#it wasn't even necessary!!

[ariadne-mouse]

Still thinking about just how deep in it Liliana Temult is. Like in the eyes of the narrative she went from

absent & possibly dead, very sad -> alive just estranged?? mysterious! -> possibly involved in a cult, tragic, can her daughter reach her? -> uncomfortably high up in said cult -> the cult's goddamn General and striking such terror into the local population of the Ruidus that they are afraid of even her appearance or someone who looks like her

Ordinary people who are trying to resist the dictatorial Imperium/Ruby Vanguard alliance and their iron control of the populace are terrified of her. You don't strike terror just by "being there". Terror happens because of actions. And it leaves us to wonder what exactly Liliana Temult has done during her time on the moon to make the citizens fear her so much.

[sergle]

IF anyone would like a snapshot of my emotional state this morning, i was looking out a window and saw a pair of cardinals feeding eachother and i had to walk away because i was about to start crying about it

[papa-evershed]

RJC + blood || requested by: anonymous

[whetstonefires]

You know, I've been thinking about it, and it is absolutely essential to the narrative that Jiang Cheng is a dick and a trash fire. (Affectionate.)

Like, first of all, if he was a sainted little angel of a shidi the way Jiang Yanli is a shijie, Wei Wuxian's choices would become obvious, sort of impersonal, and boring.

Sure, lots of people wouldn't tear themselves apart for such a person in such a scenario, but they're not the protagonists of novels, are they; in a book you have to justify not doing that. So white lotus Jiang Cheng is off the table.

Jiang Cheng who isn't fragile-and-insecure but also stubborn-as-hell and violently reactive also won't wash.

If he wasn't the kind of person who sincerely tries to die under these circumstances, Wei Wuxian would have had the option of loyally supporting him in a less self-destructive way; if he was someone who could be trusted to handle the revelation without suffering a ruinous fracture of identity, Wei Wuxian wouldn't have been forced to distance himself after the war, because he could have come clean.

If Jiang Cheng wasn't the kind of person who centers on his own pride and hurt feelings and lashes out about it, it would be very hard to set up the lategame scenario where they're 'enemies' in a real, meaningful way, despite still loving each other and Wei Wuxian never wishing Jiang Cheng any ill. Even with Jiang Yanli's death.

And I mean, you could get most of the plot without doing this interesting thematic examination of the classic 'bond between martial brothers severed by one going to the dark side' trope, but I'd argue you'd lose an enormous chunk of the story.

And without Jiang Cheng's weaknesses, Wei Wuxian's motives don't cohere. His weaknesses form the foundation of at least two of the backstory's major turning points.

There's the tantalizing possibility that Wei Wuxian wouldn't have done it, if Jiang Cheng hadn't strangled him while blaming him for everything.

Probably he would have, all else being equal! But neither we nor Jiang Cheng can be sure.

Jiang Cheng sucking a lot, and knowing his own flaws perfectly well without that granting him the ability to do much about them, is heavily load-bearing. Which gives him such a fantastic implied point of view!

[katerinaaqu]

Epic The Musical;

Tiresias: Your men are gonna die. No need to even try. You will be fucked up, oh and your wife will marry a mass murderer

Odysseus: Whoa thanks for the fucking nothing dude! Why did I even come down here?! I can throw infants off towers instead! That got me out of Troy!

Odyssey;

Tiresias: To make it out alive you must not eat the cattle belonging to Helios, if you do you are doomed. To appease Poseidon you must offer a very specific sacrifice and you must travel once more, good luck. Oh and you have news from home.

Odysseus: Oh shit we ain't done yet? Now I have to protect my men from yet another fiasco other than the sack from Aiolus?! Well...nevermind... Thanks prophet. It was massive help.

[batsplat]

Thailand 2019: Valentino Rossi provides his take on Marc Marquez's superiority that season. Then, Marquez is asked about Fabio Quartararo's prospects and Rossi comments on whether he will congratulate Marquez for winning the championship.

[badly-drawn-pigeon]

If your Aizen wants to abolish a faulty system because he sees how its flaws hurt people and is willing to make bloody sacrifices to achieve the change despite acknowledging that they are wrong... That's not Aizen. That's Kaname Tosen.

[lucassinclaer]

jancy in their just friends era giving each other exorbitant amounts of personal space

for @musicalchaos07

[epickiya722]

I'm calling it and I hope I'm wrong about it.

If Gege drops a backstory for Sukuna, folks are still going to be like "well, it's not the backstory I want for him".

[sarahwatchesthings]

Heterosexual ways to touch your nemesis #173

[ckret2]

What is the equivalent of the phrase "Oh my God" that Bill uses? Is he mentioning some god figure from his home dimension or is he using “Oh my me” or “Oh my Axolotl”?

He doesn't use anything.

Have you ever heard an atheist say "oh my big bang" instead of "oh my god"? In common usage, the word "god" in "oh my god" is merely part of a stock phrase and not a declaration of belief. In fact, changing "god" to another term would instantly make it more religious, since if you just say "oh my god" it's like "well maybe they believe in a god or maybe they're just using the phrase," but if you say "oh my [something else]" it's like "they DEFINITELY believe in [something else] so passionately that they changed the phrase just to emphasize how much they believe in it."

If Bill ever used the phrase, he would use it like a foreign word pronounced omaigohd that's just an exclamation that communicates a specific emotional meaning to English-speakers (anger, shock, excitement)—and he's not going to get all cutesy while speaking a foreign language to draw attention to something irrelevant. This exclamation isn't an avenue to announce his religious beliefs.

There ARE issues he feels passionately enough about that he'd break away from common English. Unless he's in "pretending to be human" mode, at any place where a human would naturally refer to themself as "a person," "a woman/man," "female/male," "she/he," Bill will refer to himself as "a shape," "a triangle," "triangular," "it," even in contexts where that sounds weird to the humans. His gender is triangle and that matters to him. Religion does not.

At any rate, there's no [something else] he could fill into the phrase. He knows for a fact that there are figures powerful enough to alter reality—he is one. He suspects on good evidence that there are even more powerful figures that can conjure an entire universe from nothing—he is not one. He considers "power" and "divinity" to be separate things, he doesn't think powerful figures are divine, and he doesn't think the divine is real. He thinks "god" is an artificial social label, like "king," that only exists when enough people concur that it's real and stops existing when enough people stop respecting it. He thinks "god" is what the weak call the powerful when they've been fooled into thinking the powerful deserve worship. He thinks he's one of the powerful that fools the weak. He doesn't think he's a god—except when he's lying to himself very well—but he loves how it feels when other people call him a god, so he encourages it. He doesn't consider anybody god, he doesn't obey or respect any authority, and generally the more powerful a being is, the more he dislikes them on principle. One trillion years ago, the beliefs he was raised with were the sort a white American boomer experiencing a religious crisis would insist are "spiritual but not religious." He briefly thought gods might be real in his youth, but never worshiped any.

But all that aside—his vocabulary simply doesn't include the phrase "oh my god." He doesn't want to imply he even might worship something—he's too proud and that pride is too fragile. If he has to make an exclamation, it'll be something entirely different—"Oh boy." "Oh, come on!" "You're kidding me." "Seriously?" "Whoa!" "Wow!" "No way," maybe hysterical laughter—whatever's fitting in a given situation. Several times in the fic I've had to go find a different phrase where if he was another character I could've just put "omigosh".

[neonhog]

the fnv brotherhood of steel being such an intense parallel to being stuck with an abusive conservative family explored largely through a lesbian character whose constantly making excuses for them gighhrggurughh

[goldkirk]

I'm so proud of myself about finances in the past couple months. I still struggle with money but I did enough meditation and journaling and practicing about it to make myself able to actually face my loans and credit cards and savings and bills and start really truly organizing and addressing them for the first time in years instead of just flying by the seat of my pants.

Like. This is a huge deal for me. I've felt like I'm in deadly danger every time I've tried to think about money for years and years. I'm finally able to look it in the face and stare it down and start to organize and plan on purpose instead of just keeping up with the minimum to stay afloat. I'm so proud of myself.

It's still a refrain of "GUILT (funny link)" every time I think about money but I'm able to actually make spreadsheets and face the numbers and monthly tracking again, and even make a new full budget which I haven't been able to do in ages.

still feel guilt, overwhelm, and helplessness, but no longer feel as much deep elemental shame and terror. that's progress baby

[fideidefenswhore]

the tudors (2007-2010) / wolf hall (2009) / henry viii & the king's men (2020) / eustace chapuys to the emperor (june 1535) / the other boleyn girl (2008) / the downfall and execution of a tudor queen (2023) / eustace chapuys to the emperor (april 1536) / henry viii, stratford festival production (2019) / wolf hall (2009) / elizabeth i & her enemies (2017) / the mirror & the light (2020) / becoming elizabeth (2022) / the mirror & the light (2020) / the tudors (2007-2010) / the mirror & the light (2020) / the tudors (2007-2010)

[schnaf]

22 days until ode's 22nd birthday

day 22 aka THE COUNTDOWN IS OVER - ode's past birthday brrrr ppoppos

[hooved]

quark would definitely get an abortion but odo wouldn't. just because i think odo personally would really want to be a mother if he was ever physically capable of getting pregnant