#Maybe even as a reward?

[completeoveranalysis]

[5]

I WISH I HAD THE CONFIDENCE TO BELIEVE HIM BUT STILL

DO YOUR BEST LAVA LAMP!

WE'RE MOSTLY ROOTING FOR YOU!

And OH the framing of Lava Lamp against Sakura in the background, frozen in the EXACT moment of his greatest doubt, framed by two falling pillars of water.

AND THE SQUINTING GLARE FROM SYAORAN TO HAMMER HOME THE MOMENT.

Oh fascinating! Syaoran turns away from the fight and Lava Lamp pursues, ready to finish the fight between them. Syaoran vs Syaoran etc etc the big showdown to tie it all together for the third and final time.

BUT FAI AND KUROGANE FACE DOWN EVIL WOLVERINE WITH INSULTS, READY TO FIGHT THE PRICK AT THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

And we know Evil Wolverine won’t play fair but OH I love the symmetry of it all. That Lava Lamp’s big arc has been seeing himself as the cause for all the problems in the world, and so he has to fight Himself as the final conflict. So Fai and Kurogane get the confrontation with Evil Wolverine here, as they’re in a Much More Direct View of How He Has Hurt Them Specifically and want to make things even. C:

As they deserve!

AND JUST THE. The sheer joy? That Evil Wolverine set them up as enemies, set Fai up specifcally to KILL Kurogane, and planning for him to die as well, and yet here they are? Facing him together? Alive and IN LOVE? Flirting to rub it all in?

Flirting as a sign of defiance?

To show that actually he's not that great, and his plans resulted in THIS? In these easy enemies choosing EACH OTHER and saving themselves from him?

That all his plans only proved how little he could understand them, or what they would do, or what they would CHOOSE? That he didn't accurately predict ANYONE well enough to have the plan work out how he wanted?

That his greatest plan of all time failed and ended up with them in love and standing here, at the centre of it all, and insulting him to his face?

And like Kurogane says, that HE'S the prey now? That Evil Wolverine always thinks he's in control but now they've turned the dynamic around on him instead?

That they're quite specifically here to kill him? TOGETHER?

I just can't get enough of it.

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[child-of-hurin]

Part of what charms and compels me in Jeyne Poole's arc is her reaction to her predicament. All the female POVs in this book are dealing with a lot of gendered violence, and they all deal in different but dignified forms... Jeyne is not a POV character and she is absolutely not dignified lol. She cries and begs, she is utterly helpless. But unlike most women in this book who are utterly helpless, she survives. It's frustrating how fans refuse to celebrate that, simply because there is no glory in it.

[galaxywarp]

Goals for today: get the bloodwork done that my psychiatrist has been begging me to do. Get my car’s oil changed. Get my haircut at 5pm. Take out one bag of trash. Buy more wet food for the cats.

[ride-a-dromedary]

Imagine spending a century trying to put an end to the suffering of a singular (powerful and connected to the entirety of the surrounding land tbf) fae child to rid the land of a curse, succeeding, and then being dragged to a place where literally hundreds of children are suffering and starving and dying and there's not even a pinpoint reason for it, people are just letting it happen, and then when you express that maybe that's actually kinda fucked up, being told: "Idk I think you're overreacting"

[yuwuta]

If megumi asked uzhsjdhshd omg I totally see it tbh him wanting you, but I don't think megumi would ever ask yuuji to share you, in any type of way at all. (not trying to push my own hc here!!) I feel like yuuji himself would be the one asking megumi. Yuuji knows that he's yours just as much as he knows you're his. And he loves you too much, a lot, it's purest type of love he has ever felt for anyone. And megumi is his best friend, he loves him just as much, right? Yes, not the same love between you and him ofc but yes. And I have no idea what they were doing but yuuji's just says, kind of out of the blue, that he'd let megumi fuck you. The reason being exactly cause he knows you're his, and you're just so so good that he needs to have someone to talk to (about you and always so respectfully) and who better that his best friend?

you’re opening the pandora’s box that is itfs + reader…. god….. 

okok i agree. if you’re dating yuuji, megumi would never ask, yuuji would be the one to bring all three of you together. definitely because he loves you and you’re his, and he loves megumi too, so it just makes sense that his two favorite people also get to have each other—but also, yuuji can tell megumi likes you, and he can tell you think megumi is attractive and since yuuji’s so nice, what kinder thing to do than to set you two up so he can watch (: he definitely enjoys being the mediator, also enjoys the somewhat awkward air between you and megumi, how yeah, maybe it’s a little taboo that the two of you are about to make out while you’re boyfriend watches, but yuuji likes that too… also he likes knowing that you both like him. like how lucky is he that his best friend and his girlfriend adore him so much :(( you two together makes so much sense in his head, because he talks to megumi about you, and he talks to you about megumi, and now, he can just pour all his love for both of you out at the same time

but also…. i’d like to think that yuuji’s maybe not so nice when it’s the other way around—when he and megumi get together first, and you’re megumi’s best friend. he’s not mean, but he does like to tease... how naughty of megumi to ask out yuuji knowing he’s still got a crush on you, and god does yuuji like to tease him about it :/ jerks him off and taunts about how he knows megumi’s dirty little secret—that he’s in love with his best friend and fantasizes not just about having you, but about watching his own boyfriend fuck you too… 

yuuji knows megumi would take his feelings for you to the grave if he could (he’d have done the same with his feelings for yuuji if yuuji wasn’t the one to ask him out), but where’s the fun in that! you and megumi are sooo cute together after all, so yuuji doesn’t mind trying to get you two to confess to each other too. uses his proximity to megumi to get closer to you, takes advantage of his bubbly disposition to be physically affectionate with you, uses megumi’s feelings to his advantage to tease, to wink, to smirk whenever you and yuuji hug a little longer, when he texts megumi that he’s meeting up with you for lunch, when he gives you his jacket and doesn’t ask for it back… there’s so much fun in watching megumi blush and whine and get off at the thought of his best friend and his boyfriend together. and the thing is, yuuji genuinely does like you, too, he sees what megumi sees in you, and he thinks megumi is crazy to have not asked you out before, but he supposes everything happens for a reason, because now, this way, yuuji gets to be there and watch it all happen under his guidance. there’s something about the power, about being the bridge between you two even though you and megumi have known each other for much longer, about being in control of a dynamic that could have, but wouldn’t exist without him…

[captain-lovelace]

I think the thing that really makes it so frustrating that people insist that you can write good horror without liking or reading or watching horror is that it comes from a refusal to acknowledge that horror as a genre requires skill specific to it. It's this assumption that because they've felt fear they understand it, and can therefore inflict it on their audience using whatever skills they already have. There's just one issue: not a single person on this planet has never been afraid, so it's a really easy emotion to get wrong in fiction. It's extremely easy for a portrayal of fear to come off as, for example, cheesy, or unintentionally funny, or disingenuous, or for it to just be too personal to be scary to other people. Studying how fear is written and portrayed, both effectively and ineffectively, makes you better at doing those things yourself. In order to write better horror, you have to treat horror as a genre worthy of attention and study. And I, personally, would argue that means that you have to interact with it.

One of the biggest and most important pieces of advice that I got as a writer was to read. It's hard to be a good author who doesn't read, and it's even harder to be a good genre author who doesn't interact at all with the genre that you're writing in, because you have massive gaps in your knowledge that you're not even aware of. You might not even be able to properly critique your work! You have nothing to draw from, nothing to be inspired from except things that were not made for the purpose of inciting fear-- you're fitting a square peg in a round hole and hoping it works.

The people who say no, you can write horror without having read horror, are the same people who would never say the same thing about whatever genre they like the most. On some level they're aware of how much it sucks to have someone with no experience in a genre come in with 100% conviction that they are actually the genre's savior, before coming up with something stale, bland, and full of half-baked inspirations from whatever bits and pieces of genre media they picked up through cultural osmosis, all of which they're convinced are so original because they have no idea they're drawing on any sort of larger tradition. But, because it's horror, this for some reason does not cross their minds.

The argument seems to be that you don't have to read horror to write horror. You don't have to like horror to write horror. You don't have to care about horror to write horror. It's a genre that requires zero effort, zero knowledge, zero skill you can't get elsewhere. It has no value-- but you, the person who doesn't know anything about it, you can give it value.

They don't seem to realize just how insulting that is to hear.

(Final note: queer horror and horror by POC both have rich histories, as does horror that isn't USAmerican or Western European in origin. It's a genre that is popular almost worldwide and has a lot of really excellent offerings from everywhere. Also, in addition to horror movies and novels I really recommend checking out horror short stories/anthologies, which can really show where the genre shines. Don't shy away from older horror, as well! Some of my favorite horror stories are from the 19th century.

If you love the idea of horror but have never really found anything that clicked, I guarantee that there is something out there that you will probably like, and if you want to write horror seeing the sheer breadth of what's out there will help you write better horror-- if at least to show you what you would like to see more of, or what might be missing.)

[titsthedamnseason]

happy surprise song guessing game time!! it’s metlife n1 🥲 so as a new yorker it hurts a little extra to not be at any shows this weekend…but i digress! i have a feeling taylor’s gonna go crazy so i’d love to see your surprise song guesses in the tags / replies

my guesses are welcome to new york and hits different 💗

[timemachineyeah]

I think in the next Animal Crossing, you should have to earn your control over the environment. And I don’t just mean working to get terraforming, I mean, like, earning it before getting to decide where other people’s homes are and stuff.

Idk, the deserted island is fun but I kind of hope in the next one we’re back to being a new face in an already established rural community. And you can still progress to moving absolutely everything on the map and decorating each square foot and flower to your liking, but, like… these other people have lives of their own.

I like knowing a rando isn’t gonna move onto my carefully curated flowerbed and ruin my path, but I don’t like how much the villagers in ACNH feel like fashion accessories rather than neighbors.

[mumintroll]

do you have any study tips?

hiii, im still struggling to learn to become a person who studies bc i was a lazy coaster for so long lol but some things that have helped me are: having a planner where i make a list of all the work i need to get done every day (having everything laid out + getting the satisfaction of ticking a box makes it easier and more rewarding imo), using the pomodoro technique or apps like forest to give myself set time periods in which to work where i try not to let myself do anything else, trying to work away from my house/room whenever possible (in the library is best for me but even just going downstairs to work instead of in my bedroom helps). if u manage to get organised for even just a week, for me the satisfaction that i felt from getting stuff done more than i ever have before makes you want to do it more... if it feels like a slog try and think about how good it feels when it is done rather than the bad feeling of doing it and know that you will reach it if you just keep going!

+ above my desk i have a post it note to remind me of this post which helped to change my mindset a lot lol

[todayisafridaynight]

barely four hours into the new month and im already silly

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

i don't even like video games so why have i been playing Red Dead 2 for the past eight hours gay

[mourninglamby]

i wish the dsmp was yours and it was a comic or something. literally so gorgeous

thaaaaank you darling I do also wish I could make a big comic with a team of ppl… would be so cool

[jerreeeeeee]

there's nothing inherently wrong or unhealthy with a platonic relationship being the most intimate and important in someone's life (whether that person is also in a romantic relationship or not). this has been said before but people still treat it like its true. ESPECIALLY that a prioritized platonic relationship belies “codependency” even though no one would bat an eye at the exact same dynamic if it were romantic, because of the idea that a prioritized platonic relationship is somehow immature/unhealthy and something to grow out of/move on from.

the idea that the twins just go, well, you've been the person i felt safest loving and trusting in my entire life, our souls have been bound by fate and magic and our love for one another is one of the strongest bonds in the multiverse, transcending death and unimaginable loss, the motivation behind everything we’ve ever done, but since we're both in romantic relationships now and the story is over, the reasonable and in-character thing to do would be to split up and have separate nuclear families because that's the "healthy thing" (read: expected thing). there's no other form of a domestic happy ending than a marriage and typical nuclear family. you're everything to me, my entire world, my heart, see you later.

ok this got too long i'm putting it under a readmore.

(also why i don't really like the idea that taako adopts angus. "parent" is not the only important, loving role an adult can play in a child's life but people feel that need to shove everything into a nuclear family. also taako has too much going on to be the good parent that angus needs anyway. and magnus and lucretia are right there. but this is another post <- this is actually a fan fiction i’m writing, kind of)

i just find that frankly silly. i truly believe that the twins live together for the rest of their lives and are always each others' most important person (before anyone kills me i do think barry is there too. they also both love him so much. capacity for love INCREASES there’s no need for a replacement or a “moving on” it’s an addition). there's not any reason they wouldn't live together other than that it’s not “normal?” but why would they give a shit about that. their prioritization of one another isn't the unhealthy thing about their relationship. they do have other stuff going on that's actually codependent, but i think they eventually work past it and come to have a healthier (yet no less close) relationship. actually this post was originally just supposed to be about those codependent tendencies but i felt like i needed to compensate by clarifying that there are only a very specific few things abt their dynamic i find unhealthy and that by and large they’re fine, actually.

the main thing is, as is so succinctly put in this post—they aren't able to communicate about big, important decisions. not to say they never communicate about anything, i think they actually do communicate effectively about a lot of things—warning i’m going into a complete tangent here—i see a lot an idea that they’re not siblings who hug or really verbalize affection at all which is crazy to me (<- personal opinion alert) like they’re closed off and distrusting (taako more than lup, but she’s certainly not exempt from their trauma) to other people and the world at large but they have always always been each other’s exception, each other’s utmost safe place, the one person they could be absolutely comfortable around, who they never have to be afraid of. that’s one of the things i find so compelling about them, that they trust each other with their entire selves. they have no reason to ever feel defensive around each other. oh to be known so entirely and intimately and never feel ashamed or afraid of judgement or abandonment. augh. so i do think they hug.

also—i don't think they're unhealthily codependent in the sense that they "don't know how to be a person without each other" like that's certainly not true for lup and i don't really think it's true for taako either. they have their own distinct personalities and identities they just also both inform each others’ lives. they're an integral part of each other's identity the way your family or best friend or partner or most important person in your life is but again i think that's fine.

but back to the topic at hand anyway they DO hide their misgivings from each other when it comes to huge shit with world-changing, life-threatening consequences lol. when it comes to, like, turning herself into a lich, or leaving to recover her dangerous magical artifact, lup feels like she needs to be entirely decisive and confident for taako, and when it comes to his sister turning herself into a lich, or proposing a dangerous magical artifact plan, taako feels like he needs to be unflinchingly supportive and loyal for lup. and those both backfire obviously. because they trust each other so completely that they don't trust each other enough to not trust each other. weird paradox.

but really its not a lack of trust in each other its their own insecurities projected onto each other. lup second guesses herself but feels like she can’t express that uncertainty so she’s alone with her doubts which increases the pressure and stress and creates a feedback loop that only makes her more insecure. and taako feels like he doesn’t have anything to bring to the table other than backing up lup and is afraid doubting her would hurt her which means he never has an opportunity to find out he does actually have good ideas and that lup would listen to him constructively. but it manifests in lup “not trusting taako” to have her back even if she doubts herself and taako “not trusting lup” to take criticism even if his idea is good.

and honestly i think the solution to this codependency just comes with… not being in those lifethreatening situations anymore. the universe was saved and they have normal (magical fantasy world) lives. so now when they’re hiding things from each other the stakes are a lot lower. and when the stakes are lower they’re able to express uncertainty because they don’t feel that extreme and terrifying pressure anymore. lup doesn’t have to make impossible decisions and stick to them despite any doubt because she doesn’t have the survival of entire worlds on her back anymore. taako doesn’t have to always agree with lup and uncritically support her every choice because he’s not the only thing holding her together from oblivion anymore. so they're able to express doubts and nothing falls apart and they're actually stronger for it. and they’re already doing so much work on fixing their relationship just from being separated and kinda grieving for a decade too, so they eventually work past that.

and also because they have to face those insecurities and their consequences. lup got trapped in umbrella limbo for a decade and taako had his life destroyed. if lup had been able to overcome her need to put everything on her shoulders and expressed uncertainty, if taako had been able to overcome his blind loyalty and expressed doubt, would they have gone through with the relics? would they have even gone through with the lich plan? they realize only afterward that they should’ve talked about it, and so they learn from their mistakes.

another tangent—isn’t it so crazy how, by any standard, lup should be the strongwilled, passionate, heroic protagonist and taako her cynical, pragmatic, yet loyal sidekick? and yet he’s the protagonist and she the supporting character in the actual narrative? so subversive and intriguing. i cant believe this was all masterfully and purposefully written. anyway. (<- in the in-universe metanarrative version of the story, lup [and honestly, probably davenport] is the tragic ghost who haunts the narrative and lucretia & barry are the morally gray protagonist foils, and tres horny boys are supporting characters/comic relief who go on to have their own semi-important b-plot arcs that ultimately serve to further the protagonists’ arcs. btw.)

back to the twins. i also think they don't only grow post-canon, i think they grow a LOT during the century, because in the beginning, they're coming from a life where they have been not only the most important people in each other's lives, but the ONLY people in each other's lives. and now they're suddenly faced with more people, which they handle fine individually, more or less—lup is faster to warm up to the others, but even though taako's attitude is very much that he only cares about him and his, he is capable of expanding the people who are "his" (eventually). but they've never had to bring other people into their dynamic with each other before.

i don't think either of them are possessive, their relationship is built on deepest mutual respect and love and trust and "possessiveness" is kinda antithetical to that, but they can both be jealous on occasion. although there is a difference—lup is the only one who will outwardly display jealousy (and maybe a better word than jealousy would be insecurity), again because of the dynamic earlier: taako must always support whatever decisions lup makes without question. so when taako dies one cycle and all of a sudden merle and magnus and everyone else grieve him too, lup feels a sense of ownership over grief (not over taako himself, but over loving taako, just because no one else ever really has before, and she’s never had to think about the possibility that he might love other people too) that she initially may not challenge but does eventually let go of, because it's actually a good thing that other people love him now, and bringing new people into their family doesn’t make their love for each other any less. and taako has a similar experience but tbh i think its a little easier for him bc, like, who wouldn’t love lup, and lup loves other people way more freely than taako does (still not super freely, its a low bar). not that lup thinks taako is unloveable OBVIOUSLY (taako does think he’s unloveable tho) i just think they have different attitudes abt it, like they both have the moments of “but you don’t love them as much as i do!!” which is true, no one loves them as much as they do, but taako’s more willing to let that shit go bc he just doesn’t care as much what the others do as long as they don’t fuckin bother him about it. like lup sees the others equate (as she sees it, but oc they’re not actually grieving At Her) their (comparatively shallow) grief to her world-shattering loss of her best friend, only family, soulmate, silly rabbit, and she gets angry about it, but taako’s reaction is more like, “ok they’re stupid. who cares.” meanwhile and more importantly, all of a sudden lup is falling in love with barry, but taako's not one to throw a fit or demand that he's the only one who can love lup nor the only one lup can love. she’s made her decision. he just gives barry advice and lets it quietly hurt and draws distant, because he has a deep seated fear of abandonment that is now, for the first time, clashing with his unshakable trust in lup. and their relationship irrevocably changes but maybe not for the worse, because taako has, for the first time, doubted lup, a disruption to their typical (codependent) dynamic. but, of course, in the end his fears are unfounded and lup pulls him back in, because their capacity for love increases—of course lup still loves him just as much and yknow what, so does barry, and so does the rest of the crew. so he doubts and fears and is proven wrong. and so they grow and change, and their world increases from two to seven.

but that doubt doesn’t really go away for a long time, exacerbated and strained the more lup keeps secrets (especially with barry) until it reaches a head when lup finally doubts taako and does truly abandon him. but again, of course, never on purpose and never forever, they find their way back to each other despite everything and, again, come away stronger for it. the idea that the twins’ relationship is never as close again after story and song is so fucking tragic and heartrending but really i just think its unrealistic. because the rift between them is what caused their pain in the first place, of course they wouldn’t just shrug and move on. they would do anything for each other, including a lot of difficult emotional work and healing. for a little while they do have to deal with the reality that they’re not as close as they were. but they can be again. it just takes time and effort.

but anyway just to drive my point home—we mostly see taako's side of it since he is the protagonist in the real world narrative, but lup is always, always positioned within that narrative as his most important person. (and even then, lup says as much for taako! she loves barry of course but she loves taako so much he’s her heart!!) when thb see their lives after the hunger in paloma's prophecy, taako sees himself cooking with lup. she's textually representative of healing and joy in his future, and she's the main character present in his epilogue too. she's his greatest loss and his greatest love, positioned in exactly the same place as julia and merle's kids. there are a myriad of love stories going on in balance and a myriad of love stories involving taako that are all beautiful and significant in their own right but i really do think the main one in his life is lup!!

well all that to say they’re my favorite little critters ever and i’m studying them under a microscope forever. how do you end posts

[stormyoceans]

100 JIMMYSEA SERIES

4. modern remake of 'the taming of the shrew'

title: the seduction plan

main cast: jimmy jitaraphol, sea tawinan, fourth nattawat, gemini norawit

pairings: jimmysea, geminifourth

summary: jimmy, a successful CEO, finds himself thrust into the role of both running his late father's company and being the legal guardian of his younger brother, gemini. jimmy is very strict and fiercely protective of gemini, often clashing with him over his choice of friends and romantic partners. despite his best intentions, jimmy's overbearing nature ends up driving away every suitor who comes into gemini's life, leaving gemini frustrated and angry.

jimmy himself has little time or interest in pursuing romantic relationships of his own, too immersed in his work to care about anything else. his dedication to the company is unwavering, but it comes at the cost of his personal life and happiness.

sensing his best friend's loneliness and wanting to help him despite harboring a secret crush on him, fourth devises a plan to shake things up. enter sea, fourth's cousin, known for his charm and playboy nature. gemini and fourth hatch a scheme to hire sea to pretend to be interested in jimmy, hoping that a romantic relationship will soften jimmy's stern demeanor and bring joy into his life. sea, intrigued by the challenge and motivated by his desire to help his cousin gain points with his crush, agrees to play along.

as sea begins his seduction mission, he finds himself unexpectedly drawn to jimmy's strong yet vulnerable nature, while jimmy, initially wary of sea's intentions, gradually starts to open up to him, revealing a softer side that he has kept hidden for too long. their interactions spark a connection that neither of them saw coming, and soon they find themselves falling for each other for real.

will jimmy and sea's love story survive the truth coming out, or will their bond prove to be stronger than any deception?

[nasuverse-most-breedable-tourney]

Genuine question, why do people think Scathath is so good at sex? Like yes she's a hot anime woman but is there any part of her character that I've missed that indicate any interest in sex?