#too good to be true you know?

[buttercupshands]

I may or may are about to have a cat but the responsibility of being a cat owner and having a choice not to be if I'm too scared... is even worse honestly

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[inkskinned]

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[shorthaltsjester]

the mighty nein - critical role

this is a place where i don't feel alone. this is a place where i feel at home.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 308

Honestly, Damian is so disappointed in his father right now. And his so-called siblings. The friends allies he had made over the years and he had been swapping multiple times, and still they hadn’t realized. Danyal was as pale as a corpse, closer to Drake for Pit’s sake! Jordan had red eyes! Elena was a girl! Respawn had white hair! Surely someone noticed- thank fuck, hello Todd, no he’s not on patrol, listen, listen, he needs you to know that Father? Blind. An idiot! The others more so! Yes yes, they’ve been doing their single-person trick, but surely someone should have caught on yes? And they haven’t- Oh? What a wonderful idea Akhi, he shall inform the others of this idea, the Lazarus waters do make dna testing quite hard to do. 

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[queer-coded]

> be me

> autistic tgirl in IT

> develop a crush on a cute robot girl

> offer to host a development environment for her on my home server

> she says ok

> struggle to install Debian because I'm a windowsfag

> set up Debian and add her account to the sudoers list

> try to set up a tunnel to a subdomain to point to the box

> mfw it works after an hour of reading docs

This feels like peak nerdy transfem flirting. Tell me I'm wrong.

Do you think she'll like me now? 👉👈

[heybiji]

"Do me a favor and put your arms around me."

[et-in-arkadia]

i can’t stop thinking about how

-aziraphale still has no idea that crowley went to heaven when aziraphale was in danger, risking his entire existence by walking directly into the belly of the, well, angelic beehive

-aziraphale doesn’t know what crowley learned there: that gabriel was judged and cast out for vetoing the final world-and-time-stopping extinction-level event, “armageddon the sequel,” and that the metatron was part of the trial that punished gabriel

-crowley warns aziraphale that heaven will end life on earth, but he doesn’t explain how he knows that. aziraphale thinks he can make a difference because he isn’t aware that there’s already a specific, catastrophic plan in motion. even when crowley implies heaven will be up to no good for humanity, it then becomes more imperative for aziraphale, rather than less, that he go to heaven to act as a mitigating and tempering force (because aziraphale is—lest we forget—“the soft one who still believes in magic and people being basically good and all that”)

-from everything aziraphale knows from his perspective, he’s making the right decision to help a heaven bent on ushering in a new age. he doesn’t have crowley’s side of the story, and crowley never gives it to him

-a simple “i went to heaven masquerading as an angel to save you and there learned that gabriel was cast out after his apparent love for a demon caused him to try and thwart impending total destruction” could’ve gone a long way but it’s also very clear neither of them are listening in the final scene because they’re both so anxious to be the one heard

[cerise-on-top]

Hugging, Kissing and Cuddling HCs for König

I'm trying to see him in another light again after everything I've seen about him, so I decided I'd write something fluffy and nice for him. And then came the realization I never wrote some HCs like these for him in my original posts, so I decided I'd change that! He's Austrian, so naturally I have to love him!

When it comes to hugging someone, König is a bit hesitant. Considering he’s not the most physically affectionate person out there, it’s almost an honor to be receiving an unprompted hug from him. Whether his hugs are long or short depends on the occasion: If he’s proud of you for accomplishing something, then the hug will be rather short lived. Though, he might pick you up and spin you around until you’re dizzy. If you’re sad and need some comfort then his hugs could last a while. He’s not the best with words, he prefers to listen to other people, but if he knows a hug is what usually helps you then he’s willing to do so. Despite being a big and strong lad his hugs are surprisingly gentle, he’s worried about crushing you. He could put his all into them, but then you’d likely end up with a few broken ribs and he doesn’t want that to happen. König is also surprisingly warm, so receiving a hug from him is a rare, but nice experience. Although he does go rigid at the beginning, not knowing what to do, but relaxes into the hug eventually.

Again, he’s not a very physically affectionate person, but isn’t opposed to the occasional peck on the cheek or on your lips either. There is some anxiety whether you’d actually want a kiss from him or not, so he doesn’t kiss you very often, even if you do reassure him that it’s quite alright. He’s a bit tense at first when he presses a kiss to your lips, but calms down eventually. It’s especially bad during the beginning of your relationship, but he’s since gotten better at being calm about it. Since there’s a good chance he’s taller than you he loves giving you a kiss on the forehead. It’s a small but sweet gesture. He doesn’t need to bend down entirely to reach you but he still gets to be affectionate with you. However, if you’re on the taller side, or just as tall as he is, then he’d love to receive kisses to his temple from you. It makes him smile every time you do it. If he’s in the mood for receiving a kiss then he’ll lay his head on your shoulder and nudge you a bit. Or try to get his head in your closer vicinity. Kind of like that one bunny video where the bunny stretches to receive some kisses.

Cuddles with him are a bit more common than hugs actually. However, he refuses to lay down on top of you. If you’re shorter and weaker than him then there’s no chance he’ll put his weight on you, he’s just that afraid of hurting you. If you’re taller or just more muscular, then he might, but he’s still a rather heavy lad. Most he’ll do is put his head on your shoulder while you’re cuddling in bed and are both lying down. Although it’d be a lie to say he doesn’t want to be held. König is alright with being the one to hold you, but sometimes he would prefer to be the little spoon as well. That urge gets especially bad if you’re roughly the same size as him. Sometimes just nuzzling into your chest does the trick for him as well, though. Loves it when you run your fingers through his hair as he does so. Another thing he adores is you sleeping on his chest as he holds you. He gets to hold you close, he gets to protect you and he gets to doze off a bit himself, it’s bliss to him. Sometimes he leans down to press a kiss to your head and accidentally wakes you up like that. He feels bad about it and apologizes profusely, but does chuckle a bit when he sees your disheveled hair and your tired expression that shows you just woke up.

[clovenhoofedjester]

stars when you shine, you know how i feel

a close-up of his mug, unblasted by colors and lighting and stuff. it was surprisingly difficult to color his fur in a way i liked

[stealingyourbones]

Not sure if this has been suggested before but what do you think about a DP x DC Cross where the JL discover Amity because the "It's Not Gay if he's Dead" joke escapes containment into mainstream? Also I love your blog! You're awesome.

aaaaa thank you sm hun! I really appreciate that :D I'm glad you enjoy my funky lil blog!

And now, I threw this idea at a fellow who is simply me with prompts but even more unhinged and they wrote a thing. I present to you, This:

------

Escaping containment implies that the content got leaked somehow. 

Maybe after so long with dealing with ghosts on their own, especially with ghosts that can control and use tech the people of Amity Park decide to self isolate. Phantom and Red Huntress are considered the only main heroes allowed in Amity, one out of pride and two out of concern of a ghost possessing an foreign hero. 

There was a fight and the tech isolation software glitched or a satellite picks up something on accident, letting a small leak occur. Nothing major, just a small joke. 

A blurry photo of a white haired teenager with a fancam like edit around him and the words "It's Not Gay if he's Dead." 

Which on its own wouldn't have taken off very much on the internet, but someone pointed out that the teenager was wearing what was very obviously a hero outfit. Leading to people wondering just who exactly this hero is or was. 

So they dig, and it turns out the “one” leak wasn't the only one to happen. 

The internet finds out there's not just one meme. There's hundreds of them. All originating from a single midwestern city and mostly focused around one person, the white haired teenager that is referred to as Phantom in most memes. 

Theres edits of a female musician with bright blue hair with text saying “that moment when a dead girl is your bisexual awakening” and “Its not a crush on a villian if shes not alive.” 

There's even photos of these slime-like creatures. With dozens of different memes referring to them. Varying from calling them green pigeons, to talking about tossing them like a sports ball.  

Theres even a photo of Dash and most of the football team are wearing group shirts that all say “It's Not Gay if he's Dead” with Phantoms logo on it, half as a joke and half because some of them would definitely date Phantom if they could. 

It's not even the Justice League that finds the jokes first, it's the younger generation of heroes. 

(It's how Tim asks Kon for a date. He sends a meme with Danny getting flunged in the worlds most tumbling superhero pose with the below text "It's not gay if he's dead." Tim immediately sends another text "But it is gay if he's an alien, 10pm picnic date?")

The different memes get passed around, none of them taking them that seriously, until it gets to Batman. One of the memes is sent in the bat group chat by one of the Bat kids to ask Jason about getting group Batburger later. “If your hero’s dead its not gay, it’s just hero worship, even if you want to meet him behind the Nasty Burger.” 

It's the hyper specific wording that gets Batman to look into it. He only finds the memes, nothing else. No town called Amity Park, no hero called Phantom, no trace outside of a reference to a defunct and wiped completely clean government branch and references to a nonexist law. 

This leads him to contact the Justice League, including the JL Dark, for a meeting. 

Surprisingly quite a few members recognize the teen outside of the memes. Flash, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, and some of the JLD. The Flash refuses to say anything due to timeline continuum dangers. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter mention someone like him appearing in ancient texts, but nothing beyond that. The JLD that know are physically and contractually unable to say much beyond Phantom being a hero and very important. 

It’s Captain Marvel that genuinely knows anything about him. “That's Danny, he's pretty cool. He's even helped me out a few times!”

The rest of the JL are surprised, Marvel gets more questions and answers some of them. He doesn't share the knowledge that he's helped Billy at handling the whole secret child hero thing, and that he's welcome in Amity. Just enough information to make the League stop looking into Phantom, Ember, Cujo, all of Amity. 

It works, mostly. 

Batman has never been one to let sleeping dogs lie…

-From Bones’ GhostWriter, S.

[kacievvbbbb]

Honestly despite my feelings about how the last arc of MHA went down I really love Deku and his story.

I just feel like a lot of the time we get these protagonists whose whole philosophy is it doesn’t matter what you were born as everyone can achieve greatness. But then the series goes on and it turns out that actually it DOES matter because the protagonist has this really great lineage and these really great powers you can only have through birth they were actually born born, predestined if you will, to do this.

But MHA actually sticks to its guns. Midoriya wasn’t revealed to have some great connection to all might that the universe had put in place. He wasn’t defended from some great lineage that makes him uniquely suited to this. Hell All for one didn’t even turn out to be his father, there was no hidden powerful quirk he was always meant to have. He was just Midoriya Izuku a boy who was in the right place at the right time and simply decided to act while the world did nothing. And that’s what really made him a hero.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I believe him a bit more when he goes anybody can be a hero if you just decide to act

[shorthaltsjester]

just constantly thinking about percy telling vex that he’d like to think they’re all better than they think they are (except her brother, of course) . constantly thinking about when vex tells percy he’s a good man and he gets awkward and flustered and returns that she’s a good woman and when she gets as awkward and flustered he goes “see. it’s not very nice is it.” percy shouting to ripley that he forgives her and vex carves forgive into the wood of her bow. vex tells percy to take off his mask and percy comes across vex in tears and scrubbing at her armour. god. the campaign starts and percy is making arrows as flirting and getting kisses in return and the campaign ends and exhausted and knowing it won’t be a want that will be fulfilled percy admits he never wants to make another weapon and vex equally exhausted affirms that he’ll never Have to. and god . god . opposites attract is great or whatever but the deliciousness of dynamics where the characters hold up a mirror to one another where they get to shed the burden of self and see someone Like Them as someone good or capable of being better and Falling In Love. and that love being a pathway to them coming to grips with their own image and their own capacity to be better. and that the fact that the person they fall for being someone so Familiar means that they see through each other’s shit. that percy sees that vex has fallen into the trap of Nobility tricking people into thinking that makes them inherently better and giving her the only whitestone title someone has to earn beyond selection or marriage or birth. that vex sees percy forgive ripley and discusses the importance of that choice but reminds him that it’s just as important that he forgive himself.

[originalaccountname]

putting my hands on your shoulders looking directly into your eyes why are you so insistent that Dazai is faking every emotion every second of every day except when he's acting mean or evil why do you think his dark side is more true than his happier or sillier sides

do you not also have multiple facets you show different people? are we not all beautiful multifaceted individuals? are your actions and reactions not influenced by your emotions and state of mind?

can't he laugh at his own jokes? can't he fondly think of the Agency? can't he be dramatic because he wants to? can't he be surprised by something suddenly happening, even if he knew it would happen? do you not jump when the jack in the box gets out even if you were the one working the mechanism?

why would the mean persona be more real? why would any and all joy be faked? why are you only allowing him misery?