#it makes me sad drives me insane

[redrobin-detective]

I keep thinking about how sad and unfair Ice King/Simon's relationship with Fionna and Cake was in the main Adventure Time series. We all made fun of him for writing gender bent fanfiction of Finn and Jake. Characters cringed at how obsessive Ice King got about his fantasies, the lengths he went to so they could be real. He believed so fiercely in those ideas that he acted out in ways that were extreme even for him.

Typical Adventure Time to take a gag and make it into something serious.

Because Fionna and Cake WERE real. Prismo created them and their world and then dropped it into Ice King's head. Yes, he had permission but did IK know the reason? The risks? What even was happening? Or did Prismo take advantage of the fact that Simon was a prisoner in his own mind with little agency to force more confusion into his scattered and incoherent brain. How much of his actions was the result of a godlike being knowing that Ice King's resultant behavior would be written off and dismissed.

In addition to the loss of sanity and identity Simon had to deal with over his years as Ice King, he also had the burden on an entire universe of living people living in his head adding to his delusions. How devastating that must have been for someone who could barely tell what was real on a good day.

[nosleep83]

I AM NOT OKAY EVERYONE

[finncakes]

Do you feel like Ashton and Orym are avoiding speaking to each other? I've seen a few others mention it and it feels like they have plenty of opportunities to talk but don't

OH YEAH ABSOLUTELY.

i feel like ever since their talk in ep 40 there's been smth off between them versus before. extremely long rambling under the cut i am so sorry these two change my brain chemistry

personally i think on orym's side he doesn't like someone who's able to read him this well. i think it's esp interesting cause ashton in ep 40 said "i know you're not okay." rather than asking if orym was okay, feel like that makes orym uncomfortable. someone not evening giving him a chance to continuing putting on his strong exterior. probably last person able to read past his bullshit was well...will, derrig or his mother.

ashton i think seems afraid of how easily they open up to orym. just like ashton sees through orym's, orym sees through ashton's bullshit. they've almost started to say things to orym & just abruptly cut off (and it's killing me!!! ashton i am shaking you by the shoulders what were you gonna say!!!). they want to be ready to talk to him but they aren't cause once they start i don't think they'll be able to keep everything in. knowing how much this group is players who embody their character nearly 24/7 (i do it too agfgh), i was esp sad seeing ashton after the battle. look like they were holding back fuckin tears man (orym too).

both of them are feeling small and lost and i think once they do talk? it'll be big for them internally because they read eachother so well and are a lot more similar than they originally thought. ESP seeing even slivers of how orym copes with things this awful. seems like ash & him cope more similarly than i would've figured. also makes me worried for those 6 years orym was lost for....girl what happened...

in general i think their talk in ep 40 made all their similairties and abilities to just see straight through eachother more apparent to them both. and that's sorta scary for both of them, hence why they're just avoiding it. easier to ignore it than sit down and talk to someone who you know will see a very vulnerable version of you whether you like it or not.

[lizard-queen-izzy]

It's after midnight, you know what that means? Sad TMA Thoughts With Izzy! Today's unlucky subject is actually not one of our usual subjects. Tonight's subject is Agnes Montague!

Agnes was born to bring on the apocalypse. Born to be nothing more than a harbinger of doom and destruction. Literally the human embodiment of The Desolation. That is so much pressure to have on you from the jump. She was never able to be a normal kid, never able to know her mother. She was raised in a cult, where she was the messiah. The fire was all she knew and all she was, and there was no room for anything else. She was to bring about the end of days.

And then she met a boy in a coffee shop, and everything froze. This was someone who had nothing to do with The Cult of the Lightless Flame. Someone who knew nothing about her, her abilities, her 'destiny'. He just wanted to get to know Agnes, the girl under all of that. He took her on dates, he kept agreeing to go on more, and while they were unconventional and probably not what he initially expected or had in mind, he never turned her away.

He never saw her as something to fear. A literal personification of a fear, finding someone who didn't fear her? How could she not fall for him? Do I think she was in love? Maybe, maybe not. But I do think it showed her love was possible. Even for someone like her. And that hope is what led to her choice to die.

Her own cult didn't know her. They held her at a distance because she was The Chosen One. Even those charged with her care, those closest to her, only knew the idealized version of her they crafted in their minds.

"I saw the sun. So much..power and fire and rage inside of her. Enough to burn the world and leave it nothing but dessert."

"But to look at her. It was too much for most." Arthur Nolan describes her as something powerful but too much to look at or get close to. Even when Gertrude asks: "What was Agnes like?" All he can respond with is: "I..I don't know. I guess that's the thing about being the 'Chosen One'. At the end of it. It was just the.. point. of someone else's story." A man who knew her her entire life, and he never knew her.

"But if she ceased, not in culmination of fire, but a cold and quiet death. Perhaps her spark would return to The Lightless Flame, and she could try again. So we hanged her, as she requested. All because of that most insidious of emotions. Hope." Agnes chose to be hanged rather than attempt a ritual and fail. Rather than find out if she could or couldn't live up to the one thing she was born for. She chose to die on her terms how she wanted. Jack Barnabas showed her there was more to life than what she had, and the Cult showed her she would never have that. So she made her choice.

It feels intentional we never get Agnes's point of view. We never get a long lost statement, or a Gertrude tape with her. We only ever see her as others do, incomplete. And yet her tragedy is still so apparent.

"..that's the thing about being the 'Chosen One'. At the end of it. It was just the.. point. of someone else's story." In never getting Agnes's point of view, she remains just a point in other people's stories. In life and in death, she was a conduit. Other people used her for their own gain, with little care for her herself. Except Jack Barnabas. He wanted her, not what she could do for him, just her. And in that want, he gave her hope. And the will to go.

[jupiterlandings]

“I may fail you,

but it doesn’t mean I won’t try.

I may fail you,

I may fail to fight til

we’re in the clear,

look my fear in the eye”

Ectober day 12: Obsession/Repression

[justsomeoneunordinary]

it's fucking hilarious to me that there's a tobirama week, a hashirama week, and even an izuna week

... but no madara week

lmfao damn madara, there are more dedicated fans of your brother who has 3 lines and then dies than of you

fucking loser <3

[curseofbreadbear]

cassie: gregory didn't hurt anybody!

me: oh you poor sweet summer child

[stabbyfoxandrew]

uhhhh i'm opening my cosmic lost and found docs for the first time in weeks someone wish me luck pls

[radsplain]

being a younger lesbian in your 20s and 30s is actually insane rn because not only is our dating pool small enough as it is (especially for lesbians who only want to date other lesbians) but then we’re also having to contend with the fact that half of the lesbians around our age are going by they/them or they/he pronouns and like kudos to y’all who can maintain relationships (hell, even friendships) with people who require you to deny base reality every time you’re around them or even reference to them when they’re not even in the room but like. i can’t pretend to indulge in it, like not even for a little bit. and i really do feel like this is actually a real issue and has so many implications for the lesbian community as a whole and how it really is disappearing right before our eyes, all in just a matter of a few years etc but all that is to say! we need to free young lesbians from the shackles that is gender now before i go completely insane and end up single forever

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

'heaven's gate' is truly a pinnacle of all the references to not making it into heaven that permeate much of fob's discography. it is one of their most straightforward love songs. because of course it is.

[godblooded]

christ almighty i miss being happy.

[gibbearish]

am finally back home and can say without a doubt that i am just fundamentally not built for long distance travel however the train was much nicer than planes

[hua-fei-hua]

once more reading a big fat typography book in the school library instead of studying and every so often it strikes me how similar the genshin font is to garamond in places. maybe this is a "guy who's only really stared at serif fonts for the last three months" kind of situation tho

[soldier-poet-king]

AND pathfinder is cancelled tmrw. Which makes sense. Presumably other people actually DO want to spend time with their fathers on fathers day. But like. I wanna play game with friends. My weekly social time :(

[redysetdare]

I hate to tell you guys this but it is neither a hot take nor an unpopular opinion to say "i like valentines day" I can assure you that majority of society agrees with you.

[cocksuki2]

heaven by mieko kawakami poses such an intricate question about bullying and about human free will. it addresses the complexities of adolescence and the complexities of social (and occasionally physical) cruelty through such a sensitive but unflinching lens that it is physically unnerving. 

the main character, a bullied 14 year old boy called “eyes” by his classmates on account of his lazy eye, meets kojima, a bullied 14 year old girl in the same class. 

kojima, attempting to find meaning in her suffering, befriends “eyes” (whose name we never learn in the novel) and searches for the reason and purpose behind the bullying. she explains to the protagonist that there’s meaning in “letting it happen”, that there’s meaning in his eye being lazy, and that there is meaning in her dirty appearance (which she does to feel closer to the time she spent poor and with her dad). she poses their experiences at the hands of their classmates as a form of resistance and as something that makes them strong, rather than just a cruelty done to them by others. 

her philosophy is essentially that of “everything has meaning”.

on the other hand, “eyes” has an encounter with momose, one of his bullies. momose, however, differs from the others in the sense that he always seems indifferent to the bullying and rarely ever takes the lead when “eyes” is being tormented. during their encounter, the protagonist questions momose as to why they do it and momose simply responds with “because we want to”. it’s a simple enough answer and he details to “eyes” that nothing really has meaning, that people are free to do what they want, and that the concept of doing “good” and “bad” doesn’t matter anyway. they have a lengthy discussion in which a victim confronts a perpetrator and receives answers for his treatment which completely rival the meaning kojima had been searching for through the previous half of the book. 

momose details that it’s not because of his lazy eye that he gets bullied, but by a series of coincidences that ultimately led to where they are, with “eyes” being victim and momose’s friend group being perpetrators. not because the protagonist is different but simply because they want to and they can. 

momose’s philosophy, however cruel, is that “nothing has meaning”. 

the book poses these two opposite philosophies as valid explanations for kojima and the protagonist’s experiences, juxtaposing them as the viewpoint of both victim and perpetrator. while kojima searches for meaning in their suffering, momose offers that there is none. while kojima states that their complacency and kindness is their way of fighting, momose poses that the only way to escape is to do the same thing back. 

meanwhile, “eyes” is caught between these two conflicting philosophies, one in which everything has meaning and cruelty has just as much weight as kindness, and another in which neither kindness nor cruelty have any meaning and we are simply choosing to do what we want, when we want to. both, however cruel or not they may seem, are valid explanations. neither is discredited and neither is posed as the correct answer. 

the novel poses these philosophies really startlingly. reading momose’s conversation with “eyes” after watching kojima (and the protagonist) struggle to find solace in meaning, is both jarring and somehow sensible. that’s not to say momose is right, nor to say that kojima is. the novel simply poses these two philosophies as equally factual and equally realistic. 

do bad things happen to good people because it means something or are we simply at the mercy of our own whims and the whims of others? does doing good have meaning? does doing bad have meaning? or is everything, the cruel and the kind, equally as inconsequential? is kojima right because she believes in a greater meaning for their experiences or is momose right in his belief that because nothing matters, people are free to do whatever they want, including “eyes” and kojima? 

both are equally as valid in the story, carrying a similar weight with the protagonist. it’s a really heartbreaking look at bullying from both perspectives, without a real acknowledgement of which philosophy is right and which is wrong. while the actions may be right and wrong, there is no right way to think about them except through our own personal interpretations. 

it makes the ending of the book, in which “eyes” has a surgery done to fix his lazy eye, against kojima’s (who insists that him being the way he is has meaning and suffered a mental breakdown at the climax of the story) adamant protests, all the more meaningful. 

upon losing kojima as a friend and suffering a traumatic experience—upon the ending of his first real friendship and his seemingly single point of “real” human connection (if that sort of trauma bond can be considered so)—he removes the bandage from his eyes and marvels at the beauty of the world, now containing depth. 

“everything i could see was beautiful. i cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though i wasn’t standing anywhere. i could hear the sound of my own tears. everything was beautiful. not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. just the beauty.” 

he is freed from the thing he once considered a shackle and is now indifferent to for the first time, but never acknowledges the good or the bad. he is alone, standing in the street, seeing the beauty of the world. without a friend, without peers, without anyone. there’s no right or wrong. there’s no good or bad. just the beauty.