#I am still astounded by this

[st-clements-steps]

@byrainchance gave me this beautiful, heartbreaking story, read it on ao3 here

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[univemma]

I acknowledge that the season was cut almost in half so I should really cut them some slack but I WON'T, SO:

Plot holes/Forgotten Stuff in TUA:

(some of these are mostly just unanswered questions)

-Sloane?? Where tf did she go?

-Why was Jennifer (in the original timeline) in a cage? In Moldova?? Like, was she discovered to have something ( the dimaldo stuff whatever) inside of her, so they wanted to test on her? if she never came into contact with marigold before ben then why would they? WHAT

-also wait how the fuck did she get that stuff in her anyway? How did the dimaldo get to earth after it caused the end of Reginald's home planet? Like,,,shouldnt we know that?

-Her,,,in a squid??? she was Inside a giant squid? W h a t

-the S3 post credits of ben in the train. sure, whatever, that means nothing LMAOO

-I also can't get over - Five explaining "oh yeah when we do this EVERY ALTERNATE TIMELINE is gonna be destroyed, leaving only what should've been - the original," and lila fighitng to put her family in the train station,,,All the other timelines will be destroyed??They're dying and being reborn/reincarnated in the new one anyway GIRL WHAT ARE YOU DOING

(unless ive highly misunderstood that which is likely)

-this isnt a plot hole just - five "trying desperately over and over again to save his unhelpful family who he loves very very much" being literally turned into,,,that. did someone say character assassination?

-lila and five. thats a plot hole in and of itself I DONT CARE if he's aged 12 years from season 3, (6 yr timeskip at beginning of season, then 6 technically 7 in teh train), I DONT CARE IF HES 25 NOW, I DONT CARE IF HES MENTALLY 60 SOMETHING. Lila met and spent time with him when he looked like THIS

THATS A CHILD. and clearly, the family had SOME contact in the 6 yr skip, so she WATCHED HIM GROW UP from 13 - 19, like thats just so WEIRD WHAT

this was supposed to be plot holes and just turned into me being pissed im sorry but HOW DO YOU FUCK UP AN ENDING THIS BAD??

[apnourry]

hydrangea blue never broke my heart🫶

[yourhighness6]

"Light Spinner" was honestly the most heartbreaking She Ra episode I've seen so far

Catra constantly insists she is nothing like Shadow Weaver in any way, but the parallels between her journey and Shadow Weaver's as Light Spinner are not even subtle. Shadow Weaver even says they are similar, that she reminds her of herself. And as much as Catra insists she doesn't want that, of course she wants that. She wants them to be similar because she thinks that Shadow Weaver will finally love her and appreciate her if she's another version of her, only better, if she doesn't make the same mistakes, if she comes out on top. She hates her so much but she also wants to BE her, but the thing preventing her from following in Shadow Weaver's footsteps is the best part about her. It's her capacity for love and kindness. It's her lack of selfishness and greed. She never wanted to rule the hoard or be second in command, but she feels like she has to be even as her own nature rebels against it.

[seagreenstardust]

Sometimes it floors me how anyone could look at bkdk and not see how blatantly romantic it is at its core. Their entire backstory hinges around that one time Katsuki couldn’t take Izuku’s hand. They are so canonically obsessed with each other that they are each other’s motivation, support, validation, reason for doing just about anything. The way they look at each other is so obscene with longing and awe that it frankly belongs in a period romance. One of them literally died thinking about the other. They each need the other to survive so badly that they are willing to sacrifice themselves (Katsuki) and everyone else (Izuku) in order to make it happen.

They are canonically written to be two halves of the same heroic whole. How often is the narrative foil also the romantic partner? How often is the dual lead??? In every way they deserve to be romantic partners, they are literally written to be perfect complements of each other

[courtney-deserved-better]

whenever i write teenagers i always think to myself "thank fucking god im not a teenager anymore"

[last-flight-of-fancy]

finally completed the common rarity cookie set!

[thedarkone121]

So… Those previews with Dracula, huh?

So, funny story. All the way back in July 8th — according to Discord — I admit an idea that was running around in my mind ever since I first heard the title of “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde meet Dracula” and me, coming off the novel of Dracula, wanted some angst. Just to be clear, this was well before the previews came. As Quill put it, I was given he power of Apollo 🤣

Anyway, onto the idea! Some of these are posted from Discord so keep that in mind!

Some heads up, this is a little angsty and very spoilers to the original Dracula novel but basically, here’s my vampire idea; in the midst of the Lodgers turning against him and having to deal with Frankenstein, Jekyll ends up encountering a wealthy aristocrat (ie, Dracula) at a party. The man offers to help fund the society… If Jekyll could stop by his new house and tell him about London. And Jekyll does.

And it works. They’re able to keep the society running. No one is getting kicked out. …But Rachel and Lanyon begin to notice how pale Jekyll has gotten. How he seems more tired than before. How hungrier he gets. How much rawer his food has gotten. It’s so bad than even the Lodgers notice.

Basically, the idea is based on Jekyll taking Lucy Westenra’s place as Dracula’s victim. We’re watching this man slowly lose some of his blood and become a vampire.

To add onto the angst, I also thought of Dracula — while he’s draining Jekyll and hypnotizing him — would slowly turn Jekyll against his friends. Keeping him isolated and not go for help. So even when the others are trying to help him, he wouldn’t listen.

The person who can probably get through to Jekyll is Jasper, because even though he is considered one of the lodgers, Jekyll does remember Jasper standing by him.

I do have an idea in my head where everyone is staging an intervention where they’re trying not to let Jekyll go out and see this Dracula guy anymore. Like Rachel and Robert are trying to tell him he’s been getting worse since these visits, Jasper trying to tell him that something’s not right, even other the Lodgers chiming, saying that they’ll help with the exhibition if he would just PLEASE not go there… Only for Jekyll to say: “What exhibition?”

…At that point, everyone realizes they can’t reason with Jekyll and are forced to keep him confined at the Society. Hoping to starve off the vampirism within him by keeping garlic around him, slowly giving him proper meals again. Also giving him blood transfusions as well.

But Jekyll is completely feral at this point. Even though his heart beats, his mind has been taken over by a ravenous beast. And Dracula has noticed his favorite snack hasn’t come by in a while…

And that’s it! My wonderful angsty idea of a vampire Jekyll. Believe me, I can never look at vampires the same after reading the novel for Dracula. Just the horror of the slow transformation for Lucy… It’s wonderfully angsty and I needed to share that with Jekyll!

Hope you all enjoy it!

[samwpmarleau]

jd vance unintentionally (?) admitting on national television that he and trump completely fabricated the haitian stories and shunting all responsibility — he, a sitting senator from ohio, no less — as springfield suffers bomb threats and proud boy marches and other forms of blatant, violent racism i’m-

literally incitement of domestic terrorism and he’s proud of it

[black-queen-rising]

The people taking this dialogue as a legitimate “character flaw” or literally just at face value at all and not as a continuation of the blatant disrespect the writers have not just towards Rhaenyra as the heir of twenty years, but towards anything that could even vaguely be construed as “women’s work”, is the most perfect encapsulation of just how entrenched misogyny is into the very heart of our pop culture and how the popularization of fantasy has managed to worsen our societal view of soft power by painting it as not only weak, but frivolously feminine, unimportant, and a waste of time.

Since the beginning of the show the writers have almost exclusively portrayed Rhaenyra as disinterested if not opposed to her role as heir, as a politician, and a woman in power broadly all against the original canon and all glaringly, not to make her look worse or better or likable or incompetent (they do all those things, almost every episode, with however they need her to affect the plot in that given moment because they’re incapable of having the characters drive it organically) because it’s not truly about her at all. It’s simply because they cannot fathom a story where a woman is politically adept and as a result either 1. evil or 2. boring, and that is fundamentally because once again they are so biased and against portraying anything that could even vaguely be construed as women’s work or at all “feminine-coded” in an even neutral-but-interesting way they do for (stereotypically) masculine-coded activities like sword fighting, horse back riding, dragon riding, hunting, archery, not to mention just the concept of the political conversations that drive these stories, let alone an actually positive way.

They have taken a story that at its core was always an indictment of structural misogyny and how it will literally cause societies to tear themselves apart over nothing. But because they decided at the outset they wouldn’t and couldn’t portray the structural part of said misogyny without scaring away their intended audience, and decided instead to base this all around ultimately meaningless ~team discourse~ (because literally everyone meeting their downfall as a result of the consequences of systemic misogyny is the point) their alternate path has been to over-exaggerate and ultimately turn to spectacle every single woman involved’s individual suffering at the expense of everything else about their characters. It doesn’t matter if that was the intent or not the principle result of this adaptation has been the continual disempowerment and degradation of women and their agency combined with an almost impressively voyeuristic portrayal of their suffering.

The women in this show are not allowed to have interests or hobbies unless it’s to serve to make them seem “bad” in someway, whether that be the discomfort around Helaena’s bugs, the total lack of any positive representation of Alicent’s religiosity, or how the women dragon riders are broadly painted as aggressive, violent, and unnatural. I don’t even have specific examples to list from the other “team” because in order to be portrayed as “likable” to the general audience the women of Team Black are barely allowed to have personalities, let alone distinguishing interests or characterizing hobbies. The agency and autonomy they have been stripped of, collectively, from both historical precedent and actual ASoIaF, is almost entirely in their refusal to allow women’s work to be portrayed positively. There are no balls, no sewing circles, no garden parties, no trappings of power and contests of will in the jewels and gowns Rhaenyra must now loathe to be (their deeply narrow and biased view of) “likable”, there are no female mentorships, and no female friendships, and at every chance they have had to portray these things at both a societal and personal level they have chosen to veer away and instead reinforce their suffering. They have removed women’s avenues and halls of power from this story, while making it very clear there are no others that exist in this world, and they cannot participate in the men’s; if they could this story wouldn’t exist. So we are left with a group of people who are supposedly driving this story, who this story is supposedly about, but they are internally and externally isolated, largely removed from the public eye, angry or distressed to be there on the rare occasions they’re present, disempowered, stripped of personal agency and will, and we’re still told they have power. But if we search for it the only logical conclusion is that any power which does not center on how much suffering they have been through, or how much more they may be dealt, is not only gone, it was never there in the first place.

I don’t enjoy Rhaenyra’s quasi domestic abuse any more than Alicent’s visceral sexual shame and I don’t enjoy the infantilization of Helaena’s character any more than the erasure of Rhaena’s and it is deeply concerning how many people look at these decisions, and nod their heads and say “yes, this is realistic, and not only is it realistic it’s, GOOD, because without horrific psychological and physical abuse and ultimately a complete reduction to every female character as peace loving victims of powerful men’s cruel machinations we could never even SEE how misogyny is so damaging.” And the mindset that drives people to claim that those of us who call out how this is, the definition of benevolent misogyny and say we’re crazy, that we can’t see the complexity, that actually we’re the ones somehow falling back into sexist tropes, or asking for a black and white story when instead the black and white has simply become an insultingly reductive view of evil men versus helpless women and when all else fails, accusing us of wanting a boring story because it’s either not focused on gratuitous individual female suffering, or is focused on the kind of political power every single featured female character on both sides of this conflict wielded in the original book instead of evil man conversations and eviler man dragon-battles, is at its heart why we have come to a place in pop culture where one of its most marquee properties displays and embodies these problems so glaringly in the fucking first place.

[skinreflectsthesun]

.

[lucyflawless]

I am willing to admit that I used to be a massive fucking music snob. like really annoying about it. and getting over that shit, admitting that popular music actually IS good and fun. upbeat and silly lyrics ARE good and fun. that this arbitrary "guilty pleasure" bullshit is simply bullshit. and liking things that are lesser known/popular doesn't fuckin equal moral superiority. has in fact made me a happier and less annoying person.

[followerofmercy]

favorite part of writing fr gotta be cutting out a small part of my soul, putting it into a character and then building a person around it

[voided-selfships]

Actually so fucking glad I don't look through the selfship tag

[lem0nademouth]

the venn diagram of people who glorify + romanticize the IRA and people who call Hamas “freedom fighters” is nearly a perfect circle