#and yet also emotionally devastating

[fictionaltrvlr]

I just think that-

[overwhelmed-frog]

just remembered what I think is probably my favorite dnd moment I’ve had to date. in my curse of strahd campaign, we had just left ravenloft after having dinner with strahd, and escher followed us out into the woods. as we were talking to him, falkon showed up. immediately I sense a ~vibe~, so I asked to do an insight check. I rolled really poorly and as my dm started to tell me I wasn’t sure what was going on I was like “wait okay the reason I asked is because I’m trying to figure out if they’re in love with each other. do I get advantage because I’m gay?” fully expecting her to say no. but to my dismay she said yes, so I rolled again. and got a nat 20. they were indeed gay. gaydar so powerful god granted me advantage and a crit success

[turbo-tsundere]

“It's not a butterfly yet, so why is it blamed for not being able to fly?”

[sammygender]

THANK YOU OLI I don't get the season 8 hype. No Cas, Sam and Dean have the same conflict they've been having the entire show with no new angles like why????

YEAH LITERALLY. inital conflict is literally dean being angry at sam for trying to move on and heal which is just so intensely unlikeable and for some reason i was shocked by it and it made me genuinely dislike him. to me dean is at his most awful in s8..... like he's not. he's definitely not. gadreel possession in s9 and like most of s9/10 with the mark is much worse than anything he does in s8 and killing amy in s7 was sooo awful too. but dean is just so intensely a dick in s8 and i was so angry with him and not even in a fun way. like in s9/10 he is AWFUL but i enjoyed the drama. i didnt even enjoy the interpersonal drama in s8. which is when you know something is wrong

then again. im probably too harsh on it and am basing it off memories of sitting through the first half because i LOVE the trials and sacrifice and the great escapist so so much. and i love kevin <3 he's s8 right. but. to me s8 will always be the worst season. maybe i just hate what it brings to the shows canon. sam leaving dean for a girl and a dog (which is NOT EVEN WHAT HAPPENED... and if it WAS it wouldve been justified.... id support sam even if i thought he abandoned dean unprovoked idc.....) is constantly brought back like the worst of his sins even as late as like. s11. SHUT UP. first half of s8 is just upsetting for sam reasons and not in a fun way

[fairyroses]

did you watch the Shattered/Asylum Talkville episodes? 👀

Yes I did! I'm really sorry, I've been meaning to send you all my notes/highlights from the Shattered pod ep like I promised I would, but my last semester of grad school started like 2.5 weeks ago and I've just been massively overwhelmed since then. 😭

Tbh, you could probably watch the full Shattered pod if you wanted, it was a pretty good ep for Talkville standards. The biggest highlight was probably Michael saying that the moment where Lex sees Clark use his powers for the first time is his favorite Lex moment in the series (especially in terms of his own performance)—he's clearly really proud of this episode and I think that made the pod better in general. Also Lionel gets called an evil bastard a couple of times, Tom points out how we all feel bad for Lex by the end of the episode, and Al Gough calls the Clex relationship "the focal point of the series." Other stuff happens too ofc, but I'd say those were my top moments.

The Asylum pod was... less good, IMO—like, it wasn't bad I guess, but some stuff def left me feeling kinda frustrated, so I wouldn't really recommend that you watch that one askldfsk (I could probably skim through it again and collect some highlights from it if you want, though)

[anthyies]

i am normal about the traitor baru cormorant. and the monster baru cormorant. and the tyrant baru cormorant. i promise

[always-a-joyful-note]

thoughts on yoohankim at like any capacity (shipping two of them together or all three)??

HELLO HI THANK YOU!!! I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS. SO. MANY.

Like first of all....

Bob, you don't understand how much I love their trio dynamic. Do you ever wonder how like author, reader, and protagonist they can also represent the three tenses of past, future, and present? Do you ever think about how they are all literally soulmates but not in the fate like nonsense (though I'm weak for that, too) but in the way that they literally CREATED their bond? That in saving Dokja's past, Sooyoung saved her future? That saving Dokja's future, Joonghyuk saved his own past?

They are all literal menaces to society and should never be allowed off a leash and yet they care so much for each other and for the people around them despite their tsundere like personalities (mostly Joonghyuk and Sooyoung. Dokja has a polite smile and Fourth Wall to hide behind).

Please. I of course ship them platonically because I'm me, but every single ship take on them just convinces me they were literally made for each other you can't change my mind. Like listen....with Joonghyuk and Dokja you get the idiot co-dependent fools who both very literally cannot live with each other and yet still manage to have independent arcs away from the other WHILE still including the other as an important factor, you know? With Sooyoung and Dokja, you have one literally pouring her heart out to save his life and the other pouring out his very minimal amount of trust on her (remember in 1863 when he told Alt!Sooyoung how he trusted his company to be safe because they had her?) With Joonghyuk and Sooyoung you just have two burning flames colliding and making each other worse (and fighting in the most destructive ways) and yet still making sure the other isn't going to hurt themselves or do something stupid -

Dang it, I remembered just now that this is an ask game but I don't want to delete all that, so...

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it?

Many reasons, the second foremost (;P) being that I'm a spiteful antiromantic despite actually being the worst in my friend groups about shipping (it's mostly shoving ship art and things at their faces, so I'm not *too* bad). My reputation is on the line....

But a slightly less jokestery answer is just that I like platonic bonds and if canon says no, I will accept that and appreciate it for the friendship fodder it is. And if canon says yes, I probably won't pick up on it unless the genre is literally romance or they actually kiss (even then, 50/50...fun fact. I never knew Annabeth and Percy were supposed to be a couple until the lake kiss thing. Don't know how I missed the pretty big clues...but it is what it is)

What would have made you like it?

....see above...sorry. Also, the comedy from their dynamic. The heart. They have it all.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

See above as well....I'm sorry. It's just....*collapses onto the floor and stares at the ceiling like a dramatic k-drama male lead* they're so stupid and perfect and for what reason?

[problemcore]

recently ive made a habit of putting on hbomberguy videos to fall asleep to. his videos are just perfect for that. but i also incidentally conditioned myself to become sleepier when i put on any of his videos

[chompe-diem]

shoutout to my discarded poll post for my followers asking whether or not i should watch crown of candy

[aoifereal2]

Aaron sisters of dorley is a he/him lesbian btw. If you even care

[gingkos-eldritch-secret]

Me: Finishing a good story

Also me: *staring into the distance* What the hell should I do with my life now??

Next story of the same author: I am here to absolve you of that problem

After finishing all of the author´s stories: *having a slight existential crisis*... Okay. Now what???

[jeepers-scoob]

Catch me doing hot girl shit (rereading the hunger games trilogy again and staring at the wall after every chapter bc head TOO full)

[cyranonic]

I feel like one of the exchanges in S2 that fucks me up the most is this one between Louis and Madeleine that is so pivotal and yet happens basically in the background. It just says so much about who Louis is at this point in his life and why his relationship with Armand is so essentially tragic for them both.

For Armand, the ship has already sailed on betraying Louis and Claudia. He is seconds away from letting the coven ritually murder them and so NATURALLY that is the moment when Madeleine finally confirms the thing that he could never be certain of, the love that he wanted and yet could not quite trust was real. We see that in his face; the misery of that realization.

For Louis, it just devastates me to think about how much of his life has been about hiding his true self, afraid to reveal his softer feelings. In the first episode of the show, he tells Daniel that before Lestat he had never allowed himself to emotionally connect to another man. A big part of this is probably the homophobia of the time period when he was raised. Lestat seems to recognize this when he turns Louis, offering him the chance to be true to himself.

But even after Lestat, we see that Louis still struggles with this. He can allow himself to feel connected to Claudia because she is his child and then his sister. In his mortal life, Louis took on the role of provider for his family, allowing himself to show affection to his mother and sister through his role as a caretaker. Even with Paul, he is both brother and father, caring for him due to his mental illness. Becoming a vampire separated him from familial love, leading him to beg Lestat to turn Claudia so that he can yet again have that love that he connects to being a caretaker.

With Armand, Louis expresses sexual interest, but never emotional closeness. Their dynamic falls into the pattern of dominant and submissive, but without the openly expressed care and security needed to make that relationship work. Just as with Lestat, Louis has a pattern of withholding affection as a form of self-protection. He doesn't want to be vulnerable. He can laugh and joke about the sexual appeal of his partner, but is immediately uncomfortable when Madeleine brings up his deeper feelings.

I think a part of this is derived not just from Louis' queerness and his response to a homophobic society, but also his blackness. In New Orleans, he is constantly emasculated and infantilized by white men. Being called "boy" or being praised for "doing a good job" is a tactic that white supremacists use to remind Louis that he is vulnerable. And after that, combined with the trauma he experienced during his relationship with Lestat, Louis is sick of being vulnerable. So even when he is falling in love, even when his partner is a POC, Louis can't share those feelings. Louis' final words, "he knows," indicate that his withholding isn't malicious or manipulative. It's a hopeful rather than true statement. Louis wants Armand to know, but he shies away from actually having the conversation.

Anyways it's such a gut-punch moment to me that foreshadows how Louis and Armand's relationship had some potential for genuine love within it, but it was also pretty doomed from the start.

[matan4il]

My grandparents were all Holocaust survivors. A large part of my family was murdered in that genocide. I chose to deal with the family trauma by becoming an educator on this subject. I give tours, lectures and workshops on the Holocaust, on antisemitism and on Jewish history.

Intellectually, I'm perfectly aware of how the massacre that Hamas perpetrated is NOT like what the Nazis did. More Jews were murdered over the course of just two days in Babi Yar (33,771 men, women and children), which is just one Nazi shooting pit out of almost two thousand, than during the entire Israeli-Arab conflict. Even after the carnage brought on by Hamas, this is still true. The Nazis were far more systematic (which eventually made them turn industrial) in carrying out the genocide of the Jews than Hamas has been. There's no comparison in terms of scale and industrialization.

And yet emotionally, I can't help but be hit by the similarities in terms of the immediate brutality of the murderers and the experiences of the Jewish victims. Because I am listening to the testimonies and some are so eerily similar to my research, I simply can't process how these are from recent days, not 80 years ago.

Jewish kids hiding from their would be murderers, scared to make a sound for fear of being discovered and killed.

Jewish families completely wiped out.

Jews asking themselves how did they survive and the person next to them did not.

Jewish people executed in droves, their bodies piled up.

Jews begging to be spared, to no avail.

Jewish women raped, most of them then killed.

Jewish babies executed in barbaric ways.

Jews being burned, some after being murdered, some while alive.

Jewish communities devastated. Take kibbutz Be'eri for example. It was founded before the State of Israel. Despite many terrorist attacks, it has continued to thrive in Israel's south. A small, close knit agricultural community. Over 100 people (at least) have been slaughtered there. Homes were destroyed. Everything the kibbutz's economy was based on was laid to waste, too. Be'eri has become synonymous with the worst of the carnage. IDK how they'll build their lives again after the war is over. IDK if they can. A community of almost 80 years, quite likely gone.

Foreign reporters who had been to kibbutz Kfar Azza all talked about the eerie silence and the stench of death rising from the bodies. Eerie silence is exactly how visitors to the sites of the shooting pits describe those places, while the allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi camps talked about the stench of death there.

Some of the reactions to this massacre also remind me of the Holocaust. Even though the Nazis, the murderers themselves, documented their extermination of Jews, there are those who deny the Holocaust happened, painting the Jews as liars. Similarly, even though Hamas documented themselves, and released the footage themselves, there are people going around denying the atrocities, painting the Jews as liars.

Then there's the justification of the mass murder of Jews by insinuating they brought it on themselves... Back in 1943, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aware of the plight of Jews under the Nazis, told government officials in Allied-liberated North Africa that the number of local Jews in various professions “should be definitely limited” so as to “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany.” Understandable complaints. Understandable complaints of Germans against Jews. Roosevelt, the liberal president, said that while Jews were being exterminated by the Germans. In the same manner, we're seeing people justifying the murder of Jews at the hands of Hamas, even though it's a known antisemitic terrorist organization which has repeatedly called for the murder of all Jews in the world. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a reportedly Hamas affiliated Imam declared, "If the Zionist state were to move to the other end of the Mediterranean, our war would not be over, for the enemy is the Jew.

And while I stand by my statement that the scale is nothing alike, the carnage that took place in Israel IS the biggest massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust. Not even during Israel's Independence War and some of the massacres of Jews that happened during it (like the Kfar Etzion massacre) were this many Jews murdered during a single day.

Just like so many were silent back then as Jews were being both killed for being Jewish AND blamed for their own murder, many are silent now as well. Don't get me wrong, there are A LOT of amazing people who reached out to their Jewish friends, who showed they care, who took to the streets, who held vigils for the massacre's victims! Many heads of state also condemned this vicious attack. But I'm looking at Tumblr specifically, and it is FULL of posts justifying Hamas' slaughter of Jews. They're being reblogged everywhere, spread in every fandom. People who claim to stand for social justice feel absolutely no shame sharing such de-humanizing posts on their blogs. And what do we do? Are we calling them out? Do we make it clear that it is morally unacceptable to blame Jews for their own murder? Do we unfollow these bloggers, so that at least the dropping numbers send out the message that it is unacceptable to justify the massacre of innocent people?

TLDR:

This massacre is not like the Holocaust, but the cruel antisemitism that motivated it is the same. Let's not let antisemitism thrive here. Please do what you can (whatever that is) to stand for what's right.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[raisedbythetv89]

Spike is the spark that brings Buffy’s fire (her ability to love) back

(stone - a notoriously non flammable material)

Buffy’s love is spoken about in relation to fire but even brighter and more intense

she sings of wanting the fire (her ability to love and feel as deeply as she once did) back - where once was a flame so bright it burned her - now there is nothing but black & cold

spike’s love for Buffy is also equated to fire showing how he matches her intensity with which she loves (love the use of the lighting in this shot he literally looks like he’s sitting back to back with his shadow as he wrestles for a moment of just letting Buffy die before ultimately going to help her) also this line is showing how much loving Buffy has cost him the burdens he’s carried, the pain and sacrifices he’s made and endured - “I have come to redefine the terms pain and suffering since falling in love with you” loving Buffy for Spike is painful AND HE STILL LOVES HER AND KEEPS TRYING TO DO AND BE BETTER FOR HER LITERALLY NO MATTER WHAT 😭🤚🏻

but this line from Giles foreshadows the need for Spike to get his soul (the spark) back in order for Buffy to get her fire back - soulless spike’s love is not enough because of the guilt and shame she feels loving a soulless demon

(thank you @spuffylatino for this spike screen grab)

e voila! Their joint hands burst into flames in the moment Buffy can finally say the words “I love you” which she hasn’t told a romantic partner that since Angel - representing Buffy getting her fire back and that she has found someone who not only won’t pull away from the intensity of her love but can match it

hands ablaze and neither pulls away until forced to by the collapsing hellmouth and Buffy gasps in relief because she did it, she got the fire back and now she can tell him with no fear or shame that she loves him before it’s too late

and after she says it she has sort of this “I know that’s pretty obvious given our joint hands are currently ablaze as our twin flame souls intertwine but you deserve to hear it and I wanted to and now CAN say it” look on her face like she’s really fucking proud of him but also herself that this is how far they’ve come both as individuals and a couple

When I say Spike is the best romantic partner for Buffy it’s not because it’s perfect - it’s because after she dates angel and riley she’s an emotionally devastated, vulnerable, heartbroken, abandoned YET AGAIN mess who can barely hold it together and gets more and more closed off each time. But THIS is the impact Spike has on her. Despite all they go through he is a catalyst for the return of her strength, confidence, healing, and emotional vulnerability. I love the overall impact he has on her as well as her on him!! They change each other for the better!! Through their love!!!! THAT’S AMAZING!!

[canary-prince]

Could the teenaged Yellowjackets beat their older selves in a fight? A very autistic post.

Young Taissa Verses Adult Taissa:

Listen this is so easy. Like, so easy. Young Taissa would destroy her older self. Her older self would have no idea what was happening before it was over. Young Taissa is the wolf slayer and the strongest Yellowjacket in terms of both body and spirit. Young Taissa has supernatural resolve like goddamn Spider-Man and older Taissa has amputated those parts of herself to be try and rejoin society. Young Taissa wins, I will die on this hill.

Young Misty verses Adult Misty:

This is close. This is so, so close, because Misty left nothing behind in the wilderness. She still has everything she learned out there, so her Adult self is every bit as vicious and lethal as her younger self. Young Misty, however, is much more volatile, and I feel like Adult Misty might fall for the younger one's manipulations. I think this ultimately goes to Adult Misty, just because Adult Misty would turn to poisons, which young Misty isn't yet skilled enough in to both avoid and sneak into the older one's food.

Young Natalie Verses Adult Natalie:

This doesn't come to physical blows. Every time Young Natalie tries to start shit, Adult Natalie says something something so mean and devastating that her younger self freezes in place and dwells on it for hours. This repeats a dozen or so times before Young Natalie has a nervous break down.

Young Lottie verses Adult Lottie:

This also doesn't come to physical violence because young and adult Lottie terrify each other. That type of self reflection is simply too emotionally intense for both of them and they just keep avoiding each other. If you trap them in a room they're just very awkward and then they're passive aggressive and then they have a terrible argument that makes both of them cry

Young Shauna verses Adult Shauna:

Adult Shauna takes this because she's gotten meaner. She'll attack Young Shauna emotionally WHILE beating the shit out of her but in a relatively restrained way. When Young Shauna calms the fuck down, she just follows Adult Shauna around going

Adult Van verses Young Van:

My god young Van eviscerates this woman and its with much less skill than Taissa displayed. This is because adult Van is basically a sock monkey. She has zero offensive or defensive skills. She will simply die.