I will never be the type of person who can make their little towns/homes pretty in video games

like no I’m not going to organize my farm in stardew valley, my farm is going to be efficient for my needs and nothing less

are the DOZENS of jam barrels pretty?? are the chests I have lining the front of my home and around my sell box in different colors that only I know the exact reason for? is my home filled with mayo and cheese makers, even more chests, and a bunch of other things attractive? no

are the piles and piles of fish and bugs and items thrown on the ground outside of nook’s cranny for when they open again pretty? the randomly placed items just bc I wanted them somewhere but have no idea where to put it?

the only game I think I manage to consistently keep looking good is my boat in spiritfarer and that is only bc I’m making it pretty = moving the buildings into a satisfying assortment

Guys, I did it. I peaked... This is my greatest creation! ATLA x Bob's Burgers!

The way Liv's mother is like: I'm saying this from a place of love, but [mentally tortures her daughter]. Place of love!!"

Usually I'd just reblog with tags but the way I feel about Liv's mum is too strong to be contained in the tags: I hate that woman!! I hate her!!!! She's evil!! She was horrible to Liv from the start completely dismissing how Liv felt and not respecting her at all (as mentioned above)! THEN she cuts her out of her and Liv's brothers life for choosing not to give blood - which is a personal decision only Liv can make, and way to play favourites with your kids?? NOT TO MENTION that she continued that estrangement AFTER she understands why!! And she was anti-zombie so would've agreed with Liv not turning him! She just cut her off for no reason!!! Leaving her with no family because she forces her Evan to leave Liv as well and Martin wasn't in the picture at that point (for the best we do not support Martin in this house). How terrible of a mother can you be woman????!!!?!! And to then have the nerve to demand favours from Liv. I hate her. Every mention of Liv's mum and the way she treated her: immediately enraged. Liv didn't deserve any of that. So glad she got found family with the no secrets club because her real family were the WORST. Just AWFUL people. Poor Liv fr.

Also (and I know this is a weird niche pet-peeve in the grand scheme of things-) who the hell pressures their teenage minor son to work at a fucking butcher shop?? I wouldn't even recommend that to a friend looking for a job if I didn't know for sure they'd be chill with working in a place that handles fucking blood and meat and stuff- much less a kid that doesn't want any of that. Evan literally says: "Can I just leave this here so that I can tell my Mom that I did?"

I mean, she should have left him alone in the first place if he didn't want to - he's a kid, they're not poor, let him have some fun - but if he doesn't want to work in a butcher shop, that's a boundary she shouldn't be pushing.

Also, the thing I feel is often ignored: Liv wasn't really living all that fulfilled of a life before the boat party. That's so central to her character that she's telling herself it was all perfect but the more we learn, the more we realise it wasn't.

She mentions how she didn't have hobbies, always had a life plan she was living for, that she beat herself up over any not-perfect marks she got (to a degree that even Peyton finds extreme, and Peyton isn't a slacker by any means) and stuff like her conversion with Major in the second episode also sounds like their relationship wasn't always that hunky-dory - and then, after a traumatic event, her Mom sees Liv drop all those things in what must to her look like a trauma-related burn-out - and she still bothers Evan about not having the best grades or having a job instead of taking something away from this like: prioritise happiness and mental health. Have fun while you can. Career isn't everything and doesn't determine the value of a person.

She's basically sending Liv the signal that the very things she can no longer pursue (career, grades) are really so, so, so important, that any of the new stuff she has (new friends, hobbies, a job she's passionate about, generally things that help her function again) doesn't hold up and that it's a real problem if someone isn't performing best they can in all those sectors. Additionally, she's being just...needlessly condescending and rude to her son and telling him he isn't good enough bc he isn’t identical to his sister? - and she's basically showing everyone that she didn't learn anything from what happened to Liv or straight up doesn't take it seriously. And the way she reacts to the blood donation thing kind of hits in the same carve for me, because if a person I trusted and loved and that I knew was very responsible and self-sacrificing and loved their brother made a decision like that, I think for me two theories would jump to mind: They literally cannot donate blood (possibly bc of a disease or drugs or something) or that there's some other reason - and with someone who just experienced a massacre themselves and was clearly very traumatised, I'd assume that this is the reason why they're unable to deal with this.

And then there are small things like the fact that Liv is Evan's emergency contact - which is a very interesting thing between siblings.

Usually, you'd probably have your parent as an emergency contact as a minor, but that kind of implies for me for one: In an emergency, Evan would trust her more and find Liv's presence more comforting and two: if he did something that could get him in trouble or generally was in a bad situation (Which might be the case for a teenager in an emergency), he wouldn't want his Mom to be the first person to deal with this but Liv - potentially even keeping that between Liv and himself.

Percy Jackson is actually the definition of a grey character. So is Annabeth. And I think people should just let Annabeth have questionable thoughts, do that questionable things. Let Annabeth unfairly behave towards Rachel. Let Percy manipulate Bob and even Nico arguably. Percy's actions alone can look not right but it doesn't have to be heroic as long as it is justifiable and it is. Percy is not a plain hero like Jason or Carter. I believe that the best quality of Percy is that grey character. Percy is actually the heaviest anti hero hero written and it is what does Percy a very likeable head character. Percy does the right thing, but not because it is right. Not because of honor. Not because of rules. That is why Jason kinda was a classic hero type and a lot of people didn't Vibe with Jason like they did with Percy. While Jason does all things for duty, Percy just does it for love and loyalty. Annabeth also, is, someone like that. I love Annabeth's questionable side as it should. Let the person who is most associated in the series with grey act grey. Let Percy be the anti hero. Rick, come on now.

Every time I see a "Luke Castellan was a bad person" take cross my dash, I get closer to writing a five thousand word meta about how the entire point of The Last Olympian and, arguably, the entire original series, is that Luke Was Right, Actually, and that Percy should've been radicalized in Heroes of Olympus

Book Review: This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron

Release Date: June 28, 2021

The cover is what made me want to read this book even before I read the synopsis. But boy did I choose well. The story starts out introducing Briseis, a teenager who has a gift. She can make plants come back to life, and basically talk to them. Her two adopted moms worry because when she uses her gifts it makes her kinda sick but she really loves using the gift despite having to hide it. All her friends abandon her because they can’t handle her secret and she feels alone. Then someone comes to say she’s been gifted a house by her birth mom’s sister, Circe. She ends up going to the house and learning about her birth mom’s family while meeting what might be the girl of her dreams though there’s also caveats to that too. lol. I really really enjoyed this one. Like, I want more. The cliffhanger! THE CLIFFHANGER! AHHH! I NEED MORE! Just do yourself a huge favor and read this one. Really just fun, enjoyable stuff. Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for letting me read this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Being Fake is Exhausting

I decided I needed to pay more attention to my feelings and to record them each day because I usually just go through life either ruminating in the past or thinking about the future. I don’t pay attention to what I’m feeling in-the-moment. When I decided to do this, my over-thinking came into play FRONT-AND-FUCKING-CENTER. Per usual.

What should I write about? Should I write in a way that is entertaining? Maybe it will become a book and then a movie and then I’ll finally get to live the life I am meant to live!

HOLY SHIT. My mind instantly ran off with the biggest fantasy possible. 

I started with good intentions:

“Get your feelings down on paper - it will be good for you.”

Suddenly, the thought changed to:

“You have to do this in order to find your passion. People are going to love what you have to say.”

I can tell myself I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me, but my God. I went from starting a journal for ME and my own development, to thinking about how others are going to interpret it.

I guess I should get to my initial purpose and how I felt today.

I got my period yesterday and never really realized how much my mood changes with my cycle. I love the days when I’m carefree and funny and light-hearted. I identify with those days - that’s who I say I am.

But these period days are where I avoid who I am and how I’m feeling. But the negative thoughts creep up on me every time. And now I’m realizing that it’s not just during ‘that time of the month.’ I just have a greater ability to avoid those feelings when I’m not on my period, but they are always there. I just numb them with booze, work or literally anything else that is not FEELING.

Today, I found myself mourning who I could’ve been. What I could’ve done differently in life. I started wondering if this is it. Is this my purpose? Is my purpose just to figure ME out in this lifetime? I’m realizing I’m not cut out to be a parent even though I always wanted that. It always came naturally to me and the thought of not being a mom is foreign as fuck to me. But here I am bleeding another egg into oblivion. Probably don’t even have a baker’s dozen left - my body feels as if it has aged 20 years in the last 5.

In the midst of my mourning and racing thoughts, I started to cry puddles of tears like the ones that soak you in torrential rain after 3 seconds of being outside. They were falling out of my face and the knot in my throat made me start breathing irregularly.

I was so sad for the old me.

I was so MAD at the current me.

I’m fucking pissed at the current me who has gotten used to coasting through life by doing the right thing according to society and my family.

I’m mad at the conditional way I love people.

I’m mad at the conditional way I love myself.

If this, then that. If this, then that. If I show love this way, it will be mirrored back to me that way. It’s constant. And it’s not how love works. It’s not how people work. It’s not how the universe works.

I have so much to offer this world, but I feel held back by my perceived obligations to everyone in my life besides ME.

Everyone loves my understanding, caring nature. I feel everything. I feel for everyone. I understand how hard life gets and encourage people to do what they need to do for their own happiness, but I can’t seem to help myself. And I know I’m the only one who CAN help ME.

I’m stuck. It’s like I’m struggling to get out of quicksand. The more progress I think I’m making by using all my strength to get out, I make no progress and actually make the dig out even more difficult. People really don’t like it when you start being your authentic self. They are used to the way you were and what that did for their ego. Once you start trying to take care of yourself, they get very uncomfortable.

I’m so good at distilling things into a global viewpoint. I can help anyone see the bigger picture. I’m extremely talented at this in my work where I keep people focused on the overall objective for success. If what we’re doing ultimately won’t get us closer to achieving that objective, we pass on the idea and move on.

If I apply this to my own life, my objective is to be happy because I know that only then can I truly help others and spread love by being my authentic self.

Why then, do I say yes to shit I don’t want to do?

Why then, am I still working a job that is absolutely destroying my mental health?

Why then, am I so scared to disappoint anyone in my life?

Why then, do I feel like I’m just not allowed to be happy like being miserable is a badge of fucking honor?

Why then, do the things that make me feel alive feel so wrong?

Why then, can’t I deliver the bad news I know I need to deliver with love and kindness and have it be well-received?

Why then, do I feel like the only person in my circle of people, that understands that things change, people change, and happiness is of the utmost importance?

What am I doing that is so wrong?

Why is it that when I do share how I feel, it’s dismissed?

Why do I care that it gets dismissed if it is my truth?

I guess I just feel like shit today. I know there is light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m also totally fine with the tunnel crashing down on me and trying again in another life. That’s what scares me. It scares me how much I don’t fucking care what happens..

So, I’ve been on the busy side lately and which means I just now saw the news about The Order getting cancelled and like I was having a decent day and now I want to cry in the corner of a dark room for the rest of my life.

It’s really bizarre to me that the first arc in the Riordanverse is all about how the Olympian gods are terrible and how demigods are more or less cloned pawns of their parents. Actual demigods died trying to change things and shift the balance of power (and some died trying to keep that power imbalance). Percy did the best that he could, being barely sixteen and with no real backup to call on to make the Olympians submit to their (his and Luke’s) demands (demands which barely change anything at all in the grand scheme of things).

Then we get the second arc of the Riordanverse…where the Olympians and demigods have to work together. There’s no choice on either end. It’s work together or die, and the Olympians are very stingy about actually helping. They mostly drag their feet. This is the arc where the Greeks find out that there’s another way to live, that demigods actually can live to be past 18 years old. But that’s never addressed except as Percy’s desperate bid to get out from beneath the Olympian’s thumbs. If he can’t commit suicide and the other demigods won’t let him live like a mortal, then Percy wants what the Romans have. And nothing about Camp Half-Blood changes in any significant way. 

Finally, we get the third arc of the Riordanverse. A single Olympian is made mortal and striped of his powers. He spends a few months this way, which to a being like him is only a few minutes. It’s insignificant. Barely a blip in his lifetime. He’ll forget all of his supposed character development before the century is out because it takes more than a couple of months to change thoughts and behaviors that you’ve had for your whole life. None of the other Olympians will experience this supposed character development and we already know that gods are replaceable. Our hero, Percy Jackson, is fleeing across the country with his tail between his legs to outrun the Olympians; with someone who is as quickly prone to violence as to affection and who will never ever be satisfied with leaving the Olympians behind. The Olympians continue to be all powerful. Camp Half-Blood demigods still die before they reach 18. 

The series ends with The Tower of Nero if we’re to believe Rick (but who knows; maybe he’ll pull a James Patterson ala Maximum Ride). There will be no more long series featuring Percy Jackson and his battle against the Olympians. The best that we can hope for are novellas, which will surely give us more peeks into the disturbing domestic life of Percy and Annabeth. Maybe Apollo will come over for dinner and gush over their 2.5 legacy children. 

It’s been fifteen goddamn books and the initial conflict still isn’t resolved. Nothing has changed at all. 

Look, Percy still doesn’t want to be a half-blood. 

oh gods it was parents evening again tonight..

That “he talks??” bit gets me

Yeah, kids talk. If your kid doesn’t talk to you, it’s because of one of two reasons:

Kids are not stupid, not at any age level. They pick up on shit and they remember and then when they grow to be teenagers, they know who they can talk to about stuff and who they can’t.

My 13 year old nephew is not particularly affectionate with his mother and he rarely talks to her about anything important, but there are times I can’t get that kid to stop hanging off me and he has those serious conversations with me, like when we discussed his friends coming out to him as bisexual.

It’s not even that hard to make a kid feel loved and welcome. I don’t even know what my nephew is talking about half the time with his games, but they’re important to him, so I let him talk and I make appropriate noises of shock and sympathy when they are needed.

He watches a lot of YT channels, so we’ve discussed the importance of regulating your media, because I don’t want motherfuckers like PewDiePie shaping his world view.

He reads anything from Stephen King to manga and he does that because I’ve been reading him books since he was a baby. I do it with all of my nieces and nephews; when they get school-aged and old enough to read on their own, our “us” time is going to the bookstore and letting them pick out a drink and a book.

Because reading is important to me and I want it to be important to them, too. Now, it’s not something I suggest, it’s something that my nephew asks for.

“I finished my book, Aunt [Dessie], when can we go to the bookstore again?”

And when I tell him a date, I make sure to keep it.

Saying, “You can talk to me about anything” and “you can rely on me” is all well and good, but words are just words. You have to mean it and you have to show them that you mean it.

Otherwise, when it gets to those important moments in their life, they’re gonna shut you out rather than let you in.

Seriously though, you guys. Like.

Here is a secret:

Children and adolescents are actually fucking desperate for adult attention and approval. They really are. Even the ones that have in fact kinda got fucked up so far and have learned that The Only Kind Of Attention They’ll Get Is Bad and so act like shitheads, or the ones that have learned to be inhibited (and it might not even be you who inhibited them, it mighta been their peers or some teacher somewhere, which sucks!) and learned that by showing need they’ll just end up humiliated, or whatever?

Yeah them too.

Kids want to make you happy.

They’re often TERRIBLE AT IT. They’re kids. Their brains don’t work right, their bodies are weird, they have terrible impulse control, horrible deferred satisfaction, they’re shitty at projecting future consequences, and especially if they HAVEN’T been taught they’re probably bad at showing you positive emotions!

They’re BAD AT IT. And they often don’t want anyone to know it. And they’re embarrassed about it.

But they desperately want to. So much.

So one of the most crucial things is:

a) make sure they know how to make you happy. Don’t assume they can figure it out! They probably can’t!

b) make sure that’s something that is literally possible for them to do.

c) make sure, when they do it, that you SHOW THEM YOU’RE HAPPY WITH IT.

It is absolutely ASTONISHING HOW FAST this can create a self-sustaining cycle with the SMALLEST of starts.

I want to add–you can create a place that is safe for your kids, that encourages them to talk, that rewards and accepts their behavior—and sometimes they still stop talking.

Kids are people. Which means sometimes they go through shit that they aren’t ready to talk about.

Your job as a parent is to remind them you’re there when they are, remind them they’re safe, and give them room to be a person with heavy shit. And listen, because if you do your job right, they will eventually talk to you again.

I want to add that what @findingfeather said goes especially true if your kids are not neuroptypical because sometimes it’s hard to know what makes someone happy! There’s nothing wrong in telling someone to please do xyz if it’s reasonable and attainable! And honestly this can go for anyone, make your needs and wants known and encourage others to do the same

PJO AU where everything's the same but percy's a regular sized thirteen year old and blackjack is the size of a very large percheron, so percy has to tell blackjack to sit down so he can get on blackjack's back, but 60% of the time he falls off when blackjack stands

a small sampling of these big fucks

I need this so badly

My feed is currently exploding with the fact that Biden picked Kamala Harris as his veep. I would like to remind my friends of the following points:

1) She's a cop, and we're allowed to be unhappy. We're allowed to be mad, even.

2) We are not just voting for the Presidency. We are also voting for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement. And a lot of other stuff, but let RBG retire or die secure in the knowledge that doing so will not fuck over this country.

3) "Kamala Harris is a cop and ACAB" and "Kamala Harris's nomination represents a number of important firsts in the field of politics" are both solid takes that do not cancel one another out and in fact coexist because we do not live in a magic Star Wars world where we have just have the Light Side and Dark Side.

4) The immigrants currently being held in cages and doused with weapons-grade disinfectant by our own government will not appreciate the subtleties of our political choices if we elect Trump for a second term through our inaction or dithering. For that matter, the people dying of COVID because Trump gutted the pandemic response team and then mishandled our response to the virus will not appreciate them. Because they're dying or dead. Because we couldn't get our shit together four years ago. My own mother may be one of these people. I'll never know for sure.

You're all adults, and I'm not here to tell you what to do. I will, however, share what I'm going to do: I will vote for Biden and his cop sidekick in November. And then if Trump gets a second term anyway, I'm arming myself and getting my ducks in order to go underground, because my Jewish wife and I are not going into the gas chambers quietly.

The thing I like about Maitara as a pairing is that Katara is a person who cares about everything all the time and Mai is a person who cares deeply about her people but has trained herself to never let anyone know.

So a lot of early conflict comes from Katara (who didn’t witness Boiling Rock) writing Mai off as a scary but apathetic blah, while Mai shuts down and makes it worse.

But they both love to needle and they both love to fight. Mai and her sense of irony may be the one person in the world who finds Katara’s jokes consistently funny.

And once Mai cares about you Katara will be able to see the passion that comes with that. And Mai will get to see how much of Katara’s busybody nonsense comes from a real place of community- something she’s never had.

Mai is also excellent at getting people to relax for a moment. She could create a real oasis of calm for Katara before our girl takes on the world.

old avatar fans: NO THE KATAANG AND ZUTARA WARS R GONNA COME BACK. NETFLIX WHY-

new fans: nyeHEHEHE,,,,,, zukka and azutara :3c

old avatar fans:

Me, an old ATLA fan with Zukka and Maitara