#you can't fix other people

[thepeacefulgarden]

[rythyme]

really not a fan of boston very explicitly saying "I want to be exclusive romantically but not sexually" only to be told "You're lying to yourself. I think you should be alone."

[sassafrassrex]

oh my God i just tried out the tumblr mobile website on my phone's internet browser and holyshityouguys were you hiding this from me??

i just deleted the app fr

[pallanophblargh]

You know what the worst feeling I've been having lately is? Wanting more than anything to get back into Actual Art again but finding a sudden anxiety that stops me. Even if I'm still as capable as I was, it's the mental block. It's why I've all but kept commissions closed for this whole time: this overwhelming fear of letting people down. Especially in times as troubled as these, where money is tight, and patience is thin. I've always been blessed with such patient and considerate commissioners, but I would hate to test people because of my malfunctioning brat of a brain.

I just wish it came to me as easily as it did before the massive burnout/medication. But it's up to me to come up with my own motivation. And it's ME.

Anyway. Thanks as always for sticking around despite... all of this. I'll get back on the horse soon.

[bonefall]

Feel free to ignore you've probably got a lot going on right now, but considering you know a lot about DOTC and Clear sky, I had a question...

We know that he's a terrible, misogynistic, woman beating and war mongering lunatic who was excused of all his actions because his equally misogynistic brother said " But-But he's nice! Deep down! This isn't the real him! "

But! In a world where the Hunters could write such a character, what do you think Clear Sky would look like as an actual sympathetic villain?

Idk if that makes sense, but what I've thought of doing is taking purely cannon Clear Sky and attempting to change him enough that he's still an antagonist, but not too far where only Reddit defends him.

I don't think he works as a sympathetic villain, on any level, ever. I think you're making a huge mistake to even try, and I have never seen an AU where it was done well nor am I interested in entertaining the thought.

Characters. Are. Tools. They exist to tell a story. The story that people tell me, by obsessing over some alternate universe where he was "ACTUALLY sympathetic and had a REAL redemption arc," is that they're not fucking interested in his dozens of victims. Nor do they actually care about the abusive impact he had on the minds and feelings of his family. They're JUST interested in Clear Sky himself.

Just like the Erins. Everything that happens in DOTC revolves around him. Everything. All his wives die so he can be sad about it. His brother defends all of his actions and BEGS you to sympathize with his pain so he can be 'redeemable.' One Eye comes out of nowhere so that there can be an example of "real" evil to contrast Clear Sky so he's less bad in hindsight.

The first three books of DOTC are bad, but the last three are fucking insufferable because SUDDENLY all that Gray Wing apologia pays off, and they take their main villain and throw him out a window. You CAN'T have "redeemable" Clear Sky and the plot of DOTC without dragging in someone else to drive the conflict, to BE the bigger threat to "unite" against. Slash and One Eye have to be conjured up out of thin air so Clear Sky can WHINE about how people only suck his toes instead of deepthroat them after he killed all their friends.

And yet, in spite of this absolute failure of an attempt, we continue to see this bullshit "redemption" be a mistake because Clear Sky is a fantastic villain, with major antagonist roles in nearly EVERY bit of follow-up material for DOTC that came after.

He's the most consistent monster in all of Warriors.

He's a fragile, egotistical, self-absorbed megalomaniac who ALWAYS sees himself as the victim, REFUSING to self-reflect and blaming everything else for all of his terrible choices. He will USE your love of him against you like it's a chain through your nose, step out of line and he will yank you into place with guilt trips, manipulation, public shaming, and violence.

He's a child abuser. He's a tyrant. He abandons the sick and disabled as soon as they're of no use to him, with grand speeches about "illness" and "weakness." He's a murderer who stands above the shredded corpse of his victim and bellows, "I'M NOT GREEDY! I'M JUST STRONG!"

And you'd write a "good" redemption arc for this, why?

Why are people so chronically unable to accept that there are LOTS of people like him, and you can't save your abuser? Why don't you ask yourselves why you're not interested in exploring Thunder, or Petal, or Gray Wing, and how his toxic influence impacts them? Why does the sympathy fall on Clear Sky? What about the DOZENS of victims who are dead by Book 3, and how THEY could have been saved?

Why ruin a perfectly good villain?

What's behind this trend where a billion people say to me, "Yes Clear Sky is a walking cavalcade of fucked up abuse apologia, and an incredibly realistic depiction of an abuser, but how would you change this while keeping it all the same?"

I wouldn't. You can't. It wouldn't be the same story, or it wouldn't be the same character. Never seen it done well, and I have seen it a lot. So I don't entertain this deeply frustrating "Well What If Clear Sky But Nice" impulse.

[onebizarrekai]

I've been playing beta minecraft for reasons

bonus: windowed mode obliterated color glitch

[mokeonn]

Before I go to sleep I leave you all with this piece of advice: sometimes you don't actually have to answer big political questions, sometimes you can just say "I am not smart enough to know that, I just know the small things I do to help." Like you can often times completely avoid making a fool of yourself if you just say you don't know.

[sariphantom]

How to color Rise April O'Neil for new fans, beginner digital artists, or those trying to draw and color black people respectfully

[restinpeacesensei]

traditional style 💖

[political-sideblog-dont-at-me]

I had a big long post about the trending situation but when I tried to save the draft to go check on something else Tumblr ate it. Anyway here's trending:

Here's the daily post information for the top two tags:

Here's the daily post information for the bottom two tags:

And here's the daily post information for #Free Palestine:

I know people are upset that anyone is posting any fandom related stuff at all, but Tumblr absolutely has some explaining to do when the only tag on trending that has more posts than #Free Palestine is #WWE and two of the tags on trending are basically the same tag and should've been shown as trending together instead of taking up two spots.

Being this blatant with suppressing tags during a genocide is appalling, and doing it during a massive strike (One that places an emphasis on posting Palestine related content) is rubbing salt in the wound.

[strawberrystepmom]

being loved by someone who makes an effort to understand you does make u better as a person tbh

[thepeacefulgarden]

[stergeon]

at some point i will figure out how to write the post-canon, post-empire edelgard autonomy fic of my dreams. it just feels like a very big task and maybe like with playing the dane, i’m simply not old and traumatized enough to manage it yet.

but my vision is thus: it’s set years (realistically, decades) after the end of crimson flower, when everything has gone as right as it can possibly go. fódlan is thriving. the social reforms have taken effect. the nobility system is nearly eliminated, if not entirely so, with titles made merely symbolic. social mobility, welfare, and prosperity are high. there’s an explosion in arts and culture and technology. brigid and duscur have gained independence; relations with sreng and almyra are much improved; heck, maybe they've even figured it out with dagda. in my most idealistic version, leicester and faerghus would eventually be ceded back to become autonomous regions, essentially disbanding the adrestian empire. rule is no longer hereditary, but merit-based. there's a roadmap for the future, and everything is on track—and more than that, people at all points on the power spectrum have already seen it bear fruit. with or without edelgard, it will be pursued. there's buy-in. they believe.

of course, it's not perfect—nothing can be—but edelgard's vision has been fulfilled. the people are empowered. humanity is free. fódlan has healed.

and somehow, she's had enough time to resolve her goals outside of politics, too. those who slither in the dark have been eradicated. edelgard and lysithea's second crests have been successfully removed, allowing them to live if not full lives, then substantially longer ones than they would have with their twin crests intact. who knows—maybe she finally gets around to having that wedding.

point for point, every item listed in edelgard's manifesto has been checked off. the ghosts of her past have been laid to rest. she can finally take off her crown. she can finally pursue the quiet, humble life she's wanted for so long. she can finally breathe.

... but can she?

edelgard is nothing if not driven. her intelligence, vision, and sheer willpower allowed her to plan and execute a revolution against two countries and the most powerful institution on the continent, all while she was still a teenager. as royalty, her life was never truly hers even before she became heir to the adrestian throne, with all the additional baggage of survivor's guilt and the desire for vengeance and her need to ensure nothing that happened to her can ever happen to anyone else, ever again.

so what happens when that drive has no outlet? what happens when someone who has been constantly in motion, constantly working and planning and preparing every spare second of every day since she was fourteen years old, suddenly has to stand still? what happens when someone whose hands have been bound for so long—first literally in the dungeons of enbarr, then by the weight and responsibilities of her crown—is set free?

being edelgard, she would step away from the throne, no matter how hard it was for her to give up control. she's always been focused on the endgame, and she knows that if she doesn't let go, she'll be setting the wrong tone for fódlan's future. she's too devoted to that endgame to cling to power much longer than she needs to, though i could see her making some excuses and trying to iron out just a few more things to buy herself some more time to mentally prepare before she's done for good.

but who would she be then? who is the woman without the crown? what becomes of a machine once it is no longer needed, when it has made itself obsolete? what about when that machine is a person with legs and arms and an innate unwillingness to gather dust on a shelf?

what happens when you get everything you want? what happens when all your wanting has been for others to thrive, and now you have to want only for yourself? how do you discover who you are when you've spent decades being everything for everyone else? how do you find meaning again? how do you find purpose?

after a lifetime of devotion and passion and movement, how do you learn to sit with yourself, and be quiet, and be still?

gosh, i would love to meet her. i would love to pick her brain. but boy, i do not envy the work that girl has to do.

[girlscience]

I know everybody likes to give characters the same 10 songs on their character playlists, but I think the most egregious issue with this is that no one gives them any country songs. I am handing them out to characters like candy. You get a country song, you get a country song, you get a country song.

[classicintp]

There is this whole idea that flipping a two sided coin doesn't have a 50-50 probability. It's not a new idea by any means, but the explanation is if you measured the mass of the coin, the force of the flip, the temperature of the coin & of the room, the force of any breeze, wind, or vibration in the air as it traveled, and so on, you could accurately determine within a small margin of error what side the coin will land on every time, and if you kept those constant it would flip on the same side every time. And that idea is also KIND OF the explanation for the conclusion in quantum physics that there is no free will.

A lot of people hear that and either clutch their pearls, roll their eyes, or aren't interested either way. (I mean, when you say some shit like that you're just going to immediately turn off any interest most people would have otherwise had but I'm digressing now). We all like to think we make decisions and choices, and then amateurs who want to talk about quantum mechanics alienate everyone by saying it's not true: you were always going to make these choices with no chance to make the other one.

But what I said in the first paragraph is something-like (but not exactly) what it means when you hear or read that according to quantum physics we have no free will. That if we had an unfathomable device that has been measuring all the variables of every single particle that was expelled during the Big Bang, with an also-sufficient/also-currently-unfathomable algorithm to plug those variables into, all within a computer that could do all of the calulations for BILLIONS of years, we could compute exactly where every particle was going and where it would end up, including those that make up the stars and planets, that make up the ground and oceans, that make up the animals and plants, that make up your brain and all of the proteins and neurotransmitters. That if it could all be measured and an algorithm sufficiently built then the decisions you make are already determined by the ongoing relationships and interactions the particles that make up your brain had in the past and are having right now.

However, humans cannot measure that, they likely never ever will.

Anyone that tells me they don't like quantum mechanics because something something affront to nature blah blah "they" don't believe in free will, etc. literally doesn't know it's just a rescale of the coin toss description. You still believe coin tosses are 50-50 because you aren't going to measure the variables used to receive an answer, you can still believe in free will because you can't measure the variables used to determine the ultimate path of all particles; I mean, I wouldn't become a theoretical physicist if that meant so much to you but I'm not your dad, do what you want.

Edit: I know I described the science mostly wrong, please check out the replies and reblogs for others' corrections and feel free to add corrections of your own for mine and others' learning, thank you.

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

The Revenge Of Two Hands One Mouth - O2 Academy Bristol (November 27, 2013) by Adam Gasson