#i also love the people who say he never improvs anymore...as if they've seen the scripts 😂😂😂

[everyone-has-their-story]

The way Rudy can never win with the obx fanbase...like people love to tear him apart no matter what the man does.

[djevelbl]

PぇあせたーLSぼいTくPぢっRSぎおなーふぇあろFへーっPぇあぜPーえあZDーえっせ I forgot to change language but, PLEASE talk about cups irrational fear of help/therapy, I love your long ass essays plz🔥🔥

This is the thing - IM!Cup is very closed-minded when it comes to new things; change has never been a benevolent mistress to him, after all. Which is understandable - you close off from the things that hurt you so they can't happen again, and while that's a survival tactic and fine on its own, the goal of therapy is to work on yourself and find a way to live life the best you can manage. And Cuphead is not living, but surviving. There's a difference. He's constantly paranoid, looking over his shoulder in case him and Mugs need to run immediately, he's in vigil 24/7 (does this man fucking sleep? Maybe, remains to be seen) so nobody can sneak up on them, even if they have money from the Devil (and it doesn't sound like a negligible amount either) he doesn't seem keen on spending it - probably 'cuz that's all they have in terms of monetary gain. He's been trained into these instincts and second-nature acts that he performs like a ritual every day - have you seen him relaxed? - and these things take a toll on you; there's a reason being on "survival mode" for prolonged periods of time is fucking dangerous - our bodies ain't made for that. He's also just. Scared of spilling his guts out, of being vulnerable and being taken advantage of - "that's happened already three times, who's to say it won't happen many more?" - as he seeks help; this is a learning curve, understanding that one needs help and that they're in a comfortable enough position to seek it out and get it ain't gonna come naturally to a lotta folks, especially if they've been doing the shit he's been doing for the past decade.

When he looks in the mirror he doesn't see what we see: in our eyes, Cuphead is a victim of sorts - a victim turned victimizer, but a victim nonetheless - who's hand has been forced for a decade into all sorts of nefarious acts and activities, who wakes up only to try and keep on going for his brother's sake. We think of Cuphead as a brave yet vulnerable man, somebody who's been beaten to the ground day in and day out, loyal to a fault, a golden heart who, given the chance, wouldn't hurt anybody who didn't raise their hand against him first. When he looks in the mirror, all he sees is a monster. And typically, people don't like monsters.

People don't help monsters, the undesirables, the unworthy - in his mind therapy isn't for "somebody like him" and it ain't hard to see what that means to him: a villain, a monster, a killer and maybe, just maybe, someone worse than the Devil. He doesn't think himself worthy of help, because all he sees in his eyes is the flash of demon-blood red, in his hands the blood he's spilled, in his face a perpetually furrowed brow and pursed lip - and he's forgotten that those features are a mask. When he looks in the mirror he sees what the Devil has sharpened him into, and not what he actually is. Everybody is deserving of help and improvement, yet Cup doesn't want it because for it he needs to be vulnerable - he isn't that, not anymore. He's quick on the uptake and knows how to learn his lessons, so he wouldn't let himself be deconstructed like a frog on science class - he isn't some shrink's little lab rat, he won't be metaphorically (but it ain't gonna feel all that metaphorical) vivisected for what he would probably percieve as the entertainment of anybody. He's not stupid, he's not blind - yet he is paranoid and overly carefull, he needs to be, and these things get in the way of him getting help. He doesn't fully recognize that he's got people on his corner - for the longest time it had been only him and Mugs, and he's the protector, the muscle of their little duo. He's the one to defend Mugs, to keep his hands as clean from the carnage as their situation would allow; he's the intimidating one, the brother willing to be the villain so the other can sleep semi-peacefully at night - after all, if Mugs isn't happy, is Cup doing his job correctly?

He's never had somebody go to bat for him, so therapy is an even stranger concept - and y'know that paranoia has people seeing demons in the bushes and witches in the trees.

[nyrhtak04]

Inside Out 2

This is going to be pretty long, I think. Spoilers ahead.

I went to go see this with my siblings earlier this evening and oh. my. goodness. IT. WAS. AMAZING!!!

I did not go into it with high expectations, expecting another "first draft" movie. But no. It actually felt like a PIXAR movie.

Okay, the new emotions:

Anxiety: My immediate new favorite character. I love her wacky design and her VA (wasn't sure how Maya Hawke would do, but I absolutely ADORED her here). Also, as someone with GAD, she is my default emotion. I couldn't even hate her when she became the primary antagonist. And that panic attack scene. like.

Envy: Adorable. That's all I have to say. just. adorable. Again, character design and VA were perfect. I was kind of surprised that she was such a soft character. Almost seemed more like "emulation" or "admiration" than "envy." Wonder if they'll explore the harder/darker side of envy later I have only seen it once, so I could just be forgetting a part. I think there may have been a part where Envy caused Riley to side with the Firehawks. Anyway.

Ennui: Enjoyable character. Got a few laughs. Character design is fun like the others. I don't have strong opinions about them. I liked them.

Embarrassment: I liked the character design. "He's not big on eye contact or touching." Same dude. same. I was in physical pain whenever he was on screen, but I think that was the point. Also his teaming up with and hiding Sadness was so cute/sweet. Big marshmallow.

I've heard that guilt/shame were supposed to be involved. I would have loved this, but I can see how that might have made the movie a little too busy.

Now, the movie itself:

Some parts were rushed, but since this is a movie about anxiety, I'm not mad. Some worldbuilding parts could have been fleshed out more; it's only an hour and a half long, they could have made it a bit longer without it becoming tedious. Just linger on a few scenes a little.

Riley was ridiculously relatable. I mean, she always was, but this movie it's like they got footage of me. Except I got those feelings/thought processes a lot earlier than 13 and they've never gone away (if anything, they're getting worse. thanks burnout).

As someone who finds secondhand embarrassment to be physically painful, I spent most of the movie with my hands over my face. At one point (I think during the secrets vault) I slid down in my chair because I couldn't take it anymore. The squeaks and shrieks I had to keep quiet. I tell you.

As painful as those parts were, they were still cathartic. I felt seen. Having interests intended for much younger people. Being super conscientious about those interests and pretty much everything else to the point of missing the conversation. Constantly monitoring myself and being terrified that if I didn't I would end up alone. The conflicting self-images. The phrase of Riley's anxiety-driven self being "I'm not good enough" and anxiety being confused and trying to spin it as "just means we have room to improve" (or something like that). The panic attack. Oh my gosh the panic attack was perfect. The whirlwind and simultaneous paralysis. This movie made me cry so many times.

I am obsessed with this movie and will probably post a lot of art about it.

[kuvvydraws]

I'm not sure if you've answered this question already, but I'm honestly very curious- why do you write fanfiction? I certainly enjoy it as much as you and have written a few things of my own, but I know it can be quite a personal topic for many writers. If it's too personal for you, don't feel any pressure to answer, but it's always interesting to see the writer's perspective outside of the story they've written :). I hope you understand what I'm trying to say-

Hey!

I actually enjoy the words and the rush your brain gets when they join without effort to create a reality.

Now, let me break that down XD

I've always had a book in my hands as far as my memory goes. My dad used to read to me when I was very little and from the second I could do it on my own, that was the best thing ever (yes, that means when I was punished for doing some shit, my books were taken away and I had to sneak them into my schoolbag and read in class like a heathen).

Not only I enjoyed books but I always found myself wanting to partake in the stories, and my brain was always running with the words and the scenes. (I discovered during my teenage years that brains have different ways to process thoughts and mine did it in words, so writing just sort of came naturally to me at that point in my life).

I discovered ffnet when I was 12, I think, but I had tried my hand at original works (that is, about five or six starts of different novels that never saw the light) and some "fanfiction" (about Nightmare Before Christmas because I had a big ass crush on Jack and I unassumingly created my first xReader ever) without knowing what the hell I was doing.

I just knew I wanted to write stuff and I did as much.

The thing is, I introduced one of my friends, who also loved to read and write, to ffnet, and we started writing together. The first thing we wrote was a Sesshomaru x OC fic, the second one was a Sasori x OC fic, and we dipped out toes into some Kuroshitsuji x OC...... all of them handwritten stories we promised we would type in a computer eventually (we didn't, they were horrible [I still have the notebooks we used for each of them and they are cringey as fuck]).

But we wrote for ourselves and we were happy like that.

So we were rampant and wild and having the best time. Back then I still wrote in Spanish (because I hardly knew any English and I didn't care for it), and I remember mixing Spain's Spanish with the ones from South America because obviously the percentage of writers in ffnet who used a different "dialect" Spanish was huge if you compare a single, tiny country with a whole continent.

At the same time I wrote with my friend, I wrote for myself. Naruto, Kuroshitsuji, Bleach, Hetalia.... And I met so many people, nice people, who loved my works (they were random fics, all of them x OC because I didn't know x Reader ones were a thing -they weren't at that time, and x Reader are harder to write in Spanish because all the words and pronouns are gendered one way or another-) and I got so much enjoyment from sharing them.

The thing about books I love the most is the fact that you can convey so many emotions with a few symbols, and you can create worlds out of ink and you can change views and inspire others. So, if none of my dumbass teenage novels were to roam the word, I still could share, in a free, open and fast way, my words with others.

Again, I was going to write them with or without posting them because I found -and still find- great pleasure when a scene creates itself in your brain and all you have to do to make it real is to write it down. (Sometimes my brain still does this and even when I'm daydreaming, my imagination is "written, described and dialogued" as if someone was reading a novel out loud. It makes writing so much easier).

And then I got hate.

I somehow had managed to miss all of the fandom drama that's so toxic in the internet because I didn't bother to interact with anyone in the fandoms beyond the reviews they left in my fics, and ffnet has a -sort of- specific search engine to help you find whatever you want, so I could never willingly find the "problematic stuff" because I was literally not trying to find it.

The hate comment I got was anonymous and very specific about everything that was wrong in a particular fic I had just updated -from plot and characterization to grammar and continuity-, and later on I discovered it came from a couple of authors who shared an account and who I admired greatly for their works. Turns out they were out for blood and hating on every fic that had updated that week and that had any members of their OTP shipped with some other character. (It was a Hetalia fanfic, I was writing SpUK and they were pro FrUk, if anyone is interested).

I was contacted by some other authors asking about this because they had gone through the very same thing -same specific hate, same hate comment- and I remember not giving a fuck.

I was 16 when I got the hate, writing for fun and trying to find a way to go through my shitty highschool days without falling into the black out of depression that haunted me. I remember not wanting to write anything anymore, leaving a fic I was very invested in writing to gather dust and rot in the forgotten folders of my computer because every time I tried to get on with it and progress, it felt wrong.

That thing I said about words just happening? It stopped. My brain was silent as a grave and trying to get my words out became painful. I remember struggling to even write regular project for my school.

I kept reading, of course -it was my only comfort and I really, really didn't want to give up on it-, but I abandoned the fandoms I enjoyed so much before. My new focus became the sci-fi, and I remember being hooked on Predator. Imagine my joy when I discovered there were thousands of works from that fandom! I was extasic.

Problem? They were written in English.

I didn't know shit about English besides being a language I was supposed to handle in school, memorize the unreasonably spelt words that were pronounced illogically regarding the fucking spelling and the stupid ass irregular verbs.

But I learnt English because I wanted a hot piece of alien ass XD

Back to the topic of fanfics, I still roamed ffnet, keeping 15 tabs open and reading until 5 am... But now there was a world of possiblities in front of me because of course everyone on this goddamn Earth writes in English.

So, for the next years I did that, and my words didn't come. It was fine, tho, because I had so many new things to read.

It wasn't until fall of 2018 that I dabbed into the idea of maybe considering to perhaps give writing a try again????? I was neck deep into Undertale -still am, I'm a shameless skeleton fucker and there's no cure for that shit- and its many AU's and somehow I had managed to avoid fandom wars again, so my brain started toying with words... The same way it worked with novels: I got myself into the fics other people wrote (this is so much easier to do with x Reader fics, and I'm so happy about that and the massive boom they had just when Undertale came out, you can't even understand it).

So I kept doing my shit and daydreaming about skeletons and ribs and ecto-stuff for a very long time. It was kinda reassuring and nice to see other writers projecting on their x Readers so much because that's what I had done before.

And then Good Omens happened.

As I've said before, I actually discovered Gomens back in 2012 and it is, to the date, the worst translation to Spanish I've seen in my entire life to this date. And, despite it, I fell in love with it.

Now, barely in 2019, my dad gets Amazon Prime and the first thing he fucking sees is the font of Gomens on the screen. I had fangirled hard about Gomens in book version, so much and so annoyingly that I wouldn't leave my dad alone until he gave it a chance. It's the only book my father hasn't finished because the translation is that bad. He hates it.

Yet.

The particular font they use for the show is the same from the book's title. My dad of course recognized it immediately and knew I would want in on the news.

I confess I watched Gomens the show at least seven times before giving it a break because I liked it so much and the novel was so fucking good and it's honest to God the best adaptation I've ever seen to the screen. It's so good I'm fucking sure I was crying actual tears after watching it for the first time because my dreams and all the feelings that book had given me over the years and the many re-reads were "true" and so well done and it reached deep into my heart.

And then, for the first time in six years, my words came back.

Another thing Good Omens has given me, I have to say.

I don't know if I can stress this enough, but just imagine spending six years of radio silence, sending longing stares to the void and hoping to see something yours returning back, something you've lost and you're not sure you're getting back, something you think you don't need or want but that would be nice to have again. If only. You can live without that something, and no one but you cares about it, and it's not that big of a deal and-

Then you see a spark in the dark.

My words came back.

They weren't in Spanish, and it was hard to manage them at first, only being able to listen to them in short bursts over long periods of time.

But they were my words and they were back.

Writing is still hard, and I have a lot of work to do to improve my skills, to get them not only back but to refine them because I'm not writing in my native language and all I know is what I've learnt from other authors and their knowledge. I project a lot on my projects -I don't intend to stop because it's such a relief, the biggest scape from reality I get by doing so; it helps me deal with my problems, it gives me a break and a way to take a breath when I can't keep going...

Fanfics are where I can say what I want to say to the world in the most honest way, and that allows me to be me, and to express myself and indulge in the fantasies I dream about without having to force myself to think of them over and over and over. I can just sit back and enjoy content I know I like without being judged for it.

I can fucking make that content, too.

Writing feels like home, even if sometimes I still struggle, if I can't find my words or the expression is not quite like that in English, or if I can't find the words or if I'm suffering a block... because there's nothing scarier and more free than a blank page ready to be written.