#(more literally than usual)

[joshuamj]

Hero.

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward

[pilferingapples]

"Can any one understand," exclaimed Feuilly bitterly, "those men,--[and he cited names, well-known names, even celebrated names, some belonging to the old army]--who had promised to join us, and taken an oath to aid us, and who had pledged their honor to it, and who are our generals, and who abandon us!" - 5.1.21, Hapgood translation

That's it!! that's all!! thanks, Vugs!

does feuilly ever say anything out loud in les mis. i feel like im going insane

[spacerockband]

Legend tells of the carp that leapt over the Dragon Gate at the crest of a river and became a stand up comedian.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

A phone call between brothers (takes place AFTER this incident and Fiddleford's phone call)

Sorry if this is OOC!

[starry-bi-sky]

Blood Blossom Au: Baby's First Commissioner Meeting :)

TL:DR This Post: Danny (orphan) gets poisoned with blood blossom extract by Vlad. He runs away from him and ends up under the care of one Pre-Robin Battinson Batman! Starry is loudly pushing her batdad agenda.

(Also known as "Late At Night, When The Nightingale Sings" on my ao3!)

This was a fun rough idea I've been sitting on for weeks, thinking about how Commissioner Gordon and Nightingale's first meeting might go.

---------------

Commissioner Gordon likes to think that he's adjusting to the new normal of Gotham very well, -- the new normal being grown men running around dressed like bats, in military-grade strength body armor, committing acts of vigilantism, -- and slowly, little by little, he was no longer being surprised when this new normal pops up out of the shadows like the world's most terrifying daisy. His shaving lifespan thanks him for it.

....

The kid is a surprise though.

Granted, he seemed to be a surprise to the Bat too.

There's been a string of murders lately, -- which, in Gotham, is kind of like saying there's been another storm during monsoon season. And there's just been another; in some dilapidated building down in south Gotham, with the broken, boarded-up windows and mildew-crawling walls to match. The victim is a man in his thirties, multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, left in the center of the room for the blood to pool out around him.

The place is already secured when he arrives, the building swarmed with officers and the forensic detectives. The Bat emerges shortly after he does -- or, he might've been here the whole time, hiding someplace dark and shadowy. For his own sanity, Gordon doesn't think about it too hard.

The kid is a surprise, and he appears like a bolt of lightning.

He shows up in the middle of a conversation Gordon is having with the Bat.

A whistle, sharp and loud, slicing through the air, meant for open air rather than a confined space. Gordon's ears pierce and protest the sound, and the solemn, murmured chatter floating through the room abruptly cuts off like the swing of a gavel. As he turns towards the sound -- as they all do -- he swears, up and down, that he sees Batman's shoulders jump, just slightly.

At the source, perched on the window, is a boy. A boy in a gray-blue scarf and an oversized black hoodie, one that hangs off his frame and has ace bandages wrapped around the wrists in some attempt to cinch the sleeves. The hood is up, big like the rest of it, and threatens to swallow the upper half of the boy's face whole in the fabric. What upper half Gordon can see, is smeared with some kind of opaque, black face paint. He's holding onto the side of the frame with one hand, on his hip is a grappling hook. A familiar grappling hook.

Gordon has multiple questions, and his officers tense up.

Martinez puffs up, brows furrowing as his face shapes into a frown. Shoulders rolling back. "You can't be here, kid--"

The reaction is immediate, like a spark to gunpowder, the boy yanks his fingers from his mouth and his mouth twists into a scowl. Head snapping over to Officer Martinez, his hood manages to stay on but Gordon swears that as he bares his teeth, the glint makes them look sharper than they should be. His voice is rasp and quiet and harsh; snappish in its hissing; "Put a fuckin sock in it, Martinez. I'm not stayin."

Martinez reels back, and the boy immediately veers his attention off him. Like a switch, his demeanor drops. Despite half his face being covered, his mouth twists into a cringing, apologetic smile. Slanted and off-beat, embarrassed. It'd be disarming if this wasn't Gotham, and if he didn't just hiss at Martinez like he was about to bite his head off.

"Sorry." He whispers, voice deceptively polite and softer now. Gordon has to strain his ears to hear him. "I was looking for him."

He points his finger towards-- Gordon? No, Gordon follows the direction, and finds himself looking at -- the Bat.

The Bat, who always looks stiff as a pole, now looks even stiffer. Somehow. Well, the explains the grappling hook attached to the boy's waist.

"What are you doing here?" The Bat says, gruff and unable to completely smother the stumble of surprise in his tone.

The boy still holds a sheepish smile, and slips off the window ledge. His feet hit the creaky boards with a near-silent thud, the Batman finds his feet and rapidly begins crossing the room.

Gordon notes the slight tremble in the boy's legs as he straightens. He adjusts his scarf, which droops close to his knees now that he's standing, and slings a backpack -- how long has had that? -- off his shoulders. When the Bat reaches his side, he does as he always does, and looms over the boy like a spectre. A threatening mass of shadows cloaked in all-consuming black. Standing next to him, the boy looks teeny in comparison.

The Bat is a man who terrifies even the most hardened criminals, Gordon has seen grown men shiver in fear at the mention of his name. And yet when the boy looks up at him, he doesn't even flinch.

Instead, his sheepish smile melts away like ice under the sun, holding only traces of his previous embarrassment. It remains as a shadow on his face, a small upturn at the corners of his mouth. The boy pushes his hood back just enough to reveal glinting, ice-flint eyes surrounded in tar-black face paint. He holds the backpack up with one arm. "You forgot this."

[bunnyboy-juice]

NO MORE ASSOCIATING THINGS WITH FEMMES ONLY BECAUSE THEY ARE PINK!HYPERFEM FEMMES ARE GREAT AND I LOVE YOU CAMPY FEMMES WHO EMBODY PINK BUT ALSO JESUS CHRIST CAN YOU GUYS NOT GO MORE THAN ONE DAY W/O TRYING TO SHOEHORN FEMMES INTO BEING ONLY PINK UWU BABIES. I AM FEMME AS IN GRASS AS IN DIRT AS IN TREE BARK AS IN WEEDS SPROUTING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK CEMENT. FEMME AS IN GENDER NONCONFORMITY AS IN FUCK YOU MY FEMININITY IS WHAT *I* SAY IT IS. FEMME AS IN DEPTH AND DARKNESS AND WARMTH AND TERROR. FEMME AS IN CAVES. FEMME AS IN LIGHTNING. FEMME AS IN AN AMALGAMATION OF TRAITS THAT I HAVE DECIDED ARE FEMININE REGARDLESS OF WHAT SOCIETY SAYS. FUCK IS IT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!???

[crystallizsch]

AGH happy (definitely-not-late) bday to mr jamil viper 💖🐍 and thank u harveston jamil for coming home as well as two of his bday cards 💖💥

[u3pxx]

oh i should share this old doodle of when i was watching the tagalog dub and my friend and i were talking about tsukki and weaponized politeness LOL

(mano info for yall unfamilliar ✌️)

[maingh0st]

i know i'm not the first to say this, but the acolyte's cancellation has confirmed how tired i am of disney's decision-making when it comes to their content. i know nostalgia is the easiest way to a big payout, but we can only take so many spinoffs before the universe starts to feel too small. but then fresh content—content that's building on the canon by looking to old star wars lore while asking new questions—fizzles out.

it's the sequel trilogy all over again. we're promised something new, something that actually expands the canon rather than just recycling it, even bringing in concepts from legends, and then the rug is ripped out from underneath us & we're punished for ever caring about any of it. silly babygirl! palpatine was always the big bad (don't worry about the fact that this is thematically nonsense and not foreshadowed in any way), and rey isn't a nobody ("your parents sold you because they loved you"), and this isn't a story about how the force transcends human categories and dynasties (represented by a grey jedi force dyad between a legacy skywalker and a nobody orphan from a backwater planet, fulfilling not only balance between light and dark but also transcending the old to become something new). silly idiot!!! rey's a palpatine by birth and a skywalker by self-adoption and god forbid she create her own identity outside of these names our fans recognize. watch as she stands alone on a sand planet that has no personal significance to her, ending her arc almost exactly as she began. but look!! two suns! neat

i don't even know if fanservice is the right word. at a certain point, it just starts to feel like they're quaking in their boots at the thought of doing anything new. i had my gripes with some of the choices in the acolyte, but at least it was unique. it explored a new era and asked questions that star wars has only ever flirted with. like: what happens to the children who are uprooted from their homes at such a young age, yet can't find their place in the jedi order? how does one survive in a supposedly honorable system that nevertheless relies on the repression of some of humanity's most fundamental emotions? is it possible that an organization dictating exactly how one ought to interact with the very life force of the universe... could perhaps be faulty and shortsighted? what happens when the ways of that order clash with other cultures and worldviews? (spoilers: space colonialism). and that's not even to mention the ideas they play with re: the force itself (vergences! plagueis! force witches!)

i know not everyone loved the show, but a lot of people really did care about it. a lot of people, like me, were excited to see these new questions being raised. but forget it—the disney gods have decreed that it didn't hit some magical threshold of streaming hours or reach a "broad enough" audience in the two months it's been out. but don't worry guys. turn your brains off and tune in for the next spinoff 2 chewy 2 bacca

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[eightyuh]

How does bath time work?

⟡ Story behind this special ask here ⟡ Read @wicksend here

[blujayonthewing]

This year's big web! This one marks five years of big web!!!

[da-janela-lateral]

How does your garden grow?

[markscherz]

you’re super good at taking selfies congrats

and we haven't even scratched the surface

[taxlthomas]

weesnaw