#feel free to explain why

[angstydiaz]

SINCE S6 IS COMING TO A CLOSE IMBACK WITH MORE POLLS

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Reasons Autistic People May Over Explain When Communicating

Trauma

Historic gaslighting experiences

Neurotypical bias in communication exchanges

Masking

Neurotypical misinterpretation of autistic communications despite autistic efforts

Learning what others do not believe you meant exactly what you said

Anxiety

Littlepuddins.ie

[noodles-and-tea]

how do you get such warm colors? they're so bright and beautiful

whenever I do digital art it gets all muddled or too dark

I find playing around with different coloured overlays (and sometimes using the multiply as well) adds not only warmth but also a lot of depth - even on flat colours!

I hope that was helpful!!!

[stormsthatrage]

Have a Bleach extended-winter-war time-travel-fix-it idea. In this AU Kaien's death happened before the whole turn-back-the-pendulum arc. (Yes, another Bleach time-travel AU, I know, shut up.)

As Ichigo and Kisuke are planning to go back to the past, Kisuke makes sure to emphasize to Ichigo that they have to protect Shiba Kaien. Apparently, it's of the utmost importance.

Ichigo doesn't know exactly how Kaien's continued well-being plays into saving the future. Kisuke never really explains it, or gives him a straight answer when he asks. But Ichigo knows that the Shiba Clan-Head carried a great deal of political power, and Ichigo also knows that Kaien -- according to Kukaku and Rukia -- was highly competent, incredibly noble, and fundamentally kind. It's not exactly unintuitive that a person like that could be important to bringing down Aizen.

So Ichigo listens, when Kisuke tells him to protect Shiba Kaien. He memorizes how Kaien died in the original timeline. He's attentive as Kisuke reiterates for the thousandth time that Aizen will keep trying to assassinate Kaien until he succeeds. He takes notes when Kisuke hypothesizes about what Aizen's various assassination attempts might look like -- poison during a meal, hired assassins at night, an ambush during a mission.

Ichigo ingrains the assignment into his core: protect Shiba Kaien, because if Kaien falls, the mission fails.

So when Kisuke slips a paralytic into Ichigo's tea and places Ichigo in the middle of the time-travel kido array and drains the entirety of his own spiritual energy to activate the array, a sacrifice that Ichigo never would have agreed to--

Well. The first thing Ichigo does when he arrives back in the past, numb and alone and only able to function by focusing on the duty that is his purpose -- is track down Shiba Kaien.

After all, if Ichigo is going to kill Aizen -- and he is, no matter what it takes -- he needs to keep Kaien alive.

Ichigo goes straight to the Shiba family grounds. In true Shiba fashion, they accept him immediately as family. They tend to his wounds and give him a meal and welcome him home. They let him get away with his weak excuses and explanations, and they defend his presence to the rest of Soul Society.

Kaien, in accordance with everything Ichigo has heard about the man, personally takes the newest addition to the family under his wing.

Ichigo's plans to deal with Aizen take shape around his need to keep an eye on Kaien.

Ichigo, instead of running as far and fast as he can from the Shiba clan, accepts the offer to live in the Shiba compound. He gets to know every clan member and retainer, subtly vetting for traitors. He sleeps in a room near Kaien's, allowing him to both guard against assassins at night and place warding runes around Kaien's door without having to worry about being caught somewhere he has no business being.

He joins the Court Guard in the 13th division instead of the 5th, because the only real way to protect Kaien on a mission is to be there with him. Ichigo knows that if there's an ambush, or if the mission details have been tampered with, he'll be more than enough fire power to get Kaien out of it. And it's easy to always get paired with Kaien; Kaien -- reliably taking every opportunity to hover around Ichigo that he's offered -- does most of the work, leveraging his status as lieutenant and Ichigo's combat ability to keep them together.

Ichigo finds himself frequently taking meals with Kaien and Kaien's friends. Kaien always invites Ichigo, and Ichigo accepts so he can subtly check the food for poison.

(Ichigo does not tell Kaien about Aizen. Ichigo is still unsure what Kaien's role is in the whole fight, and in the meantime, telling him about Aizen is a sure way to get him killed.)

Things heat up. Ichigo prevents both Miyako and Kaien's death, killing Metastacia before it can hurt anyone. Ichigo's shadow war against Aizen gets more intense. Ichigo sneaks out regularly to dismantle Aizen's illusions, destroy his labs, and attack his network of power, slowly weakening him.

Ichigo waits for the assassination attempts against Kaien, but they don't come, even several weeks after Metastacia fails. Ichigo takes it as a sign that he's got Aizen distracted.

Things continue for a while. Ichigo falls into a strange routine.

(And Ichigo tries not to break, seeing so many of his loved ones alive and unknowing of him. It is agony, to be around Shunsui, who is not his mentor, and the Visored, who are neither visored nor pack.

But the worst is when Captains Urahara and Shihouin catch on to his war against Aizen. He finds himself working with them as allies.

Allies. Mere allies, instead of --

Well. Not that it matters anymore.

All that matters is his duty.)

Time passes. Aizen weakens. There are no attempts on Kaien's life yet.

And then Aizen's web has unraveled enough for Ichigo to attack.

It's a long battle. It's a bloody battle. It's a very public battle.

Ichigo wins.

And it's only after it's all over -- after Aizen's crimes are revealed and Soul Society is at peace and the future is saved; after Ichigo finds himself still alive and adrift, with nothing left obligating him to keep going and everything telling him to give up; as Kaien refuses to leave Ichigo alone and escorts him to regular appointments with Unohana and forces him to talk about the truth of his past --

It's only then that it clicks.

Ichigo is whispering secrets about the future into Kaien's chest, Kaien's arms wrapped tight around him, when Ichigo confesses that he messed up, that he put the Shiba clan in unnecessary danger. Ichigo tells Kaien about his death in the original timeline. He talks about how Kisuke told him that in this timeline, Aizen would try and kill Kaien again if the first attempt failed. Ichigo promises desperately that he never would have sought out the family -- would have kept the danger far, far away from them -- if he hadn't thought he had to watch Kaien's movements so closely.

And Ichigo admits that Aizen never actually tried again. Ichigo admits that he and Kisuke miscalculated, that Ichigo brought danger to the Shiba's doorstep for nothing.

It happens like this:

First, the words leave his lips, "Kisuke" and "miscalculated" in the same sentence. Hearing himself say it lays bare the absurdity of its premise.

Then, Kaien draws away slightly, to look Ichigo in the eyes. Ichigo sees, plain on Kaien's face, a terrible, damning gratefulness.

Then, Kaien says -- fierce and defiant in the face of what could have been -- "I am so glad you came home."

And it clicks. At last, Kisuke's final manipulation reveals itself to Ichigo's eyes.

The emotions flash through him: the sting of betrayal; a flavor of love that bursts across his tastebuds as hurt; a familiar brand of exasperation that, a split second later, has his knees giving out under the weight of old pain made fresh.

Kaien catches Ichigo before he hits the ground and holds him as he shatters. And Ichigo can barely breathe through the knowledge that Kisuke would have been so smug to see them.

A sob rips itself from Ichigo's chest, and it's followed by another, and another.

Ichigo's older cousin holds him, in the home of their family, through it all.

_________

THE END except not really.

This must immediately be followed by a whole arc where Kaien, much to his own dismay, finds himself trying to hook Urahara up with his little cousin.

After all, Future-Urahara sent Ichigo to the Shiba clan. Future-Urahara tricked his little cousin into bypassing his own self-destructive tendencies to seek out family and love and support. Clearly, Urahara would actually be good for Ichigo.

And, you know, Ichigo clearly loves Younger-Urahara, judging by Ichigo's whole... well, everything, whenever the two interact.

(This whole matchmaking endeavor is made easier by the fact that 1) Kisuke is already infatuated, fascinated, and not a tiny-bit madly in love, and 2) Yoruichi is also, from the other end, trying to set Kisuke up with Ichigo.

This whole endeavor is made more difficult by the fact that 1) Ichigo is in denial that he loves this younger Kisuke since he never thought this younger Kisuke could also fall in love with him, 2) Kisuke is in denial that he loves Ichigo because that is a Shiba and he himself is a creepy low-born ex-assassin mad-scientist, and 3) neither Ichigo nor Kisuke know what it looks like when someone is interested in them.)

Poor Kaien. He succeeds eventually, but not before witnessing truly legendary social ineptitude.

[forgottenflickr]

I already posted before about this (and with this account too..) but seriously, please stop reposting stuff from this blog without crediting the original Flickr uploader in some form. It’s not hard, you can do it in a variety of ways on twitter. I can’t do anything about it, it’s just shitty

[fromtheseventhhell]

I have a question for people who fervently argue that Arya has no potential for politics but think that Sansa will be one of the main political characters, and I'm asking this seriously.

If Arya learning multiple languages, how to tell + detect lies, how to rule her face so she doesn't reveal her emotions, being able to blend into different situations, thinking quick on her feet, knowing the importance of gathering information, being someone who makes friends wherever she goes, convincing a FM to help free Northern prisoners and participating in a coup, etc. don't make Arya capable of participating in politics...what exactly is it that you think Sansa will be doing as a political figure?

[shadow-the-crow]

Because i'm bored and i want to show off my weird brain: Tma characters as numbers

Jon: 48

Martin: 13

Sasha: 38

Tim: 56

Elias: 89

Gertrude: 72

Not!Sasha: 91

Gerry: 85

Michael Shelley: 33

Michael the Distortion: 75,8

Mike Crew: 44

Basira: 76

Melanie: 49

Daisy: 39

Nikola: 34

Jurgen Leitner: 81

Agnes: 45

Jane Prentiss: 74

Peter Lukas: 86

[chronologicalerrors]

Crowley, Angels and Free Will: More Good Omens Meta

I’ve been thinking a lot about Crowley in the Land of Uz recently. Particularly this scene:

A: Come on! You're a little bit on our side. C: Not even the littlest. A: Well, you're not on Hell's side. C: I go along with Hell as far as I can. A: So whose side are you on? C: My side.

Until this point, although Crowley has never seemed particularly ideologically aligned with the other demons of Hell, we could assume that Crowley’s fondness for life on Earth was a gradual process. He and Aziraphale have come to appreciate the lifestyle (cars and restaurants and music and wine and houseplants and coffee and various aspects of human invention) and the life they had amongst the people, and each came to vastly prefer it to a life in their respective Head Offices. But here, in Uz, we find out that Crowley realised this a very, very long time ago. He’s already discovered the joys of some human delights, particularly the wine. And just look at how knowing his face is here when Aziraphale first tastes food:

That's the face of someone who's been doing this for a while...

This story takes place in 2500 BC. Crowley’s been on Earth for 1500 years or so, only bumping into Aziraphale very occasionally. It’s not known how long Crowley’s only been going along with Hell, but the suggestion is that he’s always been this way. Playing the part of the demon, all while making his own choices. This incident with Job clearly wasn’t the first time he impeded Hell’s plans. He’s been playing his own game since leaving Eden, probably.

The implication here is that he was never really on board with Hell from the start. He was cast out of Heaven for asking too many questions, but never really took to the idea of ‘the other side’, or sides in general. He’s always been on his own side, coming up with his own ideas. The Metatron, who evidently knew Crowley when he was an angel, says as much in the final episode:

Metatron: Ah, well, always did want to go his own way. Always asking damn fool questions, too.

Ever since he was an angel, Crowley was going his own way. He never particularly bought was Lucifer was selling, he just wanted the freedom to decide things for himself. As Crowley says, he never meant to fall. Heaven just couldn’t accommodate an angel who didn’t follow the rules. Hell isn’t the right place for him either, though - and he knows it. Over the years 'my side' has become 'our side', but he's never really aligned himself with Heaven or Hell:

So what’s going on with Crowley and why has he never fit in with either side? For my money, it’s because Crowley has free will. Something angels and demons aren’t supposed to have. Aziraphale says as much in their discussion in Edinburgh in 1827:

A: Look, I am good. You, I'm afraid, are evil. But people get a choice.

But Crowley isn’t evil, and has seemingly never been that way. He’s been an angel with too many questions, and a demon who wouldn’t kill goats or fire guns. He’s always exercised a right to choose how he behaves, what actions he takes. He tries to stop Aziraphale calling his actions 'nice', but he does indeed often choose to do good, even though he's technically a demon. Crowley does things because that’s what he wants to do.

Aziraphale is developing this way too. Angels aren’t supposed to do what they want – they’re supposed to do what God wants. But with Job, Aziraphale does what he thinks is just, even though it's not what he was supposed to do, for the first time. That’s the poignancy of their final conversation in Uz:

A: But what am I? C: You're just an angel who goes along with Heaven as far as he can.

Crowley was an angel like this once too. Aziraphale hasn’t yet broken away from Heaven, though. He’s not quite ready to go his own way, be on their own side, make his own choices. To choose Crowley. He will choose this eventually, but it’s been a more gradual process for him.

Crowley, though. He’s been like this since he was an angel. Which means – was Crowley created with free will? Was he made this way?

God plays an ineffable game of her own devising, after all...

[b4kuch1n]

making of a feathered thing

[salemontrial]

Why the FUCK didn't Sasha apologize to Quinni.

[onebizarrekai]

I've been going back and forth trying to decide whether I want to make the old ibvs oneshots be available on ao3 but every time I look at them I go into a state of shock at how… absolutely teenager they are

also this

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

What is Stimming?

Neurodiverse Journey

[flowery-laser-blasts]

So as of today, I am officially diagnosed with ADHD (I'll spare you all the details) and just now it hits me like... a LOT of things that happened in the past are now so much easier to explain. I also feel like I can finally be less hard and critical on myself as well (maybeIcanevenstarttolikemyselfwhoknows).

It just feels like a big load of pressure fell off my shoulders and I feel a little bit less directionless on what to do from here on out.

[sunnykeysmash]

Charlie: "Hey, uh, Dennis, uh, get to Frank as fast as you can. I have Malcolm and his dad."