#breaking the pattern

[sarsaratihawa]

[xtrablak674]

History Repeating

Being our third or fourth video call in like a week, I was aware that we were in a new spot. Albeit the diminished energy was still present, mind you these kids dad had just passed I got a strong intuition that this was their baseline and if this was homeostasis, these kids were depressed. Fourteen to twenty the energy should have been more kinetic but it wasn't it was dulled and I don't think this was just the marijuana.

The most disappointing thing for me was the environment a solid colored room with a single bar light bulb on the ceiling, the kind of lighting I wouldn't even consider yet this was their norm. The few glimpses of the room I could see things were placed in a very incidental way with no clear intention. This was familiar, not to my own upbringings but my being in my father's house particularly the one he shared with my brother's mom.

I had to point out to my Floridian nephew that I had never lived in anyone's ghetto. I think my mom was only making a bit above the poverty level and there were roaches in our house, but they never felt oppressive and ever present. The house was relatively clean having three single digit little boys ripping about and tearing around. There were no random piles of indistinguishable items. A place for everything and everything in its place. My god-grandmother's house was worn but still tidy.

My brother's children were living in squalor as far as I was concerned not that different than what you would find in a developing country. This made my nieces blurted out statement, 'its so orderly there' stand out even more starkly. She had only knew disorder her entire life, even in her younger brother's home it wasn't that different. I turned my camera around showing them one wall of my apartment where my Ms. Pac-Man game is also arranged. I told them it was very surprising to me that they had so many bare walls, not even a taped up poster.

This was eye opening, horrifying, upsetting and depressing to me. I could understand why their energy was so diminished their homes literally reflected their disenfranchised disempowered and diminished existence. And not one adult around them knew any better so here they were in this space that said bare necessities, no dreams, no mood boards, no fantasies, no future. It makes it so much clearer that my nephew felt the need to be high all day, when your life seems so bleak there is no where better to escape then into a cloud of smoke...

Things in my head were clicking a bit more, I was so disappointed in their parents when about fifteen years ago I Trading Spaces their studio apartment from just a bed bureau and TV to a full house of furniture, actual decorative aspects and lighting making the space so much more inviting. In my ignorance I thought I could undo decades of oppression, mental health issue compounded by living in destitute situations that didn't need to be so destitute. I was trying to fight a battle that had long been lost before I even existed.

Black people throughout time have had little, but a common theme amongst those of us who had little is that we care for the little we had. You could go into most of these Black households and not find an ounce of dirt. Furniture and clothes may have been worn and thread-bare, but were always clean! That wasn't the case in my nieces and nephews grandmother's house. She had been mentally checked out for decades and basic things like keeping a clean house had passed along the wayside a long time ago.

I had witnessed this personally as a child when I would sit up on the bed in the living room and hear the mice scurrying about on the floor after the sun set. Their grandmother at the time, my father's girlfriend didn't seem in the least bit upset or disturbed by what kind of filth the house must contain to have not only roaches but rodents all throughout the house. I remember even as a child being disgusted by the extreme poverty, blackened floors, holes in ceilings and walls and a general sense of filthiness.

In my own apartment in Peekskill the refrigerator was usually a space free from any pest. But in my dad's fridge bugs were in everything, the butter, milk, juice, fruits and you were probably eating them in the breakfast cereal. As much as I enjoyed spending time with my father, I didn't enjoy having my food tainted with the dead or partially living bodies of pest. This was disgusting!

But you live in squalor long enough this becomes the default. Normally I show off my apartment to those around me, and found myself deliberately holding back sharing the entire thing with these kids. I felt like it would have been inappropriate showing them how well I was living while they lived in squalor, sheet-less beds, dirty floors, bare walls, rooms lit by a single bulb, piles of clothing and random items with no rhyme or reason. It bought me so much cognitive dissonance and such sadness that I wanted so much more for these children still, and how much the adults in their lives had failed them. I am sure they were doing the best they could, but these kids deserved so much better than what they were getting...

[Photo by Brown Estate]

[nutnoce]

I've been laying down the lines again

[otaku553]

Save me yi nine sols

(You should play nine sols it’s very very fun)

[chitinleg]

got him off-balance!

[plantwriting]

[musubiki]

danmarch 🐉💎

[copypastus]

So that hofas bonus Ember chapter huh.

I wish Tamlin and Nesta built a casual friendship.

It's such a missed opportunity! They were both assigned penance eternal by the IC over their relationships with Feyre with no road to redemption. In acosf they were both on a shame spiral. You'd think this would be a like calls to like moment! Opportunity to recognise that just coz Rhys's friends hate you doesn't make you a bad person!

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

hey. hey. you there. religious jew who wants to do so well because you truly do love g-d and you see His presence everywhere and you have faith in Him and He gives you everything. yes, you. if you're not a religious jew you can read this too this just isn't geared towards you.

ok now that i have your attention read this: g-d knows you. He made your body and your soul and He understands it fully. there's gonna be some times where you can't commit to something, where you can't fulfill that mitzvah. maybe you've got an amazing new job that will pay the rent and the bills youve been struggling with for months but you need to work shabbat. maybe you cant say prayers or blessings in public bc you dont feel safe to speak hebrew outside of your own home. maybe you struggle to keep up a routine and have a hard time with daily mitzvot. whatever it is i promise Hashem does not hate you and does not see you as a failure.

i definitely understand being a perfectionist and wanting to go all out. to show that you are fully devoted and that you appreciate Him at every point in your life. also lets be real sometimes you just wanna prove to yourself that you can do all these little things and that you have the discipline to do it. or you wanna impress someone else you admire. that's completely normal and those emotions are part of what makes us human (however those can be signs of underlying mental health issues so pls talk to someone if you need!). anyway, Hashem doesnt mind that we can't do it all all the time. sometimes we can't do it all ever. He knows that something is always better than nothing. we were given the gift of life, of food, of being jewish, of the torah, of everything else by g-d and we can express our gratefulness for that in so many ways and they are all important.

g-d is not that shitty teacher you had in middle school who judged you in front of the class every time your essay wasnt an A+. He created everything and gave us the joy of life and is here to guide us through us. He made us human with all of our possible emotions because that is what we are meant to be. we are meant to be flawed and without that we wouldnt even be people anymore. you're gonna have shitty days, weeks, months, even years and He understands that and even if you can only do tiny things it still matters.

[petitesmafia]

hc the first time that Dazai sleeps over at Chuuya’s apartment is honestly by accident— he's lounging around to annoy his partner, plopping down on Chuuya’s bed and joking about how he should steal one of Chuuya's many luxury pillows. he replies that he’ll just rest his eyes for a bit when Chuuya asks what he’s doing, but then he actually falls asleep.

Dazai later stirs awake (still feeling drowsy) to see Chuuya’s clock showing that it’s a little after 5AM, and he’s taken aback bc he hasn't been able to sleep that well undisturbed in a long, long time. he turns to his right to see a sprawled out Chuuya, mouth open (is that drool??), lightly snoring, his leg stretched over Dazai’s (it’s clear that Chuuya tried to be considerate and leave him more room by the way he’s awkwardly angled, but he moves in his sleep so. well.)

Dazai softly laughs and turns his body towards Chuuya, fondly musing over how ugly he is (he’s not serious about this) and how he’ll definitely tease Chuuya for it tomorrow (he’s serious about this) before he dozes off again,,,

(Dazai only wakes again when it’s almost 7AM and he feels Chuuya trying to pull himself out of his grasp, muttering, “OI wtf is wrong with this guy? Get off of me. I need to get ready for work.”

Dazai doesn’t budge. “What are they gonna do,” he sleepily replies, “fire you?”)

[BONUS - the following night]

Chuuya, arriving home to see Dazai lounging on his couch: what are you doing here AGAIN??? Dazai: for a sleepover ^-^ Chuuya: says who Dazai: me Chuuya: this is my house Dazai: okay? good for you

Dazai: don’t flatter yourself btw I’m only here to use your amenities and for your king sized bed (half truths) Chuuya: get your shameless ass to a hotel then Dazai: why would I do that when I can stay here for free Chuuya: says who Dazai: me

[cupowhale]

What I’ve been doing recently

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

TRENT CRIMM INTRODUCING HIMSELF (AGAIN) WHEN TED CALLS ON HIM (AGAIN)

↳ bonus: he still introduces himself when sam calls on him

[thechy-fychannel]

y'all ever think abt how it was julie having the affair and it is even said multiple times that she was the one who left him, yet wilson was still the one who left their home and moved in with house. like. he couldn't bear to stay in their home alone. he immediately ran to house and stayed on his couch for weeks. suffered through his pranks and his laziness and his manipulation. telling him he wants him gone while sabotaging his attempts to leave. and he only left once he got a girlfriend again.

[invinciblerodent]

I couldn't find one, so I made a very quick and dirty cross stitch chart of the Dragon Age: Origins font for anyone to use ❤️

[overnighttosunflowers]

I've been thinking a lot about that interaction between Laudna and Orym in episode 102. How it starts with Orym saying "I'm so sorry that the world is moving so fast that we couldn't take the time to help you."

There's a certainty to that framing that is very typical of Orym. Not "I'm sorry the world is moving so fast that we didn't take the time to help you." They couldn't take the time. The mission comes first, second, and third until they've seen it through. 

Now, it's hardly a revolutionary observation that Orym's worldview comes from a particular combination of military training, survivor's guilt, and calcified grief that is ultimately self-destructive. It's also not a revolutionary observation that the party has not quite realized this, or not in so many words. They tend to treat his perspective as the only one unshakeable by personal failing. Later in that conversation in 102, Laudna even tells Orym that if someone needed to "finish the job, put me down," she'd wanted it to be him, because she knows he has the ability to do what's right.

His friends think of him as the only one who isn't a powder keg waiting to go off, but it has gone off, with Orym secretly and self-destructively pledging himself to Nana Morri in order to keep his friends alive. Betraying his friends' trust in favor of the mission. And in the end it didn't accomplish anything.

I think of Orym as someone who holds multiple truths at once. First and foremost there's a soldier's truth, the grim relentlessness that's all that keeps him going sometimes. But we've seen Orym be soft, too. He's gentle. He loves his friends. It's there underneath the grim layers of suppression. We saw it more early campaign. I don't think that he was lying in 49 when he told Imogen that he wasn't worried about her just hours after conspiring with Fearne to take her out if necessary. I think he wanted so, so badly to discount that soldier POV and buy all the way into trusting Imogen. But he couldn't. And I don't know if he was able to reconcile that. I think he genuinely believed both. Liam has said that before the events of this campaign reactivated Orym's trauma, he was legitimately on a path to healing his grief. I think that a healthier Orym would have been able to set down the soldier's truth to simply trust Imogen.

But that's not where the campaign took us. At the Malleus Key in episode 51, Orym collected a locket from a dead Vanguard soldier to remind himself that the enemy are still human. And then after Bor'dor died, in episode 63, he dropped it. Locking in on that soldier's truth. Making that deal with Morri. Not letting his friends stop and rest when they need it badly. Pressuring Imogen to give in to Predathos on the moon so that they could learn more.  

There's a grim run of episodes where Orym is stuck like that, prioritizing his soldier's truth and suppressing the part of him that is his heart. Now, I'm not someone who needs to always feel warmly towards a character or agree with their choices to appreciate their depth and role in the story, and I respect what Liam was doing there. The willingness of the CR cast to have their characters make messy and unpopular choices is one of the things I appreciate most about the show, and one of the things that leads us to the richest and most meaningful moments of character arc resolution. 

But that's where I've been frustrated with Orym: by and large, resolution has not been coming. He's been driving deeper and deeper into his traumatized worldview, clinging to it and stubbornly refusing to hear challenges to it. Repeatedly shutting down arguments by mentioning his dead family. I get it, and I feel for him, and I don't know how else Liam could be playing it given the story that Orym is in and the character that he is—not least a soldier whose training tells him never to question the mission. But, god, I'm ready for the growth. Ready for the story to prod Orym in directions that change. Ideally a shift towards a healthier perspective, but even hitting such a low that the Hells can't help but recognize that Orym's rigid morality is as destructive as it is sustaining. That will make them push back on him.

Because telling Orym he's the good one reinforces his worst instincts, increases the pressure he puts on himself, makes him double down. What he needs is someone to push back. He needs that increasingly brittle sense of his own lens as morally superior and righteous to shatter. 

And I am so, so excited for it to happen—because we're starting to see it starting to crack, just a little. In episode 92, he acknowledged to Imogen that his lens is a lens and not simple objective truth, and even implied it's one he wishes he knew how to set down: 

And now, when Laudna tells him he knows best of all how to do what's right, he admits it again: not a lot of his choices have panned out.

And it's true. They haven't. And I hope he keeps on saying it.

I'm glad to have Dorian back and on a revenge quest against the gods, because Orym trusts Dorian and Dorian is not going to let him sit unchallenged in his own convictions the way the rest of the Hells have been. I'm excited to see more of Braius, who not only disagrees with Orym about the Primes, but also doesn't have the same vested interest as the rest of the party in seeing Orym as good. I hope they both push back on him. I hope it unsettles him and confuses him and breaks his worldview and soldier identity enough that when the pieces come back together, instead of scarring over a second time, they can simply finally heal.

[turrondeluxe]

thinking about 2007 b team today again and how donnie and mikey where literally always with each other one way or another

quite literally just a mention of their names away at all times

AND THE FACT THAT THEY BOTH THINK THAT WAY ("it's only me and donnie now" "it's only me and mikey")EVEN IF RAPH IS STILL LIVING WITH THEM BECAUSE THEIR FAMILY IS JUST GETTING MORE DISTANT EACH PASSING SECOND OF EACH PASSING DAY. THEY TRULY FEEL LIKE THEY ONLY HAVE EACH OTHER. LIKE THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES LEFT.

i can write so many essays about them and how they hang onto each other as much as possible after leo left because they both feel like if they let go in any way they will lose the only brother they have left and they Refuse to do that.

thinking also specifically on how donatello probably looked at mikey, his only little brother, and decided that he was not going to do the same thing his two older brothers did to them both (leave them behind)