romanticizingani - Tumblr blog

[romanticizingani]

3/30/24

Went for a walk this morning and the sunrise was majestic. I've also been trying a lot of local cafes and shops because of the boycott; it's not just being a decent human being, it's also a chance to explore beyond my comfort zone!

[romanticizingani]

12 Palestinians have drowned in the sea in north Gaza while trying to get to airdropped aid.

Do you understand how desperate someone has to be for them to run into the water to get a damaged box of god knows what?

What could have been going through their minds when they jumped into the water? Their children's faces when they come home with a few cans of food? The promise of the family eating together?

I honestly can't even fathom what other levels of cruelty Palestinians are supposed to endure before anything tangible is done about this genocide, of which this engineered mass starvation is only one part.

[romanticizingani]

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

[romanticizingani]

3/29/24

I fear that the current weather in my country will eventually kill me because everything I touch is infected with heat. So here I am, left with no choice but to sit tight and do one of my final projects in the 2nd semester.

Also, I feel like I'm gonna die because the pain braces cause is on another level. I'm literally thanking whoever invented ice cream because it's the only thing that can alleviate the pain.

I'm so convinced that any orthodontic gadgets are just medieval torture devices in disguise.

P.S on a completely different note: live laugh love Hozier‼️

[romanticizingani]

3/24/24

Went to the dentist yesterday so they can prepare me for my braces so there's that. Had a bunch of x-rays taken but I was too shy to take photos inside the clinic (⁠๑⁠•⁠﹏⁠•⁠).

Forgot to post here because of how hectic my workload is; add to that my crippling, breakdown inducing mental health.

Anyways, here's a snippet of the house I've been working on (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠), I'm, honestly, so proud of it! Also got to see this beautiful sunset on the way home from dinner.

[romanticizingani]

3/10/24

I went to a cafe with my fam and got a head start on my math project. Overall, it was a very productive day!

This song has been on repeat the whole day :p

First time posting here! Just wanted to have an escape from my chaotic yet surprisingly repetitive life. Here's to new hobbies, I guess?

P.S. I don't know how the tags work :(

[romanticizingani]

fate vs agency: altan trengsin and fang runin

The Phoenix outright states: ‘You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.’ But is that true?

Altan and especially Rin were doomed by the narrative the moment Speer was razed, the moment they were whisked from their homes to a lab or an abusive household.

The thing is: nobody actually wanted them. They were dirty Speerly shaman trash; Altan was experimented on and Rin was abused for her entire childhood. Even in Sinegard, they were both discriminated against - Altan’s a freak of nature who is used for entertainment even if people fear him, and Rin is only her skin colour - even though they both worked so hard and DESERVED to go there. Nobody wanted them until they went to the Cike.

This fuels the anger that has been curated since they were literal kids. Of course they’re angry, and of course they don’t know how to express that in a healthy way - they’ve ALWAYS been abused, they’ve never known anything else. Obviously that doesn’t excuse some of the things they’ve done because of this anger (see: Altan’s abusive behaviour and Rin’s genocide), but the people around them, and society as a whole, failed them. There were two children, maybe Speerlies, but they were two hurt and scared children.

They did choose some things, but they were doomed the moment that Nikan decided to place them in Shiro and the Fangs’ hands. They were so angry, so hurt, so scared - they never would know anything else, really.

Fate doomed not only Rin’s fate, but the possible future she’d have with Nezha. They loved each other, but they could never have each other. Rinezha are the star-crossed lovers, the Romeo and Juliet, the Pyramus and Thisbe, the fleeting touch, the only kiss, the necessary betrayal and the leaving one behind. They are a walking juxtaposition - fire and water, general who wants absolute destruction and government official/ruler who needs Nikan to be safe for the future, poor and rich etc etc. And yet, they have these soft moments because they know how war destroys; they love each other in spite of all of this, but they can never have each other, because Nezha is the last Yin left, and Rin will never live in a world where Hesperians rule her home.

The Phoenix (and Rin by extension, I guess) doesn’t believe fate exists - that there is a choice for everything - but literally everything ensured Rin and Nezha would never be happy and in love: their race, their positions in power, their ideologies, their families, their relationships with other people, their thought patterns, their beliefs, their relationship with their power/shamanism… literally everything would’ve fucked them up. And yet, here they are defying fate, only to fall back into it again. Love is not enough.

The same goes for Altan and Chaghan. They can never have a healthy relationship where Altan doesn’t die. Altan cannot live, he’s self destructive and miserable and angry. He lives only to destroy and when he isn’t destroying, he wants to die.

They could’ve made choices, yes, but nobody makes rational choices in war. They were limited by the tools society gave them, and yeah, they were awful people, but fate itself doomed them before they were old enough to think.

:(

[romanticizingani]

this hurts sm because rin always emphasized her fear of being forgotten

i mourn the history that left with Rin’s last breath.

— no one will remember her as the girl who passed the Keju with only two years of studying under her belt

— no one will remember her as the girl who punched the Dragon Warlords son or the girl who defeated the Dragon Warlords son in the trials and won

— no one will remember her as the girl crazy enough to pledge to lore

— no one will remember her as the girl who had to endure torture in a Mugenese lab

— no one will remember her as the girl who gave the “broken” girl the chance to fight again

— no one will remember her as the girl who destroyed and saved her best friend

— no one will remember her as the girl who had to fight her whole life till the very end. all they’ll remember is a girl on fire, with so much rage, that it almost destroyed the country.

she saved nikara, she burnt it, and she gave it a second chance.

[romanticizingani]

I’m sure someone has talked about this before but one thing I absolutely love about tbosas is how Snow’s descent into villainy is never once presented as something that was inevitable

So many villain origin stories portray this idea of a person who tries incredibly hard to be a good person, who takes every opportunity to be kind and to better themselves, but are ultimately doomed to fail by the narrative. Their environment and their circumstances make it impossible for them to be a good person, and while this is effective from a storytelling point of view it’s not exactly accurate to real life

In real life there is always a point where a bad person makes the decision to do something bad, they make the decision to prioritise themselves, their own power, money or desires over someone else. That’s how real life dictators are made, they are presented with every opportunity to be good, and they purposefully choose to not take it

This makes Snow’s storyline so effective because he is given so many opportunities to do the right thing and yet, at every single turn, he chooses to serve himself instead, exactly like how real dictators are made

Snow, unlike most people we see in the capitol, is in a unique position where he could genuinely have the chance to understand and relate to the people from the districts. He, unlike his classmates, is poor and spends most nights going hungry, he witnessed firsthand the cruelty of the capitol when Clemensia was bitten by the snakes for nothing more than lying about doing her homework, when his sister was forced to sell herself on the streets in order to feed the both of them

Throughout his book, the three people he is closest to are Tigris (who dislikes the hunger games, is a rebel, and a victim of the capitol forced to turn to prostitution), Sejanus (who is originally from district 2, dislikes the capitol and knows he will never be accepted there, and also a rebel) and Lucy Gray (who is a victim of the hunger games, from district 12, and is also treated horribly by the capitol). These are all people who gave him an opportunity to realise the cruelty of the system he was in, a chance to directly confront his prejudices and see that people from the districts are just the same as him, and yet he still refuses to take the chance to change

He is given every opportunity, he’s sent away from the capitol to be a peacekeeper in the districts, he forms personal connections with people from the districts, he helps Sejanus perform funeral rites, and yet at every moral crossroads he comes to he makes the wrong decision. He didn’t have to become a villain, and yet he made the choice to do so anyway, despite every chance he was given

I think it’s a really effective portrayal of Snow as a character, and it’s a very effective villain origin story for the type of villain that Snow is. It never once excuses him from his actions because it highlights just how accountable he was for his actions

[romanticizingani]

Love letter from 1913 that opens up to form an art gallery.

[romanticizingani]

For when our young love withers this fall, another one will surely blossom next spring.