#We are overcomers

[cozylittleartblog]

cant tell you how bad it feels to constantly tell other artists to come to tumblr, because its the last good website that isn't fucked up by spoonfeeding algorithms and AI bullshit and isn't based around meaningless likes

just to watch that all fall apart in the last year or so and especially the last two weeks

there's nowhere good to go anymore for artists.

edit - a lot of people are saying the tags are important so actually, you'll look at my tags.

#please dont delete your accounts because of the AI crap. your art deserves more than being lost like that #if you have a good PC please glaze or nightshade it. if you dont or it doesnt work with your style (like mine) please start watermarking #use a plain-ish font. make it your username. if people can't google what your watermark says and find ur account its not a good watermark #it needs to be central in the image - NOT on the canvas edges - and put it in multiple places if you are compelled #please dont stop posting your art because of this shit. we just have to hope regulations will come slamming down on these shitheads#in the next year or two and you want to have accounts to come back to. the world Needs real art #if we all leave that just makes more room for these scam artists to fill in with their soulless recycled garbage #improvise adapt overcome. it sucks but it is what it is for the moment. safeguard yourself as best you can without making #years of art from thousands of artists lost media. the digital world and art is too temporary to hastily click a Delete button out of spite

[dkcdude]

Behold! God Makes All Things New! Even (or Especially) You and Me!

Introduction We all have moments in our lives when we burst into flames. Or drown. Or bury ourselves. Pick your metaphor for getting beaten down by this life, this painfully broken world. I hate to admit that I’ve been dealing with that myself lately. My consulting contract (and therefore my job) ended in early December, and I haven’t found my next job yet. Not long after that, I fractured my…

[winedark-maverick]

i love you green. i love you forests. i love you smell of damp earth. i love you feeling before the storm breaks. i love you moss. i love you rivers. i love you streams. i love you thunderstorms. i love you sunlight shining through leaves.

[byrdblood]

nimh (f) (Irish; genitive singular nimhe) - poison; venom, virulence, bitterness, animosity

[braisedhoney]

fighting back? against who? they're so happy—they've been waiting for you.

you are wonderful. don't you know that?

bonus: they play sims together :)

[vampireposter]

meeting wyll at the grove, as someone who the tieflings trust enough to train their children, says so much about him. it's so sad that he doesn't get explored in acts 2-3 as deeply as the other companions, when his problems are equally intense. the average player probably long rests once before coming across the grove, but even if not, in that time wyll has already proven to the tieflings that they can rely on the Blade of Frontiers.

this is the immediate first thing he chooses to do after being condemned to slow death via ceremorphosis. his priority list in the first conversations with tav is: 1) hunt down a dangerous devil, 2) help zevlor with the goblins, 3) once nothing threatens the tieflings he will gladly search for a tadpole cure. wyll is perpetually his own last priority, and i wonder if it has to do with the lore about souls.

if he believes mind flayers' souls have been destroyed, and fiend warlocks will all have their souls sent to the hells after death, then becoming a mind flayer isn't the worst possible way for him to die. he would never become a mindless monster to save his own soul, but he's not gripped by horror the way that some of the other origin characters are. lae'zel has been made revoltingly impure to her people, astarion is terrified of losing the scrap of bodily autonomy he just regained, gale is guilt-ridden over the orb detonation if he dies, shadowheart has to survive to prove herself to her cult leader, and karlach has also just regained bodily autonomy and is desparate to live.

this is just another quest for the Blade, whose persona guards wyll ravengard against the vice of self-concern when he ought to be concerned for those in need.

[stromer]

and thirdly, i didn't want him to beat me up

[joulex]

I dont know how to say this other than this:

If you want "blonde representation" in the percy jackson series i need you to respectfully shut the fuck up. The argument that you wanted a blonde girl to play annabeth because "it was a big part of her character" tells me you didnt understand her character AT ALL. To say that it dissapointed you that annabeth wasnt blonde in the show because her being blonde proved the "dumb blonde" stereotype wrong... i hate to break it to you but...i dont think blonde people are really being oppressed by that trope, crazy i know. Its a thing that exists, yes, but being completly honest, i dont think that a person in real life will come across a blonde woman and believe shes stupid just because shes blonde. Like you didnt "lost" representation, and it ABSOLUTELY didnt damage annabeth character. Just because theres ONE stupid line of dialogue in mark of athena where annabeth say "people dont take me seriously bc im blonde" doesnt mean that thats her whole character.

[tomatoart]

doodles from last year..r these guys stupid?

[hoosbandewan]

EWAN MITCHELL as Aemond Targaryen in House of the Dragon 1.10

[choccy-milky]

i made seb and clora in dragons dogma 2 and i need to show everyone how cute they are...seb is in his ultimate guard dog form here, i love how protective and bitchy he looks LMAOO. and when you jump off a high enough cliff your party members will catch you, so you best believe i did that just for the photo op🤪seb is cursed to constantly bridal carry clora in EVERY universe 🥰BAHAHA also speaking of making clora in video games, I FOUND MY FIRST RENDITION OF HER BACK IN 2015

LIKE DAMN i been makin this bitch for 9 years....those bloodborne graphics were crusty af tho im sorry clora LMFAO at least you got the glowup you deserve my queen👑👑

[jakeperalta]

you're losing me being written in 2021 surprised me a bit but didn't like totally shock me or make me reevaluate the whole album really. we already have hits different and the great war telling the story of a relationship that hits a breaking point before choosing to try again together and if anything it makes more sense to me as something that informs the backdrop but was written a while before the album was assembled

[hotteacocoa]

I was watching a woman interview pro-life marchers, and one of them was holding a sign that said “four of my siblings were aborted. Choose life.”

This marcher said she was raised in a family of pro-abortionists, and the siblings before and after her were aborted because the mother “wasn’t ready” at first, and after she gave birth to the third baby, the mother just “didn’t feel like going through another pregnancy.”

That alone hit me so hard. But the part that hit the hardest was when the pro-lifer said “the reason why I was had is…because I was the more conveniently timed one.”

Why do we have to boil down the lives of children to one’s “convenience”? Why? This poor girl has 4 siblings who have no graves, no dates, nowhere to mourn or place flowers, all because her mother chose to think of herself before her children.

It’s so sad. It’s so so sad.

[dandylovesturtles]

Sidelined AU Info Post

Alright, I guess we're doing this

CWs: mentions of internalized ableism, struggles with mental health

Timeline:

all of S1 is the same as in canon up until End Game

however, after Splinter turns over the helmet to Draxum, Draxum does not put on the armor, but chooses to put Leo inside instead, realizing that whoever goes in will probably have something horrible happen to them. that's detailed in this fic

unlike Draxum, who gets spit out of the armor immediately, Leo ends up trapped inside. from Leo's perspective, he is only vaguely aware of what's happening outside (it's a bit sunken place-ish, with him seeing snatches of events like through a grainy television), and he has only small amounts of influence over what the armor does

once Feral Shredder is on the loose, he pretty immediately starts destroying the Hidden City. Draxum realizes that he has inadvertently released a great evil on his people, the exact opposite of what he wanted, and he turns to the Hamatos to help him stop it. obviously they don't want to work with Draxum, but they have to get Leo back so they take the help

it takes them two days, during which the Shredder moves up to start terrorizing New York as well, but eventually they get him subdued. I'm not 100% on what goes down yet or whether Big Mama gets involved (I'm leaning toward not), but Leo fighting from the inside is a big help

Leo is removed from the armor and is in really bad physical shape; meanwhile the Shredder is subdued for now. in the immediate aftermath, the Foot Clan manages to get ahold of the Shredder and take off with him

he's too weak to do anything immediately but he is very much a Looming Threat the family is aware of

Draxum leaves for awhile at this point because none of them want him around and seeing Leo in the aftermath did wake him up to "oh yeah that's just a kid and I did that to him," also he's feeling real bad about that whole "accidentally almost destroying the yokai and also maybe the world" thing

meanwhile, Leo is severely weakened, but there's not anything that the family can do to hasten his recovery. they can only get him hooked up to an IV for fluids and nutrients and wait

it takes Leo a few days to become fully lucid again; during that time he tries to fight anyone around him off or sometimes pushes his family away to "protect" them

eventually Leo does regain lucidity, he tells everyone he's fine but he's Super Depressed. he's also lost his mystic powers completely.

Splinter also retreats a bit at this point, because he feels guilt for handing the helmet over to Draxum instead of trying to find a different way to rescue his boys, which isn't a great thing for him to do but his mental health is also not doing very well (someone get these guys some therapy)

in the meantime the bros and April manage the best they can, they all have different approaches but I'll go into detail about that in the next section

there's no treatment for Leo's condition outside the most boring one: time, exercise, and diet. unsurprisingly he hates this

Healing Bad Times abound, as shown in this fic

eventually the boys have to go out on a mission again. Leo, feeling useless, listens in on the comms from the lair, and ends up catching something the other boys' missed, meaning he's able to save them from a trap or something idk exactly what the point is he makes himself useful

this opens up a new path for Leo, one his brothers very heavily encourage

with a new goal in mind, Leo starts taking a lot better care of himself, actually following his physical therapy routine, spending time gaining new skills, and accepting help in the form of mobility aids. his physical and mental health both start making big improvements

this also helps his dad's mental health, everyone is doing better even if things aren't perfect

Donnie builds Leo a command center modeled after the bridge of Jupiter Jim's ship, he absolutely loves it. whenever the boys+April are on missions, Leo is in his command center helping from the background

eventually Leo has gotten to the point where he has enough strength for day to day life most of the time, he still isn't fighting baddies on rooftops but he can get to a store and back without collapsing on a good day and that's pretty good!

the Foot Clan has been a much bigger threat in this version of S2 and it's clear they're up to something big

of course right when Leo is starting to feel stable and happy again, that's when they launch their final attack

a lot of the finale events go down similarly to how they do in canon, minus Battle Nexus New York. they get Karai back but then she dies, Shredder destroys their home (including Leo's command center :c ), everything is Bad

Leo gets his mystic powers back the same way his brothers do, though he needs a little bit of an extra helping nudge from April/Karai, since he didn't think that was a thing he could still do

everyone getting their mystic powers is emotional but it's especially emotional for Leo. he didn't even know what ninpo was before today, but he knew after the Shredder it was like some part of his soul got locked away, and now that he can feel it again he finally feels whole

it gives him a burst of adrenaline so he can participate in the fight, though he doesn't do much of the actual battling, instead getting his bros where they need to be for the big hits (I mean this is basically what he does anyway haha)

it takes Donnie exactly .02 seconds to figure out how to use his own mystic powers to support Leo physically so that helps

after this, Leo becomes a more constant part of the team in the field, though he still primarily works as support and only gets into direct fights when he feels like he has to

instead of being made leader like in canon, Leo and Raph become co-leaders. Leo's own leadership abilities have improved massively, but Raph has more experience in the field, so having the two of them working together means they cover each other's blind spots, and the division of labor is less stressful for both of them

since Leo's already been through his character development and this tension is gone the movie events play out totally differently but I haven't gotten that far yet lol. I'm sure the apocalypse still happens somehow, though, I'd hate to lose Casey Jr

happy ending whooo

Relationships

Raph

Raph feels a lot of guilt about what happened to Leo; he was supposed to protect his little brothers and he didn't, and now one of them has permanent physical disabilities as a result. add to that it was Raph's idea to be heroes in the first place and yeah... he's not doing great

because of this guilt, Raph's instinct is to essentially baby Leo - he wants to take care of his every need as soon as it arises. this makes Leo feel stifled and infantilized, and drives a wedge in their relationship (the same one Raph is driving between himself and Mikey, in fact)

his and Donnie's distinctly different approaches to the situation also mean that they get into arguments often and can't really deal with being around each other, leaving Raph feeling isolated at the start (and thus pouring more attention and effort into Leo, which compounds the problem)

Raph dealing with his own guilt and trying to find the balance between helping Leo while also respecting his need for independence, boundaries, and dignity is a big part of his journey in the AU, and it also improves his relationship with Mikey and Donnie as he gets better at those skills

Donnie

Donnie is not dealing well with the fact that there's nothing to fix. they can only be patient and work incrementally to improve Leo's condition

he distracts himself by putting all his energy into making the lair accessible for Leo, building him mobility aids and doing everything he can to help

he also has a hard time understanding why Leo won't do the things that will help him (at first), because doesn't he just want things to go back to normal? doesn't he want to help himself? why won't he just do what he obviously has to do, Donnie does not understand

Leo is deep in denial at first, and he feels like he breaks down and starts doing physical therapy and using mobility aids and doing basically any of the things that will help him, that means it's not going to magically get better, it's going to take time and effort and it will probably never be fixed, just improved, and he hates that so much he's choosing to treat this like a temporary cold or flu that will blow over any day now

Donnie doesn't understand that so he takes Leo's refusal as a rejection and animosity abounds!

breakdowns and admissions of feelings will eventually happen

Donnie and Leo together come to grips with the idea that there is no fixing this and there is no return to how things were before but they can work toward a new normal that's just as good

Mikey

this one is a little bit too big for Dr. Delicate Touch and Dr. Feelings

Mikey tries, but he is just a kid, and with their dad emotionally retreating too there's just too many feelings for him to deal with on his own

he's gonna play family therapist until he breaks

he's frustrated because he can see what each of his brothers need to do to feel better but they just! won't! they won't do it, and he doesn't know how to make them

he's really stressed

it's Mikey that realizes that Leo needs goals to work toward to get himself motivated to take care of himself, and it's Mikey who pushes the hardest for Leo's new role in the team

sometimes Mikey will challenge Leo to something silly, like who can make the most throws of a paper ball into a trash can, just to push Leo into exercising

he finds other little ways to help the others too, but he still can't solve the big problems on his own

meltdown ensues

Mikey has to learn to take care of himself, too, while the others have to learn they can't lean so hard on him for all their emotional problems

April

the only one holding on around here. it helps that she doesn't actually have to live in the powderkeg

takes a rationally minded approach to all these problems, kind of functioning like family therapist along with Mikey but in a healthier and more controlled way

helps get them resources from above ground

Leo opens up the most about his feelings about his physical condition to her first, because she strikes the best balance between being a sympathetic ear without coddling him

she's also stressed, but she has an outside support network so she's handling it better

Splinter

fully blames himself for what happened to Leo and has a hard time getting over it

depression in full swing

it means he can't easily get out of bed to help his kids, but then he feels bad because he isn't helping them, which worsens the depression, which makes it hard to get out of bed... a vicious cycle

when Leo starts working on his condition he gets a pact out of his dad that they will both work on being healthier together

maybe they manage to find an actual therapist eventually idk lol

either way, Splinter and Leo grumpily sitting over their plate of broccoli and then Leo says "bet I can eat more pieces than you" and it's on son

he's trying his best

Leo's Condition

Leo came out of the armor severely dehydrated and malnourished, even more so than any person should realistically be after two days; just keeping him from dying of the dehydration was the most immediate struggle

the main issue is that Leo's life force, mystic abilities included, were basically sucked out, leaving his body catastrophically physically weak

his muscle mass can come back with time and diet

the bigger problems are the bone density and chronic fatigue. while Leo can improve these, they'll never be back to where they were before the Dark Armor

his reduced bone density means he has to be careful doing anything physical because the chance he can break a bone is much higher than average, and he stands to suffer more from that break than the average person

he'll eventually get to where he can go through his day-to-day life just fine most days, and can even do some of the physical things he enjoyed before, he just has to be careful and know his limits. he'll never be pulling the 1440 off the halfpipe again, but he can still skateboard as long as he's careful.

even when recovered (as much as he can be), he has bad days and days when the fatigue is really strong. how Leo feels on a bad day is up in the air; sometimes he's at peace with it and generally cheerful, happy to be around his family even if he spends most of the time in his chair or on the couch dozing in and out. other days the depression rears its ugly head and he can get a bit nasty and bitter again. his family is much more patient with him on days like that than he is with himself.

in the beginning Leo also has brain fog and sensitivity to light and sound. these clear up over time, especially once Leo starts making more effort to exercise his brain. he starts reading a lot more and doing puzzles, especially things like sudoku and word puzzles, which helps a lot. thankfully these changes aren't permanent

his inner ears were also damaged a bit, this also heals up largely on its own, sometimes he still has difficulties hearing his brothers if they're whispering or far away but it's not so bad he needs assistance

Leo's Devices

Wheelchair

this is obviously the one Donnie had the most fun building and it shows. this baby is tricked out. Leo also likes to suggest improvements often, some for actual functionality but many just because he thinks it would be cool (like neon lights on the spokes)

it is blue obviously. do you even need me to tell you that?

it's fully electronic but Leo can also wheel it around freely if he wishes. Leo likes to wheel himself when he has the energy because it's good exercise he doesn't have to go out of his way for and he just likes feeling like he's moving himself under his own power. but when he's not feeling up to it he just drives it with the electronic controls instead

it has handles that extend and retract. being allowed to touch the handles is a major sign of Leo's trust and initially it's only for his bros + April + Splinter. Leo hates being moved when he doesn't actually ask to be moved, and he also hates being tipped backwards so his fam knows not to do it even as a joke (and it's so heavy that tipping him is kind of hard, anyway). someone touching the handles or messing around with them without permission gets you immediate backlash from protective siblings

that said Leo has them extended often so he can hang things off them, even though Donnie constantly gripes that that is not their intended purpose!

Sr Hueso is another person who gets handle-touching-privileges pretty fast, and he's also the one Leo asks to move him most often because he thinks it's really funny. he hams it up every time. Hueso is exasperated but does it anyway

(if Hueso adds a few extra wheelchair-accessible tables to Run of the Mill no one has to know)

the chair can also be moved by S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. this is mostly just for emergency situations, or times when the chair is somewhere Leo is not. Shelldon is a very good boy who does not move the chair without Leo's permission.

it has a billion storage spaces and little hidey holes and it can sync with Leo's phone to play music and it also has a charge port for his phone and yeah basically anything Leo and Donnie can come up with goes into this thing. it's a behemoth

Donnie also made Leo a lighter-weight chair with fewer features that he most often uses when he's good using his walker/cane/braces but wants to clear a larger distance first, and eventually Donnie makes him an athletic wheelchair so he can play games like wheelchair basketball

Walker

the walker is also blue but there's nothing particularly special about it

Leo hates using it because it feels like an old person thing. even if realistically he knows there are plenty of reasons people use them, including his own situation, culture is culture and it makes him feel bad no matter what rationality states

so basically once he doesn't have to use it he doesn't

as they all get more comfortable with Leo's situation and he starts openly using humor to cope, jokes about Leo's chair and cane become pretty commonplace in the fam (all good-natured of course). they know the walker is too much of a sore spot though, and poking fun at it is the fastest way to get Leo to do something stupid, so no one does. it's better to just pretend it's not there

Crutches/Canes

he eventually ends up with a variety of these, with different levels of support depending on what he's needing on a given day.

some of the canes are more fashionable than others. this is important to him.

Leo pretty much always has one of these on hand just in case, even on days where he feels alright to walk on his own

he is not afraid to bonk a brother with a cane or crutch but he does so knowing they are free to retaliate

Leg Braces

Leo doesn't need these every day but they're a pretty standard part of his wardrobe at this point

they start out plain but get increasingly elaborately decorated as time goes on because he, Donnie, and Mikey can't help themselves

like the walker, the braces are in the "don't make fun of" zone, though Leo is happy to get positive comments about them and doesn't really need their presence ignored

Other Mobility Aids

Leo has a variety of things to help with his loss of grip strength, difficulties bending over, tremors, etc. all of them are either made by Donnie or ethically "acquired" by April

he drives everyone crazy by leaving them in random places and then forgetting where they are. Donnie starts installing locator tags on everything they give Leo

jokes about these are fine, Leo makes them often himself and has silly names for all of them (this also drives Donnie crazy)

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[sleepsucks]