#glory gifs

[realityhop]

“For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, womanlike, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her." — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

"Glory-seeking heroes have dominated boys’ fictional worlds since humans started telling stories. In the classic narrative, the superheroes, fantasy warriors, and video game avatars tend to be one man, working alone, often with some kind of superhuman power or at the very least hypermasculine strength and abilities, who slays the villain, saves the day in a blaze of glory, and usually "gets the girl" as a result. … At their best, these narratives can provide enticing imaginative worlds and valuable lessons about morality, bravery, and self-sacrifice. Clearly, the vast majority of young boys consume them and go on to live happy, productive lives. But there are invisible harms to this impossible vision of manhood, and boys can easily internalize damaging expectations from them about masculinity and their their own place in the world. Boys are socialized to see themselves as the hero on his journey and the main character in any story, and to see everyone else, and especially women, as minor characters or narrative foils. … this sense of specialness and superiority comes at a price. Taken together, the messages about individual heroism contained in these stories can end up breeding an odd combination in boys of both entitlement and inadequacy. The hero’s story creates impossibly punishing expectations for boys of what a man should be: physically invulnerable, emotionally bulletproof, and ideally, superhuman. Actual boys and men, with human flaws and vulnerabilities, will always fall short. Failure is built into the project. … I think about the friendship and relationship narratives we give to girls, that help them absorb the idea that they are part of a relational system, a community that everyone contributes to and draws from, while boys are socialized to think they need to be unique and special. Christensen writes about the ancient Greek concept of kleos, a kind of fame and glory or "eternal renown" that a hero earned through his great deeds. This was the basic reward system for the classical hero, his motivating drive. And at some level, that hunger for specialness and glory has endured as a kind of baseline expectation in the modern male psyche. “I think it’s about innate ability. You believe that you’re innately better and good," Christensen explains. With all this in the background, it makes sense that men might avoid the boring tasks of adulthood. If you are shooting for eternal renown, doing the laundry or studying for your social studies test might well feel a little beneath you. The model of quiet diligence and cooperation that girls are encouraged to emulate can easily read as emasculating when compared to the glorious feats of the hero. But in most situations that life throws at us, quiet diligence is more important to success than splashy acts or a feeling that you are special. It’s not innate genius or superpowers or once-in-a-lifetime feats of bravery that get you into college or land you a job or force you out of your childhood bedroom. Mostly it’s tedious, incremental drudgery. It’s perhaps not surprising that boys are spending so much time playing video games—they provide the only arenas in which they can play out their hero fantasies and expectations of glory, instead of fulfilling the tedious tasks of the real world. The pressure to be masculine might have helped boys launch into adulthood when it was an economic requirement, when men were the sole breadwinners and had to provide financially for a family. But now, with most women working and less expectation that men will be the main wage earners, masculinity has been stripped of the only part of the story that really promoted adulthood. Without the breadwinning, what’s left are just toxic scraps—a grab bag of childish vanities and impossible pressures." — Ruth Whippman, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity (2024)

"It was Machiavelli who broke with the classical and Christian aspiration to temper the tyrannical temptation through an education in virtue, scoring the premodern philosophic tradition as an unbroken series of unrealistic and unreliable fantasies of “imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover that he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself.” Rather than promoting unrealistic standards for behavior—especially self-limitation—that could at best be unreliably achieved, Machiavelli proposed grounding a political philosophy upon readily observable human behaviors of pride, selfishness, greed, and the quest for glory." — Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (2018)

Harrison Ford - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

[whatisyourchildhoodtrauma]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.07 & 5.18

[aestheticofstars]

[buffysource]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

5.06 | Family

[dailybtvs]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

[clarkgriffon]

Glory + Outfits

[korbywo]

wobbly dragonets of destiny :)

[lovebvffys]

Buffy Meme: [2/4 Villains] Glory

"I'll kill him, and her and her, and it'll all be your fault. It's kinda funny isn't it, all these people here, and no one who can do a thing."

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Μικρού δ’ αγώνος ου μέγα έρχεται κλέος.

Sophocles

Little effort will not bring much glory.

[bocadelinfierno]

[buffysummers]

I look around at this world you’re so eager to be a part of and all I see is six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out. Who’s not crazy? Look around. Everyone’s drinking, smoking, shooting up, shooting each other, or just plain screwing their brains out ’cause they don’t want ’em anymore. I’m crazy? Honey, I’m the original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, ’cause at least I admit the world makes me nuts. Glory "Glorificus" in season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

[cary-elwes]

[whatisyourchildhoodtrauma]

"She was kinda like Cordelia, actually." (inspo)

[theanticool]

[starryeyesxx]