#on themselves. or Anyone Else!

[iambeees]

broke: Boromir was corrupted by the ring because he was weak of heart

woke: Boromir was corrupted because his heart was full. full of love for his brother, for Gondor, for Minas Tirith. Does that make his heart weak? Does a heart motivated by passions and the desire to help others make it weak? Is it wrong and evil to be weak? friendly reminder, the way Sauron deceived Boromir was not by promising him wealth, nor power, nor his own safety- he thought he would be strong enough to defend a whole city and defeat Sauron. Boromir had a heart that was neither weak nor strong, but both at the same time- his heart was full.

[ruporas]

hello there, angel

[ID: Digital illustration in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun Maximum. Vash is sitting facing the viewer and holds a rose between his clasped together hands, but he’s looking to the left, upwards, at Wolfwood, with an awed expression. Wolfwood hovers over him with wings sprouting from his back. He has a cigarette lit between his lips, his arms and legs are crossed, and he looks back at Vash with a neutral expression. The both of them are covered in a blue shadow, casted by Wolfwood and his hovering form, while warm light hits the back of his wings and over Vash’s legs. Small feathers sits next to Vash. End ID]

[you-can-always-come-home]

isn't it interesting how the trio instantly hate warren. they're willing to give literally all the other teachers' lessons a chance (except yellow guy in dreams, but that was different. his friends were gone and he was alone and scared) but not warren. the clock whisking them away on a journey right before their show starts is fine. the computer interrupting their board game is fine. lillie and todney and their weirdness are fine. but fine seconds into warren's song and red guy's muttering "i HATE this guy" to duck.

sure, it's partially just meant to ram in the fact that warren's weird and unlikable, but it's interesting that the only thing that can get them to instantly distrust a teacher is when that teacher barges in on them and challenges their friendship. i've always wondered about the theory that whatever red guy said to yellow guy after he forgot the password, the censored stuff, was actually lighthearted and warren censored it to make it seem terrible so he'd have an excuse to interrupt them, but it kind of makes sense- red guy and duck seem confused at warren's assertion that they're "bad friends" and seem to dismiss him out of hand without even listening to his song the whole way through. it'd also give more meaning to "hey, c'mon, we don't hate you, that's just the worm in your brain" at the end- warren (the worm) really was the one who made yellow guy think his friends hated him. it was a matter of miscommunication. the trio are instantly hostile towards warren because he did something they weren't okay with under any circumstances- question their friendship.

[shorthaltsjester]

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

[transbeeduo]

anyways while im thinking about it the fucking stream where Sapnap and George went to Snowchester and vandalized it and "killed" a fake Michael AND FUCKING KILLED SHROUD just to get a reaction and to "get people to play on the server" is the second worst DSMP stream in existence (behind the fucking nuke one with c!dream) ESPECIALLY THEM TRYING TO DEFEND IT WITH "ohhhh we're just trying to get ppl on the server smile" AFTER FUCKING WITH THINGS PEOPLE CARED ABOUT which feels like it'd have the OPPOSITE effect. And I GUARANTEE Ranboo, Tubbo, or Tommy weren't asked about this at ALL, because why communicate with the other content creators if ur on the Dream Team obviously. IT WASN'T EVEN IN LIKE A ROLEPLAY WAY THEY JUST WANTED TO BE ASSHOLES. THAT STREAM FUCKING SUCKED ASS AND I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THAT IT SUCKS ASS

[asleepinawell]

there she goes

[hargrove-mayfields]

Funny how people have been saying that Steve is the big brother Max deserves, but when Max dies he has literally no reaction. He just stands there and listens to the clock chime, along with Nancy and Robin. As if he doesn’t even care. Max sacrificed herself for them and died and they express no grief at all, and I’m pretty sure it’s Nancy who says anything. Yet when Billy thought Max might be in danger at the Byers, he got so protective of her that he was willing to fight someone he wanted to be friends with. He spent the last week complimenting Steve and showing off in front of him, but he didn’t hesitate to beat his ass for putting his sister in harm's way. Who really deserves to be her brother?

Even once Max is in the hospital and they’ve had a little time to process what happened to her and visit, Steve is even more uncaring. He’s somewhere else smiling and playing matchmaker as if the kid he babysat for three years isn’t across the room bawling his eyes out because someone close to him died in his arms. Do you really think Steve still gives two shits about Max in this scene when he can’t even bother with Dustin?

Meanwhile Billy was so torn up that Max hated him (and started mirroring his abusive father) that he spent at least a month trying to figure out how to talk to her. Before the snowball he looks so sad because he knows he fucked up their relationship, and not even on purpose. And then, according to Dacre, between s2 and s3 he’s really trying to be the best brother to her he can and be a better person in general. And their relationship was improving! If Max died you bet your ass Billy wouldn’t just forget about her. He was her brother, not some random older guy she hardly knew who had a hero complex and saved her just to ease his own worries and then moved on with his life. I don’t agree with that characterization of Steve but that’s what the Duffers gave us.

Out of the two, who really cared about Max? That would be her real brother, thank you.

[starbuck]

the thing you really have to factor into Billy as a character is that he nearly drowned, was tortured for a week, made it back home only to be held hostage as he was informed that his beloved adoptive father had been murdered, and then had to continue to work with the murderer for months afterwards in the interest of his crew’s safety and, through all of this, no one ever asked him how he was holding up.

[plugnuts]

The Red String of Failure

[magicdonuts-supreme]

TW: intrusive thoughts. self-hate and -doubt. insecurity.

—- + -—

I’ve always seen countless F/O imagines with a repeated (and correct) theme of “Your F/O loves you.” Let’s make it known that I appreciate that, I really do, but…

What happens the moment the Voices in your head ask “Why?”

“You don’t even know my F/O! I doubt they’d love me. And even in the slim chance they did, I don’t see a reason why they’d love this half-human screw up—”

Stop.

Breathe.

I assure you that your F/O doesn’t care if this is the 9,999th time you come to them, they'll always be there because you make their life brighter just by being. Try to exist— right here, right now— for a minute or two and whittle those voices away to the best of your ability (and don’t worry if the best you can do is “nothing”). Your F/O can see how hard you’re trying, but they aren’t with you because they think you can move mountains; they yearn to share their life with you because you’re you. Dear reader, there is simply no other reason.

Your F/O won’t think twice about your trauma, whether it comes from a horror-like past or because you stared passive-aggressively at a dog the other day and feel guilty about it. They just know it affects you and they won’t hesitate to comfort (and spoil) you like there’s no tomorrow. Your F/O doesn’t care if you feel like you’re going through Hell everyday and “whine about it too much” or are “too clingy”, they’re your safe space. They’re perfectly content knowing that when you falter, they’ll be there to catch their beloved and give you a place to rest your head, if only for a minute.

Your F/O sees you in a way you can’t imagine. They accept every magnificent part of you that you call a flaw, thanking whatever celestial force they believe in that they have the pleasure of knowing you. Those Voices inside your head are lying, and just the idea of them being right is something your F/O could never fathom, but they’ll more than happily rush to prove to you how wrong the Voices are.

Your F/O has no wish to stop sweeping those incorrect thoughts away, so please let them. They full-heartedly know they’re doing important work.

[alexabrier]

The girl belongs to Tyler, so hands off.

[celeborne]

after everything he's been through, when is it his turn to be happy?

[made-ofmemories]

The last of us may be using their infected sparingly but when they do use them they are downright TERRIFYING

[hyacynta]

It's hilarious how videos about Apollo that are completely unrelated to PJO use the official PJO Apollo art as the thumbnail. He really is that iconic.

[byfulcrums]

WAIT! Imagine an episode where April complains about Sunita being unavailable for a long time and having to be alone in school again, so the boys decide to infiltrate her school go to school with her.

They somehow get cloaking brooches (definitely didn't steal them, they would never do that they did), Donnie made them fake IDs and they went to her school as students.

Barry almost has a heart attack when he sees them because what the fuck are you doing here? And the other students get angry because only they get “nice” treatment from the lunch lady (mostly Mikey, but he forced Draxum to be nice to the others, including April).

Leo would join a sport and absolutely destroy everyone, becoming a “pupular kid” (mostly because of the trouble he gets in. Also, he 100% has issues playing on teams bc that's literally canon). Donnie would be the type to complain about how easy the stuff they're learning is (except for history. He sucks at it). Mikey would look like he's distracted, but when asked what they were talking about he'd repeat everything the teacher said word by word (because c'mon, that boy can definitely pay attention to more than one thing at once). Raph is the guy everyone's scared of (he's HUGE), but when people actually try to get to know him, they realize he's just a very overprotective, giant teddy bear.

Everyone is confused because where did they come from?? Why do they look so different from each other but say they're brothers? How do they manage to vanish so many times without getting expelled?

[mrtheinsatiable]

Part of playing dragon age games is wishing your friend group had an HR department