#I've had guns pointed at me

[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.

[dragongirltongue]

I'm also just gonna say, threatening a minority with law enforcement is a bigger fucking threat of violence than whatever hammer explosion cartoon bullshit in a tiny ass vent post could ever be.

As someone who's had cops breathing down my neck fucking waiting for an excuse to hurt me on multiple occassions, it's fucking violence.

[dreamsaflame]

Mouthwashing is so prescient on discourse about inaction. So many people asking why Curly brushed aside Anya's fears and remained lenient with Jimmy. So many people asking why Swansea didn't immediately take action after the private convo in the cockpit.

And now, in real time, you can see people trying to defend both men. And I don't think this is done out of malice, or any intention to downplay the horror of Anya's situation. I think it's pretty human nature to want a better world, to want to soften the blow. There's so much we don't know (the timeline, the details of the convo, the actual nature of Curly's friendship with Jimmy, etc etc ad nauseam), so there is space to hope for a gentler moment, even if we all know the aftermath is unbearable and impact is imminent. We still want to believe things could be different, that things could be better. It doesn't change anything, but still. But still.

Maybe Anya had still held on to a little bit of hope, futile though it would have been. Maybe she didn't feel completely isolated the entire time. She was failed by both Curly and Swansea in every way that matters, but maybe she could have sat by them and not feel like her world had fully imploded. Maybe there were moments where the world allowed her to breathe.

Maybe Curly didn't know. Maybe he did try to keep Jimmy away from Anya. Maybe he was doing what he could, despite his desire to see the best in people (Jimmy). Maybe there wasn't enough time for him to even do anything. Maybe Swansea tried to step up afterwards. We don't know. We only see through the eyes of one man who only wanted to see the good in the world, and then through the eyes of one man who only saw himself.

And the game's prescience even about the end––wishing doesn't change anything. Anya dies putting away her conviction that your worst moments don't define you, that they don't make of you a monster. Daisuke dies having helped no one with his hope and sacrifice. Swansea dies filled with regret, having done nothing, protected no one. Curly watches till the end as his freeze reaction ensures he stays frozen, unable to act, to help.

Even Jimmy, wishing he was better, that he was a hero––and in the end, even Polle turns away from him.

[ducktracy]

proper reupload in the high quality this fantastic segment so deserves; eagle pig and duck bias notwithstanding, this will forever be my favorite variant of the fabled switcheroo (and a reminder that Daffy was first at his own game!) the committal on behalf of both characters--especially the sincerity of Daffy's feigned sincerity--really sets it apart

[lilcathsmith]

Crime Show Meme - CSI insp [2/5 cases]

"you're acting like you're going to rescue a person, not recover a body. And on this job... that's just not usually the case. "I was rescued." - Gum Drops (Season 6 Episode 5, 20th October 2005)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

set out to create a serious, canonesque drawing with which to say "feel free to go in my lackadaisy tag and help me mystery speculate" but only got going when i made it bowling and the rarepair agenda

[fisheito]

finally unlocked maid blade's intimacy rooms and i just. i gotta say. i am very pleased. SO VERY pleased. excellent, everywhere, all around, fantastic loved it start to finish (i got a little worried in the middle bc distressed blade gnaws at my sympathetic heart chamber) but now i am filled with new images and new appreciation for big floofy skirts and blade's adorable master-pleasing ways

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

i can do this i can do this i can do this (file my taxes a day late) i can do this i can do this if i consume enough coffee i can do this i can do this i can

[shiryawashere]

sometimes you listen to a soundtrack and accidentally cook up the outline for an entire sequel to a slowburn that's already over 50k words long

[currentlyonstandbi]

[andi-o-geyser]

this military propaganda movie has bewitched me, body and soul, with its heavily coded gay rivals, found family, cool planes, kickass music, and rampant homosexual tendencies

[deadrlngers]

me doing completely normal things vs. my mother telling me to not do them since i was 5 y/o bc "that's smth men do"

[lu-sn]

"Multiple research studies have examined the question of whether men who abuse women tend to be survivors of childhood abuse, and the link has turned out to be weak; other predictors of which men are likely to abuse women have proven far more reliable, as we will see. Notably, men who are violent toward other men are often victims of child abuse—but the connection is much less clear for men who assault women. The one exception is that those abusers who are brutally physically violent or terrifying toward women often do have histories of having been abused as children. In other words, a bad childhood doesn’t cause a man to become an abuser, but it can contribute to making a man who is abusive especially dangerous."

— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, ch. 2

[setsumushou]

#as long as i'm not given a play by play of some stranger's sexual habits it's great

Okay lol ngl, that was my favorite part - but I know that not everyone thinks the same way, and it's good to know where individuals' preferences and boundaries are, so that I can try to be mindful of them.

PORN WRITERS OF AO3

the #author wants to hear about dead batteries tag has always kinda bugged me, in part because i suspect porn writers who don't want comments about readers getting off to their porn are a small minority of porn writers, which would mean that the norm should be it's cool to comment "do you know how much i masturbate to this", and authors who don't want those comments can have their own tag instead.

but i am speculating wildly, so please reblog and give me some data!

[callmeoceanplease]

Hawaiian pizza tastes different from pineapple pizza.

Hawaiian pizza tastes different from pineapple pizza.

Hawaiian pizza tastes different from pineapple pizza.

Hawaiian has ham on it, and it fucking tastes weird.

Pineapple pizza just has crust, sauce, cheese, and pineapple, and it's so much better than Hawaiian ever could be.

Hawaiian is a crime against pizza and I firmly believe it is the sole reason people don't like pineapple on pizza.

Hawaiian pizza tastes different from pineapple pizza.

[vitiateoriginator]

Went to the mall with my friend today, and the fire alarm suddenly went off. I made us haul ass outta there real quick. Even tho the alarm stopped like 2 minutes later. I wasn't taking chances