#I don't HAVE abandonment issues

[hellsingmongrel]

I can't help but think about how Vash, after the trauma of having Rem killed when he was so young and then learning to expect the humans he grew to love to grow old and die or be killed in so many myriad ways and even having them betray him for the bounty money or just out of fear, must have developed so many difficulties allowing himself to get close to people.

Abandonment issues SUCK. You want to be close to people, you want to love people and develop connections and have friends and loved ones you can spend time with and be happy with, but you become so sure that anyone you get close to will just end up leaving you for one reason or another, and nothing you do will ever make them stay, so you just...stop trying. Stop letting yourself get attached. Stop letting yourself hope these will still be there or even reach out to bridge the gaps.

You can be friendly and outgoing and happy in the moment, but that's all it is; momentary. So you just let yourself be happy with the little glimpses if friendliness that you get from time to time and never hope for anything more. It's easier that way, you won't get your hopes up, and you're alright being alone, you've always been alone, it's ok. It's ok.

Except it's really not, and sometimes the loneliness just eats away at you, and you wonder why you were so wrong, why you were so bad or broken or a problem, or not made right to live like other people did, and why you have to be so Different that you're best hope is to just be allowed to exist Around other people, not With other people.

It's no wonder he has so much trouble never settling down, or why he only lets himself be happy for small spells between the downward spirals. He wants SO MUCH to be human, just like everyone else, worthy of love and companionship and the kinds of connections everyone else on the planet shares. He just wants to fit in and be loved, and the more his abandonment issues are reinforced, the worse it makes him feel about himself.

And then, he finds the one human who refuses to abandon him, even if he should, even if it means it puts him in danger, even if at first it's just because he HAS to, and maybe Vash feels like someone finally wants him to be around, and makes him feel a little more Human, and like maybe he can finally have a friend. Or a partner. Maybe he can let himself try to be loved.

And then he's Abandoned all over again, except it's not like every other time. It's not because he's not worthy of having someone next to him, and if he just catches up, then he can save him from the things his brother is doing, and he can be happy for a little bit longer! He doesn't have to say good bye all over again so soon, just let him be on time!

But no. It was never going to work out, was it? He should have known better. So much of what's happening has to be his own fault in one way or anotuer, so it's just his fault that this happened, too, wasn't it? It was his own fault for letting himself get his hopes up, anyway. He knew better. He doesn't get to have people who love him. It's his own fault that his world feels like it's breaking all around him while he digs a solitary grave out behind the orphanage. He's a blight on everything around him. Everything he loves ends up leaving him, eventually. He just wishes everyone he gets close to could stop dying in horrible ways. At least the betrayals mean the people will still get to live their own lives, happy and safe, once he's moved on to the next path on his neverending road.

[everysongineverykey]

dhmis is great because imagine a series centered around three roommates living in a small incredibly isolated house in a story run by a strange omnipotent woman with unclear motivations who amuses herself by tormenting the roommates over and over again in various awful ways by dangling something new and exciting in front of their faces and then making it backfire horribly thus traumatizing them all and often maiming and killing them and they can't escape because they're nothing but puppets in her little show and they're chained to a narrative that will not let them go and one roommate is a naive kid with a sadistic father who traumatizes him horribly when he isn't neglecting him and also eats people and another roommate is almost aware of his situation but will never be able to save himself or his friends and is constantly rejected by his own kind and only wants to leave the tiny house but nothing, no one, will play along and the third roommate is caught in the middle, not a naive child but not quite meta aware, and thus is doomed to fall victim to the same traps over and over and also they're literally the only three people in their entire world besides the evil things that keep intruding in their home and terrorizing them and they can't call for help. ok and now imagine they look like this

[dead-core]

craving validation from exactly the wrong person. slay

[silverwhittlingknife]

did nobody ask you for red letter day? absurd! *I* wanna know about red letter day!

hello captain and friend anon!!! I KNOW I HAVEN'T UPDATED THIS IN SIX MILLION YEARS SO THANK YOU FOR THESE ASKS <333

okay SO the first thing is, you have to understand, my list of documents for this fic looks like this:

anyway i do love this fic even though it FIGHTS ME; it's supposed to have both Fights and Mysteries and both are hard to write 😅

anyway hmmm i'm going to cheat by including a Dick POV section that I am probably gonna end up cutting, because i like it but i also worry that it slows down the dialogue?

excerpt below the cut! the only context that you need is that Dick and Tim have been having the "should Tim call if there's danger in Gotham" argument again (Tim's position is "no"), partly because they both have genuine positions on this argument, but also because it enables them to sublimate an emotional conflict into a work conflict and thus avoid talking or thinking about their feelings, which is a shared pathology goal:

Dick would bet Tim never mouthed off to Bruce like this.  One of the many things that suck about being the knock-off Batman is that none of Dick’s orders really stick.  All of the responsibility without the authority to back it up.  At least when Dick was leading the Titans, they did what he freaking told them. …Mostly. …Okay, sometimes. The awful truth is—and he tries not to dwell on it because it’s pointless and doesn’t achieve anything, but—everything with Tim, sometimes it reminds him of the worst times with the Titans.  The same uneasy feeling of dread, like he’s grabbing for someone who’s slipping through his fingers.  Roy’s crossed arms.  The clock creeping toward midnight, staring at the champagne, knowing in his heart that Kory wasn’t coming.  After Tartarus: watching Roy walk out of the room, watching Donna follow him, staring at Vic’s back, Kory’s back, all of them walking out, and no one left but the newcomers.  When the personal is so fucked up that all you can do is double-down on the professional, and even that doesn’t help, and then— (Get a grip, Grayson.) And anyway, this isn’t like the Titans, is it?  Dick was out-of-line, there, in retrospect. He’s never been good at losing people gracefully.  Pushing Kory for marriage when she was already pulling away, trying to cling to her instead of letting her go.  Giving ultimatums after Tartarus, when he knew the team already resented his orders.  Making decisions behind Vic’s back, trying to force him to stay.  It’s an ugly bad habit, picked up from Bruce: things are slipping, and your people are mad at you, so you get scared, and then you get authoritative and controlling so you can hang onto them, except you can’t control them, so then they get even angrier and you lose them anyway.   It’s easy to see in Bruce, hard to see in himself, but he knows it’s there.  He barely managed to catch himself in time, with the Titans.   Is he doing the same thing to Tim?  Does he need to back off? But Gotham is risky.  Tim’s always been capable, obviously, but…it’s okay to be a bit authoritative, isn’t it?  Tim should call if there’s someone who looks unusually dangerous.  That’s just common sense.  Dick’s not asking for miracles, here.

[petricorah]

deciding which ideas to draw lately

[letssofia3006]

Okay, I have a blast with these. Don't have a context other than being a little sleep-deprived and drawing with no sense of perfectionist.

Also, the wittebane brothers with Anna and Elsa's clothes look pretty much the same as Anna and Elsa's gender swap version.

[furiousgoldfish]

Write down some of your trauma symptoms that have gotten better, lessened, or you found ways to deal wit them so they're no longer debilitating for your life!

For me it's:

catastrophizing (learned to stop myself in 80% cases)

chronic pain (lessened, less flare-ups, still present but no longer debilitating to the point where I can't make plans at all)

anxiety (got compartmentalized with changing the host)

toxic shame (I rarely feel ashamed for what was done to me anymore)

self-doubt regarding the past (I can blame the perpetrators easily)

low self confidence (experience of getting things done has taught me of what I'm capable of)

negative thinking (I can catch myself and reverse it before spiraling)

panic attacks and seizure-like episodes (rarely have them, new host learned to stop them completely)

None of it is like it would be in a healthy person who has never been thru abuse, but compared to how bad it was, it's a huge relief to be in a better place regarding these issues, and opens the door to having a less uncertain and scary future. Write down your own, and what helped you make the progress!

[astarlightmonbebe]

i'm only at the beginning of li tongguang's descent into obsession (eps 17-18), but already it's both hurting and hitting. hurting, because we know li tongguang's capabilities, and his level headedness, and the potential he has, that he seems to throw out due to this obsession. hitting, because when you think about it, the obsession storyline and characterization does make perfect sense. obsession like that is a double edged blade, which can turn from love to hate, childish belief and joy to embittered rage in a second.

on one hand, it's painful to watch ltg's childlike desperation when faced with ruyi again. we want to grit our teeth and think of him as idiotic, unable to take a hint. but the reality is that it's a completely normal response to be expected from him. i mean, it's a dream come true, to see the person you 'love' the most in the world to be whole in front of you. it's probably what he could only dream about, especially being the one to apparently find her bones and bury them.

on a deeper level, ltg's initial reaction is very much a manifestation of his inner child, almost peter pan-like in the 'child that never became an adult/grew up' way. by that i mean to say the desperate urge to please, the constant worrying, and the oscillation between hot and cold moods are all so indicative of someone who grew up in an insecure/unstable environment, usually with volatile or simply unavailable authority figures. from what we can gather, he had no father, his mother wasn't in his life ("she doesn't want him around, nor can she bear for him to be away, so that's why he's like that" per empress zhaojie's words to ruyi). the one authority figure that entered his life to offer some semblance of guidance was ruyi, and even though it's clear that she held care for him, she was also a twenty year old assassin used to training subordinates, not children. her mentorship style is clearly so different when you hold ltg and yang ying side by side, and we know from ruyi's own mouth that she doesn't consider herself to have taught ltg well, and wants to remedy that through/with yang ying (i'll probably make a whole different post comparing this and the affects of this after watching some more episodes lol - there are bullet points in the drafts). so even though ruyi was his authority figure, she was still an emotionally unavailable one who couldn't meet ltg on the level he probably needed at that time in his life, and which no one probably ever did. hence his up and down reaction and actions.

it intrigues me, too, because i think, in a very subtle way, ltg is very much a character foil to ruyi in that he reflects some of her worst attributes, or more accurately represents the sort of person she was, or at least acted like (yuan lu's comment about how ltg has ruyi's gaze was meaningful outside of the jealousy arc - to me at least). i saw someone make a really interesting comment on how ltg's devotion to ruyi parallels ruyi's own devotion to empress zhaojie, which i'll also probably comment on more later.

obviously, ltg's obsession stems from an issue much larger than ruyi herself - she just happens to be the unfortunate target of it. and, clearly, i know his descent into it will be ugly, if understandable. i understand ruyi wanting to leave that part of her life behind, but also - to think that maybe many of the issues faced in future eps could have been avoidable if she'd been upfront with li tongguang about her identity early on.

[tarmac-rat]

Turn that corner, watch us grow older We talk about death, but it's still not over

[e-adlirez]

Trolls Band Together musical reading

Hiiiiiiiii so guess who got ratgrabbed and yanked down into the abyss yesterday as of the time I'm very impulsively writing this--

I went in not expecting much but a couple minutes in they were able to win me over with the plot and the surprisingly strong moral core despite the very simple narrative

And I dunno why (prolly because uh spoilers that I'll get into in a bit) but I wound up reading the movie through a musical lens, which is what this post is about :D

So if you haven't seen Trolls Band Together and don't think you want to (either because you're not optimistic due to the past two films or because you're by some chance a Disney elitist who's somehow trying to trick us into thinking Wish is somehow better than this banger), MAJOR SPOILERS for Trolls Band Together, you have been warned :]

Aight so the main reason I wound up with the music-based reading on first watch is because of the mention of the Perfect Family Harmony, which is what the protagonist boyband BroZone is trying really hard to hit, and I just so happen to be into music (I play drums :]) and just so happened to have been practicing harmonizing in recent times so I guess it lined up just enough for me to look at the film in a musical light, which was a lot of fun :3

Now, the plot of TBT is a very simple one: it's a big "hey guys how about we work together" kind of narrative, which we've seen before in every group-related franchise ever. However, the one thing that I found extremely fascinating was the fact that this story wasn't just being told by narrative, but by music. Specifically BroZone's harmonies and how they develop throughout the film :]

(Fair warning I'm not gonna be able to go Howard Ho levels of detailed, I don't even know how to distinguish chords by ear :'D I'm just gonna be talking about what I hear)

During the intro sequence, we see that John Dory (who I might end up calling JD for simplicity in this essay) has this thing about the Perfect Family Harmony (the PFH) and is trying to get his band to hit it. Obviously, his tactic for this is perfection and pushing his brothers to be perfect for the sake of hitting the PFH on their tour debut, and insisting that he takes the lead, which none of his brothers agree to while knowing that JD is not gonna be hearing any of their protests. This part is very important, because I'm sure that all musicians would know from rehearsals, if the group can't agree on whose lead to follow and wind up not listening to each other, the result is absolute chaos. Not literally as chaotic as BroZone's stage malfunction, but it do sound like that when none of the parts are working together :D

However uh, there's one thing I also want to point out with both BroZone's tour debut and when BroZone has their first full rehearsal together. When they sing their songs, the harmonies are very subdued and very simple, which is particularly shown in Perfect. There are very little facets to the harmonies, to the point where at any given bar in the performance, the line between backing vocals and main vocalists is extremely clear. The backing vocals even sound distinctly softer than whoever's leading at any given point, minus when the boys are singing in unison. Speaking of which, I could be wrong, but I think the parts in the song are like two at most and on occasion it's just the boys singing in unison? More musically attuned readers are free to correct me on that front, but that's what it sounds like to me.

Anyway the main point is, the brothers are forced to maintain these very fixed and restricting harmonies that more or less sound the same, and of course they are-- JD (if he composed the songs) wrote them and he insists that his brothers follow them to the letter, meaning they can't improvise or go beyond what we hear in the film. Granted it's prolly because of their specific genre of music and the fact that the boys are supposed to be teens at eldest and literally a baby at youngest, but the harmonies don't ever diverge or serve to give the song more layers. They remain exactly the same, more or less perfectly in unison, and even during their first group rehearsal with the band back together in (almost) full (could be wrong can't really relisten to that part of the movie rn), their harmonies are perfectly in unison but lacking in dimension, just like how they were during their disastrous concert.

In these, it is very clear that JD hasn't changed a single bit since the last his brothers saw him. He's still obsessed with the idea that he's the leader (even though a BroZone superfan like Poppy remembers him better as "the old one" and it even took her a bit to remember his part in the band), even though in reality, he's kinda nothing without the other members of the band. Which kiiiinddddaaaaaa shows seeing in Perfect his voice sounds very similar to Clay (I bet if I listened to the soundtrack first I wouldn't have been able to pick out JD's voice), and even his part in the PFH is the same as Floyd's.

As I mentioned earlier, due to the circumstances behind this extremely impulsive rant, I can't really check BroZone's first rehearsal after reuniting rn, but I bet it would've been the same case, because what I DO remember about that scene is that JD was being the same old JD, and everyone was trying to tell him that they've changed since they last saw him (contrast to him not changing a bit because he's trying to maintain that illusion of perfection he's been chasing this whole time). From what I remember, anyway, their harmonies were basically in the same boat as Perfect: clear, subdued, restrained against the singers' will to follow a lead vocalist at all times.

Now, we're gonna shift our gaze from the brothers for a second and take a look at the twins Velvet and Veneer. Yes they are iconic and yes their songs are iconic, but one thing I wanna point out is that when I first listened to Mount Rageous on the soundtrack, I had a really hard time picking out Andrew Rannell's voice because it was backing vocals-ing so hard that it was near impossible to not hear Brianna Mazzola's extremely dominant vocals (no hate to either, Brianna Mazzola SLAYED as Velvet), and the comments section of the video I was listening to for the soundtrack seemed to share my sentiments about wanting to hear more of Andrew Rannell, but hear me out:

We know from the film that Veneer is the nicer sibling. He's a material gworl with a heart and he genuinely doesn't like hurting Floyd, especially when you listen to how they address each other and converse with each other in the film. Now, seeing just how much on speaking terms Floyd and Veneer are on, how conflicted Veneer feels about keeping Floyd hostage and torturing him, and how Veneer is always worried about Floyd's health... it would make sense for Veneer to use Floyd's music essence or talents very sparingly, wouldn't it? With that, compare him to his diva sister Velvet, who squanders Floyd's essence even for dress rehearsals, and always sings for the back row and flexes as many riffs and runs and belts any and all opportunities she gets (hence why she CARRIES Mount Rageous). Makes Andrew Rannell's more subdued and in-the-background performance as Veneer more deliberate, doesn't it? :3 (Still wanna hear his voice more tho, it'd be nice to hear what Veneer can do on his own)

Something something the Veneer siblings are direct foils of BroZone something something Velvet is a direct foil for JD and Veneer is a direct foil to Floyd something something Rageous Twins-Floyd angst anyway back to the thesis of this thing--

Now, you'd think that JD keeps up his perfection shtick all the time, but he very obviously doesn't and it is shown first in his jam session with SpBruce and Branch in Bruce's family restaurant-cafe-lazy Susan thing, through the harmonies. At first I thought it was just because their voices had clearly matured since their childhood (which it partially is), but the other reason is the fact that their harmonies are so much fuller than they were in Perfect. They even give Pentatonix vibes in their little vocalizing bit, that's how full and multifaceted their harmonies are in the song; and the main reason is because in that jam session, everyone's in it just for fun, therefore everyone is free to add their little bit of vocal flavor into the song.

If you listen to JD and Bruce's harmonies in the chorus, you'll find that they sound more full and multilayered than ever in such a way that they didn't need five entire band members to pull off. And most importantly, the line between the leading vocals and the backing vocals are a little blurrier in the sense that leading and backing vocals for the most part are on the same volume, and they opt to sing a multilayered unison for when Poppy joins in, who is also adding her own mezzosoprano piece to the song and is given the room to do so. Everyone is given the room to do so-- Bruce's bass and Branch's tenor in particular get to shine while JD provides support with his baritone-- and of course they're given room for every single one of them to shine, because this isn't a concert, it's just a fun little jam sesh that also serves as a bet to showcase BroZone to Bruce's kids. It's ironic how the one time JD doesn't feel the need to be perfect, is the time you can really see why BroZone is such a good boyband that everyone fell in love with during their time.

Now, I did mention BroZone's first rehearsal (and I don't have much else to say about the rehearsal besides the fact that JD's obstinance means that they're doing a repeat of the tour debut), so I'll talk instead about the next time they manage to work (or in this case, sing) in harmony: A Better Place and its iconic pre-chorus.

Now, first of all I will mention the moment prior where the group has that little heart-to-heart about the PFH and how they don't need to be perfect to hit it, they just need to be together. While this is a very cheesy line, it's actually very true if you think about it from a technical musical perspective: when you're singing, you technically don't need to be perfect to sound good, and the same goes for if you're singing in a group. The most important thing about singing in a group is that you're all together, you're all on the same page, and you're all in agreement on who's going to take the lead for everyone to base their singing off of; and they have all three of those things. All of BroZone is together and able to communicate with each other, and they're all on the same page because they're all agreeing to follow Branch's lead. Ignore for a second the poeticism of Bitty B now taking up The Leader position in the vocals, the fact that the group was able to agree on who'll lead and who the others will listen to is not only a good showcase of what having a good team and leader is like, but also what it takes for a group to be able to sing together and not sound like a house of people trying to sing Happy Birthday. (It's also an achievement with this bunch but I digress.)

In A Better Place, we get to hear everyone put their own bits of harmonies into the song: we get to hear Clay's beautiful vocalizations in the pre-chorus and the chorus, Anna Kendrick joining in with her soprano is always a treat for the eardrums, Camila Cabello's improvisations are very tasteful, the LAYERS that make the pre-chorus so addicting to listen to, we even get to hear Crimp adding a bit of ukulele and it's very cute and she looks so happy you guys <:], Floyd's little vocalization at the end sounds heavenly even though the poor man hardly had anything left in him Lord bless him-- and under all of this, Branch's voice still sounds prominent enough to act as a baseline that doesn't overpower but ties all the other voices together, like a concertmaster of an orchestra being the one to set the pitch and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Everyone is listening to each other, everyone is adding their own flavor to the song, and everyone is in harmony.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk :3 if you managed to stick it out to the end then uh holy crap I commend you soldier, your brainrot must be as severe as the Trolls tag on Tumblr made yourselves out to be :D /j

[boyfridged]

also that scene in utrh when bludhaven is blowing up in the background and bruce wants to go to check on dick, and jason yells: "no! you're not leaving! not now! not this time!" not this time?

[lover-of-mine]

I just think it's kinda poetic that Buck, full of life and love, the one who wears his heart on his sleeve and is so open and cheerful, who loves with everything he has no matter the consequences, the one who's terrified of being alone and left behind, was hanging, out in the open to be saved by the family he chose, the family that chose him. But Eddie, the guarded and careful, the guardian, the soldier, the one who hides behind a carefully build wall because he's afraid of failing everyone else around him in a degree that ends with him ignoring his own pain, was trapped and had to save himself.

[jupitersrising]

This is literally Brooklynn's song.

Lyrics under the cut.

[welcometogrouchland]

I support the "Batman was unfairly biased to Stephanie for XYZ reasons" crowd so strongly bc DC claims that Bruce is a master planner who is able to understand anyone's psychology but he didn't realize that literally every single one of Steph's problems as a teenager would've been solved by her joining a shitty punk band. If he couldn't figure that much out then he didn't understand her for a minute

[kenzie-ann27]

if macdennis actually does become canon, it'll have to go down as one of the greatest love stories in all of television history, and that's coming from the show where one of the two men involved has a dildo bike

[raayllum]

RAYLLUM S4 MEME:  scenes [4/6] 4x06, “the drakewood”

This is all my fault. I left him alone. I shouldn’t have—Rayla, don’t. W-we can’t know what happened for sure. I mean, this is the path to Rex Igneous, right? So maybe he couldn’t climb out of the pit, so he had to keep going. You know him. He’s brave. He’s gotta be down there looking for Rex. He is brave. And reckless.