“Having a baby takes a flashlight and shines it on every crack in your relationship. And if there are no big cracks, it creates one. All of a sudden you have to find your way together with a whole new person in your lives. The entire dynamic of your relationship changes literally over night.”

Catherine Belknap,

“Cat & Nat’s Mom Truths”

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

Why is it that Batman’s ok with Antiheroes if it’s Catwoman or Talia Al Ghul, but when it’s the Red Hood, suddenly he’s beating the shit out of him

~Jason Peter Todd at some point

jaysohn's mommmm has got it goin' onnnnnnn

boy there is so much to unpack based on what Karan's sister said to her mom about how Karan was raised. its so crazy that his parents reinforced what they valued and what they didn't value by withholding reactions/not engaging with Karan if they didn't like or approve of what he was doing (and up until the present part of the story, didn't think this was harmful??). i don't know if the writers meant for it to be so profoundly sad, but the thought of a queer child who already felt deeply conflicted about his identity trying to express himself, find out who he is, and share his excitement about cool things he finds in the world only to get nothing from his caretakers to acknowledge it is heartbreaking. his flames burned out because he was doing it in a cold empty vacuum. she said he would pursue those things until it "got boring" but really what that means is he pursued those things/expressed himself in certain ways until the lack of interaction from his parents made him feel so insecure, self-conscious, and lonely that he phased it out. and then when he started getting engagement from his parents again, he would internalize that he shouldn't go where his instincts/pleasures/interests guide him because they're the makeup of an unacceptable person.

so Karan's historical self-deprecation in regards to his queerness and his uncontrollable, tear-filled reaction to hearing his mother indicate that she does want to support and engage with he and Achi, makes all the sense in the world. when he confessed his feelings to Achi he apologized multiple times essentially for letting the real Karan take over and control what his brain and heart were doing, ruining things between them. i love that Achi's immediate reaction to that was "you're sorry???" because its so bewildering that Karan would apologize for being himself, feeling his feelings, or thinking his thoughts. but he has been trained his whole life not to indulge or engage with his authentic self, so he feels like a failure when he does. he built his life around models of perfection and ways of carrying himself that were molded by other people.

Karan asking his mother "are you disappointed" that I'm gay/in love with a man really gets to the heart of it. like, if his mother had a choice, if his mother had the ability to change things about her son to fit her image of a better person, what parts of Karan would she remove or swap out? this is something he has had to consider, if not on a conscious level then definitely on a subconscious one, for his whole life: what parts of me are scraps, what parts of me are unwanted?

its such a relief that Achi stated that for him, caring for Karan means supporting him in doing the things that he likes and that bring him pleasure (like cooking and spending money on things that he and Achi can do together). Karan had asked Achi to "bear with" him but its clear that Achi isn't bearing anything. Achi takes pride in his charge of caring for Karan -- and helping him indulge his wants, abandon the constant grind for perfection, and reconnect with himself is a huge part of that.

I'm getting emotional over the unbreakable bond again like holy shit, that's his kid, that's his baby right there, he needs his kid augh AAA-

I know you know I've been lying to you. It's because I thought if you knew, you wouldn't love me the same.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023)

riz gukgak is SO distressing to have as a favourite character I can never funckign rest out here

naserian and hemani planned a big spookfest feast for their parents this year 🎃🍁🍂

Absolutely love your writing for all the AU/5 headcanons asks. Can I ask: AU where Rei cheats on Endeavor with All Might? It happens after AM's injury, so she doesn't recognize him, and he ofc doesn't know that she's married in the first place, much less to whom

you make this very difficult for me by giving me a window of 6 and half years for them to have an affair and for every single moment of that window, Rei is institutionalized. how am i supposed to get them to meet, much less take their clothes off. ok. think. there are other fic writers who specialize in this kind of thing, surely. what would they do....

1- ok so. The fire alarm at the hospital goes off. Rei doesn't know if it's a drill or not, but she's been there for seven years and generally does not need a lot of support during something like this like other patients do, so the nurses wave her out and she stands around outside a bit waiting for the fire alarm to stop and them to go back in. (It isn't a drill, they wouldn't have evacuated everyone if it was, but Rei is on the other side of the building and facing away from seeing any smoke) (This smoke is from a villain attack that All Might is taking care of, though he's only got seconds left of his power to use that day. he quickly rushes off, deflating and stumbling out on the other side of the hospital. Where Rei is.)

2- Rei is like "huh that guy doesnt seem to be in good shape" and kinda waves attention at him, and a nurse who's passing out water to patients and keeping an eye on the road gives Toshinori some too, getting more concerned when he dazedly answers that he's All Might and coughs up blood, but the nurse figures he's concussed since he smells of smoke and must have been closer to the fight, and is just reeling from being able to see the number one hero in person. Then they get distracted and wave Toshi to wait nearby, where Rei offers to chill his water and asks if he's alright, if he breathed in any smoke.

3- They chat and then go back into the hospital as it's un-evacuated together, Rei hanging out in the lobby where he sits as the hospital staff focus on getting everyone else back to their rooms. It pays to be low priority sometimes. Eventually she tells him her name is Rei and that she's in room K18, if he ever wants to visit or call. She doesn't get to talk to anyone except doctors, family visitors, or other paitients, and most of them don't stay nearly as long as she does. It's been seven years, and she's very lonely. Toshinori is lonely too, and when he's out of time for a day and feeling useless with nothing to do, he likes to talk to a friend.

4- Rei has been in the hospital for eight years when it gets physical. At that point, Toshinori knows a bit about her family. She has kids, mentions visits from a son and daughter, and then quietly mentioned when her son turned seventeen- her daughter's already twenty. She's been there for so much of their lives. He asks if she's married, and she admits she isn't sure how to file for divorce in a hospital like she is, if she even can, if she wants to because she'd lose custody, if it matters when she's not raising them anyway. He doesn't ask much more, knows there is a dead child and a baby she says isn't safe with her there. Toshinori never called Nana 'mom' to her face while she was alive, and had a reason for it, and has a similar reason for not asking more, not asking for the other names when he gets Fuyumi and Natsuo's. Yes, the doctors and nurses all know Rei has a boyfriend who visits. they don't say anything. who would they even tell, anyway. I debated the humor of reusing the bit from candlelight shoto that Toshi and Rei could have a kid with a fire quirk, but yeah here? Rei ain't getting pregnant, absolutely not.

5- When Natsuo turns eighteen, Rei does actually file for divorce, or at least tries to get the ball rolling on that. Toshinori's trusted her that her marriage is over in all but name, but he's more at ease with it ended fully. Fuyumi is crushed but burying it all deep inside. Natsuo is like 'what are you talking about. divorce is the most normal possible outcome here.' But anyway, Rei also begins to bring up being discharged- something she never bothered with earlier, when it seemed like she'd never be able to go home while Shoto was there, and never would want to go back anyway. (Her parents are absolutely not an option either so where would she go once discharged? the hospital was her only security.) Toshinori then tells her at this point about his diagnosis, that he's supposed to be terminal, in a way. He doesn't have a lot of time he can give her. Rei says that's ok, she'll take what she can get. She moves in. Fuyumi still goes out to eat with her once a week, though Rei doesn't say she's moved in with a boyfriend, just says she's in a safe place and it's not Fuyumi's job to worry about it, please, let her do that, relax, be her daughter instead of a mother. Natsuo adds her to his cellphone plan and gets her one. Rei doesn't tell Toshinori her ex's identity. Toshinori doesn't tell her about OfA, though she does know he's mentoring a student for heroics and is very proud of him. (Toshinori is a secretary at Might Tower, he's a great mentor. Oh huh, he got a job position at UA at the same time as All Might, she wonders if they carpool.)

+1- OK THE REVEAL so the reveal is. Toshinori gets home from the SF. And Rei almost knocks him out by the door, eyes wide and panicked, asking if he's ok, if Shoto's ok. Toshinori is like "... young todoroki? yeah he's alright? i know his fight with young bakugo looked bad but- Rei???" And that's when it all clicks for him, he's having dozens of horrible realizations at once, all while Rei weeps over her youngest. Toshinori's been a hero for a very, very long time. He's felt hopeless, before. But even then, he's known what needs to be done, he just isn't able to do it. But now? he's at a complete loss with no idea what he should do.

Something that I don't often see in the "was Edelgard's war necessary" discourse is the interdependence between the Church and the nobility. The question is always framed such as "are Edelgard's reforms worth starting a war over" or "is the net result of the war positive or negative" or "did she need to invade the Kingdom and Alliance to do her thing or was she just a cold-hearted, power-hungry tyrant" and the arguments given for or against either side of the conflict very rarely includes this simple fact :

No reform is possible in Fodlan because the Church and nobility feed off of each other.

It doesn't matter whether or not the specific reforms Edelgard wants to implement deserve thousands of people to die for them (if such a thing is even objectively quantifiable) ; it doesn't matter what the "net result" of the war is (if you can even make an objective measure on that) ; it doesn't matter whether or not having the Kingdom and Alliance under her authority was necessary to make the reforms she wanted ; absolutely no reform, whatsoever, in any territory, could have been achieved and lasted with the Church still standing. Why ?

Because the Church and the nobility enforce each other's "divine right to rule" and neither wants to lose their power.

Rhea wants to keep Fodlan in stasis until she brings Sothis back. She's done that for a thousand years and will keep doing it for as long as she needs to. How did she do it ? By making the powerful (the Crest-bearing descendants of the Ten Elites) dependant on her. She made their strength (their Crest) dependant on properly following and supporting her Church, instilling in Fodlan's societies the belief that a family won't produce Crest-bearing heirs any longer if they oppose the Goddess. The Crests are therefore both a mark of the Goddess' favour, granting nobles their "divine right to rule", and a pair of shackles binding them to the Church. If the Church falls and the commoners don't believe in the Goddess any longer, they also won't believe in the nobles' divine right to rule anymore and will rebel against the caste system. Therefore, the nobles need to enforce belief in the Goddess by showing how devoted they are, as Ferdinand and Lorenz explain is their noble duty to guide the commoners on the path of the faithful, and by giving the Church money to keep its influence and prestige ; otherwise, the nobility itself will be at risk.

But the reverse is, therefore, also true : if the nobility were to fall or stop supporting the Church (the one Rhea leads, mind you), it would lose power, influence and the money necessary to maintain its presence throughout the continent. The Church needs to make sure that the nobility system either stays the same or at least still relies on the belief in the Goddess. Any reform that abolishes the nobility, title inheritance or Crest supremacy is bound to be an absolute nightmare for the Church. Sounds familiar ?

Three Hopes touches onto this by showing us Rhea's attempts at killing the Bishop of the newly restored Southern Church. She doesn't try to get him killed because Edelgard was the one to choose him, she tries to kill him because this Southern Church represents a threat for the Central Church she leads, and she doesn't accept that.

How is the Southern Church a threat ? Two possible, non-exclusive ways :

The Southern Church's teachings are in opposition to the Central Church's teachings : we don't know exactly what those teachings are, but if the Southern Church's teachings imply that the Central Church's ones are fake, it would put their legitimacy into question. Which brings us to the second point :

The Southern Church is trying to become more prominent than the Central one : the Southern Church was dismantled about 200 years before the start of the game for being "dissident" and is now being revived with Edelgard's support. It doesn't even matter what it teaches the people : it fills a gap in the Imperial citizens' lives. By doing so, and by being morally, publicly and financially supported by the new Emperor, it earns the support of the faithful of the Empire and takes it away from the Central Church, in part at least.

So, because Rhea doesn't accept power being taken away from her, she attacks and tries to kill the "rebellion" in the egg, the same way she did with the "dissidents" of the Western Church in Houses, where she sent her students to execute and capture the priests, then executed the survivors without a trial. Sending an assassin against a bishop is clearly not something she would hesitate to do.

But, in this example, the Church was the one "under attack". You might wonder how Rhea would have reacted if Edelgard hadn't restored the Southern Church or started the war and had simply reformed the Empire without bothering anyone else, right ? Well, the answer is : basically the same thing.

What we know of Edelgard's reforms is that they are meant to end the caste system, let anyone reach a position of power, oust the people who are not competent enough to handle them and deny the very idea that birth determines someone's right to rule over a region or a whole nation. Those are all ideas that the Central Church has spent the last millenia denying and fighting against so the nobles would stay dependant on them ; if Edelgard's reforms were to be implemented, and moreso if they were to be successful, therefore proving that Crests and the ability to rule are not related, the Central Church's teachings would be proved wrong and the people of Fodlan, Kingdom and Alliance included, would rebel and stop supporting the Church and nobility. Rhea would lose her power and Fodlan would evolve, one way or another, outside of her control. She would do anything to avoid that, including sending her knights to support the rebellious nobles (like the ones we see in Hopes) who are bound to fight against Edelgard's tyranny to preserve peace and order in Fodlan, even if it means fighting against the Imperial army until they can march on Enbarr and behead the mad tyrant... which is roughly what happens in SS where the Black Eagles form a rebellion and ally with the Church's forces to fight against Edelgard and ultimately defeat her in order to keep the status quo. Yes, they fought this war because they thought Edelgard was in the wrong and needed to be stopped, but the result is the exact same.

(if you want to get into real world parallels, the Catholic Church was in much the same position of power as the Central Church for a good millenia (the xenophobia and the way it wormed itself into being central in every government by saying the King ruled out of God's will and had to be a good Christian if they wanted to keep their throne is especially similar), but then Martin Luther called it out on its corruption and started the Protestant Church (Southern Church, in Fodlan's case), leading to a long religious and physical conflict where the Catholic Church tried to eradicate the dissidents, with fire among other things)

So, what do we deduce from all this ? Three things :

The Church and nobility feed off of each other to maintain their own power ; if one were to disappear or stop working the way it did in the past, the other would collapse.

Rhea is more than ready to do what it takes to preserve her power and influence over Fodlan because it allows her to keep it in stasis and she believes that is what she should do until her mother comes back from the dead.

Edelgard's reforms would put a dent in Rhea's power, war or no war, which would result in Rhea trying to get her killed so she could put a good, obedient noble on the throne in order to restore the Central Church's power and maintain the nobility's standing in the Empire/Fodlan.

So, in conclusion : no significant change to the system can be made and kept in place for more than a few years, a decade at most, without national level of armed conflict at the very least because the Church and nobility will ally and fight tooth and nail to preserve their power. Taking apart the nobility cannot be done without destroying the Central Church at the same time, for one will always try to save/bring back the other to justify its own power. If Edelgard hadn't started the war, Rhea would have ; if Edelgard hadn't invaded and conquered the Kingdom and Alliance, their nobility would have attacked her in order to avoid her reforms giving ideas to their own population, or the population would have rebelled and started a bloody civil war in order to win their freedom, which would have likely caused more casualties, especially civil ones and children, than a fight between two actual armies.

There would have been war anyway. There would have been thousands of deaths anyway. Edelgard did what she did in order to gain the advantage by attacking first, improve her odds and shape the conflict in a way that would cause the least civilian casualties. We can still debate whether or not she was right or wrong, whether or not there was a better way to achieve her goals and save more lives, but the fact remains that while she did start the war, if she had not, someone else would have in order to stop her reforms. There was no peaceful way to change the whole system. As always, when you want to take power away from a group of people, you have to fight for it, and they will fight back.

This election day, I'm thinking of my Nana.

I'm thinking of how as a young woman, she fled political violence in her native Colombia to build a new home in a more stable country. I'm thinking about how she lived a long life, but not long enough to see her home country elect its first ever progressive president (just a few months ago!).

Coincidentally, I was living in Colombia at that time (in the very city she grew up in), and I was able to witness what felt like a miracle. A very conservative country, suffering from the violent inheritance of colonization and catholic invasion and the war on drugs, against a backdrop of the dangerous global rise of the far right--this unlikely country managed to elect one of the most progressive heads of state in the world, in 2022. That's a pretty big deal.

And I'm thinking about this, this election day, because that election was won by a very thin margin. I'm thinking about how it almost didn't happen. I'm thinking about how it was only possible thanks to the highest voter turnout in 20 year. And I am thinking about the countless number of voters who chose to vote for the first time. I am thinking of the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens who showed up at the polls. I am thinking of the indigenous women who rode 12 hours on public buses to vote at the 'nearest' polling stations. I am thinking of all the money and corruption that went into preventing minority citizens from voting, and I'm thinking about how they showed up in the millions and voted anyway.

I am thinking that I would like to see a miracle like that in my own home country.

So if you're on the fence about waiting in line today to cast your vote, I hope that you will think--about the country you want to live in, the future you hope will unfold, and about all of the people it takes to make a miracle.

Because history may deem us nameless and faceless, but when we show up en masse, we are the ones who make history happen.

And yes, maybe also spare a thought for my Nana. Who was in fact a very angry and judgemental woman who supported the republican party for 50+ years, and who would be turning in her grave right now (if the family hadn't had her cremated). Think about the mean angry ghost of my Colombian grandmother, who very much wants you to not show up at the polls to support abortion and other sinful progressive values. Think about her. Do it for her. Do it for Nana.

firm believer in the "chip is a great cook" agenda partly because he rolls really well for it and also because i like to think he's probably got a lot of experience with making scavenged/limited ingredients into something edible. and maybe he picked something up from chey after all.

~Bunny Bear Madalyn Marie ft. bunny boop

i couldn't pass up on not putting my bun in these accessories by @1-800-cuupid CC set💘Bunny Bop || VENUS💘

and fits perfectly with my naughty innocent Maddi

"You can't gaslight me because I have a narcissistic mother with a victim complex"