#and it's all a bit on my shoulders

[torchickentacos]

Okay, this is far above tumblr's paygrade but I genuinely need help on this and wanted to cast a wide net for people with different experiences to answer. tw for mentions of abuse (I'm fine, it's not for me) but I keep it very clinical and as light (wrong word but just. you know. as undisturbing) as this topic possibly can be. just a cut and dry kind of thing, no specifics for privacy, no specific descriptions of abusive actions or any of that. I almost went to reddit for this but ultimately reddit tends to front-page things with no input from op and tumblr has more of an anonymity and privacy that I want for this question.

I have a friend, 22ish, who has a bad family situation, we've been friends since high school. They regularly go months without answering in our 4 person HS group chat. This is normal, but concerning because they used to not be like this. It's been going on for a couple years now though. We'll hear from her once every couple months but it's gotten less and less frequent. We've discussed a wellness check, but can't guarantee her mother will not get mad at her for us sending it even though we have not been in contact at all and it was not requested. It's getting to be really concerning, though, as for a couple of minutes yesterday, friend flashed another friend in the chat her location. this is after MONTHS of no contact with us. no context was provided, and checking news reports in the area provided no news of anything. We haven't heard from her since and are thinking it was an accidental butt dial kind of thing, but it's still weighing on me. I know rationally there is nothing I can do. I could take her into my house but she won't answer texts or tell us anything. Our hands are tied, as getting law enforcement involved is a serious step to take (yes, acab, but this is a really specific situation and for her safety we're considering every option available, even the pigpen- she's very white passing and we did take that into consideration since wellness checks for racial minorities tend to go far more poorly due to systemic racism) and I cannot guarantee her safety afterwards if her mother was to take the wellness check out on her. I cannot text and ask anything specific because she won't answer and we never want her mom to be suspicious.

Ultimately, I think there's nothing I can do. She refuses to text us if she even has access to her phone, I have no idea if she's going back to another state miles and miles away for school in the fall, if she's still working or in college or ANYTHING, I have had no contact or context for such a long time now that there's no way to make an educated decision. I think I have to just wait until we hear from her, which could be months and months and months. But if anyone here has been in a similar situation, please tell me what you did. I hate coming to fucking TUMBLR for such a pressing issue but again, I want a wide net of opinions and experiences for this, as I'm entirely lost.

[24601orwhatever]

KYLE ADAMS as GRANTAIRE

mastered by @bikinibottomdayz

[clannfearrunt]

I've been thinking about terrestrial sea slugs (lmao) again which obviously means I draw my splatsona. They get their own last name now

through their powers they can carry on my legacy of wearing ski jackets in May

[king-magppi]

🪅Viva Piñata stuff I promised! Some new, some old that I still really liked! I hold this franchise very dear to my heart.♡🍬

Even the neglected and forgotten need someone to mourn them... So The Reaper does it personally.

[crunchchute]

tumblr is being nice so here you can have a look at my cosplay wips :]

[theluckiestlb]

as a self-identified adrienette girlie....kinda miss them, ngl.

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[sysig]

Just keep getting back up (Patreon)

[sneez]

more of them :-) the first one is based on a promotional photograph for the 1928 film and the second is based on an extremely ugly lamp i found in an antique shop. please don't tag as body horror or anything similar [id in alt text]

[isa-belle1367]

Altair bites. Like a lot. His lips are chewed and cracked, and his nails are down to little nubs. If he's losing in a fight, he will bite down as hard as he can and has taken out a chunk of skin before. He doesn't even realize he does it until Malik or Maria (depending on who you ship) point it out, and they only point it out when he bites them during *adult cardio* He has never realized he's done this but now all the "random" scars he has on his finger tips, knuckles, and inside of his mouth make a lot more sense

[bumblingbabooshka]

[Tuvok & Janeway: Control, Distance, Duty & Connection.] Sources: St Voyager Transcripts / Mitski 'First Love Late Spring' / Disco Elysium

[skania]

OnK Chapter 149

I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me because I’m always complaining about Aka’s writing, but…

And I mean it when I say that I expect nothing 😭 This was literally my first ever OnK-related reblog and its tags are more relevant than ever lmao

These, too:

#honestly I didn’t think too hard about any of this during my first read #because the romantic endgame seems so obvious that it kind of discourages guessing lmao #but re-reading these chapters has made me appreciate Aqua’s side of his bond with Akane a lot more

Back when I first got into OnK, I mentioned that Akane was the entire reason I kept reading the manga. I didn’t care about the romantic subplot, found Aqua/Kana extremely obvious and predictable, and Aqua plain boring.

It’s only during my second read that I paid close attention to Akane’s interactions with Aqua and I ended up playing myself into both, caring about Aqua and shipping him with Akane lol

This chapter has made me realize that despite everything, I'm not emotionally invested in whether they end up together or not. I’d prefer it, obviously, because Aqua truly is at his most interesting whenever he’s around Akane, and their dynamic has the best development in the manga (so far).

But it’s just like I said before: If they don’t end up together, that’s just Aka’s loss, not mine. I’m just here for Akane 😂

And as an Akane fan, I feel like the best thing for me to do right now is to just take a step back and watch things unfold, because Aka will do whatever he wants regardless of how any of us interpret his manga lol

So instead of posting the long post I originally wrote about this chapter when the leaks came out, I'll just share a a clown gif because in hindsight it was silly of me to expect Kana out of all people to have any sort of meaningful insight into Aqua 🤡

And a couple of things that caught my eye because I can't help myself:

Kana didn't even see Aqua and Akane have any sort of meaningful moment, just those two standing in each other's vicinity was enough to make her throw herself a pity party. How many more times is she going to pity herself and give up? How has Aka not tired of writing her this way? Where did her development from the Scandal arc go? 🤡

So Chapter 147 featured Kamiki thinking Ai doesn't love him and Kana thinking Aqua likes her. It even had a helpful "Cut 139: Misunderstanding" panel and everything. Will this mean something? Who knows!

Kana used guilt-trip! It was super effective!

Oh the irony! Poor Akane looks like she's been hard at work convincing herself that she's over Aqua. And you know what? I cheer for her and respect her energy 100%. I'd rather see her doing her mightiest to help him without any ulterior motives than to have her crying for him and hoping to get back with him every other chapter lol

Akane calling Kana out for her pity-party and for being cowardly was so cathartic that if I didn't already stan her, I'd have become a fan right now 😭 It also means that Aka is 100% aware of the way he writes Kana, so when will she finally be allowed to grow?

Kana's praise to Akane made me so sad though because yes, Akane is pretty and she's talented and she's kind. That's sweet of her to say. But that's not what made Akane someone special to Aqua: it was the way she understood him. The worst part is that Kana ends her praise by saying that Akane is a "goody-two-shoes" but... that's the opposite of how Akane views herself. She sees herself as someone who's not decent and not normal. So it's no wonder that while she gets flustered (it's her dear kana-chan praising her), she seems to get a bit sad/frustrated afterward. After all, for Akane it's probably the opposite. Men would prefer a decent, normal, bright girl like Kana - Aqua included.

I wish someone would tell Akane that she is too ignorant of her own charms and that she doesn't have to act like an adult all the time. Truly the pot calling the kettle black! Sadly, unlike Kana, Akane seems to have no one in her corner in this manga. Aqua was the only one there and the poor guy is barely even a character anymore lol

Overprotective mother or controlling ex-girlfriend? Take your pick!

The English translation left something pretty important out in these panels. Akane doesn't just say "if you have a girlfriend", she says "if you have a precious/important girlfriend". This distinction is very important because it goes to show that... as expected, Akane doesn't think she was an important girlfriend to Aqua. It's like she didn't count and Kana would be the real deal. Oh, Akane...

Which takes me to her very silly, very convoluted yet very predictable plan (in true Aka fashion).

When Akane thinks “I know exactly what you hate”, I imagine she means that Aqua hates hurting and endangering those he cares for. So I'm guessing Akane thinks that if she plays matchmaker and quite literally throws Kana at him, someone he has a soft spot, then Aqua won't be able to go through with his revenge because that would mean breaking Kana's very fragile heart.

In other words, it looks like Akane is going to try and use Aqua's guilt-complex against him and her weapon of choice is love. But not her love, obviously, because as far as she's concerned, her romantic love already failed to save him.

Granted, using Kana's romantic feelings to her advantage is kind of... well, wrong. To quote Akane herself, [Kana] is neither her pet nor her property, but a person. But I'm guessing that Akane may be falling victim to the same loophole she got caught in in Chapters 96 - 98. She thinks she knows what's best, so she's putting her own beliefs aside for the time being.

Kind of like Aqua, actually.

And, ironically, it's Aqua himself who first realized how easy Kana is to use.

So! All in all, I'm here for Mastermind!Akane but I hope that Aka will actually make it worth our while. Will Kana realize that she's about to be used as a chess piece in this Proxy War? Who knows, characters in this manga seem to walk in circles, only being allowed to grow when it fits the plot 😂

Last week we wondered whether Aka would subvert expectations or go the predictable route, and down the predictable route he went. His way of making it less predictable is by including a twist in the form of Akane's ulterior motives, but will this be enough to allow this ol' used trope to lead us someplace new? I guess we'll have to keep reading to find out, but given the quality of the writing lately, I'm not expecting much lol

[spearxwind]

Whole gang's here :]

[valkaryah]

GO CON thats MY man thats MY fucking president. put that lil slimeball in his place... who the fuck does he think he is to air quote willa, connors wife and the peoples princess.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

mods asleep post Rogers II

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I've always felt that it'd be Killua who initiates the first hug we see between him and Gon