#IDK WHAT TO SAY I JUST FEEL SO MUCH

[lifeonmvrs]

happy birthday to the best character ever,, baz pitch

[inkskinned]

you know, you know. no gods, no masters, no kings on pedestals. everyone is fallible. death of the author. you know! you are balanced about your intake of media - you allow the wiggle room, the grace, the gratitude, the skepticism. nobody above criticism.

but still. a weird gut-punch feeling, something akin to betrayal. you read the article. surprise! an author you love is actually: a serial fucking predator.

well, shit. what now. no, you knew he was a person (all people are), but now you're wondering - what have i overlooked by accident? what messages have i internalized that are strange and cruel? and also, like, what the fuck?

his actions lay a thick glaze on top of everything. like each place is now ruined, opaque in a new way. but okay, fine, you've done this before. you knew better, right? you've been betrayed by many a cherished childhood author.

still, this stickiness. fuck. can you pick up that book again. will you read it to your children. you've recommended it to others - will you ever do that again? and of course, of course, no parasocial relationships. you were theoretically above this kind of sentiment. but the artist informs the art, right.

so it's not something as clear-cut as feeling he owed you, specifically (a stranger) better behavior - just that you kind of, in a distant and odd way... sort of trusted him to do better. it's not like a real trust or something speakable, just the faint hope that the product (good books) was a thin representation of the soul. now it feels like the product (good? books?) was a mask. in some small or insignificant way, your previous support of this person lent them power. your money and your time and your laughter.

and the thing is - you have this terrible, echoing sensation. how many times will this happen? over and over. you find out that the singer you love is actually a predator. you learn over drinks that your favorite high school english teacher is in jail for what he did to her. you listen to the news idly and suddenly discover that a woman you used to idolize has been abusing her kids for an actual eon.

what can you touch without the static melting off. you can't even really complain about it too much (you were supposed to know better, and besides, you don't want the same re-split "it's not your fault, love what you love" basic advice), but now it's here. somehow, it feels like - you let him into your life.

it's not that things need to be pure or an artist has to be like, endlessly perfect, mindful. demure. it's more just this terrible truth that has been replayed through your veins so often it feels criminally vain. power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. did you want any one person to be worth that power?

it's just that he wrote books where he seemed to understand that. he seemed to know about hierarchies and unfair systems and bigotry and privilege. you thought they were books about what it means to struggle. you thought they were about having power and still using it for good rather than for control. he spooned you a narrative of being a good guy, a kind soul. you fucking bought what that fucking monster sold.

maybe that's why they were fantasies, after all.

[rystiel]

that annoying moment when getting left for dead in the trunk of a car in your 20s comes back to haunt you 40 years later (take a shot every time ford says “stanley”)

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

i've discovered a quite large category of people who never got into The Good Place and the only way they could articulate their disinterest was, "there's no stakes cause they're already dead." i'm obsessed with the idea the only reason they could enjoy seinfeld is they imagined kramer could beef it any fucking second

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.

[jmr-observingfromafar]

ngl Matangi in Moana 2 was kinda gay. like just a little gay. i mean my girl is a "crazy cat bat lady", calls Moana "babe" twice in her song (the way i audibly gasped in the theater when i heard it lol), and is like sooooo queer coded i love it sm. she just gives off the vibes of sapphic-coded older woman who's played as suave and confident and makes the mc just go "haguphuk" and we all know if this was old disney they would've leaned so hard into that. but i could not have been the only one to keep catching Matangi poking her buttons, the hand on her chin in one scene, just being a total fucking vibe like please i know what you are. that whole scene felt real gay and don't think im leaving Moana out of this one. she is gay, i don't make the rules. i'm stickin with this hc no one can stop me from making Matangi the cool lesbian aunt and NO ONE will stop me from turning Moana gay (Auli'i Cravalho knows what she's doing)

ok im gonna be so real for a second i was simping HARD over Moana's character design in this movie.... like even more than baby me was dying during the first one... like this girl is just- oh my gosh. baby-gay me from 8 years ago would have actually DIED if she'd seen this Moana. it's almost embarrassing how down bad i was during that movie like she's so fucking pretty i wasn't ready for her design. like girls are just too much sometimes, i cant cope .

also side tangent but the lazy ass rewrite of Moana 2 from its planned version as a Disney+ series into a freaking MOVIE was just- so painfully obvious. like they didn't even try reworking it. the structure of the whole movie is painfully episodic and it was just so blatantly shoved into movie format without any care for the integrity of basic movie versus tv structure, so the char dev and pacing was just so rough. like what were the writers even thinkingggg. pretty disappointing but that's ok i have the fandom to make me feel better (moana fan art save me....)

[rmbunnie]

Something kinda tasteless about the way that alongside the concerns of "Batman needs someone to rein in his aggression/edginess" (mostly a meta concern,) "Robin is a symbol of undying hope right alongside Batman, Superman, and the police system," and "now that the thought's crossed my mind I think being Robin would be pretty sweet actually," one of Tim's points for why he should be Robin at the end of A Lonely Place of Dying is "we need to show the criminals of Gotham that they can't just kill Robin and expect to get away with it!" Because. They can. That's exactly what happened.

Using that line of reasoning, Tim makes the claim that the idea of Jaybin's life as disposable and inconsequential is heinous and bad, his killing something impermissible, but instead of disproving said idea they allow it to become true and devote their energy to making sure it doesn't become widely known as such. By covering his death up, they actually are permitting his murder to go unaddressed and deeming it acceptable, even taking away the opportunity for it to be consequential to anyone outside of Bruce's inner circle by not spreading the news. As much as we say "oh Bruce was a great dad because losing Jason crushed him" and "he almost considered trying to kill the Joker one time," he in all tangible areas did not do anything about Jason's death. Setting aside the question of killing the Joker or not, it's still shown in Batman Year 3 that Bruce's reaction to Jason's death in the time til Tim showed up was to hide away everything Jason owned and carry on with business as usual, a little angrier. Bruce didn't make any changes or actually evaluate anything in a significant way after the warehouse and Jason's death didn't warrant any tangible consequence, that's evident from reading the comic. I know some may disagree, and I acknowledge the room for interpretation, but in order to discuss Tim's reason we have to concede that it is explicitly written into this specific comic as something Bruce and Tim both recognize as fact, because it serves as the foundation that this reason is built on: there is good reason for the criminals to believe there would no punishment for killing Robin based on the actions Bruce did or didn't take in response. The concern about the public realizing there are no consequences for killing Robin wouldn't be reasonable if it wasn't true, if there actually were.

While they recognize that Jason's death came to pass largely without consequence, the fact itself is less of an issue to both Bruce and Tim than letting criminals actually find out that it doesn't have consequence. They know it's unjust, the notion that Jason can be killed without repercussion (and in making an effort to minimize his murder confirm it to be true,) but their concern isn't for what actually happened to Jason or the lack of proper response. At least on the vigilante side of things, the problem is public perception and continuing to uphold an image of Batman as just and diligent while permitting him to ignore injustice against those close to him. There's no efforts taken to actually disprove the idea that killing Robin would lack impact, what Tim proposes is just making it harder to prove right.

I think the best way to word what comes across tasteless for me here (aside from the side commentary on the unstoppable might of the institution of police and how it's an exemplar of heroism) is that beyond Tim's victim-blaming of Jason during his stint as Robin, (discussed in more depth by people who can word it better than me,) in the base text of a Lonely Place of Dying, it is foundational to the initial premise of Tim as Robin that part of his motive for being Robin hinges on accepting what happened to Jason as something that cannot be allowed in their pursuit of justice or go unaddressed for reasons completely unrelated to the actual harm, and then intentionally erasing the event and the way in which it was allowed and did go unaddressed. No matter how much it's claimed in later comics that Bruce was faultless and Jason doomed himself, Tim's Robin came to be at least in part (in-universe) as a cover-up for the lack of action taken about Jason's death, and by extension as an effort to overwrite his time as Robin and an individual entirely. And thought it wasn't the way his character viewed it, Tim wasn't passively complicit in it or going along with a poor grieving man, the intentional and deliberate erasure of Jason as a murder victim and the injustice of his posthumous treatment was part of his opening pitch.

[violetscanfly]

Once again I offer you art that I didn't post when it was made✌🏻 One thing I have learned is to never throw away your art because even if you don't immediately like it you might some day

[beetlethebug]

thinking about emmrich saying "fuck" today. so, i like to think that emmrich is a man who does not swear. it's just not his cup of tea. as any good scholar knows though, there's a time and place to say "fuck," and when he does? my god. like. this man knows the best time to use it--to let something vulgar slip from his lips, especially when rook cannot do anything about it. emmrich knowing that rook is already going to be pent up from a day running around the entire goddamn earth whispering, "i cannot wait for you to fuck me when you return," and rook just has to live with that! has to have the sound of emmrich saying something like that for however long the mission takes.

and the implications of using that word versus any other in his repertoire. "fuck" implies dirty and nasty and rough. it's casual to a fault. it's grabbing hand and gnashing teeth and barely contained passion. emmrich swearing is like...him letting loose to the like umpteenth degree. it's letting himself feel his basest desires. young men fuck. and gods, do you bring out the young man in him.

[arsenicflame]

It's a time-honoured tradition- every time Sam comes across Izzy (and Ed) in their travels, he asks Izzy to marry him. And every time, Izzy turns him down.

At this point, Sam is asking more for the sake of it than any belief Izzy will ever say yes, a remnant of childhood dedication touched with 30 years of heartbreak and regret- though even now, a small part of him still holds out hope. Sam's promises have only got more extravagant over the years, from a job as his first mate, to a captaincy, a fleet at his command, a whole fucking island if that's what Izzy wants- but he knows it isn't though, not really. If Izzy was ever going to agree to marry him, to leave his life and go with Sam, it wouldn't be for anything Sam could offer him. Izzy never did care for flashy shows of wealth, for a ship or to be captain. The only thing that ever mattered to him was loyalty given, and loyalty shown in return. 

It all comes to a head after Stede left and came back, after Izzy lost a toe, lost his leg. Sam hasn't seen him since before things with Ed started to really slide off the rails, before stress permanently set into the lines of Izzy’s face. So, when he sees a dishevelled man with a hoof for a leg in a no-name port, he doesn't even consider the idea that he might know him. It's only when he turns towards him, and Sam catches a glance at those oh too familiar tattoos, he realises this is Izzy, his Izzy, that stands before him.

Knowing Izzy's discomfort with pity, he doesn't treat him any differently than he would in years gone by, positioning himself in Izzy's line of sight before approaching and sweeping him up into a bone crushing hug. 

“Israel-goddamn-Hands!” he exclaims, as Izzy grumbles back a begrudging “Samuel-fucking-Bellamy”, a tradition almost as old as their friendship itself. Izzy might not hug him back, but he can’t keep the corner of his mouth from twitching, just for a second.

(If Sam holds Izzy a little tighter and a little longer than usual, well. That's his business)

By the time Sam lets go, most of the crew has appeared in the town square, drawn in by the commotion. They may have given Izzy his leg and welcomed him as one of them, but still there’s an underlying tension, with nobody quite ready to set aside everything that happened before the Kraken. Seeing him cosying up to an unknown man sets everyone on edge, unsure whether to come to their first mate’s aid, or to assume that they've been betrayed once again.

When Ed sees that the yelling was Sam, his hand goes tense where it's held in Stede's. He knows the routine, has seen it more times than he can count, but as he watches them part he realises that this is the first time in a long time he's unsure of what Izzy's response will be.

Knowing that something’s different, knowing that Izzy's feeling vulnerable already, Sam doesn't go for the same flashy proposal he’s been giving for years. He doesn't promise Izzy the world, he doesn't cause a scene (or, any more of a scene than he already has, anyway). He looks at the fractured man in front of him, takes his face in his hands, and says the exact same thing to him he said when they were little more than boys. “Israel, I have to ask you. I know what you'll say, but I have to try. Come with me. Marry me and sail away with me. I'll keep you safe”

And Izzy… hesitates. He glances over at Ed, at Stede, and says to Sam “...We’re staying in port for a week. Ask me again then”

That's the moment Sam knows there is something deeply, horribly, wrong. He's not just looking at an Izzy who got seriously injured in a fight and is struggling to cope, this is something so much bigger than that- and that Ed has something to do with it. Izzy wouldn't even be considering leaving if he didn't. Whether it was negligence or something more sinister, Sam doesn't yet know, but he intends to find out.

[pineappical]

would calling this something like "the sun to his earth" be a little bit too cliche? maybe...

[royalarchivist]

Jaiden: Cucurucho, you have a lot of power, right?

Cucurucho: ...I don't know. Maybe.

Roier: Ah... Yes, you know, don't act like a dumbass, you have it. You have it, man. Eh?

Jaiden: Is there a way for us to protect all the Eggs? Do you know? I don't want anything to happen to the Eggs that happened to Bobby.

Cucurucho: Ha ha ha

Roier: WHAT? [Smacks Cucurucho]

Jaiden: [Bops him] Headpats.

Cucurucho: Maybe.

Jaiden: [Continues to bop him] Headpats. C'mon, I can get it out of you! Headpats! Chin scratches! Belly rubs!

Roier: [Joins Jaiden in bopping Cucurucho, chuckling and laughs]

Jaiden: Yeah? He's comin' around!

[Jaiden and Roier both laugh]

[wybienova]

dream visit (nostalgia) - a 2nd anniversary katfl comic

[whamss]

I see talk from time to time about Meat Rosemary reunions about how tragic it would be to see Rosebot reject Kanaya after she spent all that time chasing after her blah blah blah but man you know what would get me? The two of them reuniting and Kanaya seeing a Rose who's nigh unrecognizable to her. Seeing a Rose with Dirk's hands buried so deep inside her mind she's more like him than herself, in a body that isn't her own (made by his hands), and not knowing what to do with that? Seeing Rose continuously push Kanaya away would be tragic, yes, but what about imagining how Kanaya grapples with the reality that the woman she's trying to save is barely even herself anymore? Wondering if, when all is said and done, she would even get her back... Or if Dirk's influence is already so deeply ingrained inside of her that he would keep on living through her? What is it like to love a woman so deeply you're ready to kill her father to save her, while fully understanding the ways this might hurt her? To love a woman so deeply you'll cross galaxies to return to her side, knowing fully well that she might push you away in the end? Things I chew on