#they make me emotional okay

[describingcolours]

"well youve had it 6 years that's a good amount of time for that kind of thing to work"

"you should be grateful you got 3 years of use out of that thing, I'm lucky if mine last a year haha"

listen, in 1977 nasa launched the voyager spacecrafts to take advantage of a planetary alignment that takes place every 175 years. These 2 crafts were planned to flyby the outer planets of our solar system and gather data on them to send back to us. Voyager 2 launched first on the 20th of August despite its name because it was planned to reach our gas giants after its counterpart voyager 1, which launched a little later on the 5th of September.

The voyager mission was planned to end 12 years later in 1989. In that time, voyager 1 and 2 passed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They discovered new moons, confirmed theories about Saturn's rings, found the first active volcanoes found outside the earth, and they take close-up images of planets only seen at that point from telescopes.

On the 25th of August 1989, voyager 2 encounters Neptune, the last planet in our solar system the voyagers will meet. And that was that. End of mission. Now obsolete.

~

Less than 1 year later on valentine's day in 1990 voyager 1 looked back on the planet that had built it and sent with it a world's worth of hopes and dreams and took a picture. We called it the solar system family portrait and in it, we see ourselves. The pale blue dot nestled in the darkness of space

And then commands were sent to shut down their cameras. Preserve fuel.

35 years after launch, in 2012 voyager 1 sent back to us data about interstellar space. The very first manmade object to enter it.

41 years after launch voyager 2 did the same. Still operational, still going. Still sending back to us invaluable data, teaching us about our own solar system and the suns influence in our local bubble of space.

They are expected to continue to operate until the year 2025 - almost 50 whole years after they were launched and 36 years after their mission was supposed to have ended.

48 years of harsh space travel, battered by solar winds, pulled by gravity but fast enough just to escape, pelted by who knows how much space dust and radiation.

And even after that, they still have a purpose. Each craft was given a golden record. A disc filled with human knowledge and knowledge of humans and the planet they live on. Greetings and well-wishes to any prospective extraterrestrial life that could potentially pick it up. Co-ordinates, an invite. Samples of our music, the things we love, sounds of the earth, a story of our world. The surf, the wind, birds and whales, images of a mother, our moon, a sunset. Long after the voyager spacecrafts go dark, probably long after we are gone, they will still be doing their job; educating a species about our very tiny corner of the galaxy.

They are nasa's longest-running operation.

And it was all done using 70s technology.

So excuse me if I want a phone that lasts more than 2 years or a vacuum cleaner that doesn't break down after 6, or god fucking forbid, a refrigerator that will keep my food cold my entire fucking lifetime.

[alpacaroni-and-cheese]

Leah and Fatin, A Journey of Forgiveness

Spoilers for The Wilds seasons 1 and 2 Trigger warning for brief mention of a canon suicide attempt. Be safe before you read <3

Throughout the first season of Amazon Prime's series, The Wilds, you could be forgiven for thinking that Leatin (or Latin, for the OGs) was a rarepair. A crackship, if you will.

They had some intensely homoerotic moments (wiping your own blood on your rival's face? I see you, Fatin) and some deeply important and emotional moments (see my previous essay), but for most watchers of the show, they weren't much more than semi-strangers to lowkey friends to bitter enemies to close friends.

But then season 2 came out.

Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's go back to the beginning of the season.

Leah has pulled herself out of a man-made pit designed by the experimenters who are threatened by her. She's so desperately close to unravelling the whole sick and twisted game, she just has to show the others the pit, and then they'll believe her.

When she gets back to the beach, however, there's no time to go looking for the pit, triumphant and vindicated, because Rachel is dying. A large portion of her arm has been bitten off by a shark. She needs a hospital and trained professionals, but the best they have are antibiotics and an understanding that bleeding is bad. The open wound is cauterised and bandaged to within an inch of its life.

Did I mention all of this is happening while epiphany by Taylor Swift plays in the background? Soul destroying stuff.

Anyway, now that Rachel isn't actively dying, Leah can drag Fatin away to find the pit, but it's gone.

Leah can't believe it. She knows it was real, and she knows Nora put her in there. She knows she didn't imagine it, but the proof is all gone. The truth has once again slipped through her fingers.

Fatin, on the other hand, is only growing more and more concerned for Leah. For some context, Leah's near-drowning experience only happened just a couple of days prior, so from Fatin's perspective, this could easily be a worsening of Leah's mental state. If she's hallucinated this pit, then she's quickly going to become a greater danger to herself and to the others. Fatin now not only has to especially worry about Rachel, but Leah as well.

And Fatin is tired. She's exhausted, and her threads are pulled taut, ready to snap.

The episode jumps ahead a little, just a few days, and we see that Leah is still searching for the pit. She's disappearing for hours at a time, under the pretence of doing something vaguely useful (like gathering wood for the signal fire) but returning with little to no real progress made.

Fatin notices all this, because of course she does.

She tries to convince Leah it was just a mirage, but Leah doesn't budge. She can't budge, because finding the pit is her only real way of knowing she hasn't completely lost it.

The group is moving camp from outside on the beach to inside the forest, so everybody is gathering up their stuff and moving it in-land. Leah's helping, sort of, but she's still lost in her spiral.

Leah believes that she needs answers, and the person who can best give her those answers is lost to the waves, presumed dead. So she goes for the next best thing, too caught up in her own monsoon of guilt, paranoia and unflinching desire to find the truth to realise that the answers she's trying to find are not as important as protecting Rachel's fragile heart and mind.

Before anyone can step in and stop the inevitable fracturing, she prods, and Rachel implodes.

All of the girls rush forward to Rachel. Some, like Toni, stand guard, facing Leah and warning her not to come closer. Others, like Shelby and Martha gently soothe and comfort Rachel, whose grief and guilt is on full display.

Fatin, however, is furious.

She grabs Leah and drags her to the cliffs, shoving her up against the cliff-face.

She snarls, teeth bared in anger. Leah causing hurt to herself was bad enough, but the escalation to hurting Rachel was a step too far.

Fatin bites, tearing into the soft, exposed underbelly.

"You take your delusions, and you take your theories, and you fucking bury them, now! And if you ever take them within 100 feet of Rachel again, I'll fucking kill you."

These words will haunt her, but she has a point. Leah was wrong for interrogating Rachel.

Confronted with the fact that she hurt Rachel, and exhausted of the ceaseless noise bouncing around in her head that something is wrong, Leah makes a decision. A bad one.

She overdoses. Later, she'll say she didn't really want to die, she just wanted to stop feeling.

We don't see the immediate fallout, episode 2 picks up a couple of days later. Leah is near-catatonic, lying on a bed of bamboo. Rachel is nearby, in a similar state.

Fatin, Toni and Dot sit together close by, and Fatin is tearing strips off clothing to make new bandages for Rachel.

Fatin is scared. More scared than she's ever been before in her life. She's filled with guilt, and wishing she didn't have to deal with this reality.

So she pretends that she doesn't care, because that's easier than facing her fear and her guilt. She knows, deep down, that despite her anger being righteous, she went too far.

"What matters is, she's alive, and she's finally fucking quiet."

Rachel, who is sick of being babied, and likely just a bit pissed off at Fatin's insensitivity, resolves to get Leah up and moving herself. To the surprise of all present, it works. Leah breaks out of her catatonia and stumbles after her.

They spend some time together, sharing a real, honest conversation. They've spoken to each other before, obviously, but this is the first time each one is sharing their true selves. No more facades of being a better person than they are, no more ulterior motives. Just Leah and Rachel.

They forgive each other, and themselves, forging an unbreakable bond.

They bring out in each other the first real joy they've felt in days, maybe even weeks (just look at their faces!).

Fatin sees Leah healing, and shares in her joy. Although, maybe now she's starting to have some revelations...

2x03 sees Leah and Rachel spending more time together. Their bond deepens, and the two characters who have been the most tense for the entire duration of the show, finally get to be relaxed.

"Well if I had one that counted the number of hours since my last neurotic thought, I would be at like, a hundred."

They gather bamboo to make repairs for the beds at camp, when Leah realises something. They can make instruments out of the bamboo.

Multiple hours of practice later, they arrive back at camp, proudly holding their crudely-but-lovingly-made instruments.

They play Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It's a little off-key ("She's flat, but fuck me.") but the heart is there, and soon everyone is singing along.

Martha is dancing, Rachel and Dot are singing their hearts out, and Toni and Shelby are busy making googly eyes at one another.

And Leah?

Well, she makes her way over to Fatin.

She sings, "Home is whenever I'm with you," while cradling Fatin's face in her hands. Fatin melts, understanding the message, and falling even further in love.

In a tumultuous, traumatic time of their lives, filled with misery, guilt, shame, fear, depression, anxiety, paranoia, and bone-deep exhaustion they'll probably never fully recover from, this one simple gesture says everything.

I heard all you said. I felt your teeth tear my weary flesh. I bled from your wounds, but that's over now. I understand why.

I forgive you.

[escapismqueen]

Thinking about how Lucy and Tim are literally each others person. How they’re each others safe place. How they were there for each other no matter what, even before they were together, how they feel safest around each other. How they feel free to be vulnerable around each other. Crying.

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try

[chattematsu]

[4.0 archon quest spoilers]

[sunshinebokuto]

Bokuto hides in small places when he's sad :( no one talk to me :(

[attleboy]

little doodle to celebrate going into 2024!!! 🎉 idk what's coming but may we make the best of it :D

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[aardvaark]

the long way down job is such an important turning point in eliot & parker’s relationship bc they’d both been viewing the things they have in common as fairly negative: they’ve both been told that they’re cold and ruthless and dangerous and they know those things are true. so when they’ve recognised themselves in each other, it’s been a sense of "the thing that’s wrong with me is a lot like the thing that’s wrong with you". and there’s comfort in that, in a way. but now eliot gets parker to see that maybe those aren’t all negative traits, they’re just… traits. neutral. it doesn’t make them bad or good, it makes them who they are. and now when they see themselves reflected in each other, it’s not a reminder that they’re wrong and bad - it’s kinship, it’s familiarity, it’s belonging.

[silverwhittlingknife]

So you're a go to source for all things Dick&Tim bros and you tend to write primarily from Dick's POV. So, odd question, but if you were to summarize their relationship from his POV in FIVE panels which panels would you pick? Keeping in mind that one specific aspect of their relationship that you love needs to be clearly represented by each panel (loyalty, trust etc). I hope this is a fun challenge and not an annoying question so if you don't want to answer that's cool! Have a wonderful day!

No more talk. The same thoughts run through two minds... (SotB 29) / You're my equal. My closest ally. (RR 1) / I can't stop thinking how much I rely on him. (GoG 3)

25 Feelings Dick Has About Tim

This was such a kind ask & a cool challenge which I totally failed; here are TWENTY-five panels of Dick's POV on Tim sdfdsfds Look, I got carried away! Marcia and Cindy! The boys!!

OKAY SO BEFORE I GET TO THE PANELS A FEW NOTES:

WARNING THAT THERE ARE SOME NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN HERE because I love conflict but but but you gotta remember those are not the final word!! They are complicated people and sometimes they get mad at each other BUT ultimately their relationship is so hugely important in both their lives & they love each other and rely on each other so much -!!! <3

Also I have CONCLUDING THOUGHTS at the end about what Dick's POV leaves out (mostly: a lot of Dick defending & protecting & supporting Tim, which Dick does instinctively but isn't very self-aware about most of the time)

I have loosely organized my list into 5^5 format (5 categories with 5 examples each!), so if you want to skip to a relevant one, here are the categories!!

Below the cut:

I hate him and find him infuriating (#1-5)

On second thought, he's endearing & fun (#6-10)

Grief is complicated & he's all tangled up in mine (#11-15)

I love him & think highly of him (#16-20)

I rely on him & though it's hard for me, I trust him (#21-25)

I hate him and find him infuriating (#1 - 5)

1) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze me and Bruce, but he doesn’t know me at all, he should get lost (New Titans 61)

2) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze Bruce but he doesn’t know Bruce at all, he should get lost (Gotham Knights 26)

3) He is so nosy about stuff that is MY business (Robin 0)

4) He sounds like an insincere suck-up half the time... but okay, fine, if you push him he's got a sense of humor about it (New Titans 65)

5) I'm sure he's a better vigilante than me. It's my fault for being a failure, but I resent him anyway. (Nightwing 9 - Dick's having a nightmare)

On second thought, he's kinda endearing (#6-10)

6) He worries too much and gets anxious so easily, but it makes him fun to tease (Robin 67)

7) I'm not that competitive - okay, so maybe I'm a little competitive, I gotta make sure he doesn't get a swelled head (Prodigal)

8) I'm supposed to be his favorite! It is not cool for him to be fanboying over my not-girlfriend's not-boyfriend!! (Birds of Prey 19)

9) We have fun together. I can kick back and relax when it's just the two of us. Plus I get to boss him around a bit. (Prodigal)

10) He’s always trying to reassure me, and I guess it's a little comforting, but also he doesn’t really get it. Or me. He makes excuses that he shouldn't, because he doesn't understand that I suck. (Nightwing 64)

Grief is complicated and he's all tangled up in mine (#11 - 15)

11) He reminds me of everything I try not to think about. Sometimes the memories are so strong it hurts to look at him. (Batman 441)

12) WHY IS HE BEING IMPOSSIBLE ALL OF A SUDDEN??? THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING (Nightwing 139)

13) We're the same. He says all the things I don't let myself think about. It's like arguing with myself. (Nightwing 139)

14) He thinks he gets to tell me what to do but he doesn’t, fuck him (Battle for the Cowl)

15) Life sucks, so what. I sucked it up so he should too (RR 1)

I love him and think highly of him (#16 - 20)

16) He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever have.  If someone hurts him I will hurt them harder. (Nightwing 6)

17) I can't handle the idea of losing him. (Nightwing 97)

17) He’s so good and I’m not. I'm afraid I’m bad for him. (Nightwing 110)

18) He’s better than me, and it’s kind of a relief because I know no matter what he’ll be okay. (Gates of Gotham 3)

19) In my head he’s the responsible one.  (Gotham Knights 10)

I rely on him, and though it's hard for me, I trust him (#20-25)

20) I know I have to trust him but I'm afraid he'll make the wrong choices and get hurt (Nightwing 139)

21) I'm sure I know what he should do because I see myself in him - not that I can take my own advice, but he should (Blackest Night 3)

22) I trust him.  When I’m losing my grip on things, he pulls me back. (Gotham Knights 10)

23) I want him to trust me (Red Robin 12)

24) He can tell when I'm lying. Sometimes he sees my weaknesses better than I wish he did. (Detective Comics 874)

25) He’s always there when I need him. (Teen Titans / Outsiders Secret Files)

Final rambling thoughts:

TIM: Uhh, okay, so I'm just skimming this list - do you really trust me? you're not just saying that? - but anyway, I'm confused because you left some stuff out? Like some stuff that's kinda important? DICK: No? I think I got everything? TIM (starts counting on his fingers): The time I was having a bad day but then I called you. The time I got captured by Two-Face but then you saved me. The time I fell off a train but then you saved me. The time I fell off a building but then you saved me. The time I fell off a different building - DICK: I feel like you're trying to make some kind of point but I'm not sure what it could be.

SO THE THING IS, I put 25 panels in here and not a single one has Dick catching Tim when he’s falling!!! But I think that's a central motif of their relationship from Tim’s POV, not Dick’s. I love Dick, but in some ways I think he is spectacularly un-self-aware.

And I think he especially has a lot of blind spots about Tim. He kinda intermittently gets that Tim admires him, and he enjoys it in a playful I-get-to-boss-you-around way. But Dick tends to consistently underestimate all of his own good qualities & skills, and he meets Tim at a point in his life when he's especially down on himself & his abilities. And so he's unable to see his own influence on Tim, & therefore unable to fully understand a lot of Tim's priorities and loyalties and motivations, because you can't actually understand Tim without understanding Dick's impact on him. There's a fascinating moment in Bruce Wayne: Murderer when Dick's completely blindsided & upset to discover that Tim doesn't entirely trust Bruce, even though this has been a definitive fact of Tim's whole thing ever since he showed up with his Batman needs Robin theory, and Barbara has to actively remind Dick of the obvious-to-everyone-except-Dick fact that a lot of Tim's loyalty is to Dick, and Tim loves Bruce but feels free to be more wary of him. (And to give Bruce credit: this is not something he ever begrudges.) But anyway Babs points this out, and Dick manages to sorta process it for about five seconds, but he cannot actually accept it into his worldview so instead he discards it at the speed of light and goes off and has an argument with Tim instead sdfsfdsf

All of Dick's virtues - Dick's kindness at the circus and Dick's determination to fight through grief and Dick's rigid sense of morals and Dick's vigilante skills and every time Dick has ever backed Tim up or listened to him or protected him or saved him from something or just been casually kind to a stranger in Tim's presence etc etc etc - all these things loom really large in Tim's mental story of Who Dick Is, and What Dick And Tim's Relationship Is. Tim meets Dick before he meets Bruce, trusts Dick more than Bruce, aspires to be Robin instead of Batman. And so in Tim's default version of the story, Dick is the super-special and admirable hero and Tim is... nobody in particular, a tagalong outsider who's barely managing to be a hero, not part of Dick and Bruce's family and not part of their story, who, if he's VERY LUCKY and tries REALLY HARD, might be able to fight his way to proving himself and offering something to Dick that Dick will value, if Dick doesn't get fed up with him first.

But that's not Dick's version of the story!!!

Dick's version of the story is almost the exact opposite, a story where Dick's an outcast failure black sheep who's screwing up everything he tries, and meanwhile Tim is The Sudden New Perfect Robin Who's Better Than Me And Probably Bruce Loves Him More And Probably They Gossip About What A Loser I Am, mixed with a complicated edge of Tim Thinks He's So Smart But He Doesn't Know Me/Us At All. Dick gets much more attached to Tim over time, and Tim gets unnervingly better at the know-it-all psychoanalysis so then Dick gets to have complicated feelings about him being right instead of just annoyance at him for being wrong, plus Dick's relationship with Bruce improves a lot, so Tim stops feeling so threatening. But Dick never fundamentally changes his basic theory of their relationship in which Tim is highly impressive and capable, and Dick is not so much.

And so asking Dick about Tim is kinda like if you asked George Bailey to tell you about Harry Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life; like, you'll be there for five hours while he tells you how great Harry is, and how accomplished Harry is, and how he doesn't really get how or why Harry does the things he does, and maybe George does feel a little resentful or jealous sometimes, but that pales in comparison to all his admiration and trust for Harry who he loves so much, who's better than him in so many ways, and he's not gonna openly gripe but secretly he can't help but feel sometimes like he's such a failure in comparison to Harry, a perfect person who emerged fully formed from Zeus's head with all the virtues and also all the accomplishments, etc. etc. etc. --

-- and he will not actually remember the part where he changed and saved Harry's whole entire life unless you literally send him to an alternate timeline in order to force him to remember it. <3

[limbel]

did't feel inspired to work on a new prompt today so i decided to keep exploring dean's notebook from this piece, since i am very much Still Thinking about it a Normal Amount

[carouselunique]

They had a bit of a chance encounter on a day where Blueblood was dealing with something that was very difficult and was so caught up in his emotions he didn’t even care that he was in the garden getting grass stans on his coat and Ditzy, with her natural impulse to cheer ponies up, didn’t even notice or care that she was flying into the palace gardens when she saw someone sat in the rain.

At first he was definitely going to call the castle guards to come apprehend this strange filly with the odd eyes who was intruding when this was the last moment he’d want to entertain any desperate debutantes, however she surprised him by not fawning or anything, not even caring about his status, just putting one of her fluffy wings up and asking if he needed somepony to lend an ear.

“Don’t let my eyes fool you, my ears work just fine!”

She was incredibly disarming and while he didn’t reveal everything about why he was upset, he found himself talking about his feelings to her. And she made such cheerful remarks, and was very comforting. In the end, he felt better and she came to check on him the next day, even sharing a blueberry muffin with him. He remarked that he’d never seen her around before, and that he wouldn’t mind terribly seeing her more often.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[saltpepperbeard]

is this anything

[wheretheresawyll]

Like I think there's something to be said about how so many players gush over Astarion and how no one came to save him/how he felt abandoned by the gods. But Wyll was 17 and alone, about to watch an entire city - his home - be overtaken, and the only one that came to him was a devil, and most players condemn him for taking the only option he really had. "The only thing a God's given me was the cold shoulder." Wyll was abandoned by the gods just like Astarion was, but where we meet Astarion after he's been able to momentarily escape, we meet Wyll when he's still trapped by his circumstances.

[rayllurn]

"Runaan. Where are you? I know what I have to do. I know how to bring you back. You're still in there."