#but how every fucking piece of media

[theclam-beforethestorm]

Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker being treated like they’re two different people, my beloathed.

[phansterdam]

Nimona (2023) - dir. Nick Bruno & Troy Quane

[crimeronan]

i think there's something really beautiful about carpenter distancing herself from the trawler man every chance she gets and still getting showered by miracles while faulker, oh he of strong convictions, gets to bring the miracle of the trawler man to everyone around him but never quite gets to ascend to glory himself. i just love that they're both perfectly poised to stare at each other and each think "your goals are backwards and your methodology is dumb and possibly sacrilegious" and then still end up as something close to friends

also let's talk about how, despite these dynamics, at the end of the day, the trawler man is really just trying to give each of them what they want from him.

MMM YEAH. carpenter being beloved by multiple gods despite being such an ornery bitch who wants NOTHING to do with their sacrificial bullshit..... it really gets me. as does faulkner's ongoing crisis of faith and spiral into Faithless Cult Leader (TM). SO GOOD.

perhaps only tangentially related, but.

i've been thinking a lot about faulkner killing roemont lately. i was surprised that roemont's death ended up Breaking My Fucking Heart -- a real testament to his voice actor!! the whole pathetic old man losing everything he's worked for really.... Got To Me. ough. "don't you recognize me?" OUGH.

but i've been thinking about it in the context of faulkner's crisis of faith, too. because like. faulkner Knows that roemont is faithful. he considers roemont a heretic for trying to legalize the worship of the trawler-man, but it's like....

i feel like. killing roemont was a test of the trawler-man that faulkner devised on purpose. because if roemont dies due to the prayer marks that faulkner scrawled, then there are two possibilities:

1. the trawler-man really IS furious that the high katabasians want to legitimize the faith; the trawler-man really IS on faulkner's side; this schism really IS necessary to keep the faith "pure," and faulkner has never done anything wrong;

OR

2. the trawler-man really IS nothing but a mouth. this isn't a god with a plan or with sentience or with feelings, this is just a living river that chews things up and spits them out, and it doesn't care for its followers at all. and if that's the case, then faulkner is betraying nothing by being a faithless cult leader lying repeatedly to his people.

faulkner is devastatingly clever and constantly being underestimated. but he's also completely alone in the world. and he's Desperate for any sign that the choices he's making are the right ones. and he can't find that sign in anybody close to him, because he keeps destroying the lives of those close to him. so he has to devise his own trials....

hrugh. my boy. my boy my boy my boy.

[ear-motif]

fuckin. i still wish will didnt actually have encephalitis and had a mental illness bc the way s1 frames the possibility of him having a mental illness as the Worst Possible Outcome is so infuriating. i have no idea how one would write diagnosed psychotic will graham to be not offensive and also keeping in line with the message of the show but god will being psychotic is actually not as bad as dying from brain inflammation believe it or not

[todolist-nothing07]

I need season two, stat!

[steakout-05]

*clenched fists, head on the table, white knuckled, seething, hyperventilating, visible veins showing, sweating, about to burst into tears, shaking violently, going to explode*

it's.... spelled........ JON.............. arbuckle........

[trans-xianxian]

very ironic that there have been several story beats throughout fontaine like "the melusines are often infantalized by people but they are fully autonomous beings who deserve respect" and then half of the fan base is like awe cute little melusine baby who is like a child and a kid and a baby who needs to be taken care of by other characters because they're like a human toddler 🥺. die.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[cws: starvation/food insecurity, fantasy racism, psychiatric abuse, ableism, and Upsetting Pictures.]

-

one thing that fucks me up immensely about pericles before and after the asylum is how fucking skinny he is.

like. as much as obviously the two designs are Very Inconsistent in general which annoys me, look at him pre-timeskip. look at how he's shaped.

his head and face are way smoother and rounder, both in front and back, and the space between his cheekbones and his eyebrow ridge is filled in; his body is rounder in general and his belly is noticeably between his thighs when he's standing up; he has kind of a chubby butt; his chin and neck are softer and wider around, which you can really see with the width of the scarf compared to his shoulders and the angle where it meets his head. it comes up in front of his face more because there's not as much of an angle with his chin to hold it down.

now. compare all those things to this.

christ.

and like, you could argue some of these design differences are tiny things to zero in on in a show that's as loose with its models as sdmi is. but present-day pericles' design is pretty obviously supposed to be unsettling because he's physically built to be a Cute Roumb Little Mascot Creature--so much so that the framework has managed to stick around a little in spite of everything--and has become gaunt and haggard anyway. and you could also argue that the body type changes are just thanks to aging twenty years (and i don't doubt that's contributed).

except. he spent those twenty years in an asylum where the other inmates we see look like this.

christ.

(fun little fact that @thecottageinthedark pointed out also: remember how he literally got caught at one point because he couldn't stop eating sunflower seeds, even during a heist? a high-fat, high-calorie snack for birds? you know, exactly the kind of thing a starving person who finally has proper access to food would be wolfing down?)

(yeah.)

did i mention that this happened in a (fantasy) racially segregated prison, which is technically an asylum so the inmates can be kept there indefinitely, because in an actual prison you're required to have a sentence? did i mention that none of the human characters we see in human prison look any less healthy during or afterward, and on top of that are allowed to move around and socialize? did i mention the absolutely horrific treatment of the asylum inmates is implied to be despite the fact that the (physically abusive!) guard is playing up how dangerous and malicious they are? (you know. except for pericles 🙃)

did i mention the man who got pericles imprisoned--who he had not only done nothing to beforehand, but had helped--says he was there to 'live out the rest of his miserable parrot life in a cage, where he belonged,' and not only do none of the characters we're supposed to side with have anything to say about that, but the audience is clearly supposed to agree with him too?

(did i mention said man--who was in on the crime, singular, that pericles went to prison for!--spends those twenty years living a life of luxury in power while abusing the child he kidnapped as a baby and held hostage his entire life, and when we see him in prison he is not only chilling out and helping the authorities but reading a newspaper?)

did i mention the part where by the time we meet pericles he hasn't spoken in years?

like. man the 'ooooo scary evil abused asylum crazies' trope is bad enough, even when they pretend to lampshade it for a minute before playing it straight; i don't know how they added in All That and made him emaciated and expected no one to find it heartbreaking or even sympathetic. i don't care how bad he was before the asylum (and dear god was he ever), that is horrifying and no one deserves it. god damn.

[adustoflove]

Sometimes I suspect autism and then I immediately push it down into the gutter and forget that I could ever have it. Like why was I so shy my kindergarten teacher who was 70 at the time and had been doing it for about 40-50 years suspected something was wrong with how shy I was and only when my sibling came during parent teacher conferences did she think this kid is a Little Normal because at least I played with them 😭 why do I walk on my toes and pace around listening to the same song on repeat for 4 hours. Why do I SUCK at making conversation irl and freeze up and feel stuck like I can't do anything when people are watching me. What is wrong with my brain other than the fact that I'm mentally a little unwell

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

[kiisaes]

mha is like an estranged awkward father to me. i try not to make my connection to it obvious but i secretly care a lot about it (sometimes against what i desire) and when ppl talk serious shit about it i get defensive. like yea i understand that it's not the best series writing-wise, it's got a good amount of problems and that its mere connection to me makes me cringefail ... but i'll always find some sort of unexplainable comfort in its arms despite its flaws bc there's still a good amount of it to genuinely enjoy without a constantly ironic state of mind that all media must be critiqued with nowadays and i don't expect anyone to understand this odd relationship but myself

[thawthebeez]

me watching the 254th haikyuu tiktok skit on my fyp today

[snorfbin]

.

[floralovebot]

It's insane to me that this entire "debate" (if it can even be called that) is literally just

trans people, jewish people, black people literally everyone who has been hurt by bigotry: hey please don't spend $70 on a game about pro-slavery and fascism when a lot of that money will go to its creator who is publically bigoted and uses her massive amounts of wealth to fund the eradication of marginalized groups

and the response to that was: fuck you why can't you just let people enjoy things, harry potter personally saved my life

like. it's extremely telling that so many people value their own entertainment and nostalgia over the lives of others. jkr is such a horrible, despicable person and literally all people are saying is that yeah you shouldn't be giving a modern day nazi that much money when they constantly bring people to the alt right and donate that money to every anti-human rights organization you could think of.

and no i don't think sending people death threats is okay but at the same time, you don't get to act surprised, defensive, or victimized when people call you out for giving money to a fucking nazi.

[frosla55]

me when i started watching demon slayer & i googled my favourite character & it said 'death'

[kinkykinard]

diet culture is so disgustingly entrenched in our society that I'm exactly *checks notes* 32 seconds into the first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I don't want to watch any further because of the first fucking comment out of her mouth