#don't @ me i like history

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[inkskinned]

they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?

they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.

you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.

you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.

mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.

you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.

[marzipanandminutiae]

why are skirts inherently evil and oppressive in historical fiction until men are wearing them

I've never heard anyone going on at length about how Universally ImpracticalTM the garb of a Scotsman or an ancient Roman politician are

suddenly everyone has a concept of situational practicality that previously was not there

[dedusmuln]

yeah you support trans people but are you normal about trans men who choose to get pregnant

[anne-is-confused]

Captain Francis Crozier, at Furthest North.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Welcome to the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger.

[aromantic-diaries]

Honestly I'm glad that the aro community is moving from "we still love our friends and family we're not heartless!" to "we don't need to make up for our lack of romantic attraction with other forms of love" because yeah, our platonic and/or familial relationships are not romance-lite or a substitute for romantic love and a lot of aros reject the idea of love altogether. So yeah fuck trying to appeal to alloromantic people with the whole "we swear we're normal" thing. I don't need to make sense to anyone

Either you accept me as I am whether you understand me or not or you leave me the fuck alone

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

It’s hilarious how Vaggie made herself a ‘sinner’.

How that linked her up with Charlie is such a weird, round about truthful way, even when she was lying by omission about it.

And how amazingly dumb it all makes Adam and Lute look.

Thousands of helpless souls killed by her, but she didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ until she wondered if what she was doing was right. The divine powers in her life only took her wings and condemned her to hell after she doubted their orders, their idea of justice, and quietly chose not to completely follow them.

“You fucked up” they tell her “your mistake” she “left the band” “tried for a solo career". It’s so pathetic. They're so butthurt over the idea of one of their own having a mind of her own.

It’s also so funny, because they spin her simple act of whispering “Go, run. Now!” to demon kid she’d been holding at spear point like it was big defiant move- which makes it into one- even though she never challenged them openly, or threatened them.

Hell, Lute’s “You always were weak” plus exorcist Vaggie always frowning while her murder sisters all grin with glee as they kill sinners- it paints a picture of Vaggie never having been as into exterminations as she ‘should’ have been. Too weak to be a proper exorcist no matter how good at killing she was, not just “the traitor” but also “the failure”.

And she was scared of that. She didn’t want anyone seeing her spare that child, whispered her words to them in a back alley, out of sight.

She was scared of what would happen and didn’t even fight it when Lute took her eye and wings- she was scared and no threat in any tangible way, but apparently refusing to do one single murder is enough to freak Adam and Lute the fuck out.

One woman. Doesn’t do exactly what she’s told. After who knows how many decades of being one of the “top girls” at murder, a “bad bitch” named after “the best thing ever”, and they still get spooked by that tiny moment when she wasn’t under their total control. Like it's such a betrayal to them, her daring to so much as think this level of violence isn’t justified actually, and for a split second act on that thought.

It’s an instant ticket to ousting her from the exorcists AND from heaven, while they fly the fuck off again.

“If angels can do whatever, and remain in the sky-”

and they do. After doing that to one of their own. They did that, to someone who was supposedly meant to be in heaven. They didn’t wait for divine justice- took it, and her eye, and her wings, and her halo, into their own hands and tore them away from her. Then happily, they spend the next three years up in heaven, slurping smoothies and doing more murder sprees.

until Vaggie comes strolling back with the princess of hell, there supporting her girlfriend and the idea that all the shit she did for so long really was and IS wrong.

oh and Adam and Lute are pisssssssed about it. They take her being there PERSONALLY, wanna solve it with VIOLENCE

She hurts them without even trying. Without even noticing they're there.

They're told to fix the princess of hell situation and they have no concept of forgiveness, of caring about sinners, so they guess (rightly) that Vaggie hasn't told Charlie about her past and bet (wrongly) that Charlie would never forgive her if she knew, and also assumed (rightly) that Vaggie would be terrified of that

But they don't get that she's scared of hurting Charlie. Of Charlie being hurt by her. It's a selfless thing. That's her whole PROBLEM.

Her running to hold Charlie after the reveal- her NOT breaking down when Charlie takes alone time in the aftermath, respecting that right up until she thinks Charlie's actively in danger- afraid FOR Charlie when the deal with Alastor is made, no crumbling that Charlie went to someone else for help, when being helpful to Charlie is basically her raison d'étre- agreeing to go alone to an overlord, after learning she can DIE and THIS OVERLORD knows how to do it- all this for the sake of Charlie's dream, their shared goal, their hotel. Their friends, resigned to despair in the hotel lobby, losing hope and maybe hours away from losing their lives

No shit she was never going to bow down to the blackmail?? It'd be like turning herself inside out. Charlie isn't just some "little hottie" or whatever, they're partners. They're in this together. Even when Charlie out loud doubts if that's true, it still is.

Lute and Adam don't GET what it means, that Charlie assumed Vaggie was a sinner already. That the thing she'd be hurt about was the lying, not the murder. She was scared of not really being loved by Vaggie- of everything else wonderful between them being a lie too, all that support and faith empty empty- she wasn't afraid of loving Vaggie, whoever Vaggie had been, she was afraid of who Vaggie might be now and that she'd never really believed in Charlie at all.

Charlie was angry at the thought that Vaggie didn't think she would've accepted her. The idea of not really being understood or trusted by Vaggie, that's what hurt.

And it goes against everything Lute and Adam are, Charlie actually caring about sinners while knowing what they've done- about an exorcist after finding out who they'd been- really trusting that people can change. Lute and Adam hear her say it and see her stand up for it and they just want her to shut up and die

again though, no shit she was going to stick with Vaggie after the truth came out, in the end. Once she had a moment to take a breath and step out of her head long enough for a reality check

Vaggie didn’t say to Charlie what she'd done or who she'd been. But she’s been and keeps doing what she can to follow that idea, unvoiced, from that day when she couldn’t kill a sinner- something Charlie didn't know about but now knows must have happened- A final death means no second chance and no worth as a person, but Vaggie didn’t think that, even before meeting Charlie she didn't think that.

She's always been on Charlie's side. They were on the same side before they ever set eyes on each other. All this time, for three whole years, and now she's off to go find a way to protect everything they've built together.

"-words are cheap, but actions, they speak the truth"

Charlie never really stopped trusting her. Maybe she wondered if she should, but even then, she had Vaggie go to Carmilla to find the key that might save them all.

"She killed an exorcist in the last extermination. She knows how they can be harmed."

"But… I- I didn't even know that was possible."

"If you did, would you have told me?"

So Charlie asked. A pretty painful thing to say- and she said it even as she sent an angel to go find out a way to hurt other angels.

She DID trust that Vaggie WOULD tell her.

The irony of all this happening thanks to Adam and Lute trying to keep it from happening, and all of it leading up to Vaggie getting back part of what they took from her, because now she doesn't need them or heaven to be an angel anymore.

Charlie has faith in her. Enough to send her off on an important mission even after Vaggie hurt her- and send her right to the person who end up helping Vaggie get back her wings.

“The rules are shades of gray when you don’t do as you say”

Vaggie’s new fucking wings are gray when Lute sees them. When Vaggie’s standing over her, sparing her life, her wings and that one, fucking unexplained stripe separating her from the other exorcists, all of it is GRAY.

That visual gut punch of, you’re. Fucking. Wrong. You’re wrong about sinners, you’re wrong about supposedly protecting heaven, you’re wrong thinking you can just DO this shit. That imagery of an angel who DIDN’T stay in the sky because she DIDN’T think being angel meant everything she did had to be right- who’s here in hell, trying to protect sinners from heaven’s slaughter-

And Lute wanted Vaggie to “correct” HER “mistake”? Vaggie’s???

That’s Lute, admitting that people in hell can get second chances and make up for what they did. Admitting that “Sinful filth” like Vaggie can be redeemed in some way, by following Lute’s version of what’s right.

But wasn’t her and Adam’s whole thing the idea of blowing your shot? Getting no other chance after it?  

Oh yeah. Vaggie doesn’t believe that though. Not for sinners like her, not for angels like her.

She let’s Lute live. She does it to make Lute suffer, but there are a lot of ways to make someone suffer- an eye for an eye for example- and Vaggie chooses the one that doesn’t hurt Lute more than it has to, that leaves her alive, and leaves Lute’s suffering to be something completely of Lute’s own making (a HELL of Lute's own making, if you will) (Lute choosing to tear her OWN arm off to continue the fight-).

She's totally dismissive of the woman who was just going after her remaining eye like a dog after a bone.

Why is it that nothing Adam and Lute to do her matters?

Why don’t THEY matter to her at all?

Walking right past them, being so done with them up in heaven, not caving to the blackmail, only being worried about Charlie afterwards, not letting that crack in their relationship stop her from doing what she can for their hotel, Lute threatening to take her other eye and BLIND her just making her snark- even the vague threat to Charlie only gives Vaggie the oomf she needed to defend herself.

“Pathetic” she calls Lute. She’s right- they’re so pathetic, both them, Adam and Lute. They’re so scared of being wrong. So pissy over the idea of being less than great and perfect.

It breaks them. Adam’s last words are him having a meltdown in the face of not actually being hot shit. Where’s his respect, he wails, they should all be worshiping him! But they’re not. One of his random decedents stabs him to death because he would’ve done the same to her, and one of the last things he hears is Vaggie- the fuck up, the traitor, his former grumpy top girl Vagina- whooping with glee as he dies.

And Lute lives knowing that could’ve been her, too.

If it wasn't for Vaggie.

Being not all that didn’t break Vaggie. Finding out she was wrong got her to stop and think and change, not run straight on blindly into a fight that ends up with her (with HIM) dead.

Why does she go from terrified of Lute and Adam, to dismissive and annoyed and just all around not caring about them at all?

They gave up all her respect for them when they demanded the death of a child.

The father of humanity wanted a child killed. A helpless, whimpering kid, sacrificed to his ego and bruised pride, and for shits and giggles. His first lieutenant saw failing to do so as a sin worthy of hell. All this over a child. How could she ever take them seriously after that.  

She came down from high and chased the child and held a blade over them on divine command.

Then, somehow, she saw the HORNS in her own shadow above them- even though she wasn’t WEARING her MASK, and she stopped.

She was her own messenger angel.

She chose to give the child mercy, and became the sacrifice herself.

Vaggie stuck it to the man. Didn’t steal that life. And, terrified of what would happen to her next, acted selflessly. The same thing that got her left behind in hell should have earned her place in heaven, according to Adam-

heaven was shit to her though. Made her into a soldier. Sent her to kill and kill and kill. Taught her trust on the battlefield- in heaven, of all fucking places-

Timeline wise we see her very first smile when she meets Charlie. When a stranger does- again- the bare minimum for someone else.

When she’s back up in heaven later she isn’t wistful, just angry, uncomfortable, annoyed. She isn’t happy there. It’s not home to her, like her and Charlie’s room back at the hotel is. Why should it be? What good did she ever find in herself up there?

Down here though, she's happy. Hell is where her heaven started. So I guess in the end, she did find what she’d earned after all. Or it, Charlie, found her.

When “The rules are shades of gray…”

Sometimes they’re wrong, and you have to break them.  

People like Lute and Adam would rather crack under the pressure and die instead, but not Vaggie. They're out for blood. She's out for love.

Sucks to be them~

[p4nishers]

there's something i need to say and yall can boo me for it but deep in my heart i'll always know i'm correct: crowley already forgave aziraphale. like already would take him back at one flutter of his eyelashes. that's all.

[teaboot]

(I'm a security guard.)

[ofekma]

"noo but this time it's different! Our antisemitism is morally justified! We really do have a good reason to hate the jews!" - every antisemic person at any point in history.

[inkskinned]

it is hard to explain without sounding vain or stupid - but the more attractive others find you, the more you're allowed to do. the easier your life is.

i have been on both sides of this. i am queer and cuban. i grew up poor. for a long time i didn't know "how" to dress - and i still don't. i make my sister pick out any important outfits. i have adhd in spades: i was never "cool and quiet", i was the weird kid who didn't understand how "normal" people behave. i was bullied so hard that the "social outcasts" wouldn't even talk to me.

i got my teeth straightened. i cut my hair and learned how to style it. i got into makeup. it didn't matter, at first, if i actually liked what i was doing - it mattered how people responded to it. like a magic trick; the right dress and winged eyeliner and suddenly i was no longer too weird for all of it. i could wear the ugly pokemon shirt and it was just "ironic" or a "cute interest."

when i am seen as pretty, people listen. they laugh at my jokes. they allow me to be weird and a little spacey. i can trust that if i need something, people will generally help me. privilege suddenly rushes in: pretty does buy things. pretty people get treated more gently.

i am the same ugly little girl, is the thing. still odd. still not-quite-fitting-in. still scrambling. still angry and afraid and full of bad things. of course it became my obsession. of course i stopped eating. i had seen, in real time, the exact way it could change my life - simply always be perfect, and things can be easy. people will "overlook" all the other things. i used to have panic attacks at the idea others would see me without makeup - what would they think? even for a simple friend hangout, i'd spend a few hours getting ready. after all, it seemed so obvious to me: these people liked me because i was pretty.

i worry about how much i'm being a bad activist: i understand that "pretty" is determined by white, het, cis, able-bodied hegemonies. if i was really an ally, wouldn't i rally against all of this? recently there's been a "clean girl" trend which copies latinx aesthetics: dark slicked-back hair, hoop earrings. i almost never wear my hair like that; i can hear the middle school guidance counsellor advising me that i might fare better if i toned it down on the culture.

the problem is that i can take pretty on and off. that i have seen how different my life is on a day where i try and a day where i don't. i told my therapist i want to believe the difference is confidence, but it's not. and when you have seen it, you can't unsee it. it lives inside your brain. it rots there; taunting. i get rewarded for following the rules. i am punished for breaking them. end of story.

pretty people can get what they want. pretty people can feel confident without others asking where they got their nerve from. pretty people can be weird and different. pretty people get to have emotions; it's different when they get aggressive, it's pretty when they cry with frustration.

of course people care about this. of course it has crawled into you. of course you want to be seen as attractive. it's not vanity: it's self-preservation.

[marzipanandminutiae]

the increasingly casual nature of everyday clothing in mainstream western culture has heightened our susceptibility to Oops All Evening Gowns Syndrome- that is, the willingness to believe that literally any relatively nice dress from before the 1920s was formalwear -because a party/ball is the only context in which we can imagine wearing gowns like that

in this essay I will not, because my nose is very stuffed up and I am Annoyed

[canisalbus]

what kind of hobbies does machete have, and is there any artist, musical or visual, that he likes in particular?

He's an avid reader and has an impressive personal library. Crowds and big public events aren't his thing but he enjoys going to theatre and opera occasionally. He commissions and collects art, I'd like to believe he's a patron to at least a couple of painters and sculptors. If I had to pick one artist to be his favorite, I think it might be an obvious choice but I'd have to go with Caravaggio, a contemporary of his.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

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[fishofthewoods]

Oh my god I woke up this morning and my Stardew Valley meta post had almost 150 notes????? Hello?????????? Anyways I started writing this last night because @moon-is-pretty-tonight left nice tags on the original so thank you so much!!

We know from the starting scenes of the game that the farmer's grandfather loved Stardew Valley. So why did he leave? Pelican Town is a good place to grow old; George and Evelyn are just fine. It's a fine place to raise a kid, but maybe he just wanted to raise his child closer to real schools and other children.

Or maybe, just maybe, he understood.

Was there a day when he was in his thirties where he looked at his friends and realized they weren't like him? That he could run faster than them, work longer, explore deeper into the hidden places of the valley?

Was there a day when he went to the wizard to ask him for help, for knowledge if nothing else? Did he learn then that his family was different? Special? Chosen? And how did he react? He couldn't possibly raise a child in the valley if they would be as strange and fey as him. He had to leave. There was no other way.

But years later, on his deathbed, did he regret that choice?

Is that why he gave the farmer the letter?

Is that why they went back home?

When the farmer steps off the bus that first day, the valley is still on the cusp of winter, just barely tipping over into spring. The flowers are starting to bloom, but a chill still hangs in the air. As soon as the farmer's boots touch the soil there's a change. The air gets warmer. The trees get greener. Not by too much, not all at once, but it changes.

The junimos watch the farmer as they do their work. They're new to farming, but take to it with frightening speed; their first batch of crops is perfect. None of the townsfolk tell them that parsnips don't normally grow in less than a week, that cauliflowers don't grow to be ten feet tall, that fairies don't visit when the sun goes down and grow potatoes and beans and tulips overnight. The junimos talk amongst themselves in their strange, wild language, and agree: this is the one. They're back. The valley recognizes its own, even when they've left for a generation. The farmers have come home.

Things change fast in the valley. The community center, empty and decrepit for so many years, is rejuvenated. (Lewis says it was abandoned only a few weeks after the farmer's grandfather left. Strange coincidence, he says, that it both came and went with the farmer's family.) The mines and the quarry, similarly abandoned, are explored for the first time in ages. The town becomes cleaner, brighter, more vibrant, happier.

And it is happier. Not just the environment, but the people. It's the talk of the town for weeks when Haley does her first closet purge. Leah's art show in the town square is a huge success. Shane's smiling for the first time since he moved to the valley. All of them, when asked, say it's all thanks to the farmer.

People love to ask why Lewis didn't fix the community center on his own. Why Willy never repaired the boat to ginger island. Why Abigail or Marlon never went down to fix the elevator in the mines, or why Clint didn't fix the minecarts.

But isn't it so much more interesting to ask how those things were there in the first place? How they got so broken down? If the stories the townspeople tell are true, the valley was once a beautiful place, flourishing and full of life; why did that change? When did it change?

Was it when the farmer's grandfather, the locus of the valley, its chosen representative, left town?

And if so, what happens when the farmer comes back?