#That wanted the easy path

[zobjilan77]

My main problem with The Last Jedi aka Star Wars VIII

Ultimatly their are certain bits of the writing that I don't really agree with and certain plot points that seem super contrived. But if it where just that I would probably be completely fine with it something lile 6/10 o 7/10, not my favorite Star Wars but I like Star Wars so Im fine with it.

But near the Final act of the movie, well the is all spoilers so here we go. The New Jedi Order fell because Ben Solo aka Kylo was being influenced by... the Ghost of Palpatine/Snoke so his mentor Luke sees this and tries to see what the source of the darkness in him is and it's implied that he sees a vision of the events that transpire in The Force Awakens which results in him reflexively igniting his lightsaber, however he recognizes that killing his nephew in his sleep even if he may turn into Vader 2.0 is just not right so he doesn't do it. However Ben saw everything and crushes Luke under a hut of rocks and is implied to kill off the New Jedi temple after this (apparently their is a come where accidentaly summoned a lighting that ended up destroying the Jedi temple and his grief from that expirience was what finally turned him to the darkside). Even though I didn't like this reset of Jedi even in the Force Awakens, it's written okayish I'd say.

However incoming my main problem. I understand that this would be a devastating experience to an older more self-confident Luke, I understand that this would lead to him giving up on the teachings of the Jedi and severing himself from the Force as a whole because he sees himself as another easily corruptable Skywalker. What I can't understand that he would ultimetly choose not inform his allies that help defeat the Empire and try to get Kylo back. I understand that as a nephew that he half raised the pain of the expirience may be great, but having witness what he can become seems undeniably greater especially because it threatens everyone else he loves and cares for. Ultimatly the reason why he would abandon everything yet leave a map to be found and told Han that he was looking for a way to defeat Snoke, I think this more so points to a Luke that has already failed multiple times to bring back Kylo to the lightside and that refuses to use the force because he sees himself and the Skywalkers as easily corruptable, what would he be looking for as a callback to the original wild goose chase probably a weapon the could beat Snoke and bring back Kylo to the lightside, likely without any sort of consent from Kylo, which I think would harken back better to Lukes main virtues and flaws, always wanting to protect those he loves and seeking the easy path giving in to his temptations. This last part was basically fanfic, but I think it makes more sense for Luke to be twisted by his love and sorrow and coming up with a bad solution to save everyone, than coming up with a bad solution that even he in the movie before his redemption acknowledge couldn't save anyone and would only lead to the teachings of the Jedi dying off.

[why-the-heck-not]

19.11.23, sunday

I listened to Succession soundtrack a lot today and had about the most productive day I’ve had in so so long

things done today:

7h of coding

went to my sister’s kid’s birthday party (mario theme 🍄)

[pomegranatecraft]

[burinazar]

Oh, wait, wait, ok, I can tell tumblr my news now.

I was accepted into the JET Program and will be moving to Japan for one year starting in late summer to teach English. : )

I don't know how many other applicants have ever had either of my specific application 'angles'. I think they were both pretty weird, but also very, very me, and I'm pleasantly surprised that they seemed to have worked, going off both by the acceptance and the very positive and warm reactions I got during the interview I had. These were:

Science/scicomm/museum background + implying mutual interest in and love of like insects and sea life could be an avenue of intercultural connection and exchange

India and Japan have always struck me as weirdly similar in ways nobody seems to discuss, especially in both being simultaneously hurtling into modernity and deeply traditional/conservative in many ways and places

So. Is this a silly idea considering most people in this program are fresh college grads, and people my age are expected to maybe be getting more settled rather than hopping continents? Is this a scary idea, considering I'll have to uproot all my shit and go exist in a foreign country whose language I really don't know beyond miniscule smatterings? I mean, hmm, yes on both counts, but I'm very excited. On count one, I'd only get older in the future and demonstrably *don't* already have a settled life and career here to disrupt (lol), and on count two...guys, I'm so so tired of letting fear and inertia make my life decisions.

Time to pack up and store most of my shit and end my lease and. Yeah. Also I haven't actually been to India in five years and will probably try to visit my relatives there in the coming months since idk if i'd had an opportunity for a prolonged visit in the future during the one year (at least) in jp. I'll also be probably selling, trading, or giving away a lot more of my hobby shit (that was sort of an ongoing project already but since I'll be unable to use most of it for a year plus it's another reason to do so), so uh, if you've ever wished I would sell any of my dolls now might be time to commit BJD Hobby Taboo and ask me lol. And, obviously, I'll be studying more Japanese, because mine is incredibly へたくそ at the moment. So much to do. But I'm really excited. And thank you to all of y'all that have been encouraging to me about anything related to this matter <3

[not-poignant]

I get the impression that there’s some tough times over there so I’m sending all the love and support I can x

There have indeed been some tough times, anon <3

It's just a few things converging all into this year (including my ongoing tumour/cancer surveillance to make sure my head/neck tumours aren't growing or that I don't have any new ones), on top of training an intense little enthusiastic smart puppy who we discovered has pretty serious Separation Anxiety and then instigating slow and tedious separation training which is exhausting (imagine having ADHD and then having to get up every 2 minutes around 10-30 times a day to go to the door to desensitise to it and ask me how your hyperfocus is holding up sadlkfjas).

He's wonderful, but he's also currently in puppy jail (the lounge behind baby gates lmao) because he's just discovered that it's fun to chase our elderly cat, so I think I'm back to having to leash him when we go outside into the back garden.

Tbh between overworking on the writing front for about a year, raising Toby to be a responsible little canine dude, some interpersonal stuff (those three words are doing some real heavy lifting), and some health stuff, the death of my uncle in December (on my Mum's side, and one of the few family members who I was close to), and the state of the entire world right now, I'm just very much done with it all a lot of the time and taking breaks wherever I can get them.

Today is a work day though, I've got some editing on the table, I want to do more Relaxation Training with Toby (I was hoping to do some trick training as well, but instead I'm waiting for his brain to calm down enough that he just disengages from Maybe (miss elderly cat)), I was hoping to cook tonight (we'll see), and the weekend promises to be pretty busy!

Anyway, there are good things too! I'm just... sometimes very sad or depressed or being sucked down a whirling vortex of despair at the moment, and that makes it harder to appreciate the good things. The love and support are so very appreciated anon. I am doing my best, as I suspect we all are! <3

[attractthecrows]

solavellan this solavellan that. my favorite way to interpret dalish heroes is as mirrors.

you're Mahariel. your life is over because of a mirror.

You are the mirror of Garahel. Tamlen is the blighted mirror of you. You, the hero, are a reflection of what has been and should never have been. The blood spilled and blackened over a millennium in the name of corrupted once-gods.

you're Merrill. your life is forever altered because of a mirror. you are a reflection of the pride and the folly of your Keeper, of what a Dalish mage should be, and should have been all along.

you are Lavellan. you are the Inquisitor, the lynchpin of fate, both a reflection and avenue of change - like an eluvian. you are the reflection of Mahariel. you are the reflection of your clan. you are the reflection of Ameridan. you are a reflection of Corypheus, caught in a cycle older than either of you. you are a reflection of the elvhen heart and soul. you are, unknowingly, the reflection of Fen'harel, and you will drag the world kicking and screaming into it's new fate and future.

you are, more than anything else, a mirror.

[itspileofgoodthings]

Taylor returning over and over to the falling through the ice accident in the Bolter—everything to me

[neo-zone]

"In another life, I would've really liked just doin' war crimes and manipulatin' people with ya, Sousuke."

- Shinji Hirako (probably)

[currentlyonstandbi]

i must be some kind of masochist

[thermodynamic-comedian]

sometimes when i think about helen distortion i think about that one csh lyric that's like. "i believe that evil is a concept created by others to deal with their own nature. i understand my own nature, good and evil have nothing to do with it."

[workingforitallthetime]

drawn arrows unseen

part 22 (the end) / previous installments/tags

Mason finds what he’s looking for in the game room by the hotel pool. The net’s a little crooked, but it’ll do.

“Ping pong?” Connor looks incredulous at the sight of the table. 

“Let’s fucking go.” Mason tests a paddle against the heel of his hand. He drapes his suit jacket over the nearby foosball table.

“Okay.” Connor rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Mason can’t tell if he's willing to cooperate because he wants to play, or because he's happy to be doing something the Coyotes don’t expect. “Your serve.”

“You can have it.” Mason bounces the ball across the table to him.

Connor lets it deflect off his paddle back to Mason. “You won last.”

“In Edmonton?” Mason can’t hide the surprise in his voice. He doesn’t remember that.

“...Yeah.” Connor gets a sour look on his face.

Mason serves. The silence of the empty game room fills with the tick-tock of the ball in play. Connor smashes it to Mason’s off hand, and Mason slides on his dress shoes just in time to catch it on his backhand. Connor groans, and Mason pictures him in his Team Canada shirt in Edmonton, chirping Mason. That’s what he wants to remember from that tournament. Not everything that happened after.

Connor’s up after three games, watching every volley with laser blue eyes. Mason manages to take the fourth game, tying it up 2-2 to prolong the match. It’s a relief. He doesn’t know what happens after it ends.

The fifth game is back and forth the whole way. When it’s tied up 10-10, Connor kicks into a new gear. Mason recognizes it. He’s got that gear too. The tie score passes 11 and creeps up to 20 and beyond, the intensity increasing every time they trade points.

Mason finally claws his way up by one and serves for game point. The volley goes on for what feels like forever, the most ferocious ping pong Mason’s ever played in his life, both of them suspended in a space where the only thing in the world is the little white ball bouncing between them.

Connor lobs it deep into Mason’s territory. As the ball falls to the table in slow motion, Mason considers sending it back easy, letting the game go on, preserving Connor’s chance to win.

But Mason’s done repressing his instincts. He slams the ball back at Connor with everything that’s in him, all of the anger and shame and desperation. The game winner careens off Connor’s end of the table and disappears over a couch on the other side of the room. Mason spikes his paddle to the floor and throws up his arms in a celly. 

“Fuck!” Connor clenches his fists and looks up at the ceiling. Mason knows three calming breaths when he sees them. He waits, picking up his paddle and setting it gently on the table.

Connor exhales one final time and levels his head. His face is relaxed. Mason’s heart ticks back up to ping pong speed as Connor studies him from the other side of the net.

Connor walks around the table slowly. “I thought you were going to let me win.”

Suddenly Mason understands why he didn’t. “I’m not gonna do that anymore,” he says, as Connor passes the net. 

“You never did.” Connor reaches the edge of the table and turns into Mason’s space. 

“I mean in general.” The hard edge has worn off Connor’s scent. Mason’s head goes fuzzy, making it hard to find the words he knows he has to say. “Decide for you. I’m not going to make your choices.” Connor comes closer and closer, and finally he’s close enough that Mason can whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Connor tips up his chin. He wants to be kissed, and Mason wants to kiss him, and the force of their collision sends the ping pong table skidding across the floor. “Upstairs,” Connor gasps, as if his scent isn’t already telling Mason that.

[Friends, the beauty of a campfire story is that I do not have to spend two months sweating out every sentence of a perfectly written sex scene. Imagine I wrote it that way, though. Imagine I wrote you a sex scene that beautifully encapsulated the central theme of Mason’s belief that he needs to protect Connor from the full force of his desire, and Connor’s refusal to let Mason do that. Imagine the beautiful prose with which I would tell you of Mason approaching Connor gently, worshipfully, spreading his thick thighs apart and burying his face in Connor’s concentrated scent, Connor’s slick on his lips, coating his tongue. Imagine that I then subtly changed the pacing of the sentence structure for a sense of urgency around Connor’s insistence that this is not what he wants, he wants Mason, all of Mason, inside him, hard and fast and now. Imagine that I, somehow, came up with a creative and meaningful way to write a knotting scene that fully conveyed the depth of pleasure and relief experienced by both parties after 21 installments of this story. You can imagine sex tears if you want, your call.]

Afterwards, Connor rests his head on Mason’s chest, and in the dark of a hotel room filled with their intertwined scents, Mason finally admits to picking up the scent of ice and cedar back at U18 worlds. Instead of calling him a creep, Connor calls him an idiot for thinking it was their room that smelled like a rink.

He liked Mason, all the way back then, and the only thing that made presenting as an omega bearable was the thought that maybe that’s why he’d been drawn to Mason’s scent in the chaos of the gold medal celebration. He thought maybe Mason was going to be an alpha, maybe they were compatible. That’s what made it so confusing and disappointing and infuriating when Mason didn’t tell him about presenting, when Mason didn’t admit he could scent Connor, when Mason let Trevor Zegras wear his fucking jersey. Connor pinches Mason, hard.

Mason lets Connor get away with it. He apologizes, which is easy with his omega wrapped in his arms and the bond between them humming like steel. When the conversation falls quiet, he finally gives into his curiosity. “What do I smell like?”

Connor shifts against him. “I don’t know. Someplace wild. Like the mountains at night.” He pauses like he’s trying to come up with the right words. “I don’t want to say animal, but like a place where bear and elk have been. The mountains at night,” he repeats, like that’s the phrase he’s been saying to himself. “It made me want to run away.”

Mason’s arms have been tightening around Connor. He forces himself to loosen them. “Run away from me?”

“No.” Connor tightens his arm over Mason, tucks his fingers under Mason’s side. “Run away to whatever that place was. To wherever you were.”

While Connor showers, Mason puts on a hotel robe and turns on ESPN. It feels normal. Their whole history is hotel rooms. Their future will be too. Connor will go to San Jose in the morning. Mason has a beast of an East Coast road trip next week. They’ll see each other at the all-star break. They’ll see each other in April for a long offseason. Maybe the offseason will be shorter, someday. It will have to be, for any team with Connor in his prime. The thought of the seasons stretching out until one of them retires – fifteen years, maybe twenty, maybe more – hurts. But it hurts like a postsurgical healing throb, not like the nauseating wrongness of a broken bone.

Connor emerges from the bathroom wearing the other robe. He sits against the headboard next to Mason. “How are we supposed to do this?”

“Same as we always have, I guess.” Mason puts an arm around him. “With more of this.” He scents Connor’s damp hair and kisses the top of his head.

“Okay.” Connor presses closer and tucks his face in Mason’s neck. “Italy,” he says against Mason’s skin.

“Milan,” Mason says. “2026.”

“Wrong.” Connor lifts up his head, delighted. “It’s Rome.”

“I said 2026.” As if Mason would miss an easy one. “Milan’s where we’ll be for the Olympics.”

[saeshiraw]

tired girl hours i’m just ranting bcos i don’t have enough time to cry

[sonofenki]

my takes on the desert rose after romancing both adil and mustafa:

> starting off with the most important one imo - mc doesn't find out adil is jack's brother if you're not on his path

> also on that note the finale is waaay better on adil's path, you find some more clues together + obviously the big revelation

> while on adil's path mc's friendship with mustafa is just as much part of the story, on mustafa's (and i assume others' as well) it's like they didn't really know what to do with adil - their scenes were quite underwhelming this time

> adil has waaay more 'free' scenes like the ♡ fireworks, rajab and madi teasing him etc

> on mustafa's path the other characters notice mc being in love way more easily

[mrsblackruby]

we have to start organizing the people internationally look at how many of us there are we only win this if we start crossing imaginary borders to form real comradeship

[itspileofgoodthings]

Taylor’s first job is to be an artist, not a live stand-in for the fulfillment of even the most beautiful visions of love and happy endings we have.