#(metaphorical but still)

[toprayarc]

there's something rumbling in the streets. kicking around in the sheets. black, and blue, and as real as a bruised eye. a split lip. some gross, unsightly thing, that mari dai thinks she ought to carve right open. unzip to its bones. peel back layers, until the grotesque rears its ugly head. she heard it through the grapevine. crooned sweet between the lines. she followed it home; crawled inside its mouth. looking for nothing but trouble, and tussles, and tough guys to send flying— first rule of fight club: don't talk about fight club.

"i explicitly told you not to say my name." — @monstroum, the narrator.

second rule of fight club? ... well, now this one she'll have to stick around to find out. "touchy." mari's lips make the shape of an O, before licking clear to a smile. a bat of her lashes nearly seems innocent, mild, a naive indication to brighter futures— are you fooled? "relax," a foot props itself underneath the bar stool, fingers dancing around the rim of a glass. scraped knuckles, as evidence, marr tanned flesh. "i'm not breaking any r — rules, am i? just having a conversation, and as far as i know—" darkened gaze flickers, focuses, and fixates. "that makes me just as innocent as anyone else here."

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[bean-spring]

As somebody who has struggled with mental health all of their life and still does, Jinx's romance with Ekko means the world to me.

I'm sick and tired of people considering mentally ill people just "not interested in love" or, on the other side, "not healthy enough to be loved". Which is utterly stupid. Ekko falling for Powder but clearly showing signs of wanting to learn more about Jinx and on his way to love her too, realizing that her damaged past and issues do change her but she's still his girl. It's brilliant writing.

He can't be a savior to her, because there's nothing to save. There's nothing to fix. The whole message Jayce gives with "there's beauty in imperfections" goes hand in hand with Powder's "sometimes taking a leap forward means leaving a few things behind". Ekko goes from wanting to save her to wanting to see more of her and leaving Powder behind to know about Jinx. With Ekko loving Jinx nevertheless it shows that mentally ill people can be loved. And with Powder reciprocating and Jinx making amends with Ekko (with the romantic context behind already seen) it's breaking the whole stereotype of her being this "insane maniac with no remorse and unable to show love".

So I guess what I want to say is that their relationship would've worked in another universe, but I want to believe it could've worked in this one (with time), too.

[fairsweetlonging]

imagine if after the transmigration shen qingqiu became a combination of shen yuan and shen jiu, not in a "second person living in my head" kind of way, but a "this house is haunted and carries the echoes of the dead" kind of way; imagine shen yuan having nightmares about a house, a fire, a faceless boy behind a door he can't remember; imagine him having flashes of emotions he doesn't understand, rage at a name he doesn't recognize, helplessness when yue qingyuan apologizes for something he won't mention, nausea when ning yingying says the name "a-luo"; imagine parts of his own self have changed too, how he now likes bows in his hair, pretty flowers and flowing robes, but can no longer stand a stranger's touch, a man's touch, yet he longs for the brothels, but never sexually, only fondly, like there's something there he misses. there are many empty spaces in his heart where he feels something is missing

[pawthko]

nights on the road

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.

[cubbyyyy]

You know what makes me sit in silence everytime i think about it?

The fact that Andrew was attracted to every version of Neil.

He thought he was hot when he still had his brown eyes/brown hair

He thought he was hot when he had blue eyes/brown hair

He thought he was hot when he had blue eyes/auburn hair and the number 4 tattooed under his eye. ”you are a pipe dream“ , he said, looking at Neils bruised and most honest self.

Then Baltimore. Neil got tortured. Got bruised all over his skin, scars that’ll never be forgotten and what does Andrew do? He asks yes or no and kisses his hip.

It sure af wasn’t love at first sight but the fact that his initial attraction never faded gives you a hint about what Neil is for Andrew.

(Not to mention how the versions of Neil changed the more Andrew learned about Neil as well. First he was Neil. Then he was Abram. Then he was Nathaniel. Until he finally became Neil Abram Josten.

All the lies. All the truths. It all came together and Andrew was there during all of it).

and if I start talking about Neil falling for Andrew the more he learned about him and the role he took over-

(Neil is there to protect the one who protects them all)

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay but it's super interesting how

Din = Power = Ganondorf

Naryu = Wisdom = Zelda

Farore = Courage = Link.

Because Din, in the hylian creation myth, created the physical world. Naryu then created the laws - gravity, time, etc. And Farore finally created life - plants and people.

Din created the body, naryu the mind, Farore the soul.

And the triforce and its wielders so perfectly reflect that.

Ganon is physical power, he is big and intimidating and he breaks things. He is cunning and determined, but that's not what he focuses on. He is might makes right.

Zelda is wisdom and cleverness. She is stall tactics and information and team work. She is a powerful mage with a spine of steel, but that's not how she'll win. She is the pen being mightier than the sword.

Link is courage and persistence. He is the wild card sneaking behind enemy ranks, always moving, plunging into terrifying situations head first. He's a phenomenal fighter with a keen wit, but that's not what will get him through his challenges. He is bravery not being the absence of fear but the triumph over it.

They sit in perfect parallels to each other.

And ganon is reborn through his body - his resurrection is immortality. No matter how low he is cast, as long as he has a body he can claw his way back. He can cling to his power, build it ever higher.

Zelda is reborn through the magic of her bloodline. It's the accumulated knowledge handed down for generations, the unique power she must master, the skills she must develop to survive and get her kingdom out the other side intact. Even her name, the knowledge of herself, is handed down from all the way from the very first. Her ancestors knowledge of her future presence, her stability, is what gives her the edge.

Link is reborn in spirit. He is not bound by flesh or blood. Just like his wanderlust soul he can reappear in any time or place. His variation, his unpredictability, is exactly how he fights. It's what makes him so hard to pin down.

Ganons need to build strength means he can't chase after link. Links impulsiveness means zelda can outwit him. Zeldas stationary predictability means she's an easy target for ganon.

But the other direction?

Fire melts ice, ice redirects lightning, lightning burns fire.

And that's the very essence of the triforce.

[lucabyte]

So does anybody else ever think about how Loop felt the need to demonstrate that the party's deaths wouldn't have any effect on the loops. I know I do but that's besides the point. Anyway I don't think Loop actually needs to bathe, they just like to feel included.

[floq]

I swear that no matter what my current media obsession is, I always find a way to connect it back to danny phantom

[phewgitoid]

thinking about how these two would interact

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[kittykatninja321]

Very deeply annoyed by the fanon idea that Talia treated Jason like a pet or a tool when he was catatonic, because when you actually read lost days you can clearly see that Talia is literally the only person who looked at Jason while he was catatonic and still saw a person and treated him like a person while everyone else around her (Ra’s and the doctor she hired) was ready to dismiss Jason as an empty shell

[cortex-rampage]

I find the way that BBC Merlin set up Merlin's powers in the first episode to be quite funny. I mean, we see this sort of lanky guy and it is established that he is Merlin and (according to our own common knowledge) therefore he is the most powerful warlock ever. Okay, cool. One might assume that he has come to Gaius to develop his powers, that maybe he's only in the beginning of his magical journey. But instead the exposition shows Merlin, in the pilot episode of this 5 series show, stop time and employ levitation to save someone's life with magic, and then it is announced that prince Arthur is essentially his soulmate, and their joint power will create the most glorious age Camelot has ever seen. Quite an exciting set-up. And then for the rest of the entire show this man who we know possesses TIME-ALTERING POWERS mostly uses them on-screen to do common chores and annoy and prank THAT SAME Arthur. Like that one post said, "All of it's destiny and all of it's his fault." :p

[makimacult]

canon conversation btw

[toprayarc]

nothing good ever comes easy, but nothing bad has ever stood a chance. at least, not here. not with them. not against the stained glass of their smiles, the slip-and-slide of their jokes, the kick-drum of their hearts ... (pause, pivot, and—) that's the simple version. the condensed down, filtered out, purified statement piece that isn't as honest, as it is selective. diluted. drowned out, and divided into digestible fragments. no hard pills to swallow. less jagged edges to snag. in that version, there are no walter white's, no gustavo fring's, no bodies blistered against the sun-spattered spin of a gun, a knife, a bullet-shaped hole hammered to the back of their heads��� but, maybe that's a story for another time.

or, a story for this time, and they never truly left it behind to begin with. (perhaps, not a story at all: just an alarm, or an echo, or the two of them, latched to a fire escape. pretending that the flames are a flicker, instead of a fight. a feast. a furious lick up their thighs, urging them to move faster. run harder. douse the rest of it out. tick-tock, tick-tock, and—) "you sure you're fine?" the car rattles, the low hum of the air conditioning sweeping tendrils of smoke around the interior. "—they're smaller, by the way. mountain l — lions, i mean." mari's focus fixates on the road, hand flexing against the steering wheel as they round another turn. "two hundred pounds is a typical lion's weight. mountain lions are closer to a hundred." her stare slides, before one palm passes the wheel off to another. a hand gestures jesse's way, light, and she nods. "light me one?"

tick-tock, tick-tock:  on goes the countdown until a sudden, seismic shift. a spanner in the works. an unbegotten misstep.  (  nothing good ever comes easy  —  and mari is good, so good it baffles him, diverts him, sinking into the quicksilver shuffle of his fingers. the roguish ebb in his inflection. sprouting her roots somewhere hidden, deeper than jesse can discern. okay, he’s lying about that part. he knows what this fascination is, knows what it typically leads to, pushes his dumb luck anyway—  )  their rough-and-tumble odyssey inches toward its expiration date. it has to end. it’s a matter of whens and hows. rocks and hard places. elemental failures.

outside, a canopy of constellations blankets the night sky’s desolate canvas. shimmers over the sand. inside, jesse basks in the glow of mari’s making. rummages through their glove box for a pack of marlboro reds. yawns, indolent, and fishes one out.  “  ‘m fine. coulda slept more, but we got mountain lions to look for.  ”  he mumbles around the filter, thumbing the lighter’s striker.  “  hey, exactly how big are those guys? kinda, like, regular lion-sized, or...?  ”  (  inhale, exhale, stave off your slate-gray lethargy. your ineptitude. your fervid, dogged desire to please.  )  “  ‘cause that’s something we need to know before we try smuggling it in here.  ”