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natjennie · 2 months

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getting some responses on my post about kristen and her parents conversation, specifically the "isn't it kinda funny that helio chose you and you were the one to bring the daytime back" and I think it's really interesting how different people responded to it like. maybe it's because I live in the southern united states but. there is a lot of religion, specifically christianity, as that is the obvious analogue to the helioic faith, that is downright evil, I agree. and obviously the prevalence of it is harmful to a lot a lot a lot of people, just as it's harmful to kristen in fiction.

but you have to understand that the individual people are deluded, they genuinely believe what they're doing is right. it's really easy to be like "ugh they sicken me it makes me so mad" in a theoretical sense but. do you have drive through workers wishing you a blessed day. do you have people see your kt tape and offer to pray for your pain to go away. like. idk I just think we have to have a little bit of compassion and understanding for people that are so entrenched in their faith that they do truly believe from the bottom of their heart that what they're preaching is true. especially in a world where divine magic is real!! kristen TALKED to helio. she makes literal miracles happen on the daily. so faith in that world is gonna be heightened to a crazy degree.

obviously I condemn their human-supremacy and their cult practices etc etc etc but in that little moment I felt for the applebees. it didn't make me mad or disgusted or annoyed. it made me sad. because they saw their daughter perform a miracle of the sun and it meant nothing to her. that "that doesn't feel special at all to you?" wasn't from a place of arrogance. they weren't lauding it over kristen. they were pleading. begging her to see it from their eyes: she is the chosen one. she is a prophet of helio and has been doubting and they want what's best for her. she's their savior. she brought the sun back from the endless night. that doesn't feel special at all to you?

#im fucked up.#i mean maybe this is a privileged position to take because i wasnt raised religious #i dont have personal connections to the harm it does #but i know that most people who practice christianity genuinely love their neighbors #however they can.#it's easy from an outside perspective to be like 'theyre so evil i cant believe they were manipulating her like that'#but. i dont think they thought they were.#theyre not evil. they're trying to help her.#they are misguided YES. but intention has got to count for something #if you cant see the difference between mac and donna applebees and bobby dawn. i can't help you #fantasy high #d20 #dimension 20 #fhjy

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tunamayojazz · 8 months

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saw that fav ship trope: chronic sleeper x chronic insomniac tweet and guess what! it's them

#inuokko #ottoge #inumaki toge #yuuta #okkotsu yuta #inumaki #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #art #okkotsu yuuta #its canon that toge is not a morning person btw #gege says hes sure toge has low blood pressure too plsss #ik it would backfire on him badly if toge used cursed speech on yuta but i like to think that commands like “sleep” don't count #its yuta who asks him to do it ofc and while toge is reluctant he sees how badly yuta needs and wants to sleep #toge still gets freaked out when yuta falls asleep after the command so he just huddles closely right next to his chest #just to make sure his heart is still beating #hes not used to his commands not harming the target so he needs the reassurance #yuta sleeps like the dead tho just dont tell toge with those exact words

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cyanidesurpryse · 8 months

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as a gay indigenous man, i have now declared myself the ceo of olrox and none of yall can stop me. sorry but it is what it is.

#castlevania netflix #castlevania nocturne #netflix castlevania #castlevania #olrox #i want to cosplay him really badly and i prob will #my only concern is that im a lightskinned indigenous person #and i dont want someone to think im a white person appropriating him #also im not aztec im native american #does it still count since its still indigenous?

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iooiu · 2 years

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i couldn't explain this au even if i wanted to

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emelinstriker · 1 year

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Macaque ♡ Bath Time

First of all, this is all still SFW, but would be leading into NSFW with the ending implication. So this still counts as Fluff. Also I personally would call him Mac-Mac, so that shall now be implemented into my fics.

That being said...

CW: slight suggestive vibe, nudity, mild gore(? had to hold back a lot from making it full on detailed descriptions), maybe faint yandere behavior if you squint

♡ ~ Fluff ~ ♡

"I've told you before. Hands off my territory... No one to blame but yourself."

The dark-furred simian dropped the demon's corpse onto the pavement with a dark grin. It's been a while since he really got to do this to another demon. He's been holding back his true strength ever since he met you, in hopes of not scaring you off... Well, at least he didn't usually attack demons with you around. That didn't mean he would kill them even when you weren't present.

However... this particular demon crossed the line. Not only did this demon return to the apartment complex, the Six-Eared Macaque's territory, despite having been warned... But this demon also threatened to kill him, as well as you and your neighbors right after.

Little did he know that your husband was a lot more capable than any other ordinary demon this guy had ever faced before, by far. Despite his size compared to the intruder, he could easily fold him.

And of course, Macaque didn't take this random demon's threats lightly. Killing off a threat to you and your home once in a while wouldn't be so bad, no? Surely a little bit of self-defense in the name of your safety should be fine.

So he did what he seemed most fit. Getting rid of the pest that spoke of those threats. After all, endangering you in any way, shape or form was off-limits. Anyone attempting to break this one simple rule had to deal with the consequences and would be punished by your loving husband...

Violence may not always be the answer, but life is multiple choice.

And death was just one of the options.

A quite merciful one at that.

Macaque glanced down at the blood that now stained not only his clothes, but his fur too. He rolled his eyes, grumbling about needing to take a bath. After all, he wouldn't want his beloved to be stained by another demon's blood when he hugged them. And thus, he disposed of the body by engulfing it in a shadow portal. He was torn between letting it fall into lava or the ocean, but he decided that lava would be the quickest solution. If the corpse somehow managed to not be gone by the time the Demon Bull Family saw something floating on the surface of one of their lava pits, then they could simply see it as a nice aesthetic gift to their home.

He used another shadow portal to return to your shared apartment's living room. Everything was quiet, so much so that he had no problems hearing all your neighbors without even trying, which the shadow monkey already anticipated. Usually it was him that would come home later than you, but not today since his plays were scheduled for only half of the week. And it was a good thing he had the day off. Who knows what would've happened if you came home first and encountered the demon he got rid of instead!

After making his way past your bedroom door, he let a shadow clone enter and pick some fresh clothes for him. Meanwhile, he prepared his bath. The dark-furred simian noticed the lack of a shampoo bottle near the bathtub, so he ended up picking the plum-scented shampoo from the cabinet beneath the sink. Macaque was considering using body wash as well, but decided against it as most of what the blood got on was pure fur anyway. His shadow clone then walked in with fresh clothes, placing them on the closed toilet seat before vanishing back into his shadow.

However, before he could undress, his ears caught the sound of keys clashing by the front door. He smiled to himself at the implication- Only you had keys to the apartment since he didn't need keys to enter. And his assumption was indeed correct.

"Mac-Mac, I'm home!" Your lovely voiced called out from down the hallway as you entered.

"Heya, sugarplum! I'll be right with you, just gonna take a bath first!" He called back through he closed door. It did take a while until the tub was actually filled with warm water, so in the meantime he inspected his nude, scarred form in the mirror. He sighed to himself as he tried getting some blood off manually with his fingers, but to no avail. It would be difficult to clean up some spots, for sure. Especially those splatters that ended up on his back...

Another thing he did while waiting for the bathtub to fill up was to listen in on what you were doing. From what he could still hear past the noises coming from the faucet and your neighbors, apparently you were eating dinner. Presumably leftovers from the fridge as he did not recall you cooking anything earlier that day.

Once the tub was full, he turned off the faucet, then climbed inside and began to clean himself up. Macaque started off by washing all his fur on and around his head, at least that was easy to do. There wasn't even all that much blood stuck in there in the first place... Well, except for maybe the front.

He was so busy rubbing the blood off his arms that he didn't hear you walking towards the bathroom. At least until you lightly knocked on the door, pulling him back into reality.

"May I come in? I need a dry towel for the kitchen", you asked. Your husband told you that you may enter, so you did.

It was far from the first time you saw him without clothes, so it wasn't exactly awkward when you came in and picked one of the thinner towels. After choosing a fitting one, your eyes glanced over at the dark-furred simian. Honestly, he was already handsome by default. Him without a shirt was even better. But his wet, shiny fur glistening in the light of the bathroom made him look a lot more appealing on top of it all.

Suddenly, his own gaze landed on you. He seemed a bit confused, but this little bit of confusion was quickly wiped away as his smug grin took over.

Shit. He probably heard your heartbeat increase... Curse his intense hearing!

"What's the matter, sugarplum? Like what you see~?"

You were about to respond in a flustered, passive aggressive manner... Until you noticed the amount of red that was still very much present on his fur. You paused for a second before becoming concerned. "What happened? Did you get into a fight? Is that your blood?!" You asked frantically.

Macaque's grin left just as quickly as it came. "No, no! Well... I mean yes, I did get into a fight. B- But this isn't my blood!" That statement only eased your concerns a bit. You simply stood there in thought with the folded towel in hand... Until he seemed to try wash off some blood his back, but to no avail.

"Do you need help getting it off?" You asked as you slowly put the towel onto the sink.

He raised an eyebrow at you before waving his hand dismissively. "I wouldn't mind the company."

You hummed in amusement as you made your way over to the bathtub, getting onto your knees next to it. Macaque handed you the bottle of shampoo and you put a portion of it onto your hand, putting the bottle next to you on the ground. You then scooped up a bit of water with your other hand and mixed both liquids together. Afterwards your hands were free to roam around your husband's back, trying to get rid of the red colors and the faint stench...

Honestly, you couldn't tell if it was just the blood because his fur seemed to stink on its own.

Suddenly, the dark-furred simian started to purr as you started gently cleaning blood around his tail. You actually had a somewhat hard time cleaning it... Macaque's joy over you handling his tail so gently only made it move around more. That in of itself wouldn't have been much of a problem, but we have to take his extra strength into consideration. He may be holding back by a lot, but his tail was still able to casually pick you up if he wanted to. So trying to keep it still enough to properly get rid of stains was a challenge.

You grinned at his tail's excitement, "Do you want me to wash the rest of your body too or what?"

The shadow monkey halted before fake-thinking with a hum. "Only if you get in here with me."

You gave him a blank look for a few seconds. Macaque thought this suggestion was a bit too much for you today. You barely got off work after all. Thus he was about to apologize... until he heard you take off your own clothes.

He paused as his tail's tip flicked back above the water in anticipation. His head whipped to the side to see you put your clothes onto his own pile or dirty clothes. With your body now in the nude, you approached the bathtub before demanding him to scoot over so you could sit behind him. You then positioned yourself so he was sitting between your legs, practically having been captured so he could never escape. (He wouldn't have minded to be honest.)

And without another word, you proceeded to continue washing him. Mainly his back and sides due to his fur's locations, but you occasionally would brush over part of his chest. Most of his fur in the back wasn't even bloody, but it was still nice to help clean him. At one point his tail wrapped around your waist as he leaned back into your hold, purring while slightly rubbing himself against you. You cooed at him being adorable and tried countering him by pushing your body firmly against his, trying to reach at least part of his legs better.

However, the moment you got to his hips towards his abdomen, he chuckled. "Not low enough, sugarplum~"

You rolled your eyes at his words with a flustered smile, "Mac-Mac, you can clean that area yourself. I can barely even clean your legs from here." He pouted as his head turned to face you, just so you could see his disappointment. You grinned at him in return.

"Do I at least get a reward for cleaning up the rest myself?" He asked with a knowing smirk as his gaze lowered towards your body below the water. That cheeky little bastard... You raised an eyebrow at the monkey's suggestion. The fact that his tail seemed to slowly make its way towards your thigh didn't help the situation.

You sighed in defeat as you nuzzled into your husband's furry back. "Okay fine. But, only one round, got it? I still have work tomorrow, and you know how much our stamina differs."

Macaque chuckled, using his hands to position your arms around his torso, your hands against his chest. "I can't promise anything, sugarplum~" He swiftly turned around more until he was able to give you a quick kiss on the lips, his hands holding your head for better access. "I love you."

In return, you leaned in as well for a kiss that would last a little longer. "I love you too..."

"Well, guess I better get to cleaning now, just so we have more time for my reward~", he said in his low voice as he pulled away. It didn't take long for Macaque to completely clean himself, especially with this new motivation literally sitting behind him with a flushed, yet amused look.

Maybe you should offer him this type of reward for doing house chores, just to motivate him into actually doing those more often.

> Masterlist <

#lmk x reader #macaque x reader #six eared macaque #lego monkie kid #lmk macaque #fluff #bath #suggestive #only a bit tho #i personally dont think it counts rly into gore due to how i removed all the actual descriptions tbh

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galacticlamps · 22 days

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ok I have A Lot of thoughts about the staircase confession (well really about Edwin's whole character arc, but all roads lead to rome) but for now I just wanna say that, yes, I was bracing myself for something to go terribly wrong when I first watched it, and yes, part of me was initially worried its placement might be an uncharacteristically foolish choice made in the name of Drama or Pacing or Making a Compelling Episode of Television but at the expense of narrative sense--

But I wanna say that having taken all that into account, and watched it play out, and sat with it - and honestly become rather transfixed by it - I really think it's a beautifully crafted moment and truly the only way that arc could've arrived at such a satisfying conclusion.

And if I had to pinpoint why I not only buy it but also have come to really treasure it, I'd have to put it down to the fact that it genuinely is a confession, and nothing else.

That moment is an announcement of what Edwin has come to understand about himself, but because it takes the form of a character admitting romantic feelings for such a close friend, I think it can be very easy, when writing that kind of thing, to imbue it with other elements like a plea or a request or even the start of a new relationship that, intentionally or not, would change the shape of the moment and can quickly overshadow what a huge deal the telling is all on its own. But that's not the case here. Since it is only a confession, unaccompanied by anything else, and since we see afterward how it was enough, evidently, to fix the strangeness that had grown between him & Charles, we're forced to understand that it was never Edwin's feelings that were actually making things difficult for him - it was not being able to tell Charles about them. 'Terrified' as he's been of this, Edwin learns that his feelings don't need to either disappear completely or be totally reciprocated in order for him to be able to return to the peace, stability, and security of the relationship with which he defines his existence - and the scale of that relief a) tells us a hell of a lot about Edwin as a character and b) totally justifies the way his declaration just bursts out of him at what would otherwise be such a poorly chosen moment, in my opinion.

Whether or not they are or ever could be reciprocated, Edwin's feelings are definitively proven not to be the problem here - only his potential choice to bottle it up - his repression - is. And where that repression had once been mainly involuntary, a product of what he'd been through, now that he's got this new awareness of himself, if he still fails to admit what he's found either to himself or to the one person he's so unambiguously close with, then that repression will be by his own choice and actions.

And he won't do that. Among other things, he's coming into this scene having just (unknowingly) absolved the soul of his own school bully and accidental killer by pointing out a fact that is every bit as central to his self-discovery as anything about his sexuality or his attraction to Charles is: the idea that "If you punish yourself, everywhere becomes Hell"

So narratively speaking, of course it makes sense that Edwin literally cannot get out of Hell until he stops punishing himself - and right now, the thing that's torturing him is something he has control over. It's not who he is or what he feels, but what he chooses to do with those feelings that's hurting him, and he's even already made the conscious choice to tell Charles about them, he was just interrupted. But now that they're back together and he's literally in the middle of an attempt to escape Hell, there is absolutely no way he can so much as stop for breath without telling Charles the truth. Even the stopping for breath is so loaded - because they're ghosts, they don't need to breathe, but also they're in Hell, so the one thing they can feel is pain, however nonsensical. And Edwin certainly is in pain. But whether he knows what he's about to do or not when he says he 'just needs a tick,' a breather is absolutely not what's gonna give him enough relief to keep climbing - it's fixing that other hurt, though, that will.

Like everything else in that scene, there's a lot of layers to him promising Charles "You don't have to feel the same way, I just needed you to know" - but I don't think that means it isn't also true on a surface level. It's the act of telling Charles that matters so much more than whatever follows it, and while that might have gone unnoticed if anything else major had happened in the same conversation, now we're forced to acknowledge its staggering and singular importance for what it is. The moment is well-earned and properly built up to, but until we see it happen in all its wonderful simplicity, and we see the aftermath (or lack thereof, even), we couldn't properly anticipate how much of a weight off Edwin's shoulders merely getting to share the truth with Charles was going to be, why he couldn't wait for a better, safer opportunity before giving in to that desire, or how badly he needed to say it and nothing else - and I really, really love the weight that act of just being honest, seen, and known is given in their story/relationship.

#dead boy detectives #edwin payne #the case of the very long stairway #im sorry this really IS the short version of my thoughts i swear #i didnt want to get long and rambley backing everything up and mentioning everything else this forces me to reconsider #i just feel like i've barely interacted w this fandom and still seen quite a few odd duck takes on this moment imo #i dont think he wouldntve got the nerve to say it otherwise #(he was already going to! & if anything his new experiences in hell only cement that being the right choice)#and as much as i get what fear can do to a person i still definitely dont think he was resigned to staying in hell if charles reacted badly #i truly think he just couldnt keep it to himself any longer #the show is upfront about his escaping hell being a testament to his own strength rather than a lucky break of some sort #so i think even being on the receiving end of a rescue mission getting out still must take a lot of strength in this universe #and telling charles that definitely made him stronger/in less pain #so yeah totally necessary it happened where and when it did in my book #also i hope it doesnt sound like im being dismissive of anything charles says in this scene #but the way i see it those were all things they both already knew #so reaffirming them just adds to the idea that the act of Telling Each Other Things is what's so important here #rather than counting as a truly separate thing this conversation achieves #just my two cents

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aroaceleovaldez · 3 months

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my hc to ignore whatever's going on with CoTG trilogy is that the letters of recommendation thing at NRU just operates exactly like letters of recommendation work at any normal college - theyre usually going to be from a former teacher or someone unrelated to you who you worked with in the past. Lares are house gods that are extremely populous in New Rome and the legionnaires would work with frequently like teacher figures, plus minor gods roam around New Rome in disguise sometimes as well, not to mention Terminus. So your average legionnaire would just get letters from three lares who can vouch for them or maybe rarely a minor god or Terminus if theyre on good terms, and that's it.

Percy and Annabeth aren't able to do that though cause the lares don't like them cause they're Greek and they're both basically strangers to Camp Jupiter, so them getting letters of recommendation from the lares wouldn't make sense anyways, cause they have no relationship with them. they aren't teacher figures to the two of them. It's still not hard for them to get absolutely glowing letters of recommendation from extremely notable immortals though so poor NRU is left going "Well, shit, nobody's ever gotten a rec letter from Pluto before. That's new. I dont think we're allowed to say no to that."

#pjo #riordanverse #percy jackson #annabeth chase #camp jupiter #hc #headcanon #NRU just uses godly recommendation letters cause most kids probably dont go to high school there #presuming the legion acts as a substitute for high school #i personally like to think since we know they spend 10 years in service to the legion is that it's like. 6 years in the legion #and then either 4 more years if they dont go to college or 4 years in college and that just counts

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oifaaa · 8 months

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Wait what the hell is happening on the current arc? It sounds like this comic year should be erased from the public consciousness.

Sure spoilers for Gotham war but Bruce was sleeping for a wee while bc of the fall out of night terrors he also lost a hand and bc of failsafe he's also not really himself rn bc of him unlocking his secret personality of zur - anyway catwoman calls everyone to a meeting to tell them what she's been up to which is that she's been scouting the goons from the other villains and training them so they only steal from the rich which obviously Bruce doesn't like so he starts going after the people selina has been training - most of the bats are kinda just on the sidelines but are more in-line with selina apart from Jason who is completely on selinas side (except for in his own solo Gotham war side story which I honestly don't know when it takes place bc in it selina and Jason fall out bc jason doesn't actually believe any of the goons are gonna change and they'll crawl back to joker and the rest eventually ) but in the main story Jason is very much on selinas side to the point where she's helping him distract Bruce - the first time Bruce and Jason fight the rest of the bats (dick Tim cass steph and duke) show up and Bruce beats quiet a few of them but is struggling a bit against Jason at the end until damian swoops in to save him - damian and Bruce retreat to the redbrick House (which has been Bruce's base basically since alfred died a few years back) the next morning a lawyer comes to the redbrick to tell Bruce someone has brought Wayne Manor which is surprising to Bruce so he rushes to the batcave to find out oh no vandal savage has brought Wayne Manor - Bruce and Jason end up fighting again when Jason is pulling another heist with a few of the goons but this time Bruce kidnaps Jason and injects him with something he claims it changes Jason personality so every time he feels adrenaline he will basically have a panic attack - dick at this point is looking for Jason but ends up finding damian Tim also shows up and damian gets handcuffed to a street lamp - batman shows up and starts fighting dick and Tim and dick finds out what Bruce did to Jason- Bruce ends up fleeing leaving damian behind which obviously really upsets damian - back with Jason selinas lieutenant shows up and reveals she's been vandals daughter this whole time and wants to know if Jason would be interested in immortality only for her to realise Jason's too far into his fear to really be of use to her so she leaves him alone in honestly one of the most heartbreaking panels I've ever seen

#ask #anon #gotham war #gotham war spoilers #batman 138 #batman spoilers #tuesday spoilers #wednesday spoilers #i personally think its all very stupid #not least of which #bc i dont think this counts as a war #maybe it does idk #it doesnt feel like a war #long post #long posts #also i did leave out quite alot #bc obviously this post was gonna be long enough

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stopscammingartists · 9 months

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Who did Glip and Eevee befriend in the art and tech spheres to be so untouchable ??? No doubt those in the industry that protect them sympathize with predators at best

Art spheres no. Glip used to be this way but fell out of grace with the big fluff logs dropped.

Tech and indie game communities however, are still partial to protecting Eevee because she plays up the 'It's all kiwifarms & transphobia' angle really well and wasn't ever actually married to Marl - loosening the impact of the BF logs on her reputation compared to Glip.

I'll use cohost as an example, because it's pretty blatant there.

Just look at the comments on this post on her cohost, and how she talks about her detractors.

....The post she's talking about, by the way, is only about Lain and Big Fluff. The 2 children Marl sexually abused. It's true that both kids posted on kiwifarms, but it's extremely manipulatively dishonest to refer to them both as just KF users.

Cohost btw, seems to be in her pocket. The one time I'm aware that someone called Eevee out on something, they got banned from the platform entirely nearly instantly.

The original comment was on this post of Eevee's. Eevee edited it out, but the same comment was shared on lolcow and had a link in it. Here is the tweet the banned commenter linked to, and relevant screenshots. Guess she didn't want people seeing this. I wonder why?

It was this comment to Eevee that pushed Glip to double down on wishing Jollys suicide attempt was successful, looking at the timing of everything.

Twitter sucks, but if Cohost is willing to look the other way at abhorrent behavior like wishing that someone who attempted suicide twice was successful....so long as the person doing that said abhorrent behavior is Eevee...but quick to drop the hammer on those that lightly point out that said behavior is beyond fucked up - then cohost is rotten at the top and isn't worth using.

#floraverse #glitchedpuppet #forbidden flora #forbiddenflora #fox flux #foxflux #pengosolvent #glip #cohost #her games arent even good #remember when vinny played neon phase for 2 minutes and stopped because the chat spammed 'pedo dev'#and then the person who put the game pack together apologized not for not doing a background check #but for including a boring game #i dont like tumblr but unlike twitter that has a new glitch every day its stable and doesn't have a character limit #and the tumblr admins arent in eevees pocket so I can say things here without concern of being censored #that counts for something I think

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puhpandas · 8 days

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hi mutuals im just curious.

#im a ggy lover myself and would obviously love to see it realized in a game #but i also like gregory as a character more than his semi-canon backstory #and have complicated feelings on if i want them to confirm ggy at all.#i love ggy but dont want it to take screentime away from gregory #who alongside vanessa havent been focused on in years #(ruin was mimic basically the whole time #doesnt count) and need the screentime desperately.#personally #after THIS long (2 and a half years since gregory screentime and over a year since GGYs release)#i cant help but always wonder if theyve just. waited too long and they shouldnt confirm it.#at least just that they shouldnt release something just for the sake of confirming it and just leave it as book knowledge.#if they did focus on ggy in a game i'd want it to serve the plot involving multiple characters and progress slowly #i dont want it to be confirmed then its just background knowledge i would want there to be a plotline of #gregory remembering it throughout the plot of a game and dealing with it.#it'd confirm it then but it'd also still be wholly focused on Gregory alone and also be a natural reveal for people who dont read the books #for me its option 3 i guess. by all means its for sure canon at the moment im just talking about how it would be revealed in a game #or if at all and left as knowledge someone who read the books would know #my idea is wishful thinking we'd never get something that intricate #i can hope though #i could be so cool #but damn theyre just handling the story so strangely rn #pandas.txt #pandas talks #poll #thoughts #pre hw2 dlc #jic

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maskedinfinate · 5 months

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OK FINE OBLIGATORY YAOI POST RRGRGRGGGRR

genuinely so embarrassed to post it but um im trying to be brave ok. idk what they have going on but they are gay as fuck and probably also both on the aroace spectrum. And trans. And autistic.

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omegalomania · 1 year

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everything is lit, except my serotonin

"what a time to be alive" is probably one of my favorite songs on the new record. that's not really a hard sell, though; i struggle to pick favorites at the best of times and by this time tomorrow, my favorite track will likely be a different one. but there's something about this track that i keep circling back to, for a multitude of reasons.

this one has proven a little contentious. critics don't quite get it, and even people who love the song will say that it's a little off-putting lyrically, primarily because of those lines in the chorus: "everything is lit, except my serotonin / everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain". i'm not going to say outright that critics scoffing at the obvious earth, wind, and fire influence is one of those delightful instances of antiblack racism that's so common in music criticism, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't suspect that was a factor. but more to the point, that line in the chorus hit me a little harder than i expected it to.

patrick has stressed repeatedly that the majority of "what a time to be alive" was written before the pandemic. the lyrics to the bridge are the only parts that reference the pandemic specifically, but the rest of the song feels oddly prescient as it discusses how it feels like the end of the world...probably because in 2019, for some of us, especially those on the west coast, it did feel like the end of the world. pete wentz lives in los angeles, and thus probably got a very clear picture of this as it happened in real time. wildfires have always been an issue on the west coast, but by 2017, they started picking up in speed and scope, in large part due to the effects of climate change. the year after that, they got worse. the third year in a row this happened, it cemented that this was going to be a pattern, which is exactly what happened. today, the last third or so of the year is generally regarded as "fire season," when risk of wildfires becomes extremely high, power outages are common, and evacuations are anticipated.

i live in a fire zone. every year since 2017, i've had to evacuate my home regularly, or i know someone else who has. at this point, it's pretty well-established as routine. the first time this happened, it felt like the end of the world - watching neighbors' houses go up in smoke, housing displaced family members or friends who'd been evacuated themselves or actually lost their homes. by the time the pandemic happened, fire season hadn't actually died, either; we were carrying out evacuations while masked, and often without power (and thus no easy way to get news as to what was happening).

here's a thing about living in a fire zone. there are nights when you're going off no sleep and you're watching the ember-glow on the horizon at the early hours of the morning and thinking that it could almost be considered pretty, in a dark and dismal kind of way. there are days when the smoke haze is so heavy that you never get to see the sun but it makes the air hot and thick and it burns in your lungs. the smell of smoke becomes choking and omnipresent.

everything is lit, except my serotonin. everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain.

i don't know if these lines were written about the wildfires in particular. it wouldn't surprise me if they were. there are a lot of moments in the song, the parts written pre-pandemic, that make me think that could've been the case: neon in the night-time and not caring if it's pretty because the view's so pretty from the deck of a sinking ship. livestreaming the apocalypse, because twitter feeds were literally the best way to get your news on whether your house might be next - if you had power and internet, that is. and not everyone did.

everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain. it's kind of a silly line, and i understand being put off by it. it took me some time to warm to it too (pun absolutely intended). it's also a quadruple-entendre. everything is "lit" in the colloquial sense of being cool and exciting, sure, but it's also more or less how the human brain works. our brains are really just electricity, passing little bursts between all the neurons and synapses. on top of that, the sensation of feeling like electric shocks are passing through your skull, or "brain zaps," are a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants (which, among other things, are used to regulate someone's serotonin levels). and then there's the case of the world being on fire, literally. everything is lit except my serotonin. my lightning-bolt brain.

a memory:

i never actually stopped working through the pandemic, as i was considered an essential worker. the fires didn't let up either. a particularly horrible fire tore through a nearby area and that's the thing about fires: they turn the whole fucking sky vivid orange. i drove to work on a chilly autumn morning, the whole sky lit up in an orange glare. i stood for a minute in the freezing parking lot while flakes of ash overhead settled like snow onto my car, my hair, my clothes. somewhere, people's homes and livelihoods were burning, and in a matter of days or hours the wind could change and my home and friends could be next. so i walked through the falling ash and the sickly orange glow of the sky and did my temperature check at the door with my mask pulled up over the lower half of my face, and i got to work.

i remember that moment vividly because it was strange and surreal and eerie and it was probably the moment that felt most like the end of the world to me, or at least it did then. driving through town with the sky on fire and a disease tearing through the world and having to walk into work anyway. that's what this track reminds me of: the sheer, staggering surreality of watching everything fall apart, and then...you go to work, because what else are you supposed to do? you go to work. the world is ending. you go to work.

what a time to be alive.

#*making poasts #*writing #i dont think ive ever used that tag but i guess this counts. its a bit more prosey/personal than my standard stuff #just thoughts i was thonking about this song....lines that hit different when u have lived in a fire zone #its such a bright happy-sounding song but jesus christ. jesus christ.#anyway u are free to rb this or reply whatever i dont care

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