Breaking my slience (again ... I've ranted about this at least twice already but I keep thinking of fun new ways to word it whoopsie)

When Inej says she'll have Kaz without armour, she's not saying she wants a physical relationship from him

She is asking him to trust her enough to know that he doesn't need to protect himself around her, that she'll never cross his boundaries, that if he took off his armour he would be safe with her.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk

ik ppl hate fictional deadbeat moms but im an avid enjoyer. my feminism knows no bounds truly/j

like i get it she did a bad job. but shit she still did a job that's for sure!! like. she did it do you understand. 14 year old girl is pregnant. it's disgraceful. a shameful stain on her family. yusuke doesn't seem to have grandparents or anything so besides yusuke's bio dad she's got no one. and then when yusuke is a toddler the father disappears and considering who he is and what he's like that's probably for the best. gonna go out a limb and say that yusuke was maybe 4 or 5 when his dad cleared out so. at 18 and entirely alone. atsuko looked down at this little thing. this baby because he's still a baby to her this is a baby who only has her. Not even 4 feet tall with the biggest brown eyes looking to her for everything because he quite literally has no one else.

he doesn't know she's a failure yet. he doesn't know people will look down on them just because he exists as he is. he doesn't know how hard this is going to be from now on. all he knows is he loves his momma

so she doesn't cry. she just meets his big innocent eyes and goes "it's just you and me kid" and yusuke doesn't know that that's a sad thing.

so she takes care of him the best she can and it still sucks but yusuke doesn't know what the standard she should be held to is yet. for a small time she is the greatest and best person in his world and he's the only one who thinks so

then he meets keiko and her parents and finds out that his normal is actually dysfunctional and that his mom actually isn't all that great. that living day to day in the bottom of a bottle isn't healthy. so she's no longer praiseworthy but this person he's responsible for. just like that the roles reverse. because while she was all yusuke had yusuke is also all atsuko has. he doesn't respect her but he still punched the motherfucker in the mouth that called her a tramp. she taught him how to do it.

atsuko comes to terms with the fact that Yusuke doesn't really need her anymore, probably never did so she doesn't bother to care when he skips school or beats whoever he wants to a pulp or gambles because at 14 she was expecting so what the fuck can she really say about him. he sneers at her as he makes her coffee. atsuko lights another cigarette

it feels like betrayal when her son dies. at 14 she had him so how can he die at a sorry age like that. i wasted my teenage years on you for what? so you can die and leave me here? you fucking brat. how can she recover from this? yusuke was all she had. he hadn't looked up at her with an admiring gaze since he was 7 and stopped hugging her goodbye soon after but still he was hers he was hers and then he was gone

but then he comes back. and she doesn't get much better as a mom or as a person really. she tries harder than before maybe (keeping him in school) but yusuke never expected her to. he's made up of her bad habits and uncaring attitude but he's so much better than her. became something good something strong despite how shitty of a job she did raising him.

she's not proud because she has no right to be but something like it tugs in her chest when she sees him feeding the people he cares about at his little ramen cart looking as happy as the first time she'd taken him out to park.

yusuke's dad suggests taking another crack at the whole family thing and she wants to laugh in his face. the only family she'll ever have is that little boy who's stronger and braver than she'll ever be.

she doesn't want to see him laying cold in a casket ever again. he's meant for life, a soul as bright and durable as his. atsuko hopes he lives to see the sun explode

Red Hood Characterization

This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.

I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?

This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!

tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.

Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.

Every description about Nico (especially the canon ones) describing him as “cold” can personally fight me. Nico is jaded, yes, and often closed-off and sometimes stand-offish and defensive but he is not "cold”. He cares SO SO SO MUCH about EVERYONE. He loves and cares with his entire heart constantly and that is a core part of his character. He doesn’t often make public shows of his affection but he takes care to be kind when it matters and doesn’t hide that he does care (usually, the only exception really being him being in the closet, but even then he only hid his crush specifically and not the fact that Percy is important to him). He fine with hugging his friends in front of a crowd and will sit with strangers at a campfire just so they’re not alone. I mean, heck, he’s an extrovert! We know this! He actively seeks out people and gets lonely very quickly and easily! If he can’t talk to living people he will chat with the dead! That’s how much he thrives on being social!

The only time Nico has ever been actively “cold” was the couple of months between TTC and BoTL when he was actively mourning Bianca. Nico is not “cold.” He loves so much and he does show it, just in his own way.

Mmmhh...

It always comes back to the same problems. Tale, Fell, Swap, the majority of all my other AUs, Sans feels tremendous amounts of pressure to take care of his brother and tries hard not to let Papyrus know just how difficult it truly is for him, Papyrus can obviously tell anyway, and feels tons of pressure to take more responsibility for himself.

Papyrus is so easily influenced at such a young age, and learns to keep the struggles a secret from Sans, and later on unintentionally doing the same thing Sans did by trying to hide the burden so it wouldn't weigh on his brother.

Maybe the exact why or other circumstances vary but it always ends up that way. Sans thinks he has to do everything on his own and Papyrus just wants to help him, but the only way he knows how is to do the exact thing that only worries Sans more but neither will just talk about it. For one reason or another. They are locked in knowing the other cares, wanting to take care of them, but failing to ever actually do things to better their relationship, only creating more, and more, and more distance.

Because distance is safer than dragging each other down. It takes a very long time to realize they were doing that anyway (if they ever get so lucky).

self indulgent got concept.

Ned brings Jon home, Cat hates the boy, everything stays the same... until Robert Baratheon is charging through the halls of Winterfell looking for the babe, ready to butcher the poor thing where he lay helpless in his cradle.

in a matter of moments Catelyn learns three things:

The babe was never a bastard, Ned had only lied to her to protect Jon, and that she would die before she let Robert lay a finger on the babe she'd previously wished death upon.

cue Catelyn Stark snatching Jon from his cradle, holding him, protecting him, loving him as she would her own son, risking it all to keep him safe, all care for herself thrown to the wind.

like they say, what a mother's love holds no bounds, and what it makes her capable of had no limits.

Today was A Day so as soon as I was finished with work I plugged myself into the PS5 as if I was on life support. Whee

got to Timefall farm and was so mesmerized by all the beer that I forgot to take the beer order and only brought road building materials with me 🤡

I also finally connected the Elder to the network and he started sending me emails including the one where he talks about the US before the Stranding. That's where you learn the last president before the apocalypse was Trump which makes Bridget a MAGA republican so maybe she's the truly evil half between her and Amelie

I recently had to do fire prevention training at my job and it pleases me to see that Bridges is up to standard

@ardenssolis said ; "So, Jason, was the voyage worth it in the end?" [hi smol] / 𝐔𝐍𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃

❝ Was that voyage worth it? Let me put it this way; would you give everything in your life for one second of glory ? for not even a tangible future, just for one beautiful dream ? everything you have ? I did. That voyage... See it under any lens, you don't need to be a genius to come to the conclusion that it was not worth it. Did it make me learn anything? Hell, did that even matter ? To who was I even supposed to show my change of heart ? Was I even conscious of that ? Did I return as the same man I was when I left or was I so blind that I could not even tell any difference ? Before I could mourn this wreckage of a dream and gulp down my own despair, I was crushed by the very same ship that allowed this feverish dream to sail. The dead can't learn from their mistakes, I can only say I would do it again differently now because I now have a second chance to make things different. ❞

Hey guys, do you think about Yellow Jacket from ‘Twisted Metal: Black’ like I do?

Do you think that poor boy thinks constantly about how lonely he is because his dad is dead and his mom is just nonexistent? Do you think he gets mistreated in the asylum and constantly pushed around for ‘reviving’ his dad? Do you think that poor boy is BEYOND stressed having to go through the contest? Do you think he's crying to himself thinking he may not make it to the end? Do you think he's trying not to remember his past before everything went wrong? How he could have done something to save his dad? How he should have been the one to die instead? Do you think he's afraid of his older brother because he's a literal serial killer? Do you think he's crying over the fact how he used to feel safe with his older brother but now he's sick to his stomach to see him casually run an innocent man over and laugh about it? Do you think he wraps himself with his dad’s jacket to feel some sense of safety? For warmth? Do you think he sleeps next to his dad’s CORPSE for comfort? How much he ignores the smell of rotting flesh? How much does he use his dad’s cologne to mask the smell? How much does he swat the flies or carefully take off the maggots that eat away his dad’s rotting flesh? Do you think he holds his dad before and after the battle of the contest for some confidence he barely has?

GUYS DO YOU THINK THAT SWEET TOOTH SAVES HIM FOR LAST IN THE CONTEST TO KILL I CAN’T BE THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS ABOUT THIS-

you ever realise that there's no way your life is going to end that isn't horrible

.

everyone in the party wondering 'what's inside the black velvet pouch violante so jealousy hides but still has around all the time in the camp?' and violante, in a strange burst of humour she doesn't usually have, jokes around by saying it's smth different every single time someone asks so it became a running joke and everyone just assumes she hides some kind of expensive gemstone or whatever but instead she's hiding the stolen skull of her dead best friend she killed and that she can speaks to sometimes and can hear it speak back at her. insane women and their trinkets u know <3

the strangest thing of 2022 is that in the final weeks of it i have started to partake in the slow realization that i am actually someone loved, someone who matters to those who matter to me, and i am allowed to smile and accept that love without insisting i am not someone worthy of having it.

guess who went to twitter again :)))