#i said the word well a lot in this post

[royalarchivist]

[A sad violin song plays over an image of a sad hamster]

Pac: This doesn't have anything to do with me – I wear a blue sweatshirt, you're crazy, this mouse doesn't even have a sweatshirt, this hamster! [Reading chat] Am I a depressed hamster?

[ Transcript continued ↓ ]*

–

Pac: Actually– that's fine! I embrace that idea – of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy? [He hits his desk, then starts counting off people on his fingers] Fit is gone, Richarlyson is gone, Ramon is gone, Bagi and Empanada who were always there when we were there are also gone, I haven't seen them! It's just me and Tubbo, and sometimes Philza shows up.

Pac: I lost Chume Labs, I lost the Favela, I lost Murder Mystery, I lost Ilha Chume Labs, it's crazy! Look at how much I've lost, and I've gained nothing! Of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy?! How am I supposed to be happy?!

Pac: [Reading chat] "You have us Pac," that's true, thank you. No, that's true, sorry.

* NOTE: Please note that this is an incomplete transcript, as I was primarily relying on Aypierre's translation mod at the time and if I am not confident of the translation, I do not include it. As always, please feel free to add on translations or message me corrections.

[angelnumber27]

violently forcing myself to have better days

[leonardalphachurch]

it makes me insane when people think south is 100% in the wrong in the set your trackers scene because

SHES DOING STEALTH NORTH. WHAT DO YOU MEAN TALK TO YOU.

just. like. why do so many people take the directors word at face value on the fact that south was the one who fucked up there. we KNOW that pfl was actively manipulating her. why would their judgement in this situation be the objective truth.

and i’ll acknowledge that the narrative itself isn’t doing her any favors. but. read between the lines.

south is DEFINITELY over confident but she’s saying that setting her trackers “takes too long”. and it sucks bc we don’t actually know what “setting your trackers” entails. north tells south the next patrol is in 20 seconds and she seems confident she’ll be gone before then. and south is good at stealth. she fucking. fully trouble in terrorist towns a guy with his friend like 6 feet away. she was above north on the leaderboard before this mission! she knows what she’s doing. if “setting your trackers” takes a few seconds and she’s only got 20 then like. yeah, maybe she’s right! maybe setting them genuinely would have taken too long and gotten her caught! it’s definitely a risk but i don’t think it’s fair to assume it’s not one that she calculated and determined to be the best course of action.

and with her asking “what’s the time” i think it’s very fair to assume that pfl is asking them to work as quickly as possible with these things. if she had taken her time would she have gotten admonished for that? is that why north was below her in the first place? “taking risks” seems to be incredibly rewarded by pfl. or at least, they are as long as you’re the right person. they are as long as they pay off.

[jabeur]

i wish we'd call transphobia what it is: transphobia more often and more comfortably tbh

[jackobbit]

Drew my own interpretation of BitterGiggle! The little guy, the blorbo, the scrungus, my son

I want to drop a piano on him /aff

[maddy-ferguson]

women will literally accuse women and esp lesbian circles of "not unpacking ""man-hating""" alleged ""misandry" sweetie xo" getting offended ppl aren't appropriately uplifting how "men are amazing and awesome and attractive and i won't be shamed for thinking so" as if appreciating men is a real counter opinion than blame whatever gave women of every sexuality instance to be jaded weary cautious and tired and who'll complain every now and then and continue on with her life until she dies putting up with patriarchy. just welcome to the "woke" internet where misogyny's over and "man-hate" "shamed for not hating men" is worth springing to defences for

yeah i've only seen people talk like men's rights activists and think they're being unbelievably progressive on tumblr it's kind of fascinating. like i can see how seeing people hate on men could mess with people and stuff but you can't demand men appreciation posts that's literally the whole world outside of idk your tumblr dash (or even on your tumblr dash because fandom misogyny from people who think they're not misogynistic at all is really something). men get praised for "babysitting" their own kids like be serious? it's very let men be masculine

i don't think being like men are soooo gross and we hate them is actually constructive and it can definitely veer into transphobia (you'll always be a man/"a male" and thus a danger to women/why would you ever want to become a man they're the enemy and the bane of society etc) and homophobia relatively quickly?

but the way people ON TUMBLR ""combat that"" is often so off to me like if the most basic feminist principles offend you then i'm not really sure where to go from here. i remember seeing a post that was like "men aren't your enemy. they're your friend/brother/father/colleague/neighbor" with a lot of notes and like i don't know how to tell you this but that's literally who's most likely to harm a woman, the men she knows?😭 and obviously not every system of oppression is exactly the same but would you say the same thing to someone criticizing white people like...just very weird

i think women who are attracted to men and dating them making jokes about how they only tolerate being attracted to men because they have no choice and especially the whole i'm bi so i love every woman and only find 1 in a 1000 men attractive (very often said while in a relationship with a man) thing is obnoxious and annoying for like everyone who has to hear it lmao but also when women who date men make jokes about it (not about them being ugly or unattractive or whatever but about them being bad partners in general) it's like. what else are they going to do like you said they're gonna endure patriarchy for the rest of their lives and as girlfriends/wives/mothers they go through the most it's very bleak? idk. it's not like you can date a better man yourself out of patriarchy

of course men aren't a all as bad as the worst guy you can imagine and they're not all out to get you or whatever but saying things like "men don't all benefit from the patriarchy rich men benefit from the patriarchy but jake, 23, is not oppressing you" is like. kind of insane. jake, 14, was oppressing me like have you never interacted with boys in school😭 and it's not like it was entirely their fault we all have to outgrow misogyny it's just you know society etc but some of them never outgrow it lmao and just...the takes you see on feminism on tumblr are astounding i hate it here

[infiniteglitterfall]

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform palestine" tag.

[staraxiaa]

chromatic (kirishima fic) update

how it started, chromatic v1:

how it’s (maybe) going, subject to change:

ive just started part III btw

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Adorned by stars | Changing States

When he hits the I-70, Jeremiah slots George Michael’s Faith into his ’98 Accord and drives with the windows down. His mother would chide him for two reasons: a) he’s wasting fuel and b) it’s begun to storm. But he likes the way the wind shears through his hair like a nail breaking drywall and he likes the way spats of rain settle on his skin like constellations because on the road, he isn’t just a hand for someone else to hold, a body to handle, a man who looks at another man and fears how much of himself he’s lost in his reflection. No. On the road he is the sky, adorned by stars of his own making, relentless in his abundance, blinking in the absence of any other light.

A little Changing States aesthetic & excerpt!

i'm so normal about him i'm so normal i'm so normal i'm so-

[batsplat]

casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that

oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...

yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?

anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:

like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual

uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think

[jitteryjive]

i need to remake my cup bros ref… both cup and human designs… it’s been almost a year(?) and i’ve developed the headcanons and i would like to share with the class!!! (i wrote thirty tags. Please help me)

[prismatoxic]

i'm certainly not the first person to say this but it is very weird that, as a culture, we call hillary clinton and kamala harris "hillary" and "kamala" when we don't do this for other people in the presidential race or adjacent to it

like with clinton i kinda got it, right. because her husband had been president, so "clinton" is immortalized in the public perception as "bill clinton". she doesn't have a cool middle initial for us to call her by instead or something

but now, with harris, it's weird. it's gone from feeling overly-familiar to feeling kind of infantalizing, because that seems like a very deliberate choice that absolutely did not need to be made

i catch myself thinking of her in terms of her first name sometimes because it's what i see in most political posts, but i'm very much putting in the effort to not do that because it's really not a good look. if we did this to everyone all the time then sure, whatever, equality in terms of talking about political figures, but the posts i see that use names like "joe" or "donald" in full seriousness are... few in number. and it was the same back in 2016

do i think everyone is doing it on purpose? no. like i said, seeing it all the time makes me do it, too. but it's something i think is worth questioning, given how frankly obvious the divide is

[th3houseofleaves]

my BODY is MY CREATION!

call me god, call me frankenstein, call me sculptor, call me creator because i am taking what i am owed i am shaping creating making myself over in the image of adam, i will rid myself of this extra rib called longing and i will be bloody and pure and new as i am born again in the body i forged for myself.

INTRODUCING christopher "kit" warren an original character based in the dc comics universe. he is portrayed by jordan gonzalez.

christopher "kit" warren is the civilian identity of the vigilante known as PORTAL, a twenty-six year old meta-human with the ability to warp or teleport short distances (safely). outside of hero work, he's an independent video game developer and graphic designer, though the latter job is more for bringing in a semi steady flow of income rather than a job he does for pleasure. ideally, he'd love to have more time to work on games but he knows that that's not feasible at this point; both for the lack of income and because of his commitment to protect his community. being a hero comes first to him.

kit is originally from star city but moved away in his early twenties. his birth parents died when he was just a baby, his godfather, cole carpenter, took him in and raised him. his home life was fairly chill, he was well taken care of and never went without necessities but it was incredibly clear that cole wasn't prepared to raise a child. he still had growing up to do when he took kit in, since he was only in his early twenties and still hadn't even decided what he wanted to do in life. and while cole did his best, he was more of an older brother figure rather than the parental figure that kit needed.

that being said kit wouldn't change a single thing. he loves cole so much. that's his only real family. plus, there were perks to growing up with a young parent — rules tended to be lax, he had an easier time getting his way if he needed, and, once he was older, he could have fun spending time with his godfather doing things that they'd both enjoy. (one thing they would do together regularly was training at the gym where cole works. it started off as easy stuff, where kit was trying to mirror what cole was doing and gradually became more serious and branched off into kit begging cole to let him seriously train to become a fighter like he was. cole caved fairly fast.)

growing up he, like so many other children, loved superheroes. he'd play pretend with the other kids in his neighborhood and they'd all have their own hero identity (no one ever volunteered to be the villain, it was always more fun to be the good guys because they got all the perks). if anyone asked him during that time, he would've proudly told them that he wanted to be a hero when he grew up, he wanted to save people just like the heroes on the news. it wouldn't be until he was a little older that he'd realise his childish daydream could be reality. (his meta abilities would first manifest when he was around nine or ten, thus paving the way for his eventual decision to become a hero.)

being a meta was only a shock to kit himself, his godfather knew there was a chance he'd be one since both his parents were. the only thing he wouldn't have been able to predict was kit's abilities, which were nothing like his parents'. having a superpower was cool as hell to kit but it was terrible for cole; he now had to wrangle a superpowered child, who wasn't easily convinced that he shouldn't show off his power, and who was capable of evading him without putting much effort into it.

shortly after his abilities first manifested, kit came out to his godfather which caused cole to become more protective of him. he enrolled kit into self defense classes, alongside the training he was already doing with kit, to make sure that kit was able to defend himself when he was on his own. he wasn't about to lose his kid because some asshole didn't approve of his identity.

cole had no way of knowing that kit was going to use those skills when he would sneak out at night, taking his first steps as a hero in his neighborhood. he should've expected it, he really should've, given how serious kit was about becoming a hero but it still nearly gave him a heart attack when he found out. not even because kit told him, no he saw something, when he was reading the news, about a new meta hero that popped up in star city... who appeared to be pretty young (there was questions about how safe it is for a kid to be fighting crime)... and who could seemingly teleport.... and he didn't have to be a genius to figure out that that was HIS idiot teenage wannabe hero. needless to say kit was grounded for a couple weeks after cole found out and they had to have a long discussion about safety and why he shouldn't keep going out, even though cole knew that it wouldn't stop kit from going out. unfortunately.

as he got older he got cockier. he'd investigate riskier cases, he'd patrol outside of his neighborhood, and he stopped trying to stay under the radar of other heroes and vigilantes that happened to be in star city.

at twenty-six years old he's a fairly well established vigilante (& if the whole no metas in gotham fanon rule thing exists, than he's pretty regularly breaking that rule because? he doesn't give a shit about what batman says. he can't stop him.)

additional link: pinterest.

(edit insp.)

[drblacula]

:9 < ok so I can 't sleep wiith this on my mind so : I never understood why some people turn characters that are so obviously trans / non binary ( and everything under that umbrella ) and make them into hypersexualized boytoy bottom twinks . Like okay , I get femboys exist . I 've had femboy friends ! They're very nice ( all the ones I've met anyways . ) But that 's not the point , the point is usually when these characters , specifically the ones that are transfem / transwoman implied or coded are extremely fetishized and sexualized ( regardless if they are minors . ) It 's so baffling to me that these people simply CANNOT ACCEPT THE FACT that non cis people exist like it genuinely needs to be studied . Plus the fact that femboy is an extremely sexualized term , like you have femboys who don 't appeal to the people who fetishize them , they just like to dress up in cute dresses and thats cool ! You have terms that have been made just to try and replace the word which is insane to me . Like maybe I'm just overthinking it but I 've seen wayyy too many times that someone will go " ( insert character ) is trans and i 'm here 4 it !!! " and get fucking dogpiled like ??? it 's so fucked up it 's INSANE . Like I dunno , maybe like read into the lore of these characters and see WHY a lot of people see them as trans . Just a thought you know

[void-and-virtue]

OP I LOVED UR ANDREIL POST GOING CRAZY THINKING ABOUT IT if you have anything else in that amazing brain of yours on this take please do share because i absolutely LOVED how you articulated this aspect about andreil. its something i particularily appreciate about their dynamic and relationship with anger and Their Issues TM. your post will cross my mind whenever ill think about it from now on.

I don’t think I have ever gotten an ask and this is kind of making me go insane??? I hope you know that you made my day and also, I’m so glad people share in my endless brainrot bc when it comes to this series and these characters I simply cannot stop

It really isn’t nearly talked about enough that the thing that got Andrew to actually look at Neil and become interested was (as cited by Neil himself at some point tho I can’t remember in which book that scene is from the top of my head) Neil’s bone-deep jealousy of Kevin. It’s—it ties into that whole epiphany that Neil has at some point, when he looks at Andrew and realizes that while he is hurtling towards his own breaking point and about to burn out and shatter into something he’s not sure he’d recognize if he survived the encounter, Andrew hit that point and broke from it years ago. And that’s an understanding that goes both ways between them—in a fucked up way, it feels like Andrew might be the future that Neil has waiting for him if he doesn’t end the year six feet under: hollow and drifting, passionless after everything he had to rip away from himself to be able to survive. At the same time, Neil probably reminds Andrew of how he used to be, back when he had hope for things only to have that hope rip him apart—which is exactly where Neil seems to be headed for the majority of the story.

I think that a lot of Andrew’s understanding of Neil comes from the fact that he knows intimately what it feels like to be caught between a rock and a hard place and cut his own lifeline, only to then fail to die on impact. Neil hasn’t had to resort to that yet, but he is hanging by a thread. You’d think that watching him struggle would only serve to drive it home for Andrew that he made the right choice in closing himself off, except… well. His expectations of life and the people in it are so bleak, it’s no wonder he finds himself drawn to Neil’s messy emotions and every unexpected show of spine like a moth to a flame.

Neil, for all of his issues and scars, can still feel things—can still want something so badly it defies all logic. Can want something with such visceral, fucked-up intensity that it resonates where it shouldn’t. It’s an ability that Andrew thinks he’s either lost or cut out of himself to stay somewhat safe, sane and alive a long time ago, but that remains as the most fundamental crack in the foundation of his being. It’s a fascination that seems to come out every time he’s sober and eventually ties into him wanting Neil—wanting something worth wanting and putting a name to it once he finds it. They look at each other and don’t want a watered-down version of the person in front of them. It creates a relationship that embraces issues big and small and accepts (even values!) the messy parts of being human. It means that any space shared between them immediately becomes safe once they settle into something comfortable together. The way they handle the uglier sides of each other’s personality honestly makes me feral because it’s always done with understanding and acceptance and they even find positives or comforts there that the other can’t see and that’s probably a reason for why 1) their chemistry is so off the charts and 2) their relationship is so damn healthy (in addition to their communication being stupidly good when it comes to each other).

Andrew wants something real and Neil wants to be real. And then they get to have exactly that.