#I'm sorry this just seemed so him

[talkin-with-a-laserbeam]

Mike Milligram: Oh you're into pronouns, huh? well then let she/them tiddi- *weezes*

[tofixtheshadows]

So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.

And I kept wondering: why?

For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.

So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.

But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.

The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.

Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?

That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.

My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.

Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.

Milsiril the puppetmaster.

[humbuns]

birds of the same feather?

[somegrumpynerd]

Cross has trouble getting to sleep alone in his room and goes looking for a distraction, but ends up finding a solution for both of them

[theloveinc]

I always think it's a little surprising, irritating, endearing, something when big, tough men find solace in being gentle with their daughters.

There's reason to do tough things with them, too, to make sure they grow up strong and independent, but I think of a man like Simon "Ghost" Riley, who spent a huge percentage of his life being beaten down consistently by almost all the men who were around him.

And sure, he trusts the men in his task force with his life now, no question about it, but... I think the sudden calm he experiences when he starts to raise a daughter is beyond strange for him, but also weirdly... healing, too. Enjoyable.

That's not to say he doesn't, and hasn't, enjoyed the boyish things in life, the watching sports, the playing in the dirt, the pretending to hold guns part of growing up... but he finds himself sitting through your daughter's ballet class, overwhelmed by the calm that surrounds him, actually able to focus on the intensity of her pliers, her releves, the way her pink skirt ripples when she leaps into a sauter.

It's a new realization, a new kind of war (between him and learning how to be a parent), but it's one that doesn't revolve around the consistent anxiety that warps his stomach when he watches boys, little or not, teeter the line between roughhousing and fighting, picking on one another for shedding accidental tears that, really, cause no harm.

With your daughter, he's set in charge of watching her play with her friends and finds there is no lump in his stomach when she giggles with them, no dark possibility drifting in the back of his mind that she'll reach out and get her arm broken by someone she trusts--the fights she fights with her peers all between the characters they play and not between their fists, their games of laughter and drama and screaming but not of raging violence.

There's people who ask him, people who joke, wouldn't a man like him prefer a son? He must've been so disappointed... Yet, Simon still has yet to think of the best way to tell them that he honestly enjoys having a daughter a little bit more, that she runs to him and not for a second is he afraid she's hiding a snake up her sleeve, because she's only ever greeted him with flowers.

[betweensaintsandmonsters]

okay okay vampire obi-wan and anemic human anakin who goes to be his meal at like a fancy vampire bistro that pays willing humans to "donate" blood (get bitten) and tastes like shit whomst obi-wan then tries to take care of (in all the ways he can from sunset to sunrise) first so his food tastes good (bc anakin keeps coming back) and then because he cares

sends cookbooks to his apartment, tries to get him to go to the doctor, sends him other little gifts when he sees thinks that make him think of anakin, obi-wan just like wants to take care of his boy because he's clearly not taking care of himself (he signed up to be vampire food so that much should have been obvious) and obi-wan just wants him well is that too much to ask?

they fight about this often. (first: "how did you get my address?" "It's on the form you filled out to be here" "invasion of privacy much?" then: "you could always just... choose someone else?" "and let another vampire suffer from your lack of self care? absolutely not."") ("i don't know why you're putting so much into this? "i must have nothing else to do.") ("if this bothers you so much... just let someone else feed off me." "no.")

anakin stops showing up to be dinner for a few weeks and obi-wan gets worried. but he's not sure how far he's allowed to go in his worry, they're technically just... predator and prey (though obi-wan wouldn't describe them like that) it's just that no one tastes like anakin (that's definitely it) and nobody sasses him like anakin, and nobody is anakin and anakin is missing and clearly if he's been gone this long he can't possibly be okay

(and obi-wan is right, anakin isn't okay. he's in the hospital with an arm that might need to be amputated (but it was obi-wan's favorite place to drink from since he won't touch anakin's neck for reasons he WON'T explain)

(if you asked obi-wan why he didn't bite anakin's neck to begin with, he'd heavily imply there's no reason, but when pressed, it would be that anakin let's out this breathy moan when he's bitten, and it's music to obi-wan's ears, a symphony to his soul, he doesn't think he'd survive it if that was right in his ear, he'd have to kiss the boy then and there, have to keep him, and he can't do that, so his neck is off limits. it is IMPERATIVE anakin does not know this)

and he's lost a lot of blood and he's suffering and not alone because ahsoka and padme keep visiting, but he doesn't know how much he misses obi-wan until he isn't seeing him)

so one night obi-wan goes to anakin's apartment to see he isn't there and hasn't been there in weeks based on sent, and panics because what if he drove his beautiful boy away, or what if someone went after him, and obi-wan can't go in bc vampire rules say he needs permission and also it's good manners.

eventually anakin comes back to him, sans one arm, apologetic because "i know that's where you liked to bite" as if that could possibly be the reason that obi-wan is as upset as he is when he comes in. "i'd understand if you need a different meal," he says, as if that's all he is when obi-wan refuses to bite him because for the first time, he looks fragile and that's heartbreaking

so anakin leaves and obi-wan is gobsmacked, flabberghasted, realized anakin waited to have this conversation as close to sunrise as possible so obi-wan couldn't follow him out of the bar, but he doesn't realize that his vampire would absolutely run into the sun for him (except quin and satine 1000% don't let him "that's not how you get your man, he doesn't want a pile of dust, where's that going to get you, man, think for just a fraction of a second")

so obi-wan send anakin more little gifts, things he can puzzle out one handed as he gets used to being an amputee, trinkets he might enjoy, notes that are meant to make him smile, or that say he'll find somewhere else to feed on the boy if that's going to get him to come back when nothing else has worked. all he wants is to let anakin know that he's he's appreciated, make him feel wanted and loved.

eventually anakin sends him a note back with his phone number and then texts him to come over. he makes obi-wan stand on his stoop for an excruciating amount of time and he gets a lecture about personal space, and respecting people's wishes and "it doesn't matter that you're 300 years old, some people just don't want anything to do with you!" and anakin tries to say all of this with a straight face, before he cracks because he misses obi-wan and it is an act, and he's been in love with this vampire since he decided it was his job to take care of one human that wasn't taking care of himself.

then anakin kisses him and gives him a goofy grin and asks "what are you doing just standing there?"

"are you inviting me in?"

"i guess i am. you're stuck with me though, i'm your problem now."

"darling, you've been my problem for a long time, and i wouldn't have it any other way."

and eventually they fuck, and obi-wan bites anakin's neck, and here's his symphony played out in the most desirable circumstances. and they live happily ever after

(until anakin pesters him about making him a vampire "so i can be your problem, permanently" and they argue about it, but agree that anakin gets a life first "you've gotta be at least 40 before i turn you, i'm not going around looking like i forever robbed the cradle!" "you're not even 40! 25." "nope." "fine, 30 then, final offer." "and if I say no?" obi-wan's grin is feral, like he knows he's lost but he's still willing to play the game. "i know you won't" so does obi-wan)

[blue-jos10]

i wonder how kevin's fitness-obsessed mind justifies his alcohol addiction

[kira-light0]

Ferret Face

[nebulous-rain]

HAPPY LATE HOLIDAYS @ruebeary !!!!!!!!!!!!

you want lewis ur gonna GET it babeyyyyy. but i didn't wanna leave everyone else out so i kinda sprinkled them all over :) HOPE U ENJOY !!!

(thank you sm to @msaholidayspirits for hosting !!!)

[cherryys]

ever since 266, I saw many people say that because megumi doesn't want to be a jujutsu sorcerer, that means his conclusion doesn't have to have anything to do with using his technique or completing his domain and that him just getting saved is fine, and that is his purpose in the story, and I completely disagree.

Megumi has always treated his technique as a curse in his life, one he had never wanted and one that had always hindered him. he viewed it as a crutch, a weakness, something that controls him rather than him controlling it as its user. it had dictated his life ever since his birth and subsequently forcing him into the gruel jujutsu world, with his father selling and abandoning him, the expectations placed on him by Gojo to surpass him because of his technique, along with now, Sukuna stealing his body, his autonomy, his agency, and his ability to make a choice along with killing his sister and hurting his friends just because of his technique. Him learning that instead of fearing his technique and treating it as something he'll never control or grasp and that its power is way beyond him, he does have the strength and newfound mindset to control it, be its master and be able to completely understand and interpret his technique would be a great way to conclude his character arc and his rocky relationship with his technique.

him completing his domain doesn't have anything to do with jujutsu sorcery. his domain is a representation of his sense of self, his self-identity, his character, so to speak. it being incomplete from the start was to show you that megumi hadn't grasped his sense of self yet, hasn't found an identity unique to himself outside of wanting to save his sister (and later, yuuji) and his complete disregard for his life in general. his incomplete domain is basically showing you his incomplete character. I just can't really fathom the domain not being completed especially after him being at the climax of his character arc. it's more than just a jujutsu thing for megumi's character, it represents him.

also, megumi's purpose this entire arc to just be saved is hardly a good conclusion to his character. his entire life, he'd been stripped of his autonomy, the power to choose, the power to control his life. that was what reggie's curse was: let fate toy with you, become a clown, then die. his conclusion should be him breaking AWAY from that curse, to stop fate from toying with him, and instead of just laying down and letting life kick him over and over, he stands up and finally kicks back, fights against the circumstances, saves himself, instead of doing nothing and just letting others save him. what would be the point, then? he'd be reduced to a literal plot device, whose entire role in the story is to let his body be taken over by sukuna for his technique, and he doesn't even save himself, he just lets others do the work for him. that would be a horrible conclusion. it wouldn't make his dream of wanting a peaceful life earned for me, not because megumi HAS to be useful or has to prove himself to deserve a simple life, but because he hasn't really changed. he's the same as he was before, letting life toy with him over and over and reduced to just the damsel in distress who constantly needs others to do the work for him.

I want him to fight back. I want him to save himself. I want him to put in the work to change his fate.

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[thosewildcharms]

Your rhetorical questions have lit up my brain lol like what if Rick had met Michonne and Andre first instead of Morgan and Duane? 🤯 But anyway on a separate note, it’s so wild to see Rick and Shane’s first scene and Rick laughing along to Shane’s mysoginistic weird ass rant in light of who he is now. He really was just some emotionally repressed small town guy, And while Lori telling Rick “I wonder if you even care about us” in front of Carl was horrible, I wonder what Rick could’ve done or not done that would make her feel that way? And Shane said women’s problem is they don’t know how to turn off a light switch, to which Rick says part of the problem is he’s the one who’s leaving light switches on; I hate to be missing something that’s probably obvious but what did he mean with that?

oh that's a great idea for an AU anon. your mind!

this got long because who am i, so under a read more it goes.

maybe i got my rickgirl blinders on and am giving him too much credit but i thought rick was laughing at least somewhat incredulously at shane's speech (he was at the very least shaking his head a lot until the very end) but yes present-day rick would probably not have entertained that quite so much lol. but to kind of go along with that, my interpretation of light switch thing was rick kind of dismissing shane's, as you pointed out, misogynistic joke by saying he's the one with the issue turning off lights, and also to shift the conversation into the Actual Problems he and lori are having. also in retrospect it kinda feels like the show was lowkey already telling us lori and shane were more suited for each other than lori and rick but i could be reading into that. but listen metaphors have a habit of flying right over my (probably) autistic little head so i could also be missing some hidden meaning there.

as for the fight with lori, there's a flashback (i think in season 2?) where lori is talking to a friend about that same fight and she admits that she was the one who was being the asshole and how she got even more pissed off over how even-tempered and reasonable he was in response. from rick's perspective, he said he would try to talk about his feelings only for it to seem like lori didn't actually want to hear them after all. honestly i think they were just fundamentally incompatible, as we saw over and over in seasons 1 and 2. it wasn't anyone's fault, and their fights probably escalated because they didn't even know how to argue the way the other person wanted them to.

and not to constantly compare rick/lori to richonne, but rick similarly almost never yells or gets mean the few times we see him and michonne argue. the couple of times he did in towl were such an anomaly it set off alarm bells for michonne that something was really wrong with him (and also the situation was just objectively insane). but michonne and rick know how to disagree without getting ugly, and she certainly never has to try to provoke him into communicating because they have a fundamental understanding of each other that rick and lori never had. for sure rick learned from his mistakes with lori but i don't think the rick who was with lori was an entirely different person who said horrible things to his wife. he couldn't express himself the way we see he can with michonne because he just didn't have that type of connection with lori. and to be fair, lori didn't feel that with rick either, and again, that's okay. they probably should have just called it quits well before rick got shot. @cantstayawaycani and @jonesywrites go into this far more eloquently than I did here in their very excellent towl season 1 reaction video that you should definitely watch, because it's wonderful from start to finish.

[omaano]

"Cassian's face is a brittle thing, no person's eyes should shine as painfully tearful as his. Kino offers his hand and Cassian - bright as the sun, steady as a roc, fluid as water Cassian - accepts it with shaking fingers. He tells Kino everything."

Art for we're spitting off the edge of the world by Xenomorphic for the 2024 Star Wars Big Bang @swbigbang. It is an amazing Canon Divergence Fix-it fic from one of the most memorable moments of Andor onwards, with beautiful prose that fits the mood of the show so so well and will make you feel just as deeply for these characters. Please give it a read and heap some love on my team's amazing and hardworking author, they were such a delight to work with!❤️

[tarisilmarwen]

"Thrawn only joined the Empire to help the Chiss!"

Okay sure but have any of you bothered to self-examine why Thrawn chose to join the Empire instead of, say, the Republic, when that was still around? Or why he didn't chose to throw in with the Rebellion, put his tactical mind to use helping them overthrow the Empire quicker?

Could it be... perhaps... that maybe he values the Empire's military strength... more than he cares about the authoritarian tyranny with which it oppresses its own people?

Is it possible that he thinks the Empire's main problem is that it isn't effective enough, too much politicking getting in the way of sound strategy, but if he's around (and in charge) he can guide things so that those annoying little wrinkles (AKA the pockets of discontent and rebellion and fully justified anger at their rights and freedoms being trampled on) are all smoothed out and the overall Imperial machine is better, more in control of its assets, a stronger more unified bulwark against the outergalactic threat of the Grysk or the Vong or whatever.

Is it perhaps just a bit self-centered of him to only care about the Empire's ability to service his own goals and desires and be apathetic (at best) to the way it makes people suffer daily under its inherent systems? The Twi'leks and Wookies being constantly kidnapped and sold into slavery? The careless industrialization of arboreal worlds? The socialization and absorption of all private industry, forcing everyone to work through and with the Empire if they want to work at all? The systematic persecution of anyone remotely Force Sensitive? Is it not the mark of some kind of soul rot to be aware of all of that and go, "Yeah, but I don't care, they have the bigger guns, which is what I need."?

Maybe... just maybe... Thrawn has some Machiavellian tendencies and opinions and maybe this just might... make him not entirely a good person?

And maybe y'all should think about that before you come back and whine about his portrayal as a villain, as if all he has to do is explain to people that he did everything for a good reason and he gets an automatic narrative pardon for all of the shit he did while Grand Admiral that still needs to be addressed and answered for.

[warning-heckboop]

"Why did you make Peri mad at Dev instead of wanting to forgive him?" dunno. Vibes I guess