#they are terrible at romance

[laurapetrie]

I was Elvis's doll, his own living doll, to fashion as he pleased. The more we were together the more I came to resemble him in every way. His tastes, his insecurities, his hang-ups — all became mine. My sole ambition was to please him, to be rewarded with his approval and affection. When he criticized me, I fell to pieces. - PRISCILLA PRESLEY

[warren-keplers-funk-band]

every time i want to be absolutely ruined, i just think about the fact that, despite being only five seasons, in-universe bbc's merlin spanned over a period of ten years.

ten years during which merlin dressed and undressed arthur every day. took care of his armour. stood and fastened the clasps when arthur was going out to battle. what imaginably could be more quietly intimate than that?

ten years during which merlin withstood being underestimated, withstood all that he had done for arthur being unacknowledged, just so he could stay by his side.

ten years during which the most powerful magical being in albion chose to stay by arthur's side as his manservant, and his friend. destiny be damned.

that utter devotion, loyalty to each other? arthur's reciprocated loyalty to and love for merlin despite the fact that, in his mind, he was just a human servant who hadn't saved his life nearly half as much as in reality?

I'M DEAD. BOWLED OVER. IN RUINS.

[horrorhare]

you wear me out

[mellosdrawings]

Do you think in the N2 Squad, Jamil will just randomly get a burst of confidence and flirt with Leona and Vil, just for them to turn it around on him and he then gets so flustered he enters Caterpillar Mode™️ (pulls his hood over his face) for a solid hour?

I kept this one in my asks for a long time coz, while I thought it was a good ask and wanted to draw something for it, I am also plagued with the terrible curse of being both aromantic and autistic and struggling a lot with the very concept of ~*flirting*~

So first, gonna thank @aria-faye and @the-fab-fox for their insights and having the patience to explain to me the big strokes of flirting.

And now, I'm gonna quote aria-faye word for word cause he explained Jamil's flirting perfectly well in my opinion :

"I feel like Jamil is just... bad at flirting. He can tease and joke and all that, but when he's doing it with the intention of flirtation, i feel like he stumbles. His version of intentional flirting would probably be just... being overly straightforward. Saying what he's thinking for once."

"I feel like Jamil isn't very charismatic when it comes to flirting, so he isn't saying it [compliments] in any sort of way. Just pointing out a fact, which, to him, is flirting. Because it's not something he'd normally say aloud."

"Here's the thing: I think if they played the flirting game, and if Jamil said something intentionally over-the-top, teasing flirtatious, they [Leona and Vil] would match his energy and do it right back. BUT Jamil would be equipped to volley that back over and over. It's not flirtation that gets him. There's an element of disingenuous in flirting. It's all exaggerated, a bit untrue. It's an act - a mutually agreed-upon act that everyone in the group enjoys, but an act nonetheless. And Jamil is EXCELLENT at acts. He's no blushing flower when it comes to flirting. He would take that stuff all the way to bed if that's where it led him. But compliments? He has no idea how to take compliments. He has such a low opinion of himself for so long that he never learned. Compliments are what make him blush. Not flirting."

"Like, Leona could be like 'Damn Baby, what does that tongue do?' And Jamil would immediately respond by purring 'Come here and find out.' But Leona being like 'You look beautiful today' would have Jamil like "Oh, um. *blushes, pulls hood over his head* Thanks, I guess.'"

"I think something else that would get him flustered is physical affection. Like he gets all hyped up to shakily hold their hands, and they immediately respond by kissing his cheeks and being sweet to him. That would make him blushy too."

"Flirting is basically just manipulation. Jamil knows how to do that. He's really good at that. It might surprise him at first, but if he's the one initiating, he wouldn't do it unless he knew exactly what he was doing. Flirting for real is kind of fake. A teasing dance you do to get to a more intimate set of behaviors. And Jamil is great at this kind of thing. There are a thousand ways to make him blushy if he's not initiating. But if he's initiating, that implies a level of confidence, so the options for making him blushy circles right back around to honesty."

"Leona and Vil flirt by antagonising each other, so it might take them a second to realize that whenever Jamil drops an Honesty Bomb on them like this and speaks plainly, he's flirting. But once they know, Jamil will never know peace again, because they turn it right back on him and compliment him honestly until he's curled up and hiding in his hood and begging them to stop."

(Yes we had a very long discussion about it x))

[undertheredhood]

random civillain who just moved to gotham: *having a mental breakdown after they accidentally kill a clown with a bad dye-job*

the red hood (notorious crime lord and vigilante): "are you from tennessee? 'cause you're the only ten i see."

[jb-nonsense]

Gale realizing what you meant when you asked if he liked his belly rubbed

[fluoresensitive]

I was thinking and I've come to the realization that people do not truly understand the damage that incest and rape does to you. They think they do, they think it's about forbidden romance and desire so strong that you can't help yourself but it's not. It's about control and power, about someone in a position over you deciding that your bodily autonomy and mental well-being come second to them. And it scares me that you can't say, "please do not sexualize abuse" without facing backlash on a website with this many survivors.

[abrandnewshadow]

the conan thing was on his story 06/08/2024

video is from tmillustrations instagram 07/21/2024

[gunsatthaphan]

(っ˘з(˘⌣˘ ) ♡

[shirecorn]

Tumblr keeps popping up to sell me ad free dashboard. But what it doesn't understand is that me and the ads have a sort of symbiosis at this point.

The guys from the fake gameplay trailers for a predatory mobile app are my blorbos

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Ka/taang: friends-to-lovers or the Friend Zone?

It’s almost axiomatic, in any ATLA shipping discussion, that Ka/taang is the friends-to-lovers ship while Zutara is the enemies-to-lovers ship, and that differences in shipping tastes can be boiled down to whether you prefer FTL or ETL.

My first ship was Percabeth. My biggest ship was Klaine. It took me until Mockingjay to let go of my Gale-and-Katniss-are-childhood-friends rose-tinted goggles and start liking Everlark. I started dabbling in ETL because of Zutara, but I’m incredibly picky about it (do not ask me how many Dramione fanfics made me irrationally, disproportionately mad).

All this to say: as a longtime friends-to-lovers enthusiast, I should theoretically love Ka/taang. But…

My difficulty with Ka/taang as a friends-to-lovers ship boils down to this: Aang and Katara’s friendship was always narratively framed as insufficient, because Aang liked her from the start and always wanted a romantic relationship. And imo that dynamic really colours their entire friendship.

I like to think Aang would’ve been a ride-or-die friend — the type to give up the Avatar State to rescue her, the type to commit ecoterrorism and help her get arrested, the type to make her a flower necklace to cheer her up — even if he didn’t have a crush on her, but I will never know that. We never got to see the pure friendship part of friends-to-lovers, because the spectre of the romantic relationship was always there. Before the last five minutes of the show, Katara’s feelings for Aang range from “plausibly interested” (The Headband, Cave of Two Lovers) to “doesn’t hate it” (Day of the Black Sun, The Fortuneteller) to “no” (Ember Island Players). Yet Katara’s eventual capitulation to reciprocation of Aang’s feelings was always depicted as inevitable, starting from s1 when the prisoners during Avatar Day reassured him that she’d “come around” because he’s a catch. It’s as if friendship, even one full of devotion and mutual love like the one they share, is not enough.

And that’s just totally antithetical to what I love about a friends-to-lovers dynamic. I love romances where characters value each other outside of attraction, when they see each other for who they are (this goes double for pretty characters like Katara, whose complexity and imperfections are just as important as her beauty and her care for others). I love the idiots in love sub-trope, where they’re obviously into each other, yet do a bunch of mental gymnastics to remain in comfortable denial (we got a little bit of this earlier in the series, but by s3 we were firmly in Aang-pines-and-Katara-deflects territory). In every friends-to-lovers story I’m simply obsessed with the confess-and-kiss scene, but the version we got in ATLA was ruined by the lack of reciprocation, twice.

Over time, because Aang was written as so insistent about his affections, Ka/taang went from a friends-to-lovers story to a Nice Guy Friend Zone “why doesn’t she like me” story. I mentioned Everlark earlier: I got the same ick for Gale in Mockingjay as I did for Aang in s3, where the woman is not interested yet he still badgers her about it. (And considering Gale is canonically hot, I don’t think the relative attractiveness of Aang is the issue here). But Gale’s insistence was presented as his problem, his lack of empathy, his self-righteousness; Aang’s insistence was just a part of his quest to get the girl.

A lot of people say Zutara is a female fantasy, whether they mean it in a positive or pejorative way. Nobody says the same about Ka/taang, even though women definitely have friends-to-lovers fantasies too. A good friends-to-lovers story reminds me of all the times when I was an idiot before getting together with a friend I was actually head-over-heels for. Ka/taang reminds me of all the times when I was not interested in a friend and they didn’t respect my preference. Friends-to-lovers is a delicate balance, maintained only by unerring mutual respect and unconditional care for each other, and it can veer into Nice Guyism if the writers aren’t thoughtful about why this dynamic is so appealing. Which is exactly what happened with Ka/taang.

[frnkiebby]

i mean seriously~🎃

[spellmage]

i really like the idea that the dark urge had precisely no romantic experience before gortash. they lived their life solely for bhaal and suffered no distraction. they were a vessel, barely even a person— created to be the last soul alive

and all of a sudden this greasy, disgustingly charismatic guy comes along and messes durge up so thoroughly that they not only prayed for their father’s forgiveness in the present, but also had to reassure said father that they would definitely 100% still kill gortash at the end of it

even better is the idea that they had no idea what the Horrible Feelings they were having for gortash even were, so they were utterly confused writing letters to their dad like ‘sorry i really like being around gortash and his plans are REALLY clever and he’s a genius did i mention that he’s clever but also no worries! i will kill him i promise! love you!’

[autumnleaf1111]

You will never convince me, unless you’re Asagiri, that the “you and I are destined to” Soukoku speech was actually part of the plan. Chuuya was definitely supposed to just shoot Dazai in the head but Dazai started saying random shit that wasn’t supposed to be said.

[suckitphaneuf]

when I see ppl make valid points against the character I'm romancing

[rivsisnotonfire]

this is literally my personality in one image.