Scientists Like To Say The Body Communicates In Ways We’re Only Beginning To Understand. And To That

Some of my favorite posts here on Tumblr:

I will say this for Dune, it’s gotten some pretty sweet cover designs over the years

Aging thoughts

I'm rewatching the 1975 Count of Monte Cristo and Dantes’ has just escaped the island, stating he's 33yrs. I'm not sure if I should be happy that I've done more in my life than he has or annoyed that my greatest accomplishments don't come anywhere near a jailbreak.

Part 1

Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Side of Dimensions Movie Reaction!

My nostalgic heart is all a flutter from seeing Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions!!!

Whenever I look back on the original series, I can’t help but laugh at how cheesy (and so easy to make fun of) it was. Everything was so dramatized, despite the fact that all the fights were centered around and settled by playing a children’s card game.

But watching YGO DSD brought back those excited and heart pounding feelings I got when I first watched the series and began collecting the trading cards.

It rekindled my admiration and awe of animation, the childlike glee from obvious but still humorous lines, and most importantly, the ups and downs of watching an epic story unfold and holding your breath with the characters as fights get down to the last wire.

In the back of your mind you know it has to turn out but you don’t know exactly how and you’re at the edge of your seat waiting for it to come but at the same time never wanting it to end.

But the story does end (in a way), though I wasn’t left feeling disappointed. I don’t know what it is about Japanese stories but somehow whenever a favorite series of mine ends, I’m not angry or sad. I simply feel...content. And that is the mark of a truly great story to me. A story that you enjoyed experiencing to its fullest and even when it ends, you are left with a sense of satisfaction, because you know the memories of experiencing the story are more important than it coming to an end.

So when I left the theater after seeing YGO DSD, I felt light again, like the carefree kid I was when I first discovered YGO. If it wasn’t for the YGO franchise, I never would have gotten into writing or drawing. So thank you, Takahashi-sama, for creating a series that sparked my imagination and continues to inspire me!

And now onto total silliness to lighten up the mood!

SPOILER ALERT!

While I was pretty happy to see that Kaiba finally got his chance to face the Pharaoh again, I can’t help but think Atem isn’t going to be wearing that smirk for very long...

Several weeks after Kaiba’s first visit...

Kaiba: *bursting into the throne room* PHARAOH! FACE ME IN A DUEL!

Atem: *groaning* Oh, dear gods, not you again! Haven’t you had enough yet?

Kaiba: No! I will not leave until I defeat you once and for all!

Atem: *sighing* Fine. Let’s get this over with.

Approximately thirty minutes later...

*Kaiba in the lead with 8000 life points while Atem only has 100*

Kaiba: *thinking to himself* Something isn’t right here. This whole time the pharaoh has done nothing to defend his life points or make a move on mine. What’s his game? Is this part of some ultimate strategy that involves letting his life points almost reach zero and thus enabling him to wipe me out in one move? Does he have a card that can do that?! Is there a card that can do that?!?!?

Atem: Kaiba, would you just hurry up and destroy the rest of my life points already? If we don’t end this soon I’m going to be late for my weekly council meeting.

Kaiba: Wait a minute...you’ve been letting me win on purpose! You haven’t been trying at all!

Atem: Look, would you just take the win and leave me alone, already? I’ve got a country to run and your constant visits are disrupting my schedule.

Kaiba: This is unacceptable, Pharaoh! I will not leave until I beat you in a duel!

Atem: Now see here; the first few duels were enjoyable, I admit. But now it’s just gotten tedious and it’s only because I’m a good guy that I haven’t Mind Crushed you already (and because Yugi wold probably come after me in a righteous fury for resorting to my YGO Zero days). Look, why not travel further back in time to when I was a kid? You should have no trouble defeating me then.

Kaiba: Because that’s not the same thing! Now duel me properly!

Atem: Gods, I hope Bakura attacks the palace soon...

10 songs I love (in no particular order)

Tagged by my bestie @a-lighthouse-a-man-a-city

1) Ai no Melody by KOKIA

2) Stay for Awhile by Amy Grant

3) No Culture by Mother Mother

4) Marian the Librarian from The Music Man

5) No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine

6) I’ll Set You Free by The Bangles

7) Recuérdame by Natalia Lafourcade

8) (If You’re Not in it for Love) I’m Outta Here by Shania Twain

9) Memories by Within Temptation

10) Shoot Him Down! by Alice Francis

Entrapta deserved better

My posts are usually either detailed analysis or memes and shitposts.

I’ve re-watched the show and this will be an angry rant…  

With every viewing of the show, Entrapta’s arc makes me progressively angrier because I empathize with her so much.

She is introduced to the show as being a reclusive scientist, known throughout the Maker’s guild for her genius. Even her staff is weary of her. She spends all her time alone with her robot friends in her lab within her isolated castle.

The alliance interacts with her with the explicit purpose of recruiting her into their war effort. They want her for her ability to build weapons for them. That’s as deep as the relationship goes this far.

Entrapta has no stakes in the war, the Horde hadn’t attacked Dryl. She joins them because she wants to be their friend; she wants to help them in the only way she knows how, using her technological prowess to their benefit. Due to her isolation (and her being autistic), Entratpa struggles to understand interpersonal dynamics. Human interaction is a skill she has had little practical experience with. She understands the concepts, the rules of the game, so to speak, but she has seen it in play only as a third party rarely ever practicing it herself.

She’s invited to the Princess prom due to her princes status but she’s an outsider there too. No “friendly” princess seeks her out to hang out with her as a friend would. The only person who does so is Catra, and she does it for her own reasons…

With Glimmer abducted, the alliance mounts a half-baked rescue operation. Everything Entrapta did in this episode had a purpose, it looked like she kept getting distracted when in actuality, she was studying horde tech, rescuing Seahawk and furthering their mission and she had no time to explain herself (it also occurs to me that Entrapta might not explain herself because no one asked and no one ever understands her reasoning anyway) The princesses try to control her because she’s being “difficult”. They don’t care why she’s being difficult, they want her to conform.

Once they rescued Glimmer, they don’t even come back to check if Entrapta’s actually dead, or to get her remains and put them to rest respectfully. They allready have the princess they came for.  

Entrapta is all alone with her new robot friend Emily in the Frightzone vents, expecting that she’d get rescued because “no princess left behind” but rescue never actually comes.

Catra uses this new abandonment to convince her to switch sides. Entrapta didn’t jump ship because of her tech hyperfixation, she switched sides because Catra used her skill at pinpointing someone’s weak-spot and poking at it. 

Catra may not have been Shadow Weaver’s favorite ward (she was her scapegoat and punching bag, the poor girl) but she did learn from her and repeatedly put those skills to “good” use.

Once they find out she’s alive, the alliance wants to rescue her but she’s made new friends in the Horde and she think that they understand her fascination with science, friends that actually interact with her directly. She actually feels included here and as such, she’s not eager to return to the alliance’s side.

Entrapta befriends Catra and Scorpia but even in this trio, she is the third wheel. Catra is focused on herself, her ascension in The Horde and on her missing Adora. Scorpia is focused on Catra and on pinning for her.

Once Entrapta and Hordak start growing closer together, Catra stops talking to her. Perhaps she was hurt because Entrapta “broke her promise” to not go in Hordak’s sanctum, perhaps she was envious of her closeness to the Horde leader, or perhaps both, either way, the friendship is broken from Catra’s side. Entrapta still sees her as a friend and fights Hordak over the decision to send her to Beast Island. Despite his grouchiness, he considers her request and grants it.

As recompense for saving her life, Catra backstabs Entrapta when she tried to stop Catra from triggering a potentially world ending event and then sends her to the fate Entrapta saved her from: exile on Beast Island.

When faced with the choice between Catra and Entrapta, Scorpia choses Catra. Hordak is lied to so he doesn’t know to look for her, he believed she used him and is heartbroken about it.

You can actually pinpoint the moment his little heart breaks in this scene:

 Even so, he spends most of season 4 wanting to face her; he’d rather see her as an enemy than not see her at all.

After Catra proves herself a bad friend, (after months) Scorpia finally decides to rescue Entrapta and goes looking for help, deserting to the alliance. She has this little realization:

Adora is the only person that actually wants to go right away and rescue her. Bow wants to rescue her because they need her tech savvy and Glimmer says that they can rescue her after the war or something… (the Island she’s on is a death trap, she might not live that long for all they know)

she said this 

then this

She knows that this is a time sensitive issue but she wants to put it off  despite the urgency, if that doesn’t sound like friendship to you, then what does?  *sarcasm intensifies*

Contrast this with how the villain of the show reacted to the news of her being sent to Beast Island:

On Beast Island Bow gives her a longwinded speech about how she’s supposed to work harder at friendship. I know he’s projecting his own issues here but it still makes me so damn angry. Entrapta’s trying; she’s trying so hard, no one ever tries back! No one makes the effort to understand her (except that one clone but we’re not talking about him), she has to conform to their expectations, the reverse is never applicable.

Anyway, stuff happens and Glimmer is abducted again, by Horde Prime this time.

Then that whole “Lauch” episode happened. Entrapta is distrusted by the alliance more than Scorpia is. She is seen and cold and interested only in tech, she has to explain and redeem herself in their eyes after they treat her like rubbish. They don’t connect the fact that helping them with tech is how she shows her friendship. 

It’s the only thing she thinks she’s worth to them. She wants to be accepted by them so badly.

 Entrapta gets emotional over rescuing Glimmer! 

The person who when faced with the same prospect, said he’d do it later…

Even Catra’s apology to Entrapta for trying to kill her is a blank “I’m sorry”. Pls say what exactly you are sorry for Catra. Entrapta deserves that much. Bow received a better apology for far less of an offense.

All she ever does in the show is work towards furthering someone else’s goals, her own are always a second thought. As @cruelfeline​ pointed out, even a small scene with her discussing what happened with Hordak, her reaction to it and the gang focusing on Entrapta’s troubles for ONCE , even if it’s just offering her emotional support, would have meant so much.

Why is the show trying to tell me that Entrapta should work on being a better friend?

That’s a terrible message!

She doesn’t need to work harder on her friends, she NEEDS BETTER FRIENDS.

So many of us ND people end up being third wheels at best and we blame that on ourselves, we internalize the reasoning that our friendship fail because we’re weird and we’re not doing it right. That we’re the ones that have to try harder to be understood and that our concerns should come second.  That is a terrible thing to internalize, we are blaming ourselves constantly because we try to understand others and they never try to understand us back. 

With age, I’ve grown out of trying and being different so that other people would like me. They’d end up liking the mask I project, not me anyway. I’ve found people that understand me and that like me for who I am, but only after I’ve stopped trying to be “better” for others to accept me. With being honestly “weird” with those around me, I’ve been accepted far more than for trying to fit in. And I’ve realized that people that shun my otherness are not worth the effort to try and befriend in the first pace .

 That is what young autistics need to hear, not “git gud” at friendship.  You are not wrong, you are not defective or broken, you are you and you’re beautiful just the way you are. If other people don’t see that, then the failing is theirs. Don’t change, just look for people that see you. 

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

For today I have a parking pass for my place of work and NEVER have to take the bus again! (Unless, of course, my car is in the shop), but other than that!

Never again must I worry about catching the right bus. Never have to worry about being too early or too late. Forced to wait at a bus stop covered in graffiti and unspeakable human fluids in the rain, heat, and snow.

Never again do I have to worry about getting a seat, let alone getting a seat that provides me some semblance of personal space. I won’t have to put my bags on the seat next to me to insure some perv doesn’t force themselves upon me.

Never again will I be forced to listen to other people’s music and ticktock videos, babies wailing, and crotchety old men state their unwanted opinions loudly, as if we weren’t in a confined space and can’t hear them despite our headphones trying to drown them out.

Never again worry about unstable people causing scenes so violent and disturbing and mentally upsetting that I burst into a fit of tears and shakes the moment I’m able to get home and feel safe again.

Never again.

I support this statement 100%

...Well, maybe 90% (taking off ten for possible NSFW stuff ;3 )

“May I please draw your OC?”

Reblog this message if you encourage anyone that wants to draw your OC to do so.  No need to ask for permission in advance.

Go for it.  Draw my OC.  If you want, I’ll even give you reference posts.  Go to town on it.

You are welcome to draw my OC and surprise me with the result.  Seriously.  In fact, I encourage it.  I will proudly display whatever it is you submit to me regarding my OC.  There is a chance that I will squeal about it for several days.

Even if you feel you aren’t good at whatever artistic adventure it is you do, please feel free to submit it to me.  I want to see what you have done.

On September 11, 2001, the day my young life tilted towards adulthood, I remember exactly what I was doing when the Twin Towers came down.

I was having a piano lesson.

I remember it starting out like any other Tuesday morning. I know it did because I can’t remember the details of the ‘before’ because I was just a kid, and such trivial things like what I was wearing and what I had for breakfast and whether I’d gotten into a fight with my sister yet wasn’t important enough to stay in my head for more than an hour.

My sister and I took piano lessons from the same sweet little old lady who lived a few streets down from us at the time. My mother homeschooled us, so we always had the morning lessons. It was my sister’s week to start first, and my mom and I were left to wait on the old fashioned chaise lounge.

And then my teacher’s husband, who never came in during lessons, appeared. He said something to the adults, I don’t remember what. But whatever it was, it was enough for my mom to leave with him to where they had their TV set.

I can’t remember if I got my turn on the piano. I honestly don’t even remember leaving. My memory jumps from my piano teacher’s parlor to my mother sitting in front of our TV, her eyes glazed over, her posture hunched and rigid.

Because my papi wasn’t there to tell her everything would be alright.

He was in law enforcement at the time, and by the time the second tower had come down, his work had put everyone in lockdown, underground, and unable to contact anyone until the danger had passed.

I can’t remember how long it lasted, until my papi was able to come home. I can only remember my mom, sitting on the couch, staring at the TV, praying for the victims, praying for the first responders, and praying that her husband would come home.

During that whole time, we didn’t have school, we didn’t have activities, we didn’t have anything. My sister and I didn’t take advantage of all the free time. Instead, we sat in our rooms, and every once in a while, went to see if mom had moved, the signal that papi was coming home.

I say that’s the day my life tilted towards adulthood, not because I understood what was going on, but because for the first time in my life, I realized adults could be afraid too. That the people I had always looked to for stability could be shaken too. And that one day, I was going to have to be one of them.

In the last twenty years since that day, I’ve grown up. I’ve completed school, got a job, got a home of my own and got a cat. By all accounts, I’ve become an adult.

And now that I am, the understanding of what happened that day has only become worse.

My papi did come home safe. But there were so many that didn’t, or didn’t come home at all. So many people whose lives become harder after what happened that day.

My heart goes out to the victims, the regular heroes, and the people who were negatively impacted by the events and still continue to be to this day.

I don’t have the elegant words to offer hope, or the phrases to convey my sympathy to its fullest.

But I couldn’t let this day, now 20 years later, pass without saying, “I remember…”

And perhaps, remembering what happened, how it affected people, and thinking about what we learned and can do in the future, is enough.