#overachiever things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

possamble · 13 days

Note

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

#asks #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #marcille donato #manga panel analysis #this is probably riddled with typos sorry #readmore cut bc it got long lmao #i ended up babbling about it bc it's such an important character detail to me #bc like... wow. she's so normal about it. she's literally just chilling.#the only thing that really bothers her is the material reality of it and how people treat her #the stereotypes the stigma etc. etc.#otherwise it just..#literally doesn't factor into her criteria for self-worth at all #the basic truth is that marcille likes herself on a fundamental level #she's not plagued by a deep and festering self-loathing the way a lot of characters in her archetype are #she likes herself and is proud of her successes and accomplishments #its just that shes terrified of failure and can have *episodes* of self-loathing when she fucks up #but who doesn't yknow #i know its a very slight nuance that makes very little difference in how her 'overachiever' problems manifest but its there #the sword of abandonment issues that hangs over her head has nothing to do with her self-worth or self-esteem or meeting her own standards #it has to do with the fear of not living up to *other* people's expectations and not being useful enough to be worth keeping around #she's good enough for herself but she's always so so so scared that she's not good enough for other people #i wont say much about what ryoko kui is saying using this as an allegory for real world racial biases but #dungeon meshi's treatment of marcille's relationship with her being half-elf is so incredibly important to me because it gets it so right.#a trauma about inferiority or being a half-being isn't inherent to the experience of being 'of two worlds' at all #that's something that's unfairly drilled into people by their environment #the *inherent* anguish is the loneliness. the constant longing. the fact that you are always homesick no matter where you are #always just a little bit of an outsider and never fully at home #and dungeon meshi gets that.#edit: cleaned it up a little

68 notes · View notes

compacflt · 1 year

Text

Rumors from Pearl Harbor.

When Admiral Kazansky first comes to Pearl, he brings with him about half of his previous staff, all exceptionally-hardworking people hand-picked over years—advisors, flag aides, secretaries, ranks all over the board. But his new hires, upon getting acquainted with the old guard, are shocked to discover that his previous staff still hardly knows him at all.

“He keeps to himself, mostly,” Lieutenant Commander Hartford explains over a pint. “I made the mistake of asking him once what he did for fun. You know, like, hobbies and stuff. He blinked at me for a second, and then said, ‘I read.’ That’s it! I read! My advice to you newcomers would be, don’t ask him questions about his personal life, because it tends to be pretty boring.”

“It sounds to me like he’s a walking, talking Wikipedia page,” says Captain Calvert, who worked for the previous two Pacific Fleet Commanders and thinks she knows how to deal with them by now. “We owe it to ourselves to figure him out. It’ll make our lives easier, anyway. So, let’s put our heads together: what do we know about him?”

What they know are his habits, which they’ll come to learn intimately over the next few years, and which are admittedly pretty boring. Admiral Kazansky is one of the first to show up to work in the morning and one of the last to leave in the evening. He often answers e-mails past 2300 hours, but never later than midnight. Jokes never catch him off-guard; he rarely smiles, and when he does, it has an ulterior motive. When he’s not working, he’s scheming and making plans to go back home to San Diego, and his requests for leave are always granted, because he works like a pack mule from home anyway. He signs off every e-mail with “Sincerely,”…

“Is he sincere, though?” asks Chief Warrant Officer Kent halfway through Admiral Kazansky’s first year. (Admiral Kazansky is surely unaware that his staff now spends the second Friday of every month chit-chatting about him over drinks in downtown Honolulu.) “I can’t ever tell. And he lives in Hawaii. San Diego’s nice, I know, but what’s so different about the beaches there that he can’t get here?”

“I genuinely don’t think he’s human,” confesses Commander Stoddard. “People warned me about that when I came here, and I laughed it off, but… he keeps his desk biologically sterile. Not one fingerprint, but I’ve never seen anyone wipe it down. I’ve looked through his drawers. Don’t judge me, I got curious. Everything squared away, like he’s goddamn Einstein or something. Have any of you ever seen him in his civvies?” No one has. “God damn it, where does he shop for groceries? No one’s seen him at a grocery store? Does he even own a pair of jeans? Does he wear his uniform to bed, too?”

“He probably goes grocery shopping on the whole other side of the island to avoid all the enlisted kids,” laughs Captain Calvert. “Come to think of it…you know how he always eats lunch in the office? It’s always a salad. And always the same kind of salad. This guy survives on one cup of coffee and one spinach salad a day. Maybe he really isn’t human.”

They build out their wealth of knowledge and come to learn that Admiral Kazansky is defined by his extremes, by what he always does and what he never does. Admiral Kazansky gets his uniforms dry-cleaned every week, though he never spills anything on them. No one has ever seen Admiral Kazansky stumble over his words while giving a speech, or trip over a sidewalk curb, or push a “pull” door. He is always polite and never friendly. Sometimes he is cold, and sometimes he is cruel in his patience with you when you’ve fucked up, like a cat toying with a hemorrhaging mouse. But he never raises his voice. He is always immaculately put-together, well-groomed, constructed every day like a product on an assembly line. Nothing is ever out of place. Allegedly his umbrella once turned inside-out during a rainstorm; he disdainfully shook it once, as a hunter might pump a loaded shotgun, and it flipped itself right-side-in again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply to him. Nor do the natural embarrassments that come with being human. Admiral Kazansky is never flustered, never harried, and never falls apart.

“I found this old picture of him shaking hands with another pilot on the Internet,” says Chief Warrant Officer Kent in Admiral Kazansky’s second year. “Smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Never seen him smile like that in all my years working with him. And he had frosted tips, too. Like Guy Fieri on a diet and steroids. It was the eighties, sure, but it’s like he knew how to have fun, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to him.”

“I feel lonely for him sometimes,” says Commander Stoddard. “Strict guy like that, no family, no friends, no wife, nothing to live for but the Navy? He’s like a workhorse with blinders on. Nowhere to go but forward. That’s a lonely existence.”

“Not if you’re a robot,” says Lieutenant Commander Hartford. “I swear, sometimes he breathes and it makes me jump, ‘cause I forgot he was alive!” —What else doesn’t Admiral Kazansky do?

That’s when they realize that none of them, not the old guard nor the new, has ever, not once, ever seen or heard Admiral Kazansky sneeze.

And they all finally give up the game and quit arguing and agree that, no, he really isn’t human after all. He must be some cyborg from the future sent to whip the Pacific Fleet into shape, and you can’t ask for too much humanity from someone who’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

The rumors start soon after that. Jokes that could get them all tossed out of the Navy, but probably won’t. Jokes that accidentally spread like wildfire.

Yes, Admiral Kazansky could be a cyborg, but he also could be a Mormon fundamentalist, or a Scientologist, or a really weird Catholic. Maybe he goes home to San Diego so often because in his spare time he’s really a mule ferrying cocaine across the Mexi-Cali border. That’s what he does for fun. He eats spinach salads because he’s a reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man, and he needs all the super-strength he can get to deal with the Navy’s modern-day bullshit.

“I don’t know if that story makes sense,” laughs Captain Calvert on the phone with her husband in Washington, “but it makes more sense than the real Admiral Kazansky does!”

So the rumors get spread around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Maverick comments, watching Ice make their bed from the relative comfort of the bedroom doorway, “or if I should tell you this, because you might crack down on it, which would be a shame, ‘cause it’s funny. But every time you send a mass e-mail to the Pacific Fleet commissioned officer corps, you become the main topic of conversation between all of us officers for a solid day and a half.”

“Oh?” says Ice with a smile, struggling to fit the last corner of the fitted sheet to the mattress. He sighs, tugs on the strings of his old ratty-ass hooded sweatshirt, and looks at Maverick balefully through his glasses. “Help me out over here, would you? —What are people saying? All good things, I hope.”

“Not really,” Maverick says, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase as he stares out the window into the San Diego sunshine. “Some pretty crazy shit, actually. Hard as hell for me to keep a straight face. I heard this one—you know, people are saying you eat nothing but salads?”

“Oh,” laughs Ice, hospital-cornering the free sheet. “Yeah, that one’s kind of true. I bring salads in to the office sometimes.”

“You hate salads.”

“I know, it’s torture! Move over.” He bumps Maverick out of the way to tuck in the last corner. “But, I figure, if a man torments himself with spinach-and-arugula salads three times a week, you ought to respect his commitment. It’s all an act. You get to a certain Defense Department paygrade, it all starts being storytelling and stagecraft.”

“Or trickery and deception, depending on how you look at it.”

“Sure. But you could say that about everything. —Besides, I’d rather the Navy discuss my salads than discuss… well, this.” He gestures to Maverick, then down to the bed. They start tugging the comforter over it together. “How much slack you got over there?”

“‘Bout a foot.”

Ice pulls his side down a couple more inches to match, then flips the top up. “Is that it? That’s all people are saying about me?”

Maverick grins and bends down to pick up a pillow. “They’re also saying that you’re the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam, and all that. Think fast.”

Ice doesn’t think fast, and the pillow hits him square in the face, and he laughs again as he catches it in his arms. “Shit, that’s good,” he says; “I was just about to call Slider, think I’ll tell him that one. That’ll make him laugh. Popeye Iceman.” He tosses the pillow onto the made-up bed and pulls out his cell phone, but—then he frowns, grimaces, mutters “Ah, no,” and turns away to sneeze.

#these are not real OCs obv #none of my OCs ever are #just names saying things #if a tree (ice) falls in a forest (sneezes in his office) and no one’s around to hear #does it really make a sound?#cyclone hears these rumors and immediately starts slamming salads and dry cleaning his uniforms #what he doesn’t understand is that sometimes overachieving is driven by having something you desperately want to keep hidden #im very interested in an interpretation of TG86 ice that #has constructed a mythos/character around himself #(best of the best & scary frosted tips for example)#to hide the truth of who he actually is.#Popeye iceman #top gun #top gun maverick #pete maverick mitchell #icemav #tom iceman kazansky #top gun fanfiction #it’s the way he lives. ice-cold; no mistakes.#popeye’s ‘I am what I am and that’s all that I am’ would be good advice for my ice to take #of course around mav tho…

642 notes · View notes

rainedroptalks · 3 months

Text

yknow what, call it bad taste but I actually kinda like kindermilly cockerspaniel or whatever her name is. As a lover of annoying weirdos, I cannot wait to see her again

#ramblings #d20 #dimension 20 #d20 fhjy #fhjy #fantasy high junior year #kipperlilly copperkettle #as an overachiever I honestly kinda get her #she’s just kinda weird and bitchy #take this with a grain of salt tho #this is the same mind that brought you ‘yea Penelope everpetal did all those thing but have you considered she was funny while doing them’#ALSO I AM SO INTERESTED IN HOW SHE FOUND THE ROUGE TEACHER

106 notes · View notes

onceuponaweirdo · 5 months

Text

There is never a dull moment in the mind of an overthinking overachiever perfectionist procrastinator

#overachiever #overthinking #perfectionist issues #perfectionism #procrastinator #neurodivergent #asd #recovery #my mind is a battle field #there are no winners here #its a 24/7 thing #mental health issues #bpd #autism spectrum disorder #neurodiversity #neurodiverse stuff

93 notes · View notes

reputayswift · 2 months

Text

Idk guys the older I get the more I understand her (Revival Rory)

#‘it’s unrealistic that she’d flop so hard after being a successful overachiever in school’ well actually that happened to my good friend me!#I think she would’ve been more well received in a post-2020 world she was ahead of her time #not the wookiee thing though #Gilmore girls #tays takes

54 notes · View notes

deadliestpieceontheboard · 10 months

Text

i'm only interested in kevaaron if the foundation of it is that they're both huge nerds and even huger assholes. they're pathetic men who are also overachievers and would drop anything on the spot to prove they're right. peak comedic couple.

#cue to them having arguments literally no one else would give a shit about #for the softer parts they're both insecure about similar things (overachiever consequences)#but like #i'm here for the crack part #also works if they just end up as salty bffs #aftg #all for the game #kevin day #aaron minyard #kevaaron #its over for you bitches im queueing shit

348 notes · View notes

a-contemplation-upon-flowers · 2 years

Text

I did something again.

#feanor #house of feanor #feanorians #he does it all #no one does it like him #my overachiever #who needs bob the builder to fix things when you have feanor #*slaps feanor's back*#this bad boy can have the world of problems: create them and fix them #4 for the price of 1 #silmarillion meme #silmarillion incorrect quotes #incorrect silmarillion quotes #silmarillion #tolkien #a contemplation upon flowers🌻

883 notes · View notes

caenith · 1 year

Text

So at the end of last year I decided to learn embroidery. And now I have finally finished the first thing that I actually like looking at 😇

#tolkien #silmarillion #finrod felagund #Embroidery #Okay so now I see mistakes and things that I should have done differently but from a distance it looks pretty decent!#Also it's a learning process as I keep telling my overachieving self #Now I need a bigger SQUARE design #I have a pillow that needs a nice pillowcase #The problem is that I can't draw things myself so I just need to copy something available online #I guess I'll keep going through all Tolkien's designs for... things #Or something from the lotr movies idk

304 notes · View notes

somecunttookmyurl · 8 months

Note

fwiw my physiotherapist told me that people with eds apparently metabolise things faster than other people, so your fast metabolisation of medications/caffeine/etc could be in part linked to that?

yes people with EDS (and other forms of chronic pain) are highly likely to have the abnormal liver enzyme thing

we don't really know *why* but it's just. a thing.

#it's why loads of us are resistant to local anaesthetic also #something like 80% of chronic pain sufferers have at least one abnormality on the P450 cytochrome #around 30% have more than one #the most common (for us) is CYP2D6 which is the one responsible for - among other things - anaesthetic and most psychiatric medication #caffeine is CYP3A4 #my 2D6 and 3A4 are for sure extremely overachieving #i have my suspicions about 2C9 #incidentally CBD is a potent inhibitor of 2D6 - meaning it will slow the metabolism and 'make things work better'#which may go some way to explaining the popularity of CBD among chronic pain folks #bupropion (wellbutrin) does the same thing which is why i'm prescribed it lmao #taking wellbutrin to make my liver talk to amphetamine

69 notes · View notes

wi11owbird · 1 year

Text

made a little comic <3 season of passage appreciation post, the evers

#sky: cotl #sky: children of the light #willowbird art #season of passage #passage guide #overactive overachiever #yes I gave them a headcanon name I just think it sounds nice #they definitely need to be tricked into breaks sometimes #bro takes life a bit too seriously (just like me fr)#passage guide knows this and wants them to give themself time to just be a kid #but they know nari too well to just say that #I don't think they often say outright that they care about someone #they're very formal ingame (bowing at us for the quests)#so they show they care in other ways #sorry for the ramble in tags (it will happen again)#oh wait last thing “all night” is referring to a nocturnal isle hc a friend has that I promptly yoinked

134 notes · View notes

recurring-polynya · 1 year

Note

I just saw the drawing prompts post! If it's not too, I've love to Renji, Izuru, and Momo being the best Brot3 :3 Totally okay if you don't want to draw them though!

"I hope that none of you will simply settle for being here, but instead will strive to someday lead the companies you join!"

#izuru kira #renji abarai #momo hinamori #my fanart #doodle requests #great prompt thank you!!!!!!#i ALWAYS want to draw them #THE trio of all time #::sobbing:: i love these dumb overachievers so so much #good thing nothing bad happens to them ever!!!

90 notes · View notes

gayofthefae · 3 months

Text

Imagine not only queerbaiting but ALSO shitting on the canon ship 💀

What is "Mil[k]van Chaos Edit", Netflix's YouTube account?

What is "Wrong answers only" "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "Yes" Stranger Writers' Twitter?

They're not even like "oooh who's it gonna be" they're like "Mike and Will are so cute 👀👀👀 Mike and El? Who? OHHH those fuckin weirdos um yeah I guess maybe- I MEAN YEAH TOTALLY AHAHAHA 👀"

#stranger things #byler marketing #im not saying they actually are im saying it would be weirdly overachieving and thats why they arent #byler

20 notes · View notes

aladork · 11 months

Text

people might misunderstand this in a dreadful way but i do think it would be kind of epic alador and lilith """"dated"""" for a month or even less in high school before alador developed a thing for darius. i do think it was some "trying to perform for the norm" type of thing. almost got catastrophic by way of pushing down discomfort and avoidance but i think at some point before it got too agonizing they got to have a talk and i think this is how lilith finds out shes aroace and also alador life forshadowing for his own understanding of romance. literally ending in a "well i didnt really feel anything particularly deep when we went out on 'dates' but i did enjoy the hanging out with you part." type of deal. alador might have felt something and may have been concerned about being a bad first partner for lilith but not never says anything about it because she never seemed upset with him. like hes probably dodgy about physical touch because of overaccomodation and may have been a little awkward for a little bit and like he was probably hurting during the confusion as much as lilith was but i think their collective logic brains allowed them to still be good friends.

its not about the romance and them dating its not about shipping its about lilith having had an excursion to see if she enjoyed dating someone and safely found out the answer was no without fear of hurting or losing anyone. i think they are secret autism confidantes. dont talk personally for months but lilith can go to alador to ask his thoughts. ofc faded off during the marriage but. definitely was explaining lilith about his feelings for darius and trying to logic map out if he was attracted or not (there was definitely misscommunication in the hexside aladarius era because of this) and shes like hm i dont know. does anyone see my vision here. is this anything.

#alador blight #lilith clawthorne #i do NOT ship them but i do think that miss overachiever miss grudgby captain would have felt the need to perform the whole thing yknow.#also i am aspec i am projecting.#lilith voice i think it would be logical for us to do this. alador voice that is logical youre right....

70 notes · View notes