#but that couldn't possibly be true...

[doldulce]

Many people are engaging with the DoL basketball post I made, but no one is engaging with my more recently posted vore story 🧐 how curious 🤔

It's almost like the levels of comfort required to interact with those two topics 😮 are entirely different 🫨

[aliusfrater]

the differences in which wincesties engage with sam/anna and ruby/dean as characters mirroring aspects of the samndean dynamic, sometimes within the context of john-dean-sam to the extent that which season four explores it, really really annoys me

[smile-files]

some great bluish bakeoff stuff!

nickel later apologizes this episode; it's prompted by balloon's confrontation, but clearly nickel was in the mindset to apologize. the fact that he didn't raise the issue himself shows how he's still really afraid of how balloon would react. at the same time, though, he's acknowledging that "standing up for what [is] right" is important and good, even if it doesn't necessarily have the most beneficial outcome; notice how this not only shows how he accepts and understands balloon's anger towards him over the past few episodes (which had the consequence of losing them the challenge and getting bot eliminated), but also suitcase's anger towards him in the latter half of ii2 (which had the consequence of destroying their alliance).

in this episode, blueberry is assuming a role that has previously been taken by nickel and, more recently, silver spoon: he has placed himself at the top of the pecking order, calling all the shots, forcing everyone to roll with his punches. now everyone's in the same position balloon has been for a lot of his time in ii. silver, in throwing the chariot (:nerd emoji: actually a litter, they use the wrong word) at blueberry, is taking a stand against him -- announcing his frustration from being treated poorly.

for the longest time, balloon had "stay[ed] away from the thorns": beating around the bush, not bringing up the hard stuff, so he could maintain his positive relationship with nickel (and by extension his sense of having actually changed, which is linked with that that relationship represents) and not face his inevitable aggressive snap-back. but, though these proverbial thorns are painful, touching them helps him actually move ahead of all of that discomfort. balloon took a stand against nickel recently, which he was justified in doing, expressing his anger at nickel for both what he did and his denial of doing it -- and nickel harshly bit back about what balloon had done a while ago. balloon touched the thorn, and got the pain.

now, when nickel is yet again dancing around the problem, balloon's frustration returns. and, as silver took a stand against blueberry (which nickel supported), balloon channels his frustration and takes his own stand: technically also against blueberry, in trying to get himself and the others to the challenge before blueberry (thereby denying the domination he has imposed), but the drive itself came from nickel. he knows touching the thorns is painful, but that it's important and good. he should stand up for himself, and he does. he literally pokes himself with a thorn, and that literally sends him and the others ahead.

for the sake of this analogy/symbolic framework, it's worth noting how they are pushed forward because of the thorn, but there's still baggage: they fly through the desert only to crash, losing all of their ingredients. at this point, though, balloon's not going to let the pain of the thorn prevent him from touching it. balloon will keep standing up for himself, even if he keeps facing setbacks and pushbacks, because he knows what he deserves.

you can imagine that when balloon confronted nickel in this episode, he was expecting the same old same old: he'd say what he's mad about, and nickel would shut him down. but he doesn't. nickel listens to him. nickel lets balloon be angry at him, lets himself face the guilt he needs to feel. balloon is able to be mad at nickel without their relationship automatically going up in flames like before. and balloon is shocked! but will he forgive nickel? what'll he say? ...well, they're taken by tyler bombard before balloon could say anything...

for all this talk of the thorn, where's the blossom? well, here it is. thematic parallels indeed! recall how balloon misunderstanding "flour" as "flower" contributed to the grand slams losing the cooking challenge in ii2, which likely added fuel to the fire of nickel's hatred towards him -- now that same flower and that same misunderstanding is a representation of their friendship: it is what remains after the pain of the thorn. balloon finding value in this meager flower and presenting it to mephone at all (thereby insisting that it has value) is what wins them all the challenge. the flower and its beauty are not just a reward for the pain of the thorn, but a product of that pain.

balloon still hasn't responded to nickel's apology, because he hasn't had the chance to... but in disputing tyler's happiness about blueberry's death, balloon both recognizes his own attempt to change as well as nickel's: attempting that change is also a thorn, a very painful one (it literally killed blueberry), and both nickel and balloon have recognized the changes the other has tried to make and has succeeded in making. nickel is very reassured by this.

and as a final flower, a final reward for balloon's persistence in standing up for himself and what he believes in, balloon is chosen as the sole recipient of the immunity cookie -- silver spoon, someone with both a history of selfishness and a history of putting others below him, is the one to make this decision. balloon is finally being recognized, genuinely, for the changes he's made.

notably, balloon never accepts nickel's apology: no, he accepts that nickel is trying to make up for what he did. and, knowing from personal experience how hard it is to make that change and be acknowledged for making it, balloon is there to support him through it, and help him realize that he can be better -- and balloon is still on that "trek" himself, as we know balloon still has a lot of flaws to work through. they both know they have to touch the thorn, but they're all the more motivated to do so because they have a beautiful flower as well:

their genuine friendship.

...

balloon continues to be very charitable with blueberry, even as blueberry is critical of himself. nickel is also charitable -- telling blueberry to "just be nicer to people" implies that he believes that such a change is possible -- though of course he expresses this in his typical snarky way.

blueberry, though, doesn't believe that he can change, just like nickel used to. no matter how much balloon and nickel believe in him, he himself has to realize he has the capacity to improve before he can actually do it.

[everypanelofizuku]

Chapter 83 - Loss

[r0semultiverse]

My ideal gender presentation is a changeling that looks terrifying by default & makes people scream "what the fuck is that?" but without being able to hate crime me or even hurt me because I'm too strong & cooler than them.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Just saw someone posting a pic from Shadow House were Patrick gives Emilico a bouquet of roses and tagged it "lesbian Patrick". This is the same comic where Ricky is embarrassed about his crush on on a girl (living dolls aren't supposed to have any feelings), and a fan took this as evidence of him being a trans girl. The same comic where multiple people head canon Patrick--who is the first character to internally admit his love for a girl, and then gets embroiled with another girl (it's complicated ;-;), and whose soot power literally manifests as hearts shooting out of him --and multiple people headcanon this guy as aromantic.

You know, maybe we DO need a straight awareness day?

[akai-anna]

Round 5

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[fuck-i-like-too-much-stuff]

Waking up in this fandom is "what the fuck did the straight 12 year olds on twitter do now"

[scarlettfevor]

Finally got ahold of the audiobook of Penance by Eliza Clark and I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand I love the premise and I feel like it's written well enough to where I feel like the author isn't going to clumsily stumble through her own story and fall on her face at the end like the majority of popular thrillers. But also this story suffers from having someone who hasn't been in school for a long time attempting to write teenagers. The funny thing is that whenever I see a horrible portrayal of teenagers, specifically of zoomers its never like, inaccurate portrayals of slang and trends that most teenagers cringe at, it's extremely unnatural dialogue that I don't understand how even a 30 or 40 year old can't see how awkward and cringe and flat out bad of a portrayal they're doing. You can claim that it's regional differences, even if we were all teenagers once I still don't know what it's like to be a popular mean British girl, but I'm fairly certain that actual popular mean British girls don't go around describing themselves as popular mean girls. The funny thing is that they've mentioned several times that these girls (ok it was actually like one girl but she introduced too many characters and I got confused so I can't even remember the name of the girl who said it) are trying to imitate the mean girls in popular American shows/movies. But I think that it's SO funny how instead of going for the obvious Regina George or maybe the more posh Blair Waldorf, they chose Sharpay Evans....I'm very familiar with the popular mean girl trope because I always love the girls who fall into this category and I can say with 100% certainty that none of these girls act like this either. I don't know what the author is going for but it's very painful to listen to.

[humanmorph]

I just don't know what to do with Gur now. I'd already somewhat written them off as fucked forever I guess considering the divine they're bound to is imprisoned*. Would that be unceremonious & somewhat unsatisfying (at least to me)? Sure but it happens. But Austin twice(!) (once in the chat at Jack's Palisade soundtrack livestream & then I think in the Post Mortem) made a weird "oh well who knows about Gur" type comment & it's like. MAN.... WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT.... If they're not just fucked forever, what is happening to them? In what state could they possibly exit that situation, and how could they ever at all?

I guess the most we get about what's happening with Gur now comes from Future in the PAL46 intro: "No more visions of tomorrow for you. Now, simply recollect." Is this Gur reliving the moment of his death over & over again?

---

*I don't super remember but I'm guessing that's what happened to Future after Brnine got it back from Jesset? Also I know the whole deal there was that it's hard to enact justice on beings with the livespans that divines have - that eventually, on a long enough timeline, they could all be free again. But I don't think this matters much here, because there probably won't be that big a time jump between PALISADE & P3.

[wildflowerteas]

tsp!sskk and the terrible no good, very bad day ( September 6th, 1978 ).

[apfelhalm]

i've been having thinky thoughts about the endings of LiS 1+2 and i guess what it all boils down to is ... there is no "right" or "wrong" ending. it's about what you value most (Chloe vs. the town, the brothers staying together vs. individual happiness, doing the "right" thing vs. being "selfish") and whether you're willing to pay the price for it. is it fair? nah. but you pick what feels right to you and live with that. and not to be cheesy on main, but i feel like with all good tragedies (and the games are both tragedies) it's all about the journey. about finding beauty inbetween the dark moments, about the hope, about spending more time together before giving in to the inevitable (or maybe fighting against the odds and paying the price for it).

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

Hmm I need to quit my job to make time for all the piano practice and animation and cooking and exercising and learning guitar and blues dancing and watching anime and reading and doing puzzles and hanging out with my friends and yoga and hammocking and crocheting and staring off into space that I need to do. I'm sooooooo booked with all of that stuff

[speed-demon-doodler]

waaaaaay post game events - actual year of our lord fantasy-2024

the infamous painting and the Lute

-------------

In a bet between The Original Patron and another (for now) undisclosed entity, Orion won the so much agonized immortality, working as a sort of retired support agent for the other warlocks. Problem is, the more years you put between your natural life span and your seemingly infinite one, the more you start to lose pieces (been there done that). asking about shared memories and old friends long gone is a bit of a test to check on them.

[mad-hunts]

alright, but because i've been seeing this go around and i'm not going to lie... i was tempted to do it myself, so i took that 'sex values quiz' for barton. and these are the results that i got for him. though, i do disagree with the sex drive part (,: because barton has and can go a while without having sex NGL. but OFC, the test was only going off of the answers to the questions that i provided for him

tagged by: i think i might've been tagged in this a while ago by @twcfaces, but i can't really remember (forgive me for taking so long if you did AHHH) — and also @vulpesse!!

[frommietual]

OMG