i've been using shows to keep track of how long i've been working on tmnt aberration short

so far i've watched the entirety of wander over yonder and am starting mao mao: heroes of pureheart,,,,,,, so we're at a total of 1 day and about,,, 17 hours???

will happily take suggestions on other things i should watch once i finish mao mao !!! i'm thinking abt rewatching teen titans,,,,,,,,

truly what a guy

Made another chart, this time my observation on the Johns

They love each other so much <3

dawg my body is so ready for seeing your human versions of the gang. like the need to draw these sillies is JUST TOO DAMN GREAT--(please don't take this as "OMG HURRY UP", i'm just very excited to see your interpretations!)

well shit now i gotta buckle down on brushing up + improving upon my human scribbling skills, which - meager to begin with - have deteriorated due to Puppet Disease (and i say this with playful exasperation. i've been needing an excuse to Practice and this is a damn good one)

though i will say! i'll be adhering to the ~canon~ human versions we've been gifted via Clown's pokemon au. ofc since we don't know what Howdy, Poppy, Sally, and Eddie look like, i'll have to think of something myself

Trying so hard to think of something silly or sweet to lift the mood tonight so voila: that line in tva when Armand’s about to drink from Lestat in the chapel and notices that his hair is all messy because no one bothered to comb it

I just think that Armand should get to comb Lestat’s hair 🥹 he sits him in his lap and is so careful to not snag on any knots and you just know he does the one hundred strokes to get Lestat’s hair perfectly shiny and soft

You're so sweet, thank you 😭❤️

And yes, that's one of my all-time favorite scenes!

Armand is only one in the whole room allowed to touch him! Lestat killed anyone else who came near him and Armand doesn't even hesitate to reach out and fix his hair! Lestat saying he wanted comb Armand's curls and polish him up with kiss in MtD, but now it's Armand who's grooming him and kissing him!

I looked down on Lestat, who was unchanged, his hair fallen as before, a little over his left eye. His right arm was out, and his fingers curling upwards, and there came from him not the slightest movement, not even a breath from his lungs or a sigh from his pores.

I knelt down beside him again. I reached out, and without flinching or hesitating, I brushed his hair back from his face.

I could feel the shock in the room. I heard the sighs, the gasps from the others. But Lestat himself didn't stir.

Slowly, I brushed his hair more tenderly, and I saw to my own mute shock one of my tears fall right onto his face. ~ Armand, TVA

He should get to comb Lestat's hair always, okay? He deserves it. 🤧

is it midnight? yes. but i had to get this concept out there before it ate me alive. the swiftlis are rotting my brain fr!!!

bestie bestie have you seen the poltergayst art :D? the sillies!!! ive drawn them!!

im thinkin about drawing killer having like just weird or disturbing features, like his jaw hanging barely attached or something cuz he doesn’t understand Skeleton Monster anatomy and i honestly have so many ideas for this au cackles

yes!!! yes i've seen them >:D

i just arrived home so i'm reblogging them all simultaneously but waa these beans are so interesting to daydream about...

Like look at him look at our ghostie killie omggg<33333

you know when you're in da overwhelm zone due to Circumstances that you don't really have power over. well it's really hard to deescalate from that i am finding!

HOWEVER i am attempting:

FACING THE THINGS because the longer they loom. the longer they are looming for.

regular breaks from Addressing Everything

regular snacks/meals/drinks

prioritising

postponing stuff that can be left until later (But watch out!)

doing other things in advance that are easy to do now (such as stockpiling meals ready for feeling more ill)

asking for help where i can

10 Happy Things

May 11, 2024

Slept most of the day let's gooo

My bed and clothes are so warm and cozy

Called my mom and apparently she was out with people but she stepped outside to talk to me for a bit before going back to them and just feeling very very loved

My mom called me back and I talked to my sisters for nearly two hours hwjoiegdjkl we're just absolute nerds the lot of us

The Bible Plan I've been doing these past few days is just re-looking at everything from the basis of just get right with God, are you following Jesus and it's been very comforting to have that reminder like it is relational, it is supposed to be a delightful life we're living, there's no stress at all about doing x or y and if you're supposed to, it will not be anything but good

I can't really move my toes individually (except the ones at the ends) and I think it's kinda cute. They're a pack. They're friends. Do Not Separate.

The Tim Horton's White Hot Chocolate is so insanely good

Dungeon Meshi is such a good manga broooo

There are so many joys that I don't think I'll run out of them, and isn't that just the most delightful thing ever?

When I started this list I was feeling a little tired but now I'm quite happy and excited!! I'm so grateful to Katie for getting me into this, and my friends who also do stuff like this

i haven't been liveblogging my dark urge playthrough(s) because i don't want to spoil anyone, but i've gotta say i'm so obsessed with the durge/astarion dynamic

there are so many things that stood out to me as i watched the dark age in full for the first time in a very long time. the standout is the fact that this is an episode that has something very clear to say about jenny -- insidious, quiet, not at all the larger point of the episode, but clear. and what it has to say is that she’s impermanent.

on some level, i was expecting some degree of narrative antipathy towards jenny as i continued to watch this show. i wasn’t expecting to see it this clearly and this early. i’ve talked before about how surprise and innocence both throw jenny under the bus in a way i find unfair, limiting, and lazy, but the dark age does it too! this is a consistent pattern with her! she’s presented as something that directly contradicts information we’re given later in canon: someone who cannot handle the reality of the man that giles is. the episode is structured to demonstrate jenny as someone who enjoys the unserious, flirtatious romance of her connection with giles, but who balks at the reality of being truly involved with him, and who flinches away from the man that he really is. it is done so in a way that is not halfhearted. it is incisively deliberate -- in the framing, in everything.

we begin with giles/jenny’s romance in bloom, emphasizing in particular that jenny is eager. she is forward. she is direct about wanting to sleep with him, and the way that she describes him is incredibly key to this as well: she refers to him as a sexy fuddy-duddy. her attraction to him is illustrated within the episode as something that stems from him being adorable and old-fashioned, and the episode itself demonstrates that while the adorable, old-fashioned librarian is a facet of him, it’s not all that there is. we’re given jenny’s and buffy’s reactions to this in tandem at the end of the episode -- jenny flinching away, buffy drawing closer. this is also incredibly important.

constantly, consistently, this episode juxtaposes jenny and buffy. they are placed next to each other in the computer lab, joined by their joint disbelief that cordelia would overlook such a key detail about giles. the conversation they share is one about giles, with buffy turning to jenny for guidance re: how to help giles and jenny -- this is important -- having NO IDEA. jenny and giles share an intimate scene in his apartment, as do giles and buffy -- yet the key factor is that the intimacy between giles and jenny, the moment of comfort, is entirely false. it is a manufactured illusion that a demon is utilizing against him. the intimacy between giles and buffy, in contrast, is something real -- an admission about his past that we never actually see him share with jenny. again, the end of the episode contains similar parallels. giles attempts to express his desire to remain in jenny’s life, and jenny, now fully informed about the kind of man he is, moves away from his touch. buffy seeks giles out and expresses her appreciation for him, entirely as he is, + how grateful she is to know him as a complete individual. how this makes her life easier.

i obviously did not enjoy this. i can’t pretend at objectivity as i write this up, and it’s still a constant war with myself as i try to figure out a way to write this in any way that isn’t just SOOOO obviously biased (don’t think that’ll work, though, lmao), because i personally don’t like the way that this episode just staunchly refuses the possibility that jenny could love giles as he is. this feels like an episode intended to be the kiss of death for giles and jenny’s relationship, and taken in and of itself, it’s actually a really convincing argument for them not being able to work. we’re shown the depths of buffy and giles’s relationship, but so much of it is about placing buffy and giles’s relationship right next to giles and jenny’s relationship in order to demonstrate how ill-suited jenny is for giles. she’s weak. she’s easily infected. she’s unable to cope with the reality of closeness with giles. she’s a liability to him and unsympathetic to his isolation. buffy, meanwhile, ADAPTS to the reality of closeness with giles, EVOLVES this episode to protect and support him, rescues HERSELF when someone attempts to make her a victim of eyghon. these are all things that the dark age illustrates with aplomb. we see giles sitting with buffy, spilling his guts -- we never see him that candid about his past with jenny, even as she herself will later be candid about her past with him. 

and that’s the thing, too! this episode demonstrates such an INSANE double standard when it comes to the way giles handles secrets vs. the way jenny handles secrets. when point-blank asked to explain his deal re: a secret that is actively putting absolutely everyone in danger, giles refuses, snapping back with particularly vicious anger and telling buffy to “stay out of it.” he is determined to handle this shit on his own, and as ethan points out, this is not necessarily the best course when it comes to actually keeping people safe -- yet this episode presents him as a sympathetic figure. a flawed individual who deserves to be loved, understood, and accepted. multiple episodes later, jenny is THROWN AGAINST A DESK, and buffy’s furious demands for the truth are immediately met with complete, earnest honesty on jenny’s part, as well as complete and total cooperation with anything and everything that the scoobies demand of her & throw at her (think willow’s pointed brush-off, buffy’s dismissive cruelty, GILES COMING TO ASK HER FOR RESEARCH HELP AND TREATING HER LIKE SHIT IN THE SAME BREATH) -- yet she is presented as someone who has gotten her just desserts.

one could quibble about the magnitude of the secrets involved, but eyghon is presented as less of a threat in large part because the only person it ever actually threatens is jenny. much like angelus, the only person that the monster ever actually harms is jenny -- and both times, she is presented as responsible for it to some degree by virtue of wanting something from giles. it’s striking that jenny’s significant romantic overtures towards giles (wanting to sleep with him, telling him she’s in love with him) are always paired with some sort of harm inflicted upon her -- death, or something only narrowly escaping it. it’s striking that in this episode in particular, jenny’s desire to sleep with giles becomes something monstrous, utilized to try and tempt him -- and when he doesn’t succumb, she herself becomes something entirely unrecognizable. it’s key that giles never succumb to the temptation that is jenny. the individual that is jenny exists only hypothetically, and only in the margins.

this episode is insistent about presenting jenny as a road that will only lead to misery for giles. it works as foreshadowing for passion, certainly, but it’s also determined to highlight the fact that the problem lies within jenny herself. she isn’t able to handle the supernatural. she’s not as strong as she thinks. what she loves about giles isn’t real, and when faced with the reality of him, she flinches back. giles himself says it: “i don’t think she’ll ever really forgive me.”

thing is, though, SHE DOES. and only three episodes later! and THIS is where my little blorbo agenda shows up with baffling intensity, because this episode’s thesis statement about jenny JUST DOES NOT MAKE SENSE when looking at EVERYTHING WE ARE GIVEN ABOUT HER. she makes the decision to get back together with him, despite the clear implications in the dark age that all she enjoyed about him was the “sexy fuddy-duddy.” she is revealed to have intense ties to the supernatural, despite the clear implications in the dark age that this isn’t a life she can handle or wants to be a part of. the dark age is saying something about giles and jenny’s relationship that doesn’t match up with what canon says later, which is that she makes the CONSCIOUS CHOICE to come back to him, and that she has ALWAYS been a part of this world that she’s theoretically too terrified to continue living in with giles.

i feel that there are plenty of ways to emphasize the most important theme of this episode -- which is, of course, buffy coming to recognize giles as a flawed adult -- without also having to emphasize jenny’s inability to recognize giles as a flawed adult! she’s a plot device in this episode, a TOTAL nonentity: she’s something that can demonstrate that giles is complicated. she needs to be a shitty girlfriend so that we can understand that giles is HARD to understand. quite honestly, i’m starting to understand where some of the less savory takes on jenny are coming from, because this episode in particular leans into the idea of jenny Just Not Understanding Giles Enough. jenny Not Being Good Enough For Giles. fun fact: the first time i watched this episode with my mom, her take was to say, dismissively, “jenny can’t handle it.” i think that that’s an important anecdote to slot neatly in here. if taken totally at face value, and if one already might resent jenny for any reason (shippy or otherwise), this episode can easily and quietly feed into that resentment. jenny is shown Not Handling It.

yet, as ever, the messaging re: jenny is so inconsistent -- a by-product of her status as a Sexy Lamp, which is really in FULL SWING this episode -- that even this statement cannot remain true within the greater context of her largely hypothetical character arc. though she is demonstrated as someone who Doesn’t Understand Giles, someone who Can’t Handle Him, the show goes on to draw back the curtain and reveal that 1) she wants to be with him & 2) she actually has her own little Tragic Backstory that neatly matches his! the way she’s treated this episode -- the way the episode frames her as pulling away from giles explicitly BECAUSE she can’t handle what he’s done to her -- is not consistent with the notion of her returning to him, nor is it consistent with her backstory. it does not make sense. 

(honorable mention to the foreshadowing of passion, which saturates the eyghon confrontation on a level that i truly didn’t realize until watching it now -- not just angel saving jenny, but how he saves her. how jenny-as-eyghon enters, and buffy steps in front of giles, but her furious attempt to block jenny is aborted and she’s thrown to the side. how jenny-as-eyghon is inches away from giles, from doing what she’s been “waiting to do for a long time,” before angel pulls her roughly away from him and wraps his hands around her neck. that is RIGHT THERE, people.)

(and btws this post is dedicated to @korinainspace​ + @alltheangstmygifttoyou​ bc y’all were very gracious about me going actually insane as we watched this and i greatly appreciate it. i hope you two are getting some excellent sleep. <3 )

I'm so unwell about Dark Urge and Astarion walking around covered in blood. In my head they're holding hands while doing so btw

if you wanted an illustrated diagram of my thoughts for the past like two weeks here it is (not pictured is the resident gunslinger but he is very heard)

i want to hear abt ur atla side characters rarepairs 🥺👉👈

OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO you WILL be regretting this ok SO

it all starts with jetko. because i love them. zuko is a pretty major character, so we're ignoring him <33 its jet that matters. he's such a guy. i love him. hes the worst. he's poor little meow meow personified. i mostly just ship the two of them together in the way that they get so codependent that the lines r super blurred and all they know is they hate eachother but CANNOT be separated. and they're pretty damn rarepair-y if the tag has anything on it (like. five new posts a week, compared to the. number of posts in the atla tag by the hour)

going off of jetko, the whole lot of freedom fighters together as a big ole loser squad that bullies eachother affectionately, similar to the divorce squad we have going on- and longshot and smellerbee can have smth if they want idc rlly. but THEN we throw jin in the mix. for chaos and funsies. her and smellerbee have not even heard of eachother in cannon. do i care though? NO because they deserve to meet eachother be weirded out completely then become friends and make fun of their respective losers together. and they do. in my heart

i call this friend group the ba sing se squad and i have a whole storyline in my head all about them because I'm obsessed with them. i will find a way to throw ty lee and mai in the mix too because longshot and mai would get along great. and jin would LOVE to meet/befriend/kiss someone who actually was in fact in the circus (cough unlike zuko cough) and ty lee would gladly reciprocate.

okay that's it with my incoherent probably ooc rambling.... for now.

swiftli :]

SJDBGJSBGJDVGJVS hi Kai :]]] You already know. You already KNOW how obsessed i am w these guys 🧡🧡🧡

Ship It (!!!!!!!!) / Don't Ship It

What made you ship it?

Points through the screen. @kaseyskat YOU. YOU DID THIS TO ME. In all seriousness, though, when I was listening to the first episodes of s2 A YEAR AGO (wtf), Nyx pushed the Swiftli propaganda at me alongside the Oakworthies (they even came up w the Swiftli ship name! In our discord dms! WILD). They also mentioned that they expected Lincoln/Taylor to be much more popular based on their canon dynamics, but it only had one fic to its name at the time on ao3. And I was just like. Huh. I wouldn't have thought abt them together, but only having one fic of them is criminal,,, guess I'll write sth just to see if I can understand them more,,, and that wound up being my first dndads piece! And now. A year later. I'm. This. 🤡🤡🤡

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I am OBSESSED with their dynamic. Forever. I'm a huge sucker for the friends-to-lovers trope but Swiftli in particular also just feels. Dialed up to eleven bc both of these guys are so New to the concept of having Close Best Friends (since Lincoln spent most of his life homeschooled and Taylor, while "popular", didn't really appear to have many true friends before s2). That aspect combined with the sheer levels of devotion they have for each other (episodes 9 and 10 are stuck in my brain forever) and the general homoerotic bullshit that has happened with them makes for a pretty compelling pairing imo!!!

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I don't think this is particularly unpopular but. I absolutely ADORE qpr-flavored Swiftli! As much as I like to picture mushy little romantic scenarios for them, I also happen to be an aroallo Taylor truther and an asexual Lincoln truther (whether or not he's also aromantic depends on the day for me personally). I just think that these two lend themselves to being qpps really well - having a relationship that kinda defies the both the typical friends and boyfriends boundaries feels very in-character for them imo!!!