#trying to have that mindset more

[egginfroggin]

*Nervously tosses this at you* had a reverse portal au brain bnuuy. Fic should be up tomorrow or Wednesday, hopefully.

Here's some snippets.

“You know him?” “He teaches high school biology, yeah.” Wendy shrugs. “Keeps to himself, though; lives alone, never talks about family, really didn’t appreciate that one time a bunch of teens tried ding-dong-ditch at his place. Half the kids are convinced he’s some kind of mad scientist.” Dipper mumbles something an awful lot like, “Yeah, I can see that,” and Mabel frankly has to agree. Grunkle Ford does not give off the most sane impression all the time. Awful lot of muttering and scribbling and not sleeping. Maybe that’s what he’s hiding – a secret lab in some secret basement, or something! Mabel hums and flops her sleeves to her face, shooting a grin at Dipper.

“I just need ta’ explain something to her!” Gideon protests, eyelashes fluttering a mile a minute. Dipper could punch him. Almost does, actually, but Mabel gripping his arm and Grunkle Ford shifting slightly in front of him holds him back. “Honest! What happened was an accidenHEY!” And now Ford plucks Gideon up by the back of his little powder-blue jacket and drops him over the porch railing to the ground. “Off my property,” he snaps. “Now. And don’t let me catch you skulking around here again. I will throw you.” There’s an awful lot of lil’ rage coming from the nuisance child, at least three accusations of being “old” and “decrepit” and “an unspeakable miser who drops children” and Ford doesn’t bother to deign any of it with a response. The door shuts on the squeaky complaints, which then filter in through the windows, and the three of them collectively grimace when the volume increases to account for the door. “How long has he been a problem for?” Grunkle Ford asks the twins, and they shrug. “About a week,” Mabel says, the same moment Dipper says, “Two weeks.” They swear they hear him mutter, “perhaps I should set some traps,” under his breath, but he shakes his head. “Tell me if he bothers you again. If anyone bothers you, for that matter.”

Mabel is the one who finds a door that sticks, softly glowing as if hiding a flickering light, tattered and dinged and belonging to the shack. She grabs the knob and turns it, expecting either some kitchen disaster – they’ve happened before – or maybe something with her and Dipper, or maybe that disastrous first day with Waddles – and finds Blood. Normally, seeing that this isn't Ford's office in the house, she’d duck back out, but blood is a new one. She hears shallow breaths, sees the stairs up to the attic shrouded in gloom and cobwebs, and a crumpled heap of limbs at the bottom. A hand twitches, nails worn down to the quick and oozing streaks of red, and she counts – one, two, three, four, five, six fingers in the shadows before she wrenches herself back from the memory and slams the door shut. It echoes. Loudly. “Mabel?” Dipper asks behind her, and she shakes her head. “Not this one,” she quips, pale. “Nope.”

[heartless-aro]

People when a character is aromantic or aromantic coded: Wowie! They’re aroACE! Because they aren’t interested in romance! Look at how aroace they are!

People when a character is aroace or aroace coded: Isn’t it cool that this character is asexual? Asexual icon! They’re such great asexual representation :)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 12: Beware the Grapes of Wrath.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[burningcheese-merchant]

I think more ppl need to see this

Yeah for real lol. That's exactly what it is with him. Not to toot my own horn too much but I believe this post I made ages ago hits the nail on the head haha

"I'm bored" is... technically true. In a sense. Personally, I think it's a very simple and vague allusion to the real problem. That thin sheet of snow coating a massive, freezing cold iceberg. Just barely obscuring it from proper view.

imo it's been a bit disappointing seeing people take to extremes with Burning Spice's character. I've seen people either woobify him, downplay or excuse his actions by saying "he's not evil! He's hurting! He's depressed! He doesn't hate people, he's lashing out because he can't internalize his pain anymore!", or just demand he be put to death immediately on sight without trial. You can like a morally repulsive character and sympathize with their issues while also acknowledging that they're repulsive and need to face justice for their crimes. Burning Spice is one of my favorite characters, I love everything about him, he's sexy as fuck, I understand why he's the way he is, I'm still happy to see his ass beat because he's a piece of shit and he deserves it lol.

Not to throw shade at "simpler" villains ofc. I love me some assholes that are assholes just because they can be. Like Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2. But Burning Spice isn't Jack Horner and he honestly shouldn't be. The deeper, sadder, more complex reasons governing his actions suit him better than just "I'm bored fuck this shit" and nothing else ykwim

and of course, he's still wrong. Burning Spice's view of the world is wrong. Does a book begin just to end? Does a song play just to finish in a few minutes' time? No. They begin so that we may read, listen, and enjoy. So that they may make us laugh, or have us shake our heads in disappointment, or tell us some hidden truth. Make our days and lives a little more interesting than they were before. Life is beautiful BECAUSE it is fleeting. Born, grow, wither, born, grow, wither. Yes, that's how it goes. But there's so much more to those things than just what we can gather from those three words. Every day is different. Though the sun rises every morning without fail, it's never quite the same color, is it? Always a bit of a different shade of yellow, orange, red, bleeding into the sky a little differently each time. There are so many things to see and do, games to play, people to meet and love and cherish. Maybe some of those things and those people won't be here someday but that doesn't mean their existence never meant anything. We are not born to die, we are born to live. We must die for those who are to live, and live for those who have died. Regardless, we must never lose sight of the intrinsic value of all that surrounds us. Burning Spice very much did. Underneath his bitterness and anger and (not unfounded, to be fair) lamentation for the unstoppable cycle of life and death is a deep-rooted selfishness and fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation for life and other people. In the face of despair, he gave in and chose evil. He was and is wrong for doing so, regardless of why he did it. He could've stepped down. He could've just admitted he didn't have what it took to be the Herald of Change. Hell, if he really hates being alive so much, he would've committed suicide a LONG time ago. But he never did any of that; instead he chose to inflict an equal or greater suffering on everything and everyone else, even the undeserving. And for that he MUST pay. And Golden Cheese, with her personality and her experiences and the wisdom she came to attain when faced with the exact same despair as Burning Spice, is exactly the right person to make him do that

[bunbunism]

AHHH A TOTAL OF 50 SM HOURS IT'S DONE 🐡

I'm a bit late but like genuinely the last song made me bawl for hours, it means so much to me be represented, I barely see anything actually portraying bipolar, ocd, osdd, (lots of D's hehe) autism, pots yk all the crazy stuff I got and even if they are it's in an negative light, where they end up miserable forever or they'll some horrible person

Forgive me for the yap 🙏

( thank you on notes + reblogs on the sketch, made a grown man cry tears of joy fr)

[fairsweetlonging]

i'm so weak for original luo binghe/shen yuan where he succeeds in stealing bingmei's shizun to have for himself.

maybe they cross over in the dream realm (like in the punishment protocol), and he sees this other version of shen qingqiu, standing beside the koi pond of qing jing peak, looking calm and healthy and alive, and different, just slightly different. and when this shen qingqiu looks up and sees binghe, he doesn't sneer and attack like in nightmares, nor does he try to run like in the punishment dreams—he smiles. he smiles at binghe, and calls his name. he looks... happy, to see him.

confused, yet intrigued, bingge indulges a little by humoring this weird dream version of his old shizun, meeting him by the pond, and while it's the same face it's not the sharpness of an ice cold beauty, it's warm and soft and tender, even more so when shen qingqiu plucks a peach blossom from the tree and tucks it in binghe's hair, when he leans over and presses the pretty curve of his mouth against binghe's cheek, when he calls him "binghe" instead of "beast".

at first bingge thinks this must be a dream; he's a mere spectator, saying little to nothing at all, watching quietly as shen qingqiu chatters about some beast that liu qingge brought him (bingge was a bit surprised to hear that name, he died so long ago), sitting down with him, not moving when shen qingqiu leans against his side.

then shen qingqiu disappears, and bingge is alone again. he isn't sad, or even angry, he's just confused. he usually has full control over his dream realms, what just happened? but then again, he usually enjoys tormenting shen qingqiu, so he hadn't interrupted the man before, and after he realized it was different, he never bothered changing it. this might be just a fluke?

it happens again. shen qingqiu is a little more quiet, this time, a little tired. they sit together at the pond's edge again, shen qingqiu leaning against him, and this time bingge takes him into his arms, just to see what happens. shen qingqiu reacts positively, snuggling closer, but he shouldn't. this has never been something bingge wanted, nothing he ever even thought about, it makes no sense.

then somewhere somehow he realizes that through xin mo he's transporting a different shizun from a different world to his dream realm, and when he realizes that somewhere out there there is a shizun that smiles and laughs and cares for him, loves him.... he wants it.

so he does what he always does when he sees something he wants: he takes it.

next time they're together in the dream realm, he's prepared. he silently hooks his claws into shen qingqiu's (ridiculously unprotected) consciousness, using xin mo's power to track him down and create a rift. he lands in a cosy little bedroom, with a large bed and trinkets on the shelves and a ton of books. shen qingqiu is still asleep, curled around a large pillow but alone. whoever he thinks bingge is in his dreams isn't here. and well, if they're not here to protect him, clearly they don't care enough to keep him (bingge would never leave him out in the open like this, his sweet, naive, stupid shizun, laid out like a treat for anyone to snatch up). he makes sure shen qingqiu is deep asleep before he lifts him up and takes him back, closing the rift behind him.

[salty-an-disco]

you ever resent a character's popularity because of how most of the fans reduce them to their characterization in a single scenerio instead of observing how they are in other circumstances as well?

[likesdoodling]

Annatar during chapter 39 of The Harrowing by Chthonion~

And then doodles with some of my favourite bits from the afore mentioned chapter -

I've been meaning to do stuff from this chapter since it came out cause it is amazing- (in a 'wanting to suffocate Annatar with hugs and cups of tea, and the collateral sufferers too- like getting Maedhros back to Fingon for recuperation' kind of a way) - at revealing just how messed up Annatar's mindset is. I definitely recommend the Maedhros pov as well- the amount of '... I don't think I even want to unpack that statement' and 'seriously. We have gone over this. At least three times. In the last twenty minutes. Why do you not get it??' that goes through his head during that conversation is just- Amazin~

:D

This fic is really cool and I highly recommend it to anyone even vaguely into lotr or the Silmarillion.

:D

@chthonion

>:D

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[willosword]

i love seeing mark all anxious and protective over oliver but it also makes me sad bc it reminds me that oh yeah. just a few months ago he saw his brother be lifted by his little baby arm and flung around like a ragdoll and he couldn't do anything to stop it huh :(

[good-to-drive]

Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself

I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture. 

Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse. 

It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity. 

It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore. 

I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving. 

One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.

The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.

There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives. 

As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence. 

Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.

And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away. 

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life  – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).

The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need. 

What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence. 

In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.” 

It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied. 

Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.

In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work. 

It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.

When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity. 

It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).

If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?

Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another. 

And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far. 

But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.

[akkivee]

still kinda not over ichiro taking a bite out of his hamburger in the leaders bonus hypster track and going 'it's so good!! it tastes really meaty!!' lmao

[lacecap]

something about this seems familiar to you

[qoldenskies]

You talk a lot about Donnie's triggers when it comes to Raph and Leo, but what about Mikey? Is there anything specifically related to him that would freak Donnie out?

mikey gets brought up the least because he's the least physically imposing, and he very rarely got violent. his abuse was almost solely psychological, at least in the beginning, whereas raph was mostly verbal and leo was a mix of,, uh. everything lol (note that even before he smacked him, even before the closet, he was mentioned to be throwing things at him). most of mikey's abuse was caused by leo except for that one incident in the kitchen, so donnie tends to see leo as more of a threat than he does mikey when he's in a bad headspace. when mikey's alone, he doesn't think he's going to be hurt UNLESS he seriously seems to upset or anger him. (i think if donnie ever hurts mikey during an episode, he's going to take it a lot worse than if it were raph and leo. partially because he's smaller and younger, but also because of. right after the closet. yeah)

i actually think most of the things specifically about mikey were addressed in cw, though, because they were more emotional things-- the fear of being talked about when he wasn't around, for example. all of the food insecurity stems from him, too. leo was a nasty evil gaslighter but mikey was the one that just outright lied constantly, mostly in an effort to "protect donnie's feelings" (or at least to look like he was) and that's a big reason he finds that so uncomfortable. of course he's going to correlate hiding things to actually protect his feelings with talking behind his back.

[cupcakerias]

i haven’t drawn anything new lately (what a waste of spring break ugh)

but hype will always motivate me 💪

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest