to the young who want to die by Gwendolyn Brooks
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to the young who want to die by Gwendolyn Brooks
not feeling your best?
very gentle yoga
you feel like shit (a self care guide)
disability accessible recipes
tips for baking with brain fog
stretches made more physically accessible
adjust your posture
the nine delights
different ways to rest
in-depth self care assessment
what to do when you've had a bad day
gentle ways to get back on track
how to feel your feelings
emotions & actions
hi ito, have you ever dealt with existential dread? its been on my mind a lot recently, i dont know what to do. the meaningless that comes with the inevitability of death is kind of hard to deal with, theres a sort of insistent feeling that nothing really feels real, and that nothing i do will ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things, and this makes it hard to feel motivated to do anything. i cant bring it up with my friends or family, because realistically there is nothing they can do about this either, and i dont want to depress them and risk exposing them to the same train of thought. i think im starting to understand what people meant when they said oblivion is happiness. i feel helpless and its starting to affect me mentally a lot, if you have any thoughts at all, whether its just general or any personal experience you might have, itd be an immense help
I’ve dealt with similar things on and off since I was very young and now I’m watching my partner deal with it, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, as in: everything matters, i have so much i want to do, all of it is important but I have so little time on this planet— so he’s kind of just getting paralyzed and ends up starring at the wall.
While I can’t give you a definite answer that’s the magic cure-all to these very human and normal worries, what I have found to ultimately be true (if not comforting) in both cases is that, yeah. Indeed nothing really matters.
There is no sound reason why we’re put on this earth, or when, or how, or by who, and trying to subscribe an inherent meaning to an event that’s so out of your control as your birth is, will only lead to misery. We were never “supposed” to do anything as humans, other than live, reproduce, and die, probably.
And yet we’ve gone so far out of our way to create things like language and art and communication devices for the sole purpose of connceting with each other. Not just to communicate threats or good hunting spots, but in the hopes of being deeply understood and seen, even briefly.
I’m writing this to you, a stranger, that’s been able to reach out to me from what’s probably the other side of the world. We don’t know each other and yet we are speaking, we are connecting, I’m listening to your worries and attempting to pull you out of them. Isn’t there a point to that? Or rather, would this have been possible if there wasn’t really a point to anything at all?
All this to say, life is what you make of it. You get to decide if there is a point and what that point is and what to do about it.
Simultaneously, you’re also surounded by very poignant things, achieved by mountains of effort which wouldn’t have been possible if everyone was paralyzed by the pointlessness of it all.
Earth will die or whatever. Our sun will explode in an unspecified amount of years and it will take out every hint of out existence, probably. But for now we are here, and we have a choice to either do amazing things or do nothing at all and wait for it to explode.
Something something, mortality makes everything more beautiful, because it also makes it painfully temporary.
:))
what does the "overeducated" in your bio mean to you, specifically?
it makes more sense knowing The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favourite books.
Wilde spent a lifetime cultivating this glamorous image of a London socialite, flamboyant and witty and disgustingly well-read, only to then write a book about how constantly performing an idealized version of yourself will only lead to corruption of the soul, and you'll become the architect of your own unhappiness. His public image and entire life collapsed a few years after he released the novel, prison destroyed him mentally and physically, and he died in a cheap hotel room in paris, ridden with disease, and yet-- in his final letters to friends, he describes how freeing it is to know that the world sees him now for who he might truly be, or the worst version of himself. Sick and poor and dying, but no less witty or intelligent for it.
I do think there's such a thing as being overeducated, in the sense that you learn so much of the world, it can only lead to your isolation from it. When everything becomes a theory or a dogma or a quote, previously studied and analysed and regurgitated, it ceases to be real.
The older I get, the more I realize I've spent a grotesque amount of my short life obsessing over being the smartest, most knowledgeable, and profound person in any room, to the detriment of my contentment. First off; I almost never was. And second; even when I was, I was not happy for it, but bored to be in the room at all.
I think I kinda shot myself by wanting to know too much, too soon, basically. And in the end, knowing nothing at all, lowkey.
You know that scene in The Secret History when Henry reveals he doesn't know humanity has landed on the moon? It's this show of how even though he is evidently the most educated of the bunch, he is completely cut off from reality, and so in any space that doesn't revolve around the duscussion of Classics, he wouldn't be very smart at all. On the contrary, he'd be even bellow the average american, even with how Richard idolizes him.
I feel like that sometimes.
Write it badly or it'll never be written
Write it badly or it'll never be written
Write it badly or it'll never be written
Write it badly or it'll never be written
Write it badly or it'll never be written
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
hey again, ito! what are some of your favorite tropes in fanfiction?
hello!
it kind of differentiates between what I like to read vs to write.
I'm much more lenient and soft with the things I read, usually. I'm a big fan of that fake-dating trope that's treated like a comedy of misunderstandings instead of angst. I like those 5+1 things fics,, mainly because I prefer short fics to long ones. Rivals to lovers, also? Not enemies, necessarily. I prefer they have an antagonistic but ultimately harmless relationship rather than harbour outright animosity. And when done right and agonizingly, I really like reading second-chance romance. Maybe it's the old man in me, now that I've grown and find myself relating more to divorcees rather than high-school first love narratives.
In writing, I'm much more unpleasant I would say. I like traumatic, cosmic horror timeloops and killing characters and having them haunt the narrative, and I like never having them touch, but spend 60k words wanting to. Not sure why....
Also really like this trope I've coined as "the unskippable event" in which characters usually have to get together after a while due to a formal event that requires their presence, such as a wedding or a funeral. I find these fascinating in real life as well, and like to observe how people have changed in how they interact with each other after such a long time. How they word and carry themselves. all that fun stuff
this is totally an invitation for people to send me fic recs they think i would like based on these, by the way.
I want to be heard (doesn’t speak) I want to be understood (doesn’t explain) I want to be seen (acts like if a missing person was right in front of everybody)
this too shall pass but the fuck was that for
do you have any tips/advice for writing casual intimacy?
It's an aspect of character writing I've mostly approached with personal experience as a guide, I think. But generally, there are things that are concidered universally intimate in a casual manner, and most are a subversion of sexual intimacy, in a way.
Like sharing a bed, or just sleeping next to each other with no further intention. Same with showering/bathing. Or like playing with someone's hair, not pulling it. Touching/ kissing spots that have no known sensitivity, like the shoulders or the forehead, ect.
When you boil it down, I think casual intimacy is more of an exchange of vulnerability, whereas sexual intimacy is an exchange of services (And I don't mean this in a way that strips sexual intimacy of feeling, or trust-- quite the opposite. Exchange of services, as in, you care so much about someone, you devote your body to please theirs.)
make sense???????????
So now in 2026, at the age of twenty something (sorry i forgot exactly how old you are) what do you think of the century old debate...
kataang or zutara?
It has always been kataang, man, circa 2005.
And it's not even that I don't get where zutara is coming from, okay, I have eyes I get it. Fire boy water girl, red blue, sun moon, she touches his scar, whatever! Whatever! I get it. It's like a hetero ship bear trap.
But there are a few things that fundamentally irk me about it and forbid me from doing more than occasionally dipping my toes in its potential, starting with how, if Zuko and Katara ended up in a relationship, then it would have put romantic undertones in his redemption arc, therefore stripping them both of some of their agency.
Romantic feelings are infamous for how they cannot be helped at times, and it's so important for Zuko's arc that Katara makes a very conscious choice to forgive him and place trust in his hands a second time. It's even more important that Zuko wants to be part of their group with the purest intentions of helping them restore the world's balance, and not because of some red string of faith and inexplicable pull he feels toward any of them. The fact that he finds friendship and genuine platonic love among them hits so much deeper because of how unexpected it is from his perspective. Everything about Book 3 is just so much more meaningful and moving when Zuko tries to win the group's trust and not their affection. Trust in him as someone who wants to finally do Good, just for the sake of it being Good.
To everyone, but especially Sokka and Katara, Zuko is the face of oppression. He wears the colors of the soldiers who killed their mother. He wields the power of the people who wish to burn the world to crisps and rule over the ashes.
And yet they forgive him. They choose to believe that he has changed, that he is not his father or his sister, and perhaps he never was. They chose to put him on the throne. To give him the means to be someone exactly like his father and sister, and trust that he won't be. This is a story about redemption, forgiveness, and love as an active choice. But if Katara has romantic feelings for Zuko, it borders on colonizer-colonized romance. And that's just....egh.
But now I'm just making arguments against Zutara and not for Kataang so;
The most common point I see is that Katara is supposedly a mother figure to the whole of the gaang, and Aang, at this point, is too immature to treat her as an equal. But that's literally rebuked in the show, multiple times. Yes, Aang is childish and carefree because he is a child. They all are, but unlike Aang, the rest have been awake for long enough to be war-torn, whereas Aang has to grow up on speedrun and learn to shoulder the burden of the entire world.
As the show goes on, you see that the gap in maturity closes in-- and there are points where Aang appears to be more mature than Katara altogether. Like when he grasps the basics of waterbending easier than her and she gets prissy while he's trying to help. Or when he saves Zuko at the end of season 1, despite him just having tried to kill them all. Or at the Southern Raiders episode--- which is another Zutara stronghold, on the basis that Aang is trying to force his philosophy on Katara, whereas Zuko understands her need for revenge effortlessly.
The thing is, though, that Aang wants to share his philosophy with Katara because he cares about her, and wants her to experience the level of peace that he does,, not in a "i'm holier than thou" attitude. His lack of understanding of her hatred has nothing to do with his age and everything to do with the way he was raised. And Katara, as is shown throughout their earlier adventures, needs someone who functions as an anchor in her life, someone who reminds her that she's a child too, and someone who adds water to her fire (ha!), not someone who accidentally fuels all her worst traits. And she does the same for him, numerous times. She's shown to be the only one who can get Aang out of the Avatar state--- fuck that, she literally brings him back to life at some point. Aang is Katara's proof of everything good that the world has yet to offer, and Katara is Aang's...well. everything. period.
While funny in its delivery, the line "Why would I choose cosmic energy over Katara?" is world-shattering for someone like Aang to say. He is a monk and an airbender and the avatar; all his life, he has been taught not to tie himself to worldly attachments. For the love of Katara, Aang casts away his entire worldview and cultural values-- the only thing he has left of his nation. He is consumed by violence when she is in danger; he loves her to the point of being unable to unlock his full potential and save the world, and he never once blames her for this. It is a perfectly conscious choice, and a choice that he stands 10 toes down on, till the end of the show.
And it's not even that the Guru tells him Katara has to die or something, it's that maybe he should chill with now much he loves her, and Aang's like???? no???? the fuck???? why would i ever????? What's world-ending power next to how my affection for this girl drives my every move???? What's a peaceful world without me getting to love Katara in it?????
And I think that's just pretty dope.
But hey. Zutara was the main inspiration behind the poppy war's Rin and Nezha, so...I vibe with the opposition on occasion. We break bread. I'm a multishipper at heart, and love love so. Yeah.
they have a certain gnc quoi
For the low price of 5 likes I will perform the humiliation ritual of finding my atla fic drafts from 2020 and post snippets of them
Sorry, I’m just now learning to use tumblr and I might have posted a comment for you in someone else’s original post that you just reblogged. And it took me a while to find the “ask” area lol
So okay here it goes:
I would love to hear your thoughts about ummm “is it possible to understand someone else and be understood for real or is there always gonna be some hermeneutical injustice, something lost in translation and we’ll never be able to reach one another?”
no worries! glad you found your way around
to answer the question-- or to not exactly answer, but to dance around it in a way that's hopefully interesting: I'm not sure.
Extremely good timing, since I was literally watching "Lost in Translation" yesterday and was thinking about this exact concept, to no avail, since I still don't have a definitive answer.
Through my own personal experience with this whole "life" thing, I don't think there's something such as complete/pure/total understanding of anything, especially other people. Not because no one will let you in close enough to perform it, but because I think it's impossible to completely/purely/totally know oneself. There have been many times I've been called out on something by people in my life that I hadn't even realized I was doing/ being/ coming off as. So...do they have a false perception of me, or do I have a false perception of myself? Do they not know me, or do I not know me?
And then you go into a whole Evangelion-level self-examination of trying to figure out who can determine your "true" self. Is "you" the version of you that exists in your head, as you understand yourself? Or can "you" only be determined by other people because your own research of yourself is horribly biased through the involuntary safety nets your brain has placed against Ego death? And if by some chance you and another person reach an identical conclusion about who you are, who's to say that you're not both horribly wrong? Or better yet, who's to say that you're actually thinking of the same thing, and not just miscommunicating your conclusions in a way that makes them sound similar, while in reality, you're both thinking of something else?
So I don't know !
But, for what's worth, I think people can reach each other simply by extending their hand in an attempt to do so, even if they don't make actual contact. You don't need to reach inside a person's chest and grab at their heart to touch them.
If a suicide could've been avoided by just having more money, it was a murder.