#I'm a thinker!! I'm thinking!!

[joinmeinjoy]

Very interesting to me that Abigail preferred Hannibal over Will, but Will had an emotional connection to her that Hannibal didn't - or at least not to the same extent.

I think maybe one day he could've found a stronger bond considering she had also killed and eaten people, but during the series she's really just a tool. Hannibal uses her to like... babytrap Will. And tbf it worked, Will didn't tell Jack what he knew when he discovered Abigail murdered that guy - if he was willing to cover for her, maybe eventually he'd cover for Hannibal too, the 3 of them too intrinsically tied for him to separate, I mean that's the trapping part. But she was just a means to an end, a relationship Hannibal nurtured for his own gain with Will....whereas Will really did view her as his daughter.

Very interesting to me...off-put by Will (especially towards the end of s1), but he had the most vested interest in her well-being out of the pair...

[thoughtfulchaos773]

Sydney's back tattoos will be revealed through Carmy's eyes.

It's the only way.

[thecruellestmonth]

Remembering stuff like Alfred having Bruce and cutting his hair and and dressing him. Which could mean anything but really reinforce the upstairs/downstairs servile relationship. The lack of modesty or shame a rich person has around their staff is something else. And it’s just a like. Almost a Caste system where Alfred is second class and can never BE on Bruce’s level as an equal let alone authority figure. And Alfred is happy with that! Because that’s the story and he is, after all, the butler

[laufire's cool post on Alfred & Bruce]

Yeah, Alfred is not Bruce's father. Bruce is the pater familias of his household like his father before him, and Alfred is his very cherished manservant. Alfred can be a caretaker and a confidant, he can even be parental (-ish), but he's not a parent. (Note to self: rant about the awkward and aggressively enforced line between "parental" and "parent" in Batman mythos.)

IMO one of the most compact arguments on Alfred's role is in Batman: Year One (IIRC the very comic that established Alfred as an old servant of the Wayne family, instead of his original story of being hired by Bruce). Grant Morrison was on some podcast (I think either Kevin Smith's podcast or "Hypertime to Podcast"?) talking about the significance of how Bruce's first act as Batman is to ring a bell to ask for Alfred to help him. We see Morrison emphasize this moment in The Return of Bruce Wayne, where The Bell is a relic on the same level as The Pearls and The Gun.

I can agree it's a defining moment. To some extent I'm willing to accept Morrison's suggestion that Bruce ringing the bell symbolizes the value of asking for help, teamwork, comradery, family, humility, etc—and most fans would be happy to sprint with that interpretation. But I can also juggle a separate interpretation that branches off and veers to the left...

You do not ring a bell to ask for help from your parent or friends or family—you ring a bell to summon a servant.

Bruce becoming Batman in Year One is the story of a prince reclaiming his kingdom. (The Return of Bruce Wayne is a renewal of that story.) Summoning the family manservant is the act of Bruce finally accepting his royal inheritance, after his foolish attempt to slum it with the rabble. A good king is kind and attentive to his subjects, and considers the opinions of his advisors—but they're never his equals or his superiors, no matter how much he cherishes them. They're his subordinates. Nobody is on Bruce's level as an equal, nobody can win a case against his authority, in Gotham. Bruce is the rightful heir of his kingdom. The king and queen are dead, long live the king.

—I know some vocal fans are very critical of Miller, but there's no disputing that Miller's Batman: Year One is the definitive Post-Crisis story of Bruce's invention of Batman, and pretty much every modern comic writer and fan recognizes it. It's likely no comic writer or story has had as much enduring influence on the Batman mythos since Miller wrote Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. Case in point: Alfred.

So yeah. Alfred isn't Bruce's dad. The Gotham TV series probably makes the strongest case for Alfred as Bruce's dad, and even then I personally think there is wiggle room to say eh they're family and they love each other but they're not quite parent & child. Everything else—Batman '66, BTAS, the Nolan movies, Lego Batman, Battinson—ultimately doesn't Alfred cast as Bruce's dad, for the best. Recent comics and the later Arkhamverse games try to force the father-son thing, but it's cheap and unearned.

[cpericardium]

I once read this very popular Worm/Sky High fanfic that was just post-GM Taylor being transplanted into the Sky High universe, inwardly sneering at everyone there for having a lower PRT rating than her, musing about how she was the most powerful person in the school, bragging about the people she'd killed, mumbling about power ratings to characters who obviously had no idea what the fuck she was referring to, and then handily defeating the main Sky High villain in half a chapter

it wasn't satire, just an example of your basic average wormfic

[rainbowlilymemes237]

I feel like I will meet the voice actor one day.

[menlove]

I love when people are like shocked and horrified about the latine vote always going red like. every latine in this country is gonna go "yeah?" like it's not surprising. those of us that are leftists agree that it's fucking stupid and I promise you we're more frustrated than you are, but like. never a shocking event.

[icouldbeyourprettygirl]

he didn't text me today. he's been texting me daily for the last couple of days. I'm scared it's because of what I said yesterday. all I can do is hope that he hasn't figured out I'm in love with him

[philosophiums]

Hello Sam look at me swooping in on time (ish) can i I please know 1, 3 and 8?

When I see questions about 'who's your fave' vs. 'but who are you LIKE' Im always weirdly interested to see how alike or unlike they are

hi crow!!!! <3

1. first anime you ever watched

....i just had to do some Remembering about like. where i was living/what i was doing for like 5 of the earliest anime i can remember watching, and now i'm about 98% sure my first anime was Attack on Titan. i stopped watching after season 3 and won't ever finish it KJSBVKJDBVF sometimes i rewatch the levi vs kenny scene, though, bc my god is it gorgeous

3. favorite anime character

UHHHHHH...... god i don't????? i don't know????? i legitimately might not have one.... like i have A Favorite from every anime i've ever watched, but there aren't any that are popping into my head as all-time favorites. maybe bakugo mha? maybe akutagawa bsd? tsukishima hq? megumi jjk? hm i mean i guess if i want to judge my favorite based on how often i think about them i would say bakugo, tsukishima, and megumi are all at the top, but tsukishima has been a fave for longer, megumi is part of my current obsession, and bakugo has only been on my mind for about the last two years huh. i honestly don't know. i can't give a good answer to this KJDSBVKJDBVD

8. anime character you are most like

man.... i don't know..... KSJDBVKJDFVBDFV i'm a bit like megumi (logical thinker, not super emotional, unless pressured for More will only put in as much effort as necessary). i'm also a bit like ukai hq (not a teenager KJSBVKJSBV, smoker, lighthearted but competitive, good at explaining things but does NOT want to be a teacher). and a little bit like atsushi bsd (childhood trauma made me just want to be kind, socially awkward, does not know how to handle pda, nervous around authority figures). little column a, little column b, etc KSJBVDKJFVB

anime asks

[elbiotipo]

I don't like debating against anti-civs/primitivists because it's. well. a completely unviable ideology which is, ironically, only supported by twitter weirdoes, but I remember that "what would you do in the leftist commune" thread before it got flooded by trolls, and someone answered earnestly "I would make clothes from scraps!", what is this, fucking Fallout?

Even middle ages peasants could clear the incredibly low bar of "making new clothes", is that really the best future you can think of? is that really socialist utopia for you? a middle ages village with D&D nights? Yuri Gagarin didn't fly to space for this shit.

[sskk-manifesto]

(´･ᴗ･ ` )

[lloydfrontera]

i stand by my conviction that the best way to read tged is by stopping in ch 401 but i do have a rant concerning ch 402 that is locked and loaded for posting and i don't know if i should wait for today's chapter to drop so you guys have the full context or if i should pretend it isn't happening and i'm talking about a hypothetical ending that definitely didn't happen

[bonni]

another interesting thing is that fascism warping perceptions of artistic beauty in the regions where it flourished was and still is a very real phenomenon, but if you think that fascist art was just soooo good intrinsically and that that made it useful for indoctrinating people you've very much got it backwards (as op of that post pointed out). read Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco for free online

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

everyone online is gangsta about respecting people's bodies and opinions until a true free thinker hits them with the "I prefer condoms and pads to birth control pills and tampons" and then they will lose their ever loving minds every time

[thilsiktonix]

This woman should not be able to fly.

Finals week is finally done, and I'm officially out for the summer again. I have two commissions to work on, but after I finished my last final on Thursday, I've decided to take a small break before jumping back into the swing of things. I'm testing out a new way of doing fullbodies- that being with colored outlines. I think it looks much better than what I was doing originally, so I'm likely going to switch to colored outlines for most of my lines from now on!

This is actually a redo of an older ref of the same character. It was during a small point in my life where I decided I hated lineart, and did everything to avoid it at any cost; I did awful sketches with my lineart brush, I refined sketches into lines, and, of course, I made pixel refs.

They don't stand the test of time too well.

This reference was made in 2021. I think it's safe to say that I've improved a lot since then, in practically every aspect possible when it comes to ref-making.

Commissions are open. Check out my commission site in the pinned post!

[supdaemons]

miguel o'hara is the perfect marriage of tragedy and horror inside one person and that is everything to me I wax forever about how tragedy and horror were meant to go hand in hand because the most frightening thing on earth and amongst the stars is loss. miguel o'hara is heavy with the horror of what he did and the tragedy of why he did it

[atopvisenyashill]

I'm sorry I keep coming back to it omg but I think "Rhaenyra straight up has a bastard" would be plausible IF Aegon Waters is born like a year after Laenor dies (maybe Qarl really was just pissed off that Laenor was cheating on him, sucks to suck ig) (actually my conspiracy here is that it wasn't Daemon or Qarl that killed Laenor it was Otto because he wanted to get rid of Rhaenyra's cover for her kids but I'm aware that's suuuuper conspiracy brained) because then there's no way Rhaenyra can claim it's Laenor's so she either has to very quickly marry - which is risky because what if her husband is a secret green or attempts to threaten her boys - or just say "yep this one is a bastard" and I think Rhaenyra could justify that making Aegon Waters a bastard protects the Velaryon boys + "well if I have Daemon's secret baby and refuse to say it's Daemon's but let him be in the child's life, that means he has an obligation towards me as the mother of his child so he won't side against me no matter what."

The fundamental problem with this AU is that when she has an actual bastard, the greens are going to lose their minds. Criston will probably exclusively refer to her as a whore from that point on. Alicent is going to raise the BIGGEST stink she possibly can about it. There's going to be SO MUCH political fallout that's kind of difficult to handwave away, and while EYE think it's a perfectly rational argument to be like "so aegon can fuck whores in fleabottom and refuse to care for the bastards he leaves and that's fine but i have a single child out of wedlock and agree to keep him out of the line of succession and it's a big fucking problem, is it?" but the men of westeros will NOT go for that shit even if she sends Ser Lorent into Fleabottom to drag Gaemon, Essie, and Sylvie out and parade them in front of the court. Elaena got away with it but Elaena had a "love" story to fall back on, Alyn was single for part of their affair anyway, and most importantly Elaena was not the crown princess (and Aegon gets away with it but Aegon is a man so you know, different rules). If no one had questioned the Velaryon boys, she might be able to get away with this but since there's already a question surrounding her sons, this is a problem.

Like, idk, if she parades Aegon Waters around is like "see this one is my bastard, I'm fully capable of admitting I fucked up!" idk hwo that plays. I think the Northerners would respect the fact that she's taking responsibility for her bastard instead of shushing it up (especially if she points out that Aegon doesn't take care of his) but I think this would lose her all of the houses she had in the Reach which frees Daeron and Tessarion up to do some damage in the Riverlands.