability to feel at all. the inability or lack of willingness to conform to societies emotional expectations of you is seen as a flaw and a reason for exclusion.

alhaitham is canonically disliked and avoided for being the way he is. he prefers it this way, but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating this avoidance are in the right. they are the societal pressure to conform that alhaitham blows off. alhaitham could be the way he is for a lot of reasons: avoidant attachment style, trauma, following someone else's example (eg. his grandmother), or just his base personality. it doesn't MATTER. he is the way he is. kaveh having to accept that should be part of the story.

putting the burden of the fatal flaw on alhaitham, making the way alhaitham treats kaveh and the people around him the problem, feels invalidating. it implies heavily that alhaitham's way of interfacing with the world, alhaitham's very SELF, is incorrect. my suggestion is to flip a larger portion of that burden onto kaveh. kaveh 👏 character 👏 arcs 👏

some examples/recommendations:

- make kaveh project his insecurities onto other people but especially onto alhaitham; he's overly reliant on other people for his own self worth, and he perceives alhaitham's lack of positive feedback as a direct reflection of how alhaitham feels about him. but learns along the way that alhaitham doesn't hate him, kaveh's actual struggle is with hating himself and being unable to his own self as worthy of love. maybe throw in how you are responsible for your own recovery, other people can help but you can't rely on them to carry you through self actualization.

- or, kaveh tries to make alhaitham behave more like a "normal" person, to be more pleasant and emotive and forthcoming, and then realizes he's in the wrong for trying to make alhaitham into something he's not, possibly for all the wrong reasons (not because he likes alhaitham better like that, but bc society says that's healthier and a better/more conforming way to be)

- or you could go ahead make alhaitham's issues the main problem but they're too complicated to overcome in a short period of time, so kaveh has to accept alhaitham is doing his best in his own way and not push for unrealistic and unhealthy changes. he could alter his own behavior to give alhaitham space and time and a safe place to land.

that got sappy so it's past time for me to dip out. go forth and ship things; but maybe consider letting alhaitham be a rude stone-faced bastard if he wants to be.

[number1paimonstan]

I feel like god now, this took way longer than needed as well as frustrating because capcut hates me

[clumsypuppy]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[14dayswithyou]

That is all thank you

ANSWERED: Art credit for da first Ren meme goes to @meo-eiru!!

BUT HELPPPPP THESE ARE SO FUNNY JDSGJH T_T The Moth meme + Uno meme had me CACKLING lmaoooooooo

[seaglassdinosaur]

What’s so interesting to me about Odysseus’s transition in Monster is that he hasn’t changed all that much. He was always capable of violence and we know that because of everything he’s done in the war and in his journey. The only change that occurs is he’s chosen to no longer feel guilty, and to stop hesitating when it comes to violence.

[valgeristik]

You know they've been stabbin' 🤗

been thinking a lot lately about Zea n how they're perceived vs how they Are. And how their upbringing would affect all that. Especially Noel being one of their parental figures............maybe one day ill make a more eloquent post about it. but for now have. this (yes the boxes arent centered i know i know please ignore that, it would be too hard to fix now)

Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List

E-sims donation

[kawaii-kushami]

having one of those mid-20s moments where you're like well damn. im really not a teenager anymore i dont hate myself anymore actually. like its insane

sorry i gotta ramble but this feels too silly to post anywhere else