#is this a sustainable relationship?

[oaxleaf]

jmart's relationship dynamic is actually so interesting because it takes a situation that could so easily be unhealthy - in fact, it's pretty much impossible to have a completely normal relationship under these circumstances - and does the very best it can with it. there is so so much that could go wrong in a relationship where you're both traumatized as hell, have been together for three weeks tops when the literal apocalypse starts, that apocalypse brings an incredible power dynamic to your relationship, and one of you seems determined to fulfill his martyr complex. i think it's a little bit silly to expect them not to argue. aside from the fact that a little bit of conflict is probably healthy, you cannot seriously think none of it would come up? you cannot seriously say you would be happy for none of it to be discussed?

and yet, i feel like they, for the most part, do an incredible job of communicating. it takes a bit of coaxing, but they talk about a lot of their issues, set up boundaries that they then follow, and when things do boil over they actively search each out to apologize. season five makes a really strong case for how good of a couple they could have been if only the stakes had been lesser and they'd gone through less trauma - the tragic irony of course being that that trauma is precisely what made them grow so close in the first place - and it think it's overall some really good relationship writing. a good balance between their individual characters, how those two interact, and how they interect with their current circumstances both as individuals and as a duo

[thisnoah]

Idk if it's just me but I think Graves is a divorced man and I think that's very baby girl of him

[darkesttiimelines]

reblog for larger sample size <3

[deoccchi]

I remember drawing an art with my pc and pure Syd so I finally gripped myself to draw the reverse version The lyrics from sustain++ by Mili I just thought this song a good representation of how Martha percive relationships

+crop version bc I like it there will be full rendered art just give me some time.

[the-crimson]

(All talk about the characters not the ccs)

I’m finally watching bbh’s June 19th stream (day after Father’s Day) and he’s talking about removing everyone’s access to his base. I’ve seen people talking about how this could cause problems and lose him Forever and Bagerah’s trust but I think people - including Forever and Bagerah - are forgetting a crucial fact

Bbh is a single parent and has been from the start.

He has to be incredibly paranoid to keep Dapper safe. His paranoia is the only reason Dapper -and many of the other eggs - are still alive.

He can’t rely on other people to keep Dapper safe. He can’t tell Dapper to go live with another parent if his house is compromised. That’s why he has five different houses and keeps building more when too many people gain access.

I don’t think Forever or Bagerah have a right to complain about this considering they have 3/4 other parents/houses to keep their egg safe. They have a family structure that allows them a sense of safety that bbh has NEVER had.

Like yea, I understand why they would feel betrayed but from an objective pov, they have zero ground to stand on to protest because they have NO idea what bbh has gone through raising dapper alone, how could they? They have always had 3/4 other parents at their beck and call.

Trust doesn’t mean letting someone run rampantly through your house/safe space just because they feel entitled to it. Trust means having faith that if bbh is closing off his/Dapper’s house to you, he has a legitimate reason that doesn’t have anything to do with you personally.

Bbh has done so much for team friendship and taken down so many of his walls and boundaries for them that the fact THEY don’t have faith in him makes me sad. I trust team friendship and the q-ommunication smp to work everything out but I just hope Bagerah and Forever come to respect bbh’s boundaries a bit more :D

[newvegasdyke]

You’re eating animal meat from factory farms, those animals didn’t sacrifice anything they were KILLED. They would have fought as hard as possible to live. You’re a fucking idiot for real I can’t believe the things people say about meat

[introspectivememories]

excerpts from my months old wip "think i'll miss you forever (like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky)"

[compacflt]

Okay, so I was re-reading your Slider one-shot for like the twentieth time, and what really struck me (beyond the brilliance of your writing, and the way you’ve presented the disillusionment of growing up, expecting the world to be a certain way, only to realize that life doesn’t quite work out the way you think it will, when you’re seventeen), is the casual sexism just tossed ‘round by our main characters!! :o We have canonical evidence of both Ice and Mav being pretty sexist (what with “the plaque for the alternates is in the ladies’ room” and the downright stalker-ish behavior exhibited by Mav at the O-club…), but it still surprised me a lil’ when twenty-y/o Ice was just like: “The Soviet Union did the impossible and taught women to drive” —and I realized that ah, he truly was born in 1959, or something. There’s little scenes throughout your story where I find myself wondering, which one of them is better, in this sense: When Ice tells Mav that Sarah isn’t talking to him ‘cause of his combat kills, justifies it by saying: “You know how women are”, and Mav tells him all women aren’t the same… I thought that maybe, it was Mav; but then later, Ice shows a distinctive amount of empathy for Juno, sees and respects her for the skilled pilot that she is… and I thought that maybe, it’s Ice after all—he does seem to be more progressive and accepting than Mav, in general? It also made me wonder, that if either of them had been a woman, would they even have respected the other person enough to consider them to be a rival??—or would it have a been a mildly-amusing circus side show for them, to have a female pilot at TOPGUN?

Ty for the ask anon!! ice is more socially progressive than mav yes.

But—maybe this is my experience growing up in one of the bluest counties in Commiefornia and then going to one of the most leftist-coded colleges in one of the most leftist-coded cities in The World; uhh, even if a white man votes D all the time & has professional respect for women/minorities to their faces etc, get him in a room with a bunch of other white men, especially in a masculine and competitive environment like the gym or the navy, and uh. progressive or not, what you get is a lot of “The Soviet Union did the impossible & taught women to drive.”

And it was the 1980s. (As a reminder, in top gun’s 1986, less than 45% of Americans even approved of interracial marriage.) It sucks to say it, but if Ice was making fun of Cougar for quitting the navy cause of his psych issues such as they may be, and openly calling bullshit on Maverick’s MiG story in front of everyone, I am quite confident in saying he Would Not respect a female pilot to her face—if they were the same rank. At the same rank, it’s a competition. All weaknesses, even perceived biological ones, are to be exploited and called to attention. —But, once he’s advanced in rank, proven his own superiority, he’s more inclined to favor a meritocratic “sex doesn’t matter just fly good” attitude, ergo his relationship w/ “Juno” (she’s just a literary symbol to show that Ice may have respect for other minorities in the Navy “your career speaks for itself” but NOT FOR HIMSELF as a closeted man). This “who cares about gender/race just fly good” attitude is probably where 50s+ Maverick lands too, which is why no issues with Phoenix.

but jesus GOD maverick is a sexist in the original Top Gun. That’s why I wrote the prologue to WWGATTAI—a part of me definitely believes both he and Ice are definitively queer, but a part of me also wonders, are they just also conditioned to dismiss women as intellectual/societal equals because of their time in the 1980s male-dominated Navy? CAN they really only have a truly equal relationship with another man? I have no idea what my Ice’s sexual orientation is for exactly this reason. Yes, he’s functionally gay by the end of it, and that’s what I keep calling him—but sexuality is fluid & complicated. It’s definitely more-than possible he’s mostly straight and it’s just the circumstances of his wildly intense trauma-bond relationship with Maverick that led to their relationship as I wrote it. If you don’t LIKE/understand/respect women, and only feel at home/excited by committing acts of male-typified violence with the few men you respect, how does that bend your definition of the word straight? ...its still straight, but only straight-ish!

not to take it a step further, but WHY ELSE is canon maverick single in TGM? he canonically can’t make it work with women until he retires from the navy!!! he doesnt know how!!! His military environment is not conducive to normal long-term relationships with civilian women!!!

[dustteller]

I think modern au Zhu SHOULD be the lesbian best friend trope to Ouyang except that its because this man is her pet project and gODDDAMIT she's gonna FIX him she's gonna MAKE him be BETTER she's going to SOLVE EVERYTHING and he will RESPECT HER (she is actively making him worse). She has a whole complex about it and everything. She has based a part of her identity on dragging this man up from his toxic funk and is fully convinced that if she tries hard enough he will eventually come to his senses and be an equal participant in this relationship. They have a terrible wonderful toxic loving codependent relationship that's neither a romance nor a friendship nor a rivalry but a secret fourth thing.

Predictably, this does not go well. The character arcs would be Zhu learning she can't fix a sinking ship and letting Ouyang fail by himself, and Ouyang learning to not be a shit person, actually, and coming out of his bubble of self-centeredness and working on himself instead of unloading his emotional labor onto the people around him. And they should both get to develop a healthier relationship with each other than what they had in canon bc queer solidarity is great and its even better when it's in the shape of some weird bullshit some gay people built out of the corpse parts of heteronormative romance (affectionate and completely unironic)

[tagmusicblog]

this line is ALWAYS recorded wrong in lyrics and it drives me mad. theres is no second cry of reward! its the most important part of the line man! the thesis of the whole song!

[owari-no-suffering]

Honestly as much as I was gasping by The Way Misaki Went Out, there was essentially no other way for this really to go. She was always going to go too soon because the reason she took Miri in was her ticking clock. When Misaki died, was Miri supposed to go stay with the grandfather, a man she's likely never met, or at least has no relationship with? Everything about Misaki coming back into Miri's life, while heartbreaking and sympathetic, was also shortsighted and selfish. A relationship made for the parent rather than for the child, like what's been shown with the certified Buddy Daddies. And it speaks volumes to at least the character writing, I think, that you can't really fault Misaki for what she does. I think the inevitable tragedy of it all makes it spicier.

Anyway. Foaming at the mouth thinking about how the fuck I'll cope next week ❤️.

[alfredosauce50]

I know this may sound like a silly question, but how come your headcanons of Allen and Alfred don't get along in most of your stories? I've read over your interpretations of them, and I can understand where their differences lie. However, I have also seen a lot of places where their personalities can actually compliment each other quite nicely. [For example: Both are very loyal individuals, Alfreds a complete goof, and Allen could be a stand-up comedian if he really wanted to, etc]

(Sorry for the long ask. I'm borderline obsessed with your headcanons of these characters 😭😭.)

(Also, if you're busy w/ university n' stuff, pls dont feel the need to answer right away (`･ω･)ゞ✨️)

It comes down to circumstances. The thing with headcanons is that they’re just isolated descriptors, but in a story, a lot of other factors come into play. They’re more than likely to end up in very different places in the world and have clashing motivations.

In Avatar, Alfred was a human being and Allen was a Na’Vi. In The Place Beyond the Pines, Allen was the father of your child, and Alfred was your boyfriend. In What makes me human, Allen was living a cushy life as a suit and yakuza member, Alfred was a terrorist that wanted to destroy any and all semblance of that.

You can understand why they would naturally hate each other in those situations. But towards the end, they usually set their differences aside for a common cause that’s more important than the both of them. So unless they were in an agreeable setting that let them complement each other, they wouldn’t.

My headcanons are also a lot tamer because they’re for a broader audience. These two have a lot of traits that would pit them against each other that go unmentioned in them, but show up in stories.

TLDR: Allen and Alfred may have some similarities, but environment is very important in influencing their relationship with each other. But they’re also very emotional beings with flaws and demons. Maybe they have stigma toward each other, or are jealous of each other for doing something better.

[pochapal]

getting a bad grade in gender identity because i value self expression infinitely less than i value human connections

[sidewalkchemistry]

@/homegrown_handgathered on Instagram

[jelzorz]

131.

They head back to Katolis to rest, to regroup, to talk about everything that's happened and to figure out what happens next, but that goes doubly for Rayla because... well, she's not really sure what that is for her. She'd gone after Viren the first time, forsaking the home Callum gave her to chase down a ghost; she'd gone after him again to be met with Claudia and a handful of coins, her parents' terrified, angry faces etched into the metal, and Callum had said it was fine, that he understood but...

They still haven't talked about it. Rayla'd tried to give him the space to process it, to be ready to talk to her on his own, but they can't avoid it any longer. They can't keep pretending it's fine when it's not, in many, many ways.

Mostly, Rayla just wants to know where they stand. Is it a lost cause to hope she might still have a place here with him?

"Only if you want there to be," Callum says. He won't look at her. He fiddles awkwardly with the corner of a book on his desk, and Rayla tries not to look too disappointed with his answer. "You left," he says quietly, "and when we found out Viren was alive, you..."

Left again, finishes Rayla in her mind. She glances away.

"I can't—won't ever stop you from leaving if... if you don't want to be here," says Callum quietly. "There will always be a place here for you, but whether or not it's home to you is your choice."

Rayla grimaces then because that's not what she's asking. Of course she wants to be here. Of course she wants to call it home—but it's his choice as much as it is hers. She won't burden him with her presence if he doesn't want her here. If he wants to move on. If he doesn't love her anymore.

She swallows. "I'm asking about us, Callum," she clarifies.

He nods without looking at her. "I know."

There's a pause. Callum sets the quill down and leans back in his chair, his eyes tired and hurt and tired of being hurt, but he looks Rayla right in the eye for the first time in what probably has been years and lets out a sigh. "I'm always going to love you, Rayla," he murmurs. "But whether or not we'll be okay again... That's up to you. It's your choice. No one else's."

Silence falls between them. Rayla's not sure what to say to that.

[voyagerprobe]

i'm not even anti meat i just hate our culture's relationship (or lack thereof) with meat production so you get people who will say "you shot an innocent deer? that's fucked up" while happily snacking on chicken nuggets