#i am incapable of not rambling

[bambiraptorx]

4. 📡 Are there groups other than the Resistance? Are they on the same side?

19. ☀️ How has Raph changed from his past self?

31. 😵‍💫 How does Raph deal with stress?

(For the I’m Not Dead Yet AU)

A quick rundown of IMNDY for context: Raph dies in the bad timeline and gets sent back in time about eight years before canon (whether before the show or the movie i haven't decided yet). I'm kind of gonna focus on his original timeline for this post though.

4. 📡

Yes, the EPF is very much in play here as a tentative ally to the Resistance. However, the open distrust of yokai and mutants by many EPF agents means that they often clash. This is especially true when a few members started talking about how they would get rid of the non-humans after getting rid of the Krang, and while that talk was shut down pretty quick, the distrust on both sides remains. Members of both groups sometimes wonder if they would work better if completely separate.

After Raph's death, the two groups kinda drift apart, largely because the Resistance lost its central base in the attack that killed him and was primarily focused on defense rather than offense for several months to years afterward. (Also because they lost a LOT of people in that attack, not just him, and suddenly had much different amounts of available labor and needs to meet.)

There's also the prisoners in the Krang labor camps, who occasionally get used as bait, canon fodder, or hostages. They aren't an independent group, per say, more like pawns used by the Krang to manipulate people. By a few years into the war, there are more people krangified than not, so they have plenty of foot soldiers and instead often choose to toy with the remaining population.

19. ☀️

While he was still with the Resistance, Raph and Leo were effectively co-leaders, with Raph usually leading battles and Leo managing the ins and outs of keeping the Resistance alive, and then splitting other duties as necessary. They probably had to have a deep conversation at some point about why Leo wasn't taking his leadership role seriously at first (most likely in the first year or two of the invasion), with Raph realizing that it was largely rooted in Leo not wanting the family dynamic to change or to have to take responsibility for his siblings' lives.

When Raph goes back in time, he's dealing with his tween/early teen (slightly parentified) self, who's about two decades younger than him, and at a time in his younger self's life when Splinter was just starting to become more withdrawn and unavailable. While he was originally planning to avoid

31. 😵‍💫

In the bad timeline, Raph has a much stronger support structure when it comes to dealing with stress. Yeah, he's been fighting off aliens for his entire adult life, but he's had his family to support him. Even as quasi-leader of the Resistance, he isn't doing it alone and has Leo by his side. The Resistance is also much larger in its early years, so while there's a lot of people to take care of, there's a lot of people who can help.

After he goes back in time, he technically has a less stressful life, at least until he fully realizes that he will never make it back to his timeline, at which point he effectively starts grieving for everyone he's ever known, and starts developing a lot of unhealthy/destructive habits to cope with that.

Also a fun little tidbit about Donnie for anyone who actually read this far: he called it 'the invasion' for the ten/eleven years before Raph's death, at which point he started calling it 'the apocalypse' :)

[flying-fangirls]

Not to be an English major, but my genuine favorite part of Malevolent is how it handles its themes. Overall Malevolent tackles such profound and interesting ideas to chew on, but it's specifically the approach it takes to those ideas that really gets me going.

For example, one of the major themes across several seasons and characters is identity. The podcast asks pretty standard questions like "How do you define yourself?" and "How do others define you?" But it doesn't choose to stop there! It constantly expands on that idea, and it also asks things like "Which of those definitions is the 'real' you?" and "Are any of them right, are any of them wrong?" and "Is there even a singular definitive version of you?"

Malevolent works out from one idea and poses all these rich lines of discussion and questioning, and then just. Doesn't provide an answer! Or, at least, not a single, one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, it gives us multiple possibilities:

John's arc tells us that your identity is what you make— what you say, what you decide— and no one else's definition of you matters. Arthur's arc tells us that you can get stuck in a rigid, self-deprecating personal identity, so you need others' perspectives to help you see and love the real "you." Larson's story tells us that you do not have the right to selectively accept/deny parts of your identity and actions, and that others can see the whole of "you" whether or not you take accountability for it. Noel's story tells us that you can choose what parts of your past define you, and that leaving behind all the other versions of yourself can be beautiful and empowering. Kayne's story tells us that leaving behind other versions of yourself is akin to murder, killing off the pieces that you don't like and pretending like you've evolved past your own self. Yellow's arc tells us that your identity is fluid and can easily be influenced or manipulated by what others tell you, and by that point you've changed your own self-definition to something entirely new that can be just as true or untrue as the old you.

With all of these characters and with every other character throughout the show, we get a unique answer to the question "What is identity?" And if you look further at all the characters, you can break down their different arcs over the seasons and find even more answers just within that one character's development and story. And some of the answers we get correspond, and some of them contradict, and none of them are the right answer, and all of them are the right answer.

Malevolent takes one idea, and then it crafts an incredibly nuanced and humanistic exploration of said idea that adapts with respect to whatever situation or character it is applied to. And it uses this approach with all of its themes: identity, morality, guilt, grief, love, hope, etc.

Malevolent knows that life is messy, that people are complicated and contradictory and diverse and ever-changing, that no part of the universe or humanity can ever be explained or defined in a simple manner. Malevolent knows all that, and it wants to help us understand that too.

Malevolent shows us that nothing can ever be easily understood or answered, and it shows us that that fact is beautiful.

[gay-otlc]

When people say they struggle with keeping track of all the tone tags (the ones like /j or /gen), everyone who disregards that by responding "it's just memorizing some abbreviations/acronyms, it's not that hard, stop complaining" is ableist and a fucking hypocrite. If you're going to advocate for accessibility, advocate for accessibility for all of us.

You can't claim to be an ally to neurodivergent and disabled people and then shit on us for our symptoms. If you actually care about helping us, why aren't you listening when we say we struggle with something? It's never okay to tell disabled people they should be able to do something they can't, that it's not that hard, but it's especially not okay if you do so while pretending to support disabled people.

Also, in addition to the "it's not that hard" statement being ableist, it's utter bullshit. There are so many tone tags to keep track of and memorize. I did a quick google search and one of my top results had ninety one tone tags. That's a lot. That's probably a lot even for a neurotypical person, and I'm not a neurotypical person. I struggle to remember a lot of basic, necessary tasks, so I really can't memorize ninety one tone tags.

Especially when some of them are incredibly ambiguous- only one letter? Acronyms or abbreviations at least give you some clues, one letter tone tags are so incredibly confusing. Like, what does /t mean? There are a lot of words that start with T! (This is a rhetorical question. I know /t means "teasing," but I only know the answer because figuring that out was a memorably frustrating experience.)

And /t is just one example of a tone tag I learned because I kept seeing it in conversation and not understanding and being really confused and frustrated. I can't tell you the number of times I've been messaging someone on discord, and they say something with a tone tag I don't recognize, and I just open a new tab to google the meaning, which is where I find lists like the one above. I usually rely on google instead of asking the person what they meant, because I feel stupid and embarrassed for not knowing this code that everyone else seemingly gets.

Which is exactly how it feels when I don't understand someone's tone in real life! Confused and frustrated and ashamed. And tone tags were supposed to help neurodivergent and disabled people not feel that way, so I don't know how we reached a point where they cause those feelings in many of us.

I can't deny that tone tags are a useful accessibility tool for some. If you find them helpful, it's genuinely good that you have that resource. But they're not accessible for all of us. It's incorrect to act like tone tags are a perfect way to communicate, and it's ableist to disregard our struggles with them and tell us to just try harder.

Either listen to those of us who say they have trouble understanding tone tags, or stop pretending you actually give a shit about accessibility.

[mimi123meg]

White Collar is insane to me, yes I understand that I have an unhealthy obsession with late 2000s/early 2010s network television but White Collar is objectively the strangest one of the bunch to be obsessed with tbh. Like Neal Caffrey on paper is not an interesting guy and he is frankly annoying, but like Matthew Bomer was crazy for this, he is so fucking good at playing him and making him a character you want to root for. Neal Caffrey is the worst but he wants to be good so badly, he is a slave to his emotions but he tries so hard to be rational, he thinks he's the best but he is full of self-loathing, I am so normal about him (i am delusional)

[blackkatmagic]

There are some characters I'm insane about, and some I don't have particularly strong feelings about. And then there are the ones I think I'm normal about right up until I engage with them again and I'm suddenly catapulted headfirst into a riptide of insanity that's been lurking, unnoticed, right below the surface while I fooled myself into assuming my emotions about them were within normal human limits.

[butterfilledpockets]

If y’all are wondering why BENT is taking so long…

That and the fact I am currently travelling and drawing all these at ultra speed-

[bizlybebo]

usually screaming on here about lesbians or the ferins so take some fnc for once. i am a “chip fell first/gillion fell harder” TRUTHER

[lovesickeros]

lord its so dark in here the sahara desert of tsaritsa content you are like a shining oasis. your characterisation of her compels me & mihoyo would be hard pressed to top it imo.!! caaaaan i humbly request yr thoughts on her first meeting w a reader of any kind, or maybe even multiple kinds (sagau, sagau god au, isekai, etc) if you so desire...

it really is like a desert here. being the fan of a character we aren't getting until the last damn nation is driving me up a wall but i will persevere bc if nothing else i support morally bankrupt women in media. we r in a severe drought over here but i do my best. unfortunately nothing i say is ever coherent so pull out your translation notes its abt 2 be messy

also this got out of hand but thats bc first meetings w the tsaritsa are tricky to write + a LOT of her characterization lies in deeper exploration then just surface level yknow...NOT A DIG AT YOU this is just my excuse for rambling. gently pats the tsaritsa she can hold so much complexity i do not have the word count to delve into it completely :]

gonna talk cult au for a bit here though because that's 99% of my content. and honestly? she thrives in sub au's of the cult au like villain au + imposter au. it's basically made for her. i mean, early days, the imposter au had been going around for a little while but one of the first few ideas was the Fatui taking reader in so like. it kinda technically actually was. pretty sure cult au Tsaritsa popped up because of the imposter au. a lot of it's writers kinda left though which. man am i getting old or.

anyway.

there isn't much of a chance her first impression is all that positive. at best it's usually neutral, imo, but rarely if ever positive. specifically because i view the Tsaritsa as someone who isn't as fanatical as most of the acolytes typically are towards the creator. she's not exactly going to worship the ground you walk on unlike a certain geo lizard. which is partially why i think she thrives in the sub au's i mentioned.

imposter au, for example. she meets you at your lowest. there's no gaudy extravagance or pampering from the acolytes waiting for you because your own acolytes have turned on you. for all intents and purposes you aren't a "god" at all. which is why i don't think she meshes well with normal cult au reader. the Fatui are made up of outcasts, basically, and imposter au slots right in just perfectly. you're weak, at your lowest, when you meet the Fatui in the imposter au. and the Fatui can help you, too.

a mutual exchange, really. the Tsaritsa sees a tool she can use to one up the rest of the nations and especially Archons, and she has no qualms about you using her and the Fatui in turn. you both want something out of it, after all. whether you just want to be safe from the rest of the acolytes, or you want revenge, or whatever else..she'll give you the power to fulfill it, and she gains the strongest piece on the chessboard when all is said and done.

the best way i can describe the first meeting is "practical", i suppose. she sees an opportunity in you. the ultimate gamble. because if she "saves" you, and you dont trust anyone else because they tried to kill you, well..she holds all the cards, doesn't she?

but the Tsaritsa, imo, is just as capable of being just as fanatical towards you as anyone else. she just won't worship you as the creator. but as yourself? clawing your way back to your divine power and taking back what belongs to you? the Tsaritsa is, to me, a character who's character flourishes in long-term fics more because she changes a LOT between "just met reader" and after having been with reader for some time. she's practically apathetic at the beginning but a lot of her character, in my characterization, shines through LONG after the first meeting.

[zhongrin]

dick owners who are bodily able and living in an enviromentally capable conditions to flush toilets in a shared bathroom but don't,

fuck you 🖕🏻

[roomwithanopenfire]

i love ao3 comments for many many reasons but one very nice one is the opportunity to tell people more about my fic than they probably care to know

[huntershowl]

@vsagis.

as promised, because u held me at gunpoint and definitely not because i'm feral

THEY'VE BEEN WAILING on the heavy bag for close to half an hour now. the punches and kicks come in lightning-fast combinations, broken up by step-pivots and dodges against invisible return fire. it is a desperate attempt to distract herself. as soon as her mind begins to drift, thoughts of dark green and a voice and a laugh creeping in, she ups the intensity. the burn in their muscles, the rattling force of their own strikes in their skull, keep them grounded in their body. whatever has sparked between persephone and izuku is bad news. she hasn't been this consumed with thoughts of another for a long time — and back then, her future wasn't promised to a revenge mission that will likely kill her.

it might have worked, or at least tired them out to the point where they could go find a hideout to pass out in, if the haunt himself didn't walk through the fucking door before she could really get started.

the space lapses into silence as seph drops her arms, breaths heaving, face flushed. it's an old boxing gym tucked away into the grimiest part of the city, one she never gave midoriya the location of. the lights are dim, filmy; the punching bag sits directly underneath one, like a spotlight. with her training gear consisting of leggings and a sports bra, the sprawling back tattoos are on full display, as are the scars across her abdomen: old stab wonds, gunshots, and a nasty burn stretching up her right side. she's tied her hair back in a long braid that sways languidly and snakelike with each sudden movement.

despite herself — despite the whole purpose of this — seph can't help the frayed-wire spark of warmth in their chest when they turn to look at him.

❝ . . . midoriya. you found me. ❞

[cheekblush]

took myself on a little shopping trip yesterday in the city where i used to study in hopes of lifting my spirits but by the end of the day i felt so disheartened. wandering the same streets 10 years later and not much has changed. i’m still the same lonely unlovable girl.

[argetcross]

it's flawed and imperfect and is built from sweat and time and the precious seconds of your life's energy and your brain's lucidity, but if you don't make it, if you don't do it, it'll never exist, and so you have to keep going, even as your guts twist and you cry and you think, this is the moment you fuck it all up, but if you stop, not even the fuckup will remain because time marches on uncaring and that's worse, to never pick up a pen again, it would be betraying the you who is still searching for answers and you don't want to die so you have to keep going-

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

questioning sexuality is so exhausting

[reallilystuff]

blehhh he's so silly :p

moon in skirt....yeag send post

part 2 of just drawing the dca in outfits I'd like to yoink for my own wardrobe | part 1

this time we're giving him the tamagotchi fit bc I've been obsessed with those since like age 9 and it's killing me

TAMAGOTCHI LOVERS....please rise up please pleaaaase pleek im begging. closeups and gotchi list under readmore

list of gotchis: Tsukitchi, Hoshitchi, Marupitchi, Shizukutchi, Nijifuwatchi, Ichigotchi, Cosmotchi, and sun on the purse LMAO

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

Peach by the Front Bottoms is SO Sweetoffski coded. Like. "Someday you will find someone who will love you like you deserve, but tonight I'm the only one left and I'm betting it's a fact that you will never learn." IT'S LITERALLY THEM!!!!!!!!!!