#I hurt a lot of people and i regret that

[zorosdimples]

knowing i should take a step back from tumblr for my own wellbeing vs. being emotionally attached to this app and the people on it

[lvstharmony]

​beyond grateful for the people that are surrounding me in my life, just as i am grateful for the people i’ve parted ways with, for without them, i would not be the person i am today.

[martyrbat]

detective comics #509

[ID: Bruce Wayne sleeping in his penthouse, his eyes squeezed shut as the narration reads, ‘Gordon's strained laugh sounds hollow, but it echos in the Batman's mind... and haunts his dreams...” Bruce awakens to a hand on his shoulder and before he can think, he's twisting it and holding it down. The panel expands, revealing the hand belongs to Alfred as he's almost toppling over! He cries out, “M-master Bruce—my arm!” as Bruce groggily realizes who it is. He lets go at once as Alfred moves to the end of the bed and holds his arm while stammering an apology, “S-sorry, s-sir... Sorry if I startled you.” Bruce looks at him with aghast as he cries out, “My god, Alfred—I almost broke your arm!” Alfred reasons, “You must have been having a nightmare, sir.” as Bruce sits up and puts his face in his hands. He weepily dismisses, “A nightmare—what kind of an excuse is that? Old friend... forgive me...” Alfred reassures, “Nothing to forgive, sir. Just bad nerves, sir.” END ID]

[relicsongmel]

Was doing some thinking today and realized that one of the reasons I'm really drawn to Kieran is because he's a rare example of a character that's shy (and usually good-hearted) but still has some rougher edges to him.

I feel like all too often shy characters are shoved into being portrayed as either "smol bean who would never hurt anyone and just wants friends uwu" or "brooding loner who snaps at people to cover up the fact they don't actually know how to socialize" with not a lot of wiggle room in between. While I can and do enjoy characters that (arguably) fall into those respective categories, they're a bit reductive in the sense that things are very rarely that black and white in reality. Even the kindest people have a limit to what they can tolerate. They have bad days or respond poorly to events around them that cause them stress. And the same can be said in reverse as well—point being, people are multifaceted and don't always behave as predictably as we'd like to think.

And I think Kieran reflects that dichotomy perfectly. When we first meet him, he's meek, timid, and relies heavily on his more brash and forceful older sister to help him navigate social situations where he would otherwise lose out on something valuable because he's too afraid to come forward and ask for what he wants (like how she has to ask the player to battle him on his behalf). He's often quick to cower whenever she starts to get heated, but he's also not afraid to point out when he thinks she's wrong and sometimes even gets sassy with her himself. He's undeniably sweet and gentle and shows eagerness to make friends with the player, but he becomes much more curt when he notices we're lying to him about Ogerpon. The rest of the Teal Mask storyline shows him fluctuating even further—yelling at Carmine and the player for keeping secrets from him, punching things in fits of anger...then backpedaling and apologizing for the trouble he caused a few scenes later. Spreading the truth about Ogerpon to everyone in the village to help make her happy...then selfishly demanding a battle to see who's worthy of being her Trainer when she has already clearly chosen the player.

After being lied to and suffering repeated losses at our hands (including the Pokemon he's idolized all his life choosing us over him), he leans even more heavily into his bitter side during the Indigo Disk—being cold and ruthless to pretty much everyone around him, but at the end of the day it's primarily overcompensation for what he perceives as his own personal weakness (because he's still just a kid trying to be taken seriously). He's shown to drop the act on multiple occasions—most notably when he's caught off guard by our appearance at Blueberry Academy and at a few points during the Area Zero expedition. He antagonizes the player up until the moment of his defeat and tries to catch and use Terapagos in a last-ditch moment of desperation that ends up going horribly wrong, but after everything resolves he's quick to admit his mistakes and asks the player for forgiveness and if they can still be friends. After the epilogue he's mostly back to his old self, but still seems to get worked up when provoked (e.g. when he yells at Drayton for refusing to stop calling him "ex-Champ" in one of their League Club Room interactions).

And I think this varied and sometimes contradictory behavior is precisely why Kieran is such a cohesive and believable character—because it shows how even kind, well-meaning people may have a hidden darker side that can show itself under the right circumstances. How they might let their insecurities get the better of them. How a shy, timid kid might not have the experience to know how to deal with sudden feelings of frustration and/or jealousy that are far too strong to keep to himself, so he lashes out as a result. How despite all this he remains kind, sensitive and loving at his core and shows willingness to learn from his mistakes. And that is what makes him so compelling to me.

[bunnihearted]

⋆⭒˚.⋆

[marklikely]

i don't think anyone should be shamed for not coming out or not transitioning (medical or otherwise) bc its ultimately your choice i just think its really easy to make up excuses after excuses to avoid doing something that would make you a lot happier and its worth taking the time to really question what you want and why you've avoided it. from time to time

[seventeendeer]

adventure time, baby, I'm going to keep it real with you: you had the perfect meta setup (a spinoff of a children's cartoon made for adults who grew up with said cartoon) for a story about two characters desperate to return to simpler times (fionna longing for the subconscious memory of a fantasy land where nothing is complex and she won't have to face the trials of young adulthood in her now-mundane world, simon longing to lose his mind again so he won't have to remember his grief) coming to realize that the "simpler times" they remember were never as straightforward as their idealized memories (fionna realizing that her black-and-white worldview was actually just deeply biased and ultimately harmful, simon realizing that ice king was just as miserable as simon himself and simply lacked the tools to parse his own emotions), the idealized past they want to return to was never real, and in order to move forward, they have to face the painful realities they've been trying to avoid, mature as people, and learn to see beauty and value in their own respective lives, even if they're not the lives they'd hoped for

and then that didn't happen. there was a perfect metaphor for the false allure of nostalgia using THE "whimsical at first glance/shockingly grim under the surface" children's cartoon RIGHT THERE. How Did You Fuck That Up

[adxmanial]

—

[solradguy]

Whenever I see someone being transphobic on twt in a bridget thread i reply with three pictures of my mains: ky kiske from ac+r, ky kiske from rev 2, and ky kiske from strive.

it self selects for people who actually play the game. it’s canon that he’ll fight off transphobes with the blade. and if they actually played guilty gear they’d get the underlining messages

While it can be really funny to bully these guys back, please keep in mind that nothing you can say or do to these people will hurt them or waste as much of their time as what they say will stick with you or waste your time. It might be funny to send them a bunch of Ky pictures, but what they're doing is laughing that the only response the people they hate can give them is sending a bunch of pictures of anime boys.

The only thing that works is blocking them. They've turned being an asshole into a recreational sport and getting any sort of response in return is a victory for them.

[candlebel]

I cared. I still do. I still think of you and I still cry over you. You were importat to me. You still are.

[calamitydaze]

long tag ramble below u have been warned

[plumbley-bee]

I will not regret having loved.

I don't mean I won't be sad, and my heart won't ache over connections I've lost.

I don't mean I always forgive people who have betrayed my trust and hurt me.

I don't mean I haven't loved the wrong person before.

I mean, the day I regret having felt love at all is the day I fear I will truly lose myself in every way that matters.

Even if I no longer hold any love for someone, I can not regret having felt it in the first place.

Why on earth should I regret the part of me that loves when it is my favorite thing about myself? Why should I shame myself for feeling the very same thing that allows me to have friends to hug and laugh with and milestones to celebrate?

I refuse to feel at fault for having felt something so beautiful and untouchable as love. I can not with good conscience condemn the version of me that loved when I didn't know why I shouldn't have. I will not punish myself over having found something worth loving, even for only a few seconds.

So I will weep for the connections I've lost, and I will do so proudly.

I will scream and cuss and cry at and about the people who have hurt me, and I will do so proudly.

I will laugh and hug and celebrate the people in my life, and I will do so proudly.

I will do these things with all the love I've ever felt etched into my heart, and I will do so proudly.

[kutyozh]

it feels so bitter that my fondest memories of Bolivia rn belong to A. I don't wanna tell the whole story on here but I wish I had saved myself and others so much trouble by making... different decisions

[giantkillerjack]

Ya know. I spent most of my life with horrible painful soul-crushing social anxiety.

And after about 25 years of continuous hard work, suddenly, people started pointing out - to my utter bafflement - that I had, in fact, achieved my lifelong dream of being charismatic. I'm 29 now; I feel comfortable in most social situations, and it is a very rare person whom I cannot make laugh.

I am, undoubtedly, finally, charismatic.

But do you know what I found?

I found that now that I have an understanding of which social rules serve which functions -- Now that I have an understanding of just how much damage my awkwardness was doing to people, well,

I found that, actually, my awkwardness never really hurt anyone at all. People were just judgmental dicks to me about it.

Now that I have the skill-level to (most of the time) creatively vocalize what is in my head as soon as I think it and without fear, I can confirm once and for all what I had always suspected:

I was worth talking to when I was quiet.

I was worth talking to when I was awkward, and when the words in my head took time and patience to hear, and when most of my jokes didn't land. I was worth talking to the whole time.

So I just... I hope that if you've ever wondered whether you are worth communicating with, the answer is yes. Absolutely yes. Each of us has a soul worth sharing - and if you and I were talking, I would happily wait for you to speak (or communicate in other ways) without condescending, and I would never shame you for that harmless awkwardness that so many people feel the need to violently stomp out.

You are worth talking to. You just are. And you deserve people who will speak to you with kindness, with patience, and with the basic immutable respect owed to all people.

(I talk about this with some frequency, both on tumblr and in real life. At some point, maybe I'll gather all my thoughts on the matter into one post. At some point, I wrote about my personal experience trying to build my social skill. But I felt the need to say at least a little bit tonight after seeing this other lovely post, and I'm glad I did. It will happen again.)

[ourhouseishaunted]

70% of my trigun thoughts are abt how plants (independent and dependant) work and what they symbolize and their relationships with other characters and the world and stuff and the implications of independent plants coming with the earth forces and what it says about how earth has progressed since SEEDS left the planet, 20% of my thoughts are "hope those guys (meryl milly vash livio ww knives) are having fun" and 10% is rotating trimax Rem Saverem around in my head at all times

[rexxdjarin]

I wish someone had told me.

Rex had uttered this phrase more times in the last few years of his life than he ever had in all the ones before now.

He was a Captain, a man organizationally meant to be in the know.

Yet these days it felt like the more he found out about the truth of things the less he really knew the entire time.

The war he fought in, the war he and all his brothers dedicated their lives to, was built on an insidious lie. It was orchestrated to make the Republic and the Jedi fall. Palpatine constructed all of it, including his own life, to make that happen. And upon realizing this toward the end of the clone wars, he found himself uttering the phrase that became all too familiar to him for the first time. I wish someone had told me.

Ahsoka had saved his life by removing his inhibitor chip. They escaped with their lives and parted to keep each other safe. He went years, a whole decade, without hearing from her again. The entire time wondering if one day he’d look over his shoulder to find his little sister rushing to pass him like she used to. Worrying about her all the time. Starting his own clone rebellion without her beside him. She had started her own fight to build up the rebellion and never thought to seek him out. That maybe he’d want to help. Until finally she did, a decade later, and he was brought in to the fight again. While he was glad to see her and happy she had survived all this time, she disappeared after fighting a Sith on Malachor and never came home. Yet somehow, some way, she survived, only to go out on her own without finding him again. And once again he felt it- I wish someone had told me.

Or worst of all - the darkest truth that no one had the heart to tell him. That it was Anakin, his beloved General and one of his best friends, who aided Palpatine in the collapse of the galaxy as they knew it. That it was Anakin who had killed all his fellow Jedi and used his helpless chip-controlled brothers to do it. That it was Anakin who had killed Padmé Amidala and sent a surviving Obi-wan Kenobi into self-imposed exile. That it was Anakin who became the monster Darth Vader and terrorized the galaxy for decades. That his best friend, his leader, had suffered so greatly for so long and never confided in him. Never looked to him for help the way Rex had always done to him in the years he grew up beside him. That Anakin and Padmé had two children who were kept hidden to survive and who lead the rebellion, including himself, to victory against the Empire. That all this time everyone he knew had some hand in the future that was to come and yet none would ever ease his questioning, anxious mind about where things went wrong. That not even Ahsoka could stand to tell him the truth. Only Anakin’s son and daughter could sit him down at his old age and fill in the gaps in his own story. At his much older age, he sat with his helmet in his hands, looking at his same brown eyes that never seemed to age brimming with tears and said to himself - I wish someone had told me.

The things he could’ve done to help. The shoulders he would’ve provided for his friends and leaders to cry on. He would’ve carried that weight. He would’ve fought beside them all. He should’ve been there. If only someone had told him.

And as he sat in his private quarters, set up just like his barracks all those years ago, with his General’s two very grown up children looking at him with both their Father’s and Mother’s eyes, faces, and hearts…he just wished so deeply that someone had told him everything sooner.