#and the power to feel others pain

[need2thneeds]

thinking about how the only thing to bring joy to Yellowfang's life was fire and cinder and how that's also the last thing she ever saw

[multifandombullshitbabes]

have we ever thought abt the fact that zuko is literally azula's older brother. like she's his little sister. that's his little sister. throughout a big, big part of atla plot, he was actively running away, scared of his little sister killing him because he KNEW she would/could. can you imagine that? your little sibling, wanting more your father's approval than your companionship to the point of death? every time they fought, zuko was fighting his baby sister. azula was fighting her big brother. this is making me so sick. they were 16 and 14 years old.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

✨ ARCTIC MONKEYS ASK GAME ✨

favourite record opener track?

have you been to a live show? if so, feel free to share a photo/something particular that struck you about your experience!

humbug or tbh+c?

which member of the band would you most like to spend the afternoon with and why? how would you spend your time?

which album means the most to you?

if you had to pick one song from their discography to never hear again, which one would it be?

how long have you been a fan? tell us about your journey!

do you have any cool arctic monkeys memorabilia or keepsakes that are meaningful to you? (eg wristbands from a show, merch you’ve bought, signed stuff, tour posters)

what’s the first song you heard that made you fall in love with the band? where were you when you heard it?

what’s your favourite alex era hair? feel free to share photo examples!

have you ever created any fanart or fanfiction inspired by the band/involving anyone in the band? feel free to share a link!

do you have any arctic monkeys tattoos? if not, do you want any?

what are some of your favourite lyrics alex has written? (doesn't have to be arctic monkeys, can also include tlsp/ other artist collaborations/the submarine soundtrack)

do you own any physical copies of any of the albums?

favourite arctic monkeys b-side?

if each of the albums was a person, which one do you think you'd most be like and why?

favourite album cover?

if you could ask each member of the band something and have them answer honestly, what questions would you ask them?

what's your favourite quote said by someone in the band? feel free to share a link/clip!

favourite record ender track?

[commanderfreddy]

people are discoursing about the laios and shiro fight bc that was always going to happen but i do hope that wave crests quickly and we can all come to see it as what it is: literally one of the best written fights between two people who are both entirely justified in their actions and acting without any malice or cruelty of all time

[eruverse]

Someday I will write 90s Amerus fic. That day isn’t now (biggest writing block rn), but someday. Many of the 90s fics in the English fandom are too incorrect in my opinion when it comes to historical contexts — and I know why, but it is 😄 grating

[lovrbooy]

i feel like i have very unpopular opinions on dennis within this fandom. i am scared of fandom spaces so. to the tags i go

[honestlyvan]

(Crossposted from DW)

There’s some interesting parallels to be drawn with the way Scratch is an aspect of Alan, just like the Casey of the Dark Place is. One reflects all his darkest fears, the most self-destructive narratives he can tell about himself, and the other encapsulates the skills and virtues he needs to push himself forward, one wearing his face and another one wearing the face of someone he admires.

So you could do quite a bit with Scratch inheriting that obsession with Casey from Alan, but in a furious, bitter, jealous form where Casey is an interloper, a challenger to Scratch's ownership of Alan, coming between him and his Alan, a stranger, an intruder. Because that's what Casey is -- a tool and a shield, the impression of someone Alan trusts -- someone for Alan to cling to, someone who can disrupt Alan’s internal narrative, and he's taking Alan from Scratch.

Casey is just as much a prop to Scratch as he is to Alan, he's just there to be the hero so Alan can be the victim and Scratch the monster. And just like Scratch's love of Alan is a warped mirror image of Alan's hatred of himself, Scratch's jealousy of Casey is a mirror of Alan's suppressed desire to be a better person. To be a hero, to drive the story forward on his own terms, to have agency.

Which is how you get Scratch hissing “You're not going to get what you want” against Casey's lips, shoving him against a wall in an alleyway when Casey has once again showed up as a diversion, letting Alan run away, taking Casey away from Alan the way he took Alan from Scratch. “You think you know. You know shit. You don't really wanna know”, while bleeding venomous jealousy into the air because he is Alan and Alan is him and Alan is his and this outsider thinks he can take Alan from him. Like Alan isn't just using Casey, too, like Casey is something more than a just an empty vessel for Alan's wants when that should be Scratch, that should have been Scratch from the start.

Because Casey doesn't hate Scratch any more than he loves Alan. His role is to have compassion for the victim, to protect him, to move the plot forward for him, just like Scratch's role is to antagonise and delay and stop Alan from progressing. Scratch knows what he's dealing with. But there's more to Casey than just what he got from Alan, he is a reflection of the real Casey through the lens of Alan – and that’s the really fucking offensive part. That Alan can so scarcely accept himself that he’ll bring in this outsider, discarding Scratch, using a stranger’s face instead.

Scratch is Alan, after all. He has Alan's face and he has his voice, and he knows Alan better than Alan knows himself. “You're going to get what's coming to you”, he tells Casey, loop after loop, until he can get him out of the way for good.

[taikanyohou]

“Would you stop saying that you’ve got nothing left?” VEGAS + PETE + MACAU | KinnPorsche (2022).

[bonefall]

I know you're keeping Clear Sky as an antagonist (and he's very compelling as one in your rewrite), but I'm curious: if you absolutely had to give him a redemption arc, how would you go about it? (Besides not fridging his sister and wives, of course.)

If I was forced to give Clear Sky a redemption arc I'd slip a femur right out of my legmeat and beat someone to death with it

I'd never write a redemption arc for him, ever. It would be a completely different character.

Clear Sky's redemption arc is not even an idea worth considering; This an extremely consistent abusive family member who drives the entire plot, a predator who will leverage the love people have for him, whose defining characteristic is that he dresses up his megalomania as "Just Trying to Protect Everyone"

And I'd give that up?! for what?

I'd rewrite the whole plot, JUST like how the writers did with TWO born evil foreigner villains so their story wouldn't get boring, so I could prove the he could be a good boy if he wanted to? WHY?

It's doing the same thing the Erins do, totally uninterested in the story of his victims to write yet another plot centered around the pain of an abusive man.

Elder Bones is disappointed in you if you even think about it, actually. I am holding the femurbone in my hand as we speak. I'm gonna GETCHA

[basofy]

ive never talked about their dynamic but this is one of the many thoughts i have about them

[solarspen]

Playing Baldur's Gate 3 was the worst best decision of my life I have literally not been able to do anything else since starting it. I don't think I felt this much genuine enjoyment playing something since I was like 16 it's so fucking good

[furiousgoldfish]

Symptoms of grief:

feeling a heavy weight in your body pulling you to the ground

only being able to move slowly, not having any energy to move fast

feeling numb, emotionless, uncaring, stone-cold or deeply sad

feeling like nothing in the world matters and nothing is worth doing

not having any interest in activities that take any energy

finding other people tiring, and interactions exhausting

clinging to anything old, familiar, nostalgic, and comforting

wanting a distraction, but also feeling like nothing can distract you enough

over-indulging in distracting activities like video games, tv shows, internet

not being able to find words to express what you’re going thru, feeling like nobody could possibly understand or empathize

not wanting to see or talk to other people, wanting to be alone, but also longing for comfort and familiarity

doing anything is very tiring and you wish you could only lie down forever

not wanting to eat, or alternatively, always wanting to eat

craving mostly comfort food, things you’ve had in some period in your past, or sweets, fast food, anything that brings you a little comfort

losing control over your diet, not being able to care about what you’re eating

feeling like this feeling will never end, feeling like you should be over it already

having surges of memories, some of them painful, some of them made painful by the fact that they’re in the past, unchangeable, unrepeatable

feeling physical pain in the area of your chest, back, stomach, shoulders, if a particularly painful memory is touched or triggered

wishing you could stop feeling and re-experiencing past moments

feeling like you’re never going to be happy again

feeling like you’re dying

[coquelicoq]

part of the process of learning to take responsibility for your actions is learning what things you can't take responsibility for. not just to protect you (e.g., from your own feelings of guilt; from people taking advantage of your willingness to take responsibility by attributing blame to you unfairly), but because to take responsibility is not just to say "it was my fault and i'm sorry" but to actually do things (to make amends and to mitigate and prevent future harm), and if you don't understand what to take responsibility for, you aren't going to understand how to take responsibility.

there is a lot that's outside of your control. people put a lot of emphasis on forgiveness in a way that i think is missing the point. being forgiven is not my priority. my priority is that i am doing what it is in my power to do. i can't control how that's received. i'd like it to be received well; i'm doing what i'm doing because i want to repair harm that i have caused to another person, so it matters to me if what i'm doing is actually achieving that goal or not. but there's only so much that i can do to achieve that goal, and if i'm doing it, and the harm is not repaired, that's okay. that's beyond my control. i have to make my peace with the fact that i've caused harm to another person that is not resolved, because i'm doing what i can and i have to continue living on this earth, and in continuing to live i'm going to be living with the fact of that unresolved harm. the most important thing at that point is for me to use my knowledge of the specific ways in which my actions harmed that person to change my behavior going forward to avoid causing that harm again, to the extent that that's within my power.

it doesn't do anyone - you or the people you have harmed - any good for you to assign responsibility to yourself for things that you can't control. if you're going to attempt the active work of repair and change you have to first identify what it's possible to repair and change. you can't actually repair a relationship all by yourself! you can only change your own behavior. you can only offer amends to the other person that they may or may not find sufficient. not to go all serenity prayer on you but guilt for the sake of guilt just makes you feel way more powerful than you actually are (because you think that everything happened because of you) and at the same time completely incapable of exercising your power (because you don't understand what your power actually is). to effect change you have to focus on the things you can actually change. focusing on the things you can't change is a problem not just because it's taking your focus away from the things you can change, but because it means you don't actually understand the sphere of your own influence. you're operating under what is essentially a self-centered worldview in which you could make everything better, you could prevent all harm, if only you were trying harder, if only you were a better person. who does that serve? it doesn't reflect reality. it makes you hate yourself and feel sorry for yourself at the same time, and it doesn't actually improve things for the people you harmed. it doesn't help keep you from harming people in the future, because you don't understand the territory and the limits of the causal relationship between your actions and other people's reactions to them.

you can only do what you can do. what you can't do, you can't do, and you can't take responsibility for doing, either in the past or present. after you realize that there is harm to repair the next step in the process of repair is to ask yourself what your responsibility is for the past and what your agency is going forward. everything else will follow from that. you simply cannot skip that step.

[obihoe]

god, the ichibi truly is the most terrible bijuu of them all huh. like he's not even that strong, among the bijuus at least he is the weakest but he seems to be so much more terrible to live with than the others. and gaara ... he is not even That strong either? at least not at first, he breaks down all the time. and his jutsu repertoire is not all that various either, his main strength is his defence but after lee breaks it, all the other opponents he faces afterwards manage to break it as well. gaara i think is the epitome of a failed bijuu-host relationship .. his bijuu might be willing to help him by sharing his power with him but that power is too much for him and moreover, the ichibi doesnt help him exactly either, he moreso just uses him as his marionette to sate his own bloodlust .. as opposed to the other, non-jinchuuriki ninjas, gaara has an INSANE level of power and chakra but he cant channel it properly and its too much to handle for him. the image of his sand shield around his body cracking is fitting i think cuz his power quite literally breaks him apart

[daydadahlias]

you can't reclaim a word that's never been used against you