sheshamaystreet°

I'm Shesha May, CEO of Obsessive Thoughts This is my space and by "space" I mean a place for my fandoms, feelings and what-not.

[catchymemes]

[picsandquotes]

Rapunzel tells us that climbing the highest tower becomes easy if someone at the end gives you a reason to hold on.

[thepeacefulgarden]

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome & Perfectionism

How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome:

Keep Your Ideal Self Top of Mind: While you can't ever truly "fake it until you make it," it is essential to cultivate the belief that can act in accordance with your ideal self. Consider what the ideal version of yourself would do on a daily basis: What would your morning routine/night routine look like? How would you prioritize tasks or activities throughout your day? What would you consider your metrics for a successful project, task, social interaction, or professional activity? How would you describe a productive day, week, or month? Qualify and quantify these ideal metrics to give yourself a blueprint to move forward toward your goals and become the best version of yourself.

Competence Builds Confidence: Remember that the notion of an "overnight success story" is a fallacy. Quickly-awarded achievements, seemingly effortless skill sets, or having the perfect script for every occasion typically stem from hours or years of practice, experiences, studying, self-development, and trial and error. Over time, you refine these crafts until you can consider them as strengths. This inner knowing gives you the self-assurance needed to truly believe in yourself and it's contagious in your work, speech, and body language. Competence radiates inner confidence, without a question.

Remember Everything Is Relative: Logically, we know that comparing the middle of someone's journey to the beginning of yours doesn't make any sense. While it can be intimidating to enter the ring as a beginner, remember that the most skilled and successful people you know were at one point at square one. The only way to catch up to those you admire is to make an effort in the first place. However, because you're a beginner, give yourself some grace and remember that making mistakes is part of the learning process. It is better to fail in the beginning before people have certain expectations of you. But, the truth is, no one truly knows what they're doing. More time existing and life experience only helps us make better judgments to more accurately assess the proper next move.

Perceive Attempts As Data: Success is all about pattern recognition. See what "inputs" derive certain "outputs." Some attempts – at a certain career path, academic concentration, interpersonal interactions – will be advantageous with many that are neutral and some that go sour. Do not allow an unanswered email to a pitch, a lower grade on an assignment, or an ending of any type of relationship to feel like a moral failure and as a marker of your worth (personally, professionally, etc.). Evaluate what you did correctly and seek out areas for improvement. The more attempts you make, the more data you collect in order to help you make accurate assessments going forward. Consider this your motivation to start.

Accept Failures As Life Lessons: Failures offer a unique opportunity for self-reflection and course correction. Consider the mistakes that lead you to a negative outcome or the unfavorable circumstances you entered into (e.g. not studying for a test or already seeing red flags during the job interview). Use these opportunities to refine your strategies to succeed. While failures might not be inherently positive in the short term, failing fast saves you a lot of trouble along the way.

How To Overcome Perfectionism:

Find Stupidly Small Ways To Start: Write the title on a document and some keywords you want to use; Write an introductory sentence to an email; Place the first photo on the collage; Mix the spices together for a dish –literally anything to get you started on the task at hand. Give yourself a small push to gain momentum to keep going.

Set A Timer: Gamify any task by making it a race against the clock. Set a timer for 10, 20, or 30 minutes to see how much you can get done with a short spurt for hyper-focus. Focus on output, not outcomes when using this method. Remember: You can always go back and edit a project or refine the details of a space, meal, or task after. You will probably surprise yourself with how much you get done and how quick it is to elevate the standard of any timed work.

Consider Consequences of Delayed Action: Procrastination is perfectionism's greatest frenemy. The quicker you are to begin a task or strategize how to initiate a conversation, the more likely you will be to make it happen and give yourself the brain space to mull over the ideas before sharing the final product. Shitty first drafts of anything in life are welcomed. You can always edit later before finishing or showcasing something you want to take pride in. A step forward gives you guidance toward the right path. A step backward provides insight into how to strategize to win in the future. The only guaranteed way to never achieve greatness in a certain area of life is to not start in the first place.

[adorablelokie]

How does the Sacred Timeline and Multiverse even work in Loki?

It’s extremely easy actually! You just have to pay attention to Miss Minutes’ cartoon from episode 1 and He Who Remains’ speech in episode 6.

The Sacred Timeline isn’t just one universe. It consists of numerous separate, unique universes/realities/timelines (they use that interchangeably, but as shown in Ep.1 & Ep.6 it’s ultimately the same thing) that are all roped, woven into one stream of time, manipulated to follow the same path. That path is called The Sacred Timeline.

The meaning of The Sacred Timeline and what it actually represents is both visually as well as verbally explained in Episode 1 and 6.

“Eons ago, before the TVA, a variant of myself lived on Earth in the 31st century. He was a scientist and he discovered that there were universes stacked on top of his own.”

He Who Remains starts by explaining how one of his variants (a Kang variant) found out about the multiverse, how there were other universes stacked on top of his own. 

His variants were then able to made contact, interact and for a while everything was OK. 

“They shared technology and knowledge. Using the best of their universes to improve the others.”

However, that peace didn’t last. Variants started conquering other universes.

“The peace between realities…erupted into all-out war, each variant fighting to preserve their universe and annihilate the others. This was almost the end…ladies and gentlemen, of everything and everyone.”

Which brings us to Miss Minutes’ video. It’s not just propaganda, there’s lots of truth in there regarding the creation of The Sacred Timeline. Except that the Time Keepers are basically just a stand in for He Who Remains.

“Long ago, there was a vast multiversal war. Countless unique timelines battled each other for supremacy, nearly resulting in the total destruction of…well, everything.”

Miss Minutes’ video basically echoes everything said by He Who Remains.

Again, universes = realities = timelines. It’s used interchangeably.

To put it simply, the most important part of the video is the very beginning of the cartoon. We see these different, unique timelines/universes (they even pointed out their differences with different colors) all being roped into one singular stream.

The Sacred Timeline isn’t just one timeline/universe, but it comprises of an infinity number of unique universes. 

“But then, the all-knowing Time-Keepers emerged, bringing peace by reorganizing the multiverse into a single timeline, the Sacred Timeline. Now, the Time-Keepers protect and preserve the proper flow of time for everyone and everything.”

The Time Keepers are basically He Who Remains himself in this case. He explains to Loki and Sylvie in episode 6, that in order to stop the war and preserve peace, he weaponized Alioth, created The Sacred Timeline and once he did that, all he had to do was manage the same flow of time.

“I weaponized Alioth and I ended… I ended the Multiversal War. Once I isolated our timeline, all I had to do was manage the flow of time and prevent any further branches.”

Again, The Sacred Timeline is just a path. It’s a rope, full of different threads (universes).

Each universe is different, people, beings are different, the world is different, they are all unique in their own way. But once He Who Remains created The Sacred Timeline, they all started following the same flow of time, a path predetermined by He Who Remains.

That’s how we have different Lokis. Our Loki. Sylvie. Boastful Loki. Gator Loki. Bandit Lokis…..they’re all unique beings, they’re not the same person, they share no biological relation, their parents, families are different, their worlds are different, literally everything about them is different. 

The only thing they share is the same role. The role of a Loki. That’s it. 

And that role should end with death at Thanos’ hands.This is their predetermined path.

For example, and this is a bit of a spoiler for No Way Home I suppose….

…

in No Way Home we’re gonna get three different Peter Parkers. One played by Tom Holland, one by Andrew Garfield and one by Toby Maguire. They will all play variants of each other. They’re all Peter Parkers, they all have Aunt Mays, Uncle Bens, families etc….but ultimately none of them are the same. They’re all different in their own way. They look different, their aunts are different, their uncles are different, their families are different etc….basically they share no genetic relation to each other. Absolutely none. They all hail from different universes, they all play the same role in their universes, but they aren’t biologically related to each other.

That’s why the TVA uses Temporal Aura to detect variants. Because being a variant isn’t about being the same person and sharing the same DNA. It’s all about the role and if you want to be more poetic, a soul. But that’s it.

Loki, Sylvie, Boastful Loki, Alligator Loki, Bandit Lokis…absolutely none of them are related to each other in any shape or form.

 He Who Remains made sure that all universes, all different, unique beings who live in those unique universes will move in the same direction. To preserve some resemblance of order and prevent another war started by Kang variants.

It doesn’t matter how different everything between universes is. It doesn’t matter if in one universe Loki resembles a human being and in another he’s an Alligator. As long as they follow the same path chosen by He Who Remains.

And when something happens and timelines split from The Sacred Timeline, these branches could be created from numerous universes. Because again, The Sacred Timeline isn’t just one universe, it’s made of infinite number of different universes (yes I intentionally keep repeating myself)

And these branches from different universes can and could further branch off into infinite number of timeline branches and/or eventually clash with each other thus creating another war led by Kang Variants. That’s basically where the TVA comes in with their pruning. To stop branching, prevent Kang Variants to run free and start a new war.

When Sylvie stabbed He Who Remains she didn’t create the multiverse. She merely freed it, allowing the unique universes to create their own path. The Sacred Timeline, which is basically just a path, no longer exists at this point. Sylvie gave each universe freedom.

Ultimately this will lead to another Multiversal War, but for the time being each universe, each being has freedom to take the path not predetermined by He Who Remains.

TLDR:

1. The Sacred Timeline isn’t just one universe/reality/timeline. It’s a just a path and it consists of numerous different unique universes that all simply just follow the same flow of time.

2.The multiverse always existed but was manipulated to follow the same flow of time. Sylvie merely freed the multiverse, she didn’t create it.

3. Each universe is different, unique in their own way. People are different, their worlds are different. That’s how we get such different variants.

4. Variants aren’t the same being. They’re all their own person, unique in their own way, they have different DNA, different parents, different families, different worlds,…the only thing they ‘do’ share is the same essence, soul, a role they play in their respective universe.

5. If you want to read more about how the multiverse works, here’s the interview where Michael Waldron explains it nicely

I hope this explains it nicely. Literally everything you need to know about how the Multiverse/The Sacred Timeline works is in the show. And yet people stil think there was no multiverse before Sylvie stabbed HWR, that the Sacred Timeline is just one universe and that multiverse is created from that one universe…which is all just…no 

[lillagrim]

[iworshipsylki]

Tom Hiddleston explains what real love is in 2015 at an interview.

-  ‘‘Do you think it has changed? Was it much easier before? ’’

Tom: ‘‘Oh, I think falling in love is the same as it’s always been. I think it’s as, surprising, and shocking, and chaotic, and beautiful as it’s always been. I think, you know, the heart is uncontrollable, you can’t legislate for who you fall in love with. You just- it happens (…) I think you fall in love with somebody, you can’t explain why you do it, you just do (…) I think real love is about acceptance, and about truth, and about vulnerability.. I think in that- when you really can accept someone who they are, that’s what real love is.’’

(if u wanna watch the full interview here is your link)

[iworshipsylki]

“I don’t think he will stop searching [for Sylvie] now. He feels that this is something he has done, a mistake that he has made, and he’s invested in setting it right. (…) By the time [Loki] realizes his glorious purpose might be to love and be loved, he’s back to square one, utterly alone, and burdened this time by the knowledge of everything he has just lost. (…)Love is really the only force that has any power to change things or people. It gave us all a compass point to walk towards as a team.”

-Tom Hiddleston /  Empire Magazine - 2021 

[whentheynameyoujoy]

But... Sylki’s not rushed at all?

As someone who prefers her slow-burn to last roughly 5000 years, I don’t think I understand the complaints about the romance between Loki and Sylvie being rushed and underdeveloped. Does it happen quickly? Sure. But that doesn’t necessarily equal sudden and underwritten (rewatch The Last Jedi if you want a counter-example). The speed with which the two get from “just met” to “twin flames” may be fast, but otherwise their story follows a fairly typical romantic trajectory, with all the usual steps those entail.

After meeting, they banter and act as two antagonistic snarky office workers, a standard romance trope.

More bantering as they interact during an adventure, sharing a new experience together and seeing how the other works.

As they go on, they become more open around one another, actively choosing to get to know each other better. A connection is established based on their shared sense of loss and family relationships.

Loki does a thing for no other reason than to make Sylvie happy. This is where we see an obvious romantic attraction appear as they discuss love and sex, clearly trying to sus out whether the other is dtf. Also, more banter but this time without the snarky edge.

They grow comfortable enough for the pathologically distrustful Sylvie to fall asleep in his presence and Loki to outright woo her with a song.

After Loki screws up Sylvie’s mission, he offers his support, both emotional and practical. In contrast with their first slog through the wasteland there’s no antagonism; they see themselves as partners in crime now and have a perfectly normal conversation. Upon entering the town they verbally verify trust and work as a team.

About to die, Sylvie shares her deepest pain with Loki, he expresses his admiration for her, and she initiates physical contact as they hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes, ignoring the looming apocalypse and realizing they’re in love.

Bam, the basis of the relationship is established, escalating and deepening from there.

They are worried for one another.

They have each other’s back without thinking.

They attempt to verbalize their feelings.

Loki is Sylvie’s only good memory.

They (attempt to) engage in outright self-sacrificial heroics in order to be together again.

They contrive a scenario where they 100% need to cuddle under a blankie for science or whatever as they discuss their future together.

They refuse to leave each other’s side in a fight.

They protect each other some more.

They hold hands again.

Their bond and mutual trust help them defeat a monster, improving one another and making them realize they’re stronger together than apart.

Bad guy tempts them with a vision of a shared future, Loki refuses the notion of having power without Sylvie.

Revealed as twin souls destined to fall for one another.

A means to an end with no intent to cause harm, their fight ends with Loki expressing deep empathy with Sylvie’s suffering and pleading with her out of concern for her own wellbeing, acting out of selfless love.

Then and only then, after all this stuff, do they kiss.

It’s all there, from the flirty bickering and mutual attraction to opening up and deep bonding. Nothing is missing. The boxes are checked off fast, but they’re still there to be checked off. And the absolute best part about it is that the romance manages to stand as an element of its own and develop the characters while staying true to them and their individual stories. These new feelings don’t magically correct Sylvie’s crippling trust issues in a single blanket-sharing session and they don’t make her stray away from her mission. They’re a complicating factor and facilitate both current and future development instead of hampering it. The story takes precisely as much time developing its individual aspects as it needs to, not hesitating to put its characters in a conflict with each other if required.

So again, please, where is that rush I’m meant to dislike? Because the fact that all this happens in the span of four episodes, all the while moving the plot along, developing side characters, and seeding future plots while packing one hell of an emotional punch the entire time? That’s not rushed. That’s fucking great filmmaking, my guy.

[fleshadept]

The Sylki Kiss Was Bad on Purpose: An Essay

all i’m saying is that the only reason the sylki kiss had 0 movement except the camera is because it was supposed to be awkward and unromantic and, ultimately, a judas kiss

[fxckingstylik]

This is the hottest sh*t I’ve ever seen. The way she ran her hand down his chest slowly while eyeing his lips, then his eyes. 

[lulerains-deactivated20201030]

EVERYWHERE TOUR in MANILA

[lulerains-deactivated20201030]

#FIANCE3rdWIN (trans)

[sheshamaystreet]

I love you for a million reasons.

[kdramaaaaa]

These neighbourhood moms are way better at tracking a person than an NIS agent, Terrius. 😂 Don’t mess with these moms!

{Check my gif masterlist out!}

[sheshamaystreet]

My brother laughed so hard on this scene.

[bluemallowz]

my heart can’t take this much cuteness ;;

[thesongremainsthesame]

Keanu Reeves photographed by Deborah Feingold, 1989.

[yezineodidi]

these two are super comfortable with each other off-screen, you can tell they have so much fun whenever they’re filming together

[sheshamaystreet]

✔️ . . . . . I've watched all the versions, btw. Here's a quick history: Meteor Garden is based on the 1992 Japanese shōjo manga series, Boys Over Flowers (花より男子 Hana Yori Dango), written and illustrated by Yoko Kamio. Meteor Garden (2001) is the first live-action television adaptation of the manga, followed by its sequel Meteor Garden II (2002), Japanese Hana Yori Dango (2005), its sequel Hana Yori Dango Returns (2007), South Korean Boys Over Flowers (2009), and Chinese Meteor Garden (2018). I watched it when the subs for the first episode was out and I totally appreciate this remake. Of course, it was too quick to judge the first episode but I couldn't help it. I see more of the Japanese version in this remake than the 2001 Meteor Garden. To enlighten and help you enjoy the new remake, please stop comparing Meteor Garden 2018 to the 2001 version. This remake is catered for the new generation. It is not made for us who had the 2001 version while we were growing up. Dylan Wang and Shen Yue do not resemble Jerry Yan and Barbie Hsu at all–they resemble Tsukasa Domyouji and Tsukushi Makino in Hana Yori Dango (manga and live action). One of the reasons why they were chosen for their roles is their Japanese features. To appeal to the new generation, the concept is changed. Shan Cai is no longer that very poor girl who is against attending Ming De University (yes it's not Ying Te haha!), there is less violence (this is also because of China’s censorship rules), and hairstyles/fashion are totally different because this is 2018 y'all. Dylan Wang is more Tsukasa Domyouji than 2001 Dao Ming Si. And yes, it has the same story/plot, but it has a different concept that delivers a modern and millennial version. Thus Dylan Wang sporting street fashion and Shen Yue doing selfies haha!