#or maybe i'm just projecting lol idk

[goldennika]

i watched Jungwon's My Little Day ep thinking it would be a healing ep like Beomgyu's but it made me just want to give Jungwon a tight hug bc damn, he really gave up his youth for his career and that he doesn't really know who he is as a person and doesn't know what/how to have fun outside of work

[lazzarella]

Could be off base, but I was thinking about Fang (again! Surprise!) and, with a couple of things he says, I don't think it's the hugest stretch that he might see himself as difficult to love at times? Which makes it lovelier that, not only is he loved so easily, but he also accepts that love so easily. Like, he knows that Tan likes him before Tan asks him out, but he never pushes him away, he never doubts it, like other characters might. And, I don't know, I just think it's nice. I really like the way his character is written

[glacier-shrimp]

mentally I'm here

[nightmare-foundation]

Yknow, I feel like Dick not fighting back against the mistreatment of him during the Spyral arc (perpetrated by the batfamily) isn't super surprising from a trauma lens, at least not to me.

I've seen people tend to argue that Dick should've and would've fought back, and I'm definitely not arguing otherwise- but why DIDN'T he fight back??

Personally, to me, his behavior strikes me as fawning. He's not arguing against the shitty things the batfamily does to him or say about him, if anything he's agreeing with them. I could probably really look back over how he acts in B&R: Eternal, but from what I remember, he feels very people pleasing.

And imo this isn't super surprising? Especially if what happened in Nightwing #30 is still fresh in his mind, not to mention Spyral breaking him down and the others lashing out at him, physically and verbally. These things are very traumatizing, and would've changed him most likely. His trauma response being to fawn here makes sense; he Needs the others to work with him, and fighting them on something they won't budge on will only get him hurt. Not only that, but physical punishment seems to be a very real consequence at this time, and Dick is likely in survival mode.

If fawning means he can get his job done and not be physically punished, then it makes the most sense for him to go that route, as sad as it is. His trauma response moving from fight(?) to fawn would be a really interesting thing to explore. After all, Dick said things wouldn't be the same, but we don't know WHAT would change, or if it would even be for the better (since people seem to interpret that to mean 'I'm leaving after this' or similar, which is fair tbh but that statement can mean a multitude of things).

Overall, regardless of how in character it is, I think Dick turning to fawning makes sense in this situation. Being beaten by your father and then repeatedly physically and verbally assaulted by the rest of your family is deeply traumatizing, not to mention everything that is Spyral. If Dick can minimize the damage to himself as much as possible and finish the mission, then it makes sense for him to fawn.

[camellcat]

some doctor who cyanotypes I made for my photography class that I just realized I never shared

[coffee-dere]

Hi hi~!!! Sorry I haven't been posting very much... This took a little while (Wayyyy longer than I expected T-T"), but it was fun!! I really should draw WxS more..

[icewindandboringhorror]

... why he sit like this

[thrilling-oneway]

i'm not sure if this is me overthinking things or my media gcse is actually paying off but i wanted to talk about this detail from pandemonium that i haven't seen anyone else point out.

(this kinda unravels into a character study halfway through don't question it)

in chapter 5 (subs here), Shizuku talks about a childhood memory where Tsukasa intervened in an argument her friend group was having. She adds that this interaction made her realise that Tsukasa is the kind of person who really values his friends. Fast forward a second and Shizuku has complimented Tsukasa to the point of embarrassment, Rui teases him over it and Tsukasa gets annoyed and asks what kind of person he takes him for.

Specifically what I want to talk about is Rui's response to that, or lack of response, since he never gets the opportunity before the group moves on to their next tour spot. Internally we see that he agrees with Shizuku's take that Tsukasa is the kind of person who loves his friends a lot, remembering that Tsukasa had been looking out for him and encouraging him to make friends during the trip. He ends up coming to the conclusion that Tsukasa's happiness comes from seeing his friends happy, which makes sense, since we already knew it works the same with Saki. As I said though, he never gets to actually say that out loud.

Kind of.

While I wouldn't question it if only Shizuku had mentioned this detail about Tsukasa and the scene had moved on, the fact that they added that little bit on the end with Rui realising that statement is true makes me go into delusional media student mode.

Point #1: HOLY SHIT the Rui character development in this event was insane. That deserves its own post which I will write some other time but I was genuinely not expecting this to be the end of his first character arc. I mean, we still haven't got the last WxS event of the season yet so they might throw in an epilogue, but this felt like a proper conclusion to his character arc. Rui started out as someone who didn't have any close friends, he was lonely, and in this event he's finally starting to make friends outside of other MCs and actually coming to terms with the fact that, yes, his friends do care about him and his wellbeing. To put it shortly, he feels loved.

Point #2 slash Point #1.5: I said kind of. Does he answer Tsukasa's question out loud at the time? No. It was kinda rhetorical anyway but shhhh. But. Does he answer it later? Yes absolutely. Chapter 8 specifically (no fan TL yet so I'm running off DeepL and wiktionary as normal). You see what I said above, about how they could've just left it with Shizuku saying that Tsukasa is someone who cares about his friends and then just moved on? Yeah this is what I mean. The whole event still works if you remove the part with Rui. But including it does add a little set up for chapter 8. What kind of person does Rui think Tsukasa is?

Chapter 8 is where Rui outright admits that Tsukasa changed his life. Without Tsukasa inviting him to join WxS, he never would've gotten close with Nene again, never would've met Emu, never would've had friends. And thanks to that, he's now able to keep making new friends. He's happy. Thanks to Tsukasa, he can be happy now. Ship or not, Tsukasa impacted Rui's life a lot. Going back to chapter 5 of the event, that's where Rui realises that his friends, or Tsukasa specifically, actually cares about his wellbeing and his happiness, something which he wouldn't have been able to say a few months prior in-universe. Again, ship or not, Tsukasa is like. the most important person in his life right now.

Point #3 slash 2 / 1.5 part 2: This one's less media student and more overthinking it but still a media student. But whatever. Anyway, maybe I'm thinking too hard about the fact that Rui specifically outlines that Tsukasa's happiness comes from seeing his friends happy, but like. I wonder if that realisation is part of the reason why he even told Tsukasa all of that. Like. He's not normally very honest about his feelings, hell he doesn't even realise them half of the time. Even in his last WxS event, he never told the other members about the job offer Asahi gave him, he doesn't even realise how much the prospect of leaving WxS was hurting him until Asahi had to take back the offer for him because of how sad and pained he looked when he accepted it. So the fact that he's fully aware that yes, Tsukasa had an impact on his life, yes, he feels like he's loved and cared for by the people around him, yes, he actually wants to make friends, yes, he's truly happy - it really sticks out, the fact that for like the first time, someone didn't have to tell him this to his face. It sticks out that he even admitted it out loud to the person his feelings revolve around.

But trail back up again to where I mentioned chapter 5. Tsukasa's happiness comes from his friends' happiness. Rui is a much kinder character than people give him credit for. I don't think it would be out of the question for him to want to give back some of the genuine happiness Tsukasa gave him. I mean he says it, right? He thanks Tsukasa for giving him the chance to change his life. And it does make Tsukasa happy to hear that Rui is happy; he says he's welcome, but still points out that Rui came to this point by his own will as well. He's happy that Rui was able to turn his life around.

Like literally the very last thing said in the event. Rui finally has friends, people who love and care for him. He's finally genuinely happy.

Fufu. I'm sorry Tsukasa-kun, but …… this is also going to be a fun memory for me! You really make me smile a lot, Tsukasa-kun! And with those smiles, I will make new friends and new relationships.

Bye I'm gonna go cry in a corner I love this event sm.

[forestgreenlesbian]

.

[brittlebutch]

Desperately trying to make sense of Alex's motivations in Season Two and you know, I do eventually have to wonder if maybe Alex wasn't actually lying in the majority of those tapes.

Like, we tend to assume that Alex's motivations have been a consistent throughline since the college years, but do we actually know that that's the case? Do we know for sure that Alex was acting in deliberate, calculated ways in 2006; or could it be that he's telling the Truth on those olds tapes when he says he's blacking out and can't remember what's happening to anyone? After all, if we're assuming that Season 2 Alex's motivations are the exact same as his motives in Season 3, then it doesn't make any sense at all that he spend months working with Jay to try to find Amy; Season 3 Alex would have attempted to kill Jay like, on sight just to get things over with as quickly as possible and contain the spread of contamination as best as he could.

But, maybe, if Alex really had been separated from Amy after the events of the 04-04-10 tape, and if he really doesn't know where she is, then maybe that could make things start to make more sense. Maybe he really had been watching Jay's channel, and seeing Jay start going through the same things he went through in college without things devolving into violence and disappearances, and wondered if things maybe could play out differently this time. Maybe he really did send that tape to Jay to ask him for help, maybe he really was just trying to find Amy.

But then, instead of actually being helpful, Jay makes it extremely clear that he's a lot more interested in stalking Alex than he is in finding Amy. Alex asked for help, and instead there's a bunch of masked dudes on Jay's heels that keep attacking him, Jay is breaking into his house, stealing his things, leading the Operator right to him all over again, keeps trying to get other people (namely: Jessica -- if Alex is being honest when he says that his call reassuring her that Amy had been found was an effort to make Sure she stayed away from everything that was happening) involved; and instead of anything getting better, instead of anyone finding Amy, things are just getting worse all over again.

It's not until after the incident at the tunnel that things seem to start rapidly devolving. Rather than a calculated attempt to finally follow through with his need to curb the spread of contamination, this is very clearly an outburst of rage and terror. Alex's "I told you not to follow me" line in conjunction with Jay speculating that Alex didn't know who that guy was, to me, pretty firmly seems to speak to Alex having mistaken that stranger for Jay. From his point of view, Alex knows that Jay and totheark know where he live, have broken in before, he suspects that Jay stole a key to make it easier to get into his house, and he's been followed on the daily for months -- Alex is sitting at the tunnel because he doesn't know where else he can go without being constantly surveilled, hunted, and assaulted. And instead of getting a moment by himself to breathe, Jay followed him out there all over again (it feels like Alex looks directly at the camera in Jay's footage of him from this day; he knew for a fact that Jay was there), and then to make matters worse now 'Jay' won't even keep his distance anymore.

So Alex lashes out. And it's not until afterwards that he looks down and finally recognizes that this wasn't Jay -- it was someone completely innocent. Things have finally reached the low point he was at in college all over again; maybe even worse this time. If Alex doesn't remember attacking anyone in college, but he was at least partially conscious of it this time, then things have reached an entirely new rock bottom, they've reached an absolute point of no return.

He has no idea what happened to Amy, and he's spent months trying to find her with no hint of where she could be; he doesn't know where Jay actually is or what additional trouble he could be causing at this point; he does know that now innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire (in regards to the stranger in the tunnel, and also Jessica now that Jay has her phone number, and the untold number of people Jay got involved when he started posting videos to the Marble Hornets channel); things are spiraling out of control and there's no one left to ask for help. The situation isn't getting better, it's getting worse; things aren't getting easier to handle, they're just getting more out of hand; the negative impact is spreading and who knows how much further it can still go?

So, Alex decides to go scorched earth. He disfigures the body with the rock either to hide evidence or to make sure the guy would actually stay dead and not just get back up to start his own cycle of contamination in a few years. He tries to give Jay one last chance to back off, and Jay instead admits he's been talking to Jessica, acts obstinate and lies about not having Alex's spare key, and then breaks into Alex's house a second time (minimum). If Alex doesn't stop him now, who will? Alex met with Jay planning to kill the others, and then himself, so he could put a stop to this once and for all and keep things from getting any worse than they already were.

Maybe it makes a lot more sense if, rather than being a strangely incomprehensible detour on what should have been a straight path, the events of Season Two were the breaking point that put Alex on that path to begin with.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

something i've been thinking a lot about today is that in the ten years i've been writing, i have an unconscious (and sometimes, very conscious) expectation that the next thing i write will be better than the last, but sometimes it's clear that progress doesn't work that way, and there will be projects that stick more than others, and projects that don't seem as easy, or projects that don't seem as impressive or as interesting, and it's been freeing accepting that!

[taylorsabrina]

can i say something controversial about the summer i turned pretty?

[bestialitybestiary]

Tbh I'm not a fan of murder husbands Steter. Like I get it and all respect to other fans, I just find it too ooc for Stiles and I think Peter isn't a guy who's evil to be evil or for fun. I feel he's focused on his survival, especially now, since there's almost no one left of his loved ones. Wolfs are pack animals so it must have made a big difference for him to loose so many people so suddenly (I'm talking about sudden shrinking of his group here, not the family aspect. About feeling safer in bigger group). His experience thought him that he doesn't have a privilege to spare his enemies, at least not anymore. I just see him as a guy who's focused on surviving and protecting himself physically and emotionally. He focused on revenge to somehow deal with what happened, but really it didn't help at all (of course) and he just buried it deep inside and never let anyone close. Something like: if others don't see it, if he doesn't have to acknowledge those emotions, then they're not there. He's keeping distance in every sense of the word for his sanity sake.

What I mean is murder husbands au is like a bad end for Steter, I guess.

[possiblynya]

When in doubt, redraw your dnd party as animal crossing characters (again) 🥳

[grocerystoreanxiety]

in the process of making a website, fully ignoring it for a month and completely forgetting what I put in as any of the test users’ login info, what I did last, what my system architecture was, and 0 clue if anything’s up to date anymore <3 lovelyy im overwhelmed

[autogeneity]

tremendous degree of physiological anxiety