#Lesser Lights

[chinzhilla]

𝔗𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔶-𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔬𝔣 ℌ𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟺

I thought we could help him. But I was wrong. It's time we cut out the cancer.

Malignant (2021) dir. James Wan

[a-noodle-named-daemon]

Deep cleaned Daemon’s terrarium today and he provided some very helpful assistance 👷

[year-of-the-rabid-dog]

Palestinian Artists/Record Labels on Bandcamp

{ELECTRONIC}

00970

377

Bilna'es بالناقص

BOUNCYDUCK

BRUT_FORC.e/TRAUM.a

Cyber Witch

Double Dunks

Loris

NaJazz Project

Sea Level Records /تسجيلات سطح البحر 

Toumba

{EXPERIMENTAL}

Dirar Kalash

Dunums

Garden of Gethsemane

Irritable Syndrome

Mamzera

Maya Al-Khaldi

Never A Land Without People

Phonodelica

Raymond Haddad

{FOLK}

Akram Abdulfattah

Arhan Afndy

Gazelleband

Marwan Abado

Rim Banna

Samah Mustafa

Sounds of Palestine

{INDIE/ALTERNATIVE}

Bassam Beroumi

Discoverer

Eddie Violet

Haya Zaatry

Mafar

Maysa Daw

Shadi Zaqtan

{JAZZ/RNB}

Drink Sage

Majazz Project / Palestine Sound Archive

{METAL}

Bahal Amma

{RAP/HIP-HOP}

Asifeh

ERROR

Exist Records

Moody Kablawi

Shabab

{FUNDRAISER/SOLIDARITY PROJECTS}

"A Better Tomorrow for Palestine" by naru records; profits made will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians

"Archivio Futuro x Gaza" by Archivo Futuro; profits made will be donated to the Gaza Emergency Appeal by the UNRWA

"By the People, For the People" by House of Afandi Records; profits made will be donated to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Dunums & MANAS' Self-Titled EP; profits made will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians

"For Palestine" by Paralax Editions; profits made will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders

"For Palestine" by Toumba; profits made will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders

"For Those We Lost" by Lowlives Collective

IAFG - Vol. 1 by IAFG - International Artists For Gaza; profits made will be donated to Gaza Freestyle

"For All" by MidnightRoba; profits made will be donated to the Gaza Emergency Appeal by the UNRWA and Medical Aid for Palestinians

"ت​ر​و​ي​د​ة م​و​ل​ا​ل​ا​ة - ح​ر​ي​ة" by 1; profits made will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians

"Rap Across the Wall-Palestine" by Musicians Without Borders; profits go towards workshops organized by MWB to help platform lesser known Palestinian artists and provide music programs to Palestinian children (Bara’em Ghirass)

"RE-INSTITUTIONS" by BALLAMONA; profits made will be donated to Save the Children: Gaza Emergency Appeal

"Resist to Exist" by Avon Terror Corp x Exist Records; profits made will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society

"The Olive Tree" by Turquoise Coconut; profits made will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians

[notbecauseofvictories]

[ Washington D.C. — August 2024 ]

[alilyamongroses]

Kate Phillips as Queen Jane Seymour, Damien Lewis as Henry VIII and Lily Lesser as Princess Mary in season two of Wolf Hall

[dailytudors]

Lilit Lesser as The Lady Mary

[BBC's Wolfhall: The Mirror and the Light Promotional Material]

[tackletofset]

Dark Rise theories I disagree with and why:

Sarcean r*ped Anharion: I find it perplexing that many people still believe in this lie. It's canon that Anharion "had GIVEN himself" to Sarcean, and "the feeling of being taken, melting heat, and the fall of hair around him like black silk" is a very poor way to describe a noncon situation.

The on-and-off Collar switch: What makes you think that Sarcean wouldn't be dead by Anharion's hands the second he "switched off" the Collar, if it was as coercive as they thought?

Will and James will "dissolve" after getting their memories back and morph fully into their past selves: The memories serve as key to make decisions about their present and future. In order for Will and James to decide for themselves, they must understand the full truth of Sarcean and Anharion without the biases, prejudices, and agendas of those around them. Pacat has made it clear that Will and Sarcean will ultimately choose different paths, despite being two incarnations of the same person. The former chooses to rule, while the latter prefers freedom, and both choices are valid given their respective situations. The endgame should be putting Sarcean and Anharion to rest so that Will and James can move forward: Will must reconcile with his past in order to navigate his future.

Anharion's real name was a deadname: I say this as a person under the trans* umbrella. "Anharion" wasn't a name he had chosen for himself; it was an insult coined by the Light side. Perhaps he had come to embrace it out of spite. Just as Melkor (Mighty Arising) was dubbed "Morgoth" (black foe) by his enemies, and Mairon (The Admirable) was later called "Sauron" (the Abhorred), I believe Anharion's real name will be revealed in Book 3, with a positive meaning. I can't wait to call him "Queen (Real name)."

Will or James having to k*ll the other/k*ll themselves: Pacat intended to break the pattern where queer protagonists always met tragic ends. It was one of her motivations for writing Captive Prince and also emphasized a lot during Dark Rise interviews.

We will have a sad ending: Pacat stated in a December 2021 Q&A that a "happy ending [was] guaranteed" for the aforementioned reason.

James has no agency: James has plenty of agency, even amidst his complicated situations, with many people constantly attempting to violate his boundaries. James has consistently made his choices and desires clear. The unconventional nature of his choices, which may not always make sense to others, does not diminish their validity.

Sarcean was fully evil: "The Dark King did Nothing Wrong" nuff said.

[aimasup]

throws up my hands in mock resignation but also a hint of frustration Okay Valentino is a cool villain I guess

He's like. Genuinely unsettling. Wish the show struck a better balance with his character sometimes (like sometimes when he's onscreen I have to skip over because I feel queasy and sometimes he's so unsubtle he feels more like a prop than a guy who's going to be a Huge Deal in s2)

[jojossillywalk]

do you ever think about how polnareff lost his mom young and canonically admits that he has no family back in france, his memory version of sherry says that he'd have done anything for her, one of his prominent memories is buying her an umbrella, and his memory version brings up his regret about one time he flipped at her when they were kids.

and how he initially takes avdol having concern for him as patronizing and how he is very insistent that he's been "alone from the start" and his admittedly extremely inconvenient habit of going off by himself by reflex becomes minimally less funny

[m00nb04rd5]

Nahida (Genshin Impact)

[mitamicah]

Another Bojči for his birthday :3 Such a good seal dad 🥹🦭

[a-noodle-named-daemon]

Caught the boy exploring his freshly arranged terrarium 💛 Makes me so happy to see him come out exploring as soon as nighttime falls

[mysteriousbp]

Can we get Gerson talking to hope about why he killed her even though we know, but I like a way like a conference

[notbecauseofvictories]

[ Washington D.C. — August 2024 ]

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Reading your post about buggy and shanks. I get a lot but why guy like shanks would care about guy like buggy?

Their interactions in marine ford for me were just nostalgia with using buggy for what he needed. The way he talked about him with white beard also seems just nostalgia vibes. He doesn’t even know if he is a pirate or not.

Shanks seems so much more open to others. He parties with Mihawk. Drinks with Whitebeard. His crew interactions. All of them are much better. More honourable. Have courage.

Let’s be honest, buggy is one of the worst people. He is greedy and selfish af.(( I think it’s good he gets some shit from cross guild) I don’t see any reason other than my childhood was with this guy so I have soft spot but nothing special here.

well, if you don’t like buggy, i can see why you’d have trouble imagining what shanks might see in him.

but one of the worst, really? the guy who lied and stole to get a devil fruit is on the same level as the guy who murdered a decades-long ally for a devil fruit? like, yeah, buggy’s greedy and selfish… he’s a pirate. i know most of our heroes are Good And Noble Pirates, but it’s not strange to see pirates in one piece who have more ordinary motives.

imo buggy’s worst trait is not either greed or selfishness, but his two-facedness. he’s got a very very small number of people he actually feels loyalty towards, and everyone else is one bad situation away from getting metaphorically stabbed in the back. he tells himself it’s their fault for thinking they could trust someone like him—or in the case of his impel down followers, that they admire him so much they’d want to die in his place. sometimes he feels bad about it! (he wouldn’t bother trying to justify his actions to himself otherwise!) but self-preservation is always buggy’s highest priority.

he’s made himself into a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy of untrustworthiness, acting like this… and i find it kind of funny, because buggy takes other people at their word even when they’re obviously manipulating him! a very trusting, very untrustworthy guy. these contradictions are a big part of what i like about buggy as a character.

as for cross guild… i might enjoy the shit buggy gets from them more if it was for anything he did on purpose. like, beat him up for making unilateral one piece-hunting announcements, sure! but he didn’t design that boat. it just feels like punishing him for having followers who buy his hype… who mihawk and crocodile are also taking advantage of, so it’s not like they have any real moral high ground there. they’re just embarrassed to ride on the clown boat.

anyway, you aren’t really asking about buggy’s qualities, you’re asking about shanks’ feelings. and as i’ve mentioned a time or two before, we don’t really have any insight into those in present day! my big shanks/buggy post is about their thoughts and feelings in the past, because those do seem a bit more transparent to me, so i feel more comfortable speaking on them.

but present day shanks…

he says natsukashii when whitebeard brings up buggy, which is usually translated as “nostalgic” or “fondly remembered.” he’s not like buggy, when they parted ways he didn’t linger over any hurt feelings and let them grow bitter. that’s good! that’s healthy behavior! and his knowledge of buggy’s current status is kaze no uwasa de mada kaizoku wo yatteru to kiita, “heard a rumor on the wind [he’s] still being a pirate.” shanks has been on the grand line, in the new world, for years, why would he know anything concrete about a minor east blue pirate? he only learns about luffy’s first east blue bounty because mihawk brings the poster to him; i think we can assume shanks doesn’t have the time to search through newspapers from a distant ocean in the hopes of maybe seeing a one-line reference to an old friend.

i do find it amusing that the verb he uses to describe their separation is also used to mean “break up/divorce” but i’m sure you don’t care about that.

as for being more open with others… it’s not like they reunite under good circumstances. ace and whitebeard have just died, along with who knows how many others; massive bloodshed is only being held off by shanks’ presence and attention. shanks uses buggy to keep his old promise with luffy from being broken because that promise matters to shanks but he cannot afford to put in the time himself, he has to keep the marines from starting shit while they sort through their dead and wounded. it’s not exactly a “let’s get a drink and catch up” moment.

and that’s the only time we’ve seen them interact as adults!

claiming that because shanks wasn’t open with buggy in that moment he would never be open with him in another time and place is an ungenerous interpretation of the character. even if you don’t think the chapter 581 cover is canon, one of the few interests we’ve seen the buggy pirate crew and the red-haired pirate crew have in common is their love for a party. (probably taught to their captains by roger back in the day!) why wouldn’t they hang out and get day drunk if the opportunity presented itself?

and saying “my childhood was with this guy” and “nothing special” in the same sentence cracks me up—it’s not like they were in school together with dozens of other kids! buggy is the only other person who went through that experience. everyone else on the oro jackson was an adult, many of them 20-30 years older than those two. their experience of those events was inherently different. sharing an experience like that with one other person is special, even if that’s all there is between you.

and that’s what your question is ultimately about, right? is that nostalgia for their childhood all that exists between shanks and buggy? i don’t know. i don’t think we’ve seen enough of shanks around buggy in present day—or heard any of shanks’ present day thoughts about buggy—to make a definitive claim one way or another.

sure, on paper buggy seems like the kind of person shanks would look down on at best. but he smiles when buggy chews him out for saying hisashiburi (long time no see/it’s been a while) like he didn’t just lie about having a treasure map for buggy. now, maybe that’s just shanks being amused by a tiny yappy dog who’s no real threat to him. maybe it’s a real, sincere affection for this dumbass who still doesn’t see shanks as a threat. or maybe it’s nostalgia for the dumb fights they used to have as kids, with a hint of disbelief at how little buggy has changed.

even if it is, i don’t think that’s all their relationship has to be. an old fond feeling is a fine place to start from, to build something new—if that’s what they both want.

[personal-breeze-2]

my vote is that i hope both of their heads explode