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#and i needed to write this
remapped-soul · 1 year
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real hunger has a real taste
i read this poem by ada limon that feels like being hit by a ton of bricks and then this short fic happened. enjoy or im sorry
Daniel is Scotty’s unofficial wedding photographer. Before this, he was Scotty’s groomsman. Some say he could have performed better, assisted better, but Daniel was the best friend before being appointed to the role of groomsman. Best friends pull your hair back while you spill your guts into the toilet basin, all the while laughing at your stupidity for mixing vodka with gin. Daniel laughed when Scotty started to cry all of a sudden, saying, “She’s gonna be Mrs James now. She’s gonna be mine.” Daniel laughed at how ridiculous he was and wiped Scotty’s runny nose and reapplied the concealer and foundation under his eyes because he was the best friend and he didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
Let’s recap.
Daniel is Scotty’s unofficial wedding photographer. Before this, he was Scotty’s groomsman, and before that, he was Scotty’s best friend. He is Scotty’s best friend. Before that, Daniel was Scotty’s fan, as much as Scotty was Daniel’s fan. Athletes bred and nurtured with the sole purpose of winning. They get fans when they win. They remain with friends when they start losing.
What came first? Being friends or being fans?
One day Daniel was laughing alone, and after he met Scotty, they were laughing together.
What came first? The egg or the chicken?
Daniel can’t wait to play with Chloe and Scotty’s kids, ask them absurd questions, get them to smile at him the way his nephews and nieces smile at him, carbon copies of the people he loves. There is no better feeling in the world than making the people you love smile.
What came first?
Neither.
Let’s start with the beginning.
At first, they were lovers.
They were lovers in the way people are for a night when they meet in a pub, when the sharp neon lights fracture everything in three and you think lust is enough to build an empire. Daniel saw Scotty bathed in fluorescent pink somewhere in Austria, head thrown back, neck taut, skin glistening with sweat. Daniel thought, “I want to press my lips there.” Daniel did. He blamed it on the too many vodkas in his bloodstream, but Daniel never hesitated when he wanted something, sober or not.
Scotty tasted like salt, like the musky aftershave he still wears to this day because Chloe likes it. Barely legal and a head taller, when Scotty kissed Daniel for the first time that night, fingers curled around his jaw, when Scotty fucked Daniel against the filthy bathroom door while Swedish House Mafia blared all around them, Daniel thought, “This feels just as good as winning.”
They were young and they were dumb and the world didn’t care enough about them to notice when they crashed together in the same hotel room.
Years later, when Daniel wins for the first time in Canada, when he lifts the trophy above his head, drenched in champagne and drunk on adrenaline, he thinks, “This feels nothing like fucking Scotty.” Hunger split in two, he knew he would never be satisfied if he didn't have both.
Scotty flies in that night, knocks so loud on Daniel’s door he is about to wake up the entire hotel and fucks him senseless five minutes after Daniel lets him in. For the first time in years, they do it on a bed, Scotty above him, hair soft, cheeks rosy, smile so tender it makes Daniel bite back a sob.
“I won,” Daniel whispers.
“You did,” Scotty says and leans down to kiss him once more.
He won, so maybe he gets to keep Scotty too.
Scotty meets Chloe for the first time in 2019. Daniel takes a step back, and waits for the flames to pass, for the relationship to end the way it did before. But Chloe is not Ivy, and Scotty of 2019 is not Scotty of 2018. For the second time in his life, Daniel is wrong.
With nothing else to do, he throws himself into making the car better. He starts meditating and doing breathwork. Whenever Lance passes him by in the paddock, Daniel looks the other way. It’s not Lance’s fault Scotty has been fucking guys in the backyard while kissing girls on the front porch. It’s not Scotty’s fault Daniel never asked for more. Sometimes you got to love yourself enough to believe you deserve better.
Daniel fell in love with his best friend but he got to keep only one. He redirects his love into his friendship, he comes running whenever Scotty calls, and when he gets asked, “Will you be my groomsman?” Daniel says, “Yes.”
Daniel has many regrets in life. Not staying with Cyril, not telling Heidi he loved her sooner, not eating more veggies, but being Scotty’s friend is not one of them. He helps Scotty dress and ties his bow tie for him, styles his hair and powders his nose after another crying session.
He swallows back tears when Scotty walks down the aisle, when Chloe slides the ring onto Scotty’s finger. Happy tears for happy moments, because Daniel is nothing but a good friend. He trusts that Scotty is too.
Daniel takes back his love, keeps it behind his teeth, and lets it power his smile. They dance and yell and get drunk under the Venetian sky. Chloe kisses Scotty under the fluorescent pink lights, and in turn, Daniel kisses Heidi.
Daniel thinks, “This is good enough.”
With time, he will believe it too.
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sylvies-kablooie · 4 months
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i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.
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noperopesaredope · 7 months
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I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.
Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.
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officialspec · 3 months
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modern au but set in brisbane. is this anything
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just-french-me-up · 9 months
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the urge to write is like a cat meowing for dear life for someone to open the goddamn door, who then shows utter disinterest in said open door
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eridan-ampora · 8 months
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i love it when characters are codependent. i love it when losing someone feels like losing a limb. i love it when two people "complete" each other so wholly and terribly that one can barely function without the other. i love it when the fear of losing the only person who understands them is so all-consuming they'll destroy anything to stay together, including themselves.
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tofixtheshadows · 30 days
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I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.
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Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.
Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.
Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.
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I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.
He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).
First, we get this:
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Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.
They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.
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It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.
We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.
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What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?
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He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.
In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.
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Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!
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...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.
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Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.
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And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.
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I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.
And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.
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Meals are the privilege of the living.
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the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"
just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible
#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order#at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers#90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies”#serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent#like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries#but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate#and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited...#i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something#cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare#and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest.#it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!'#'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members...#..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)'#anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language?#maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity#and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media#and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons#and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators#instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period#anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value”#and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives#so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs)#happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world#(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills)#and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on...#...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin#oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works?#beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value#and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the#important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)
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rhinestonesox · 1 month
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When Senshi was young in the dungeon the majority of the adults he were with ostracized him. All except Gillin, who died to make sure Senshi had something to eat: unseasoned boiled meat that may or may not have been one of their comrades.
It really puts into perspective why he was so nurturing towards Chilchuck. When Chil reveals he’s 28 to the party, Senshi responds by telling him that he thought he was older. Senshi was in his 30s when he and his comrades got trapped in the dungeon, so it’s safe to assume that he thought Chil was at a similar age.
He met a young boy who was, from his perspective, forced to do dangerous work in the dungeon just like he was, and so, Senshi made an effort to look after Chilchuck in the same way Gillin looked after him.
Mind you, when Senshi was young in the dungeon he had to starve for weeks, eat the horse he loved, and finish it off spending the next i don’t know how many years wondering if he committed cannibalism.
Senshi understands first hand the value of nutrition and proper eating, so when he’s with the party he makes an effort to make sure they’re all eating a full and balanced diet. Not only that, but Senshi INVOLVES them in the process of getting food to eat, always preparing it in front of them and narrating every ingredient in the process so that there’s no doubt about what they’re eating.
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humunanunga · 1 year
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Enough of the trope where memory loss undoes the damage or the corruption or whatever. More content where removing memories just removes the context.
The tragedy of needing to grieve and not knowing what or who you lost or why. The angst of having trauma and being denied the awareness that it's trauma. The suspense of being different somehow and left to wonder how and when. The tension of knowing that something is off and you can't find where it hurts. The Adventure Zone gets it. Kingdom Hearts gets it.
There is an aching inside you and you don't know how it got there.
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tariah23 · 3 months
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The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.
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jesncin · 6 months
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A comic about Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and typos.
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magnusbae · 11 months
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To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:
A post in 2023:
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A post in 2014:
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A zoom out of the same post:
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This is what a community looks like.
See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.
It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.
Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.
If you want more of something, reblog it.
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ronanlynchbf · 9 months
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tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY
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ribbittrobbit · 3 months
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these kids are incredibly stressed out
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whumperfultime · 3 months
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Hey idk what writer/artist/creative needs to hear this but: You can create the most garbage self-indulgent poorly made full-of-cliches awkward ugly piece of art on the entire planet and you're still allowed to be proud of it and share it with the world. In fact, I outright encourage you to be proud. You deserve it. I love you. Keep making things.
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