#grace was great tho

[somewhereincairparavel]

if you are ever upset about Jason Grace slander, remember that the more people don't like him, the more we truthers can gatekeep his awesomeness to ourselves, so one day if the fandom might change their opinion about him for the better, we can claim our "always been a fan" ticket 😤💅

[shouyuus]

sooo i was going back through my figure skating folder on tiktok and saw this video again and immediately my brain went meljayce ice dancing/skating 🫶🏽

yes!!! so that's pair's skating -- the difference between ice dance and pairs skating is that in ice dance, there's no jumping/throwing, and you can't lift the girl above shoulder height! but the edge control and the dynamics/synchronization is insane.

here are two of my fav programs in ice dance:

tessa and scott's 2018 pyeongchang free dance (i was THERE!!!!)

shib sibs 2018 pyeongchang paradise (i was also there and i subsequently got to meet them when they were doing a ralph lauren event in nyc so that was kinda cool)

and pairs skating is where you get the really crazy jumps and throws and side-by-side triple-double jumps -- two of my favs:

sui and han bridge over troubled water at beijing 2022

knierim and frazier fall on me 2020 nationals

so the "stereotype" and i say that loosely bc it's all kind of in good fun, is that freestyle skaters are like... all about that power, right they gotta YEET themselves into the air and do insane jumps, and ice dancers are all about precision and control -- they even have slightly different skates than normal "freestyle" skaters. the blades are shorter so they can get in real close to their partner and not step on them lol.

so i headcanoned that mel's always been an ice dancer, she's precise and careful and very, very refined. and jayce used to be a pairs skater (i mean, it'd put some of those fuCKING muscles to good use yall) but swapped to ice dance after meeting mel.

[thanks-obillma]

watched nerdy prudes must die and this happened

[recurring-polynya]

Good morning, happy Thursday, who wants to read a fun idea I had about giants in Soul Society?

So! I was reading this @littleeyesofpallas post about wuxing symbolism and was particularly struck by this passage in a section about the gate guardians:

There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians even then...

No, I said to myself, of course not. He's powerful enough to control his size, because I was thinking of the part where Grand Fisher claims Isshin is too small to defeat him and Isshin responds with a lecture on soul reaper lore:

Now, bodies are not swords, but maybe the same mechanic applies! It certainly applies to Hollows. Earlier in this same scene, Kon mistakes Grand Fisher for a Menos Grande, and Grand Fisher is insulted by the comparison, but it's the same thing. Menos are huge and scary, but when they become Arrancar, they shrink down and become scarier. [Aside: I think this is why the Yammy-is-secretly-Espada-0 reveal doesn't quite manage to hit. It goes against the lore Kubo has been laying down for ages]

On a meta level, this is just a shounen storytelling tactic where X is an indicator of strength, but then later on, it's like "Reverse Uno! Not-X is the real indicator of strength!!" That's exactly how this zanpakutou-size thing is used when it's first introduced.

Exhibit A: Renji, a court jester, being impressed by the size of Ichigo's sword:

Exhibit B: A handful of issues later, Urahara, an intellectual (lol), sets us straight:

Genre convention or not, I think it lends itself some interesting world-building. Among low-powered people, size is impressive, but as you scale the ranks of power, it's kind of pathetic. Weirdly large people are like the petty bourgeoisie of Soul Society power dynamics.

But that's actually the perfect niche for a gatekeeper! In general, your typical Joe Shinigami is going to be able to take on just about any rando from the Rukongai, but maybe not a particularly strong ryouka. Ganju was able to take on Yumichika, after all. A single shinigami wouldn't be able to take on a planned rebellion, like in the Bount arc, and they've got to, like, sleep and stuff. The Gotei could, in theory, have an entire gatehouse and a gate patrol, etc, but that they are perpetually short-staffed as-is. Instead, how about one medium-powerful gatekeeper whose size makes them well-suited for fighting groups of people (or siege weapons), and who is going to be intimidating overall?

Furthermore, it's implied that Jidanbou isn't actually a shinigami. He wears a shihakushou, but his axes don't seem to be a zanpakutou (he doesn't release them and is distressed when they are destroyed). His neighbors offer this comment on him:

It's not quite right, though: after all, many shinigami are from Rukongai, including Gin, who is the reason Jidanbou is being healed at the very moment this panel takes place. I think what this guy means is that Jidanbou is of Rukongai, which is to say not of the Seireitei.

So what is he, then? Here's my big idea: I think that the gigantism in Soul Society might actually be a reiatsu-developmental disability! It's always been my impression that growth, especially for powerful people, happens in fits and spurts, rather than linearly, and that furthermore, big changes in growth tend to coincide with developments in reiryouku. Somewhere, either in childhood or adolescence, someone's spiritual pressure grows more quickly than their control over it, which results in their body growing uncontrollably. They become very powerful "physically", but their strength is all in their mass/reishi, which takes most of their spiritual pressure to control. This may end up limiting the upper end of power they are able to achieve and some cases means they get cut off entirely from the other forms of power used by shinigami (connecting to a zanpakutou, kidou). I think this might be especially common in children from the Rukongai, who lack access to education and training. I can also imagine it leading itself to cautionary tales in the outer Rukon that if you feed your hungry children too much, you'll end up with a giant on your hands.

This offers one explanation to why Jidanbou is a giant and his brother Jiroubou is large, but not remotely on the same scale (the Souls Data Book lists his height at 7'7" vs Jidanbou's 32'5"). There are a handful of other shinigami of larger-than-human height, which could be a milder form of this, or it could mean that some sort of special training or medical intervention helped keep their growth manageable. I think you can squeeze in a lot of interesting character insights into this headcanon, from Hachi (8'5"), who perhaps worked exceptionally hard in an effort to control his power and ended becoming incredibly skilled at kidou as a result (interesting that he, too, is not actually a shinigami). Or Oomaeda (6'11"), who gets by a lot on his family's wealth and clout, but is definitely on the weaker end of the lieutenant power scale. In his case, his large size kind of speaks to his entire "thinks he's classy, but is really just gaudy"/can't-even-tell-how-outclassed-he-is-by-his-peers deal.

Then, as a counterpoint, you've got Hitsugaya: immensely powerful from a young age, and one of the hallmarks of his character is how in-control of himself he is, down to having developed an actual visible power bar for his bankai. Whether this is some effect of his personality, or whether it's an intervention on Hyourinmaru's part, his growth has been choked off as a side effect. He's the direct opposite of Jidanbou, who additionally seems somewhat childlike in personality (crying over his axes, for example, or his attachment to his extremely dubious "rules of the city"). To me, it's very sweet that their friendship might have roots in opposite expressions of the same reiatsu-growth-fuckup.

Much in the way that the Shiba use some sort of magic that's distinctly different from shinigami-kidou, I guess I really like thinking about other ways power might manifest itself in Soul Society outside of the shinigami-industrial-complex. And also the way the Seireitei may or may not try to control those powers."Guard this gate!" they say. "We won't actually let you live in the city or give you city wages, but you can have a cool outfit and, uh...do it for the exposure?"

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

Cinna wasn't black in the books, but after lenny Kravitz portrail in the movies, Wisdom Kaye is, in my opinion, the perfect choice for a recast/fancast.

I mean, just look at him -

This man breathes fashion

[thewhizzyhead]

when I first heard of the premise for nerdy prudes must die, I wasn't expecting that the jock brute and someone whose last name is often mistaken for "chastity" to be my favorites but hey here we are and those two have completely stolen the show

[lesbianralzarek]

entering a subculture is really funny because you have no frame of reference for whats popular or not. the dj was so oldschool he didnt use spotify, so i asked him if he had any disks for corpus delicti and he said, quote, "they werent even popular 15 years ago" ⚰️⚰️⚰️

[doomordestiny]

thinking about charlie with painted nails rn

[thatone-churro]

the fuck you mean my writing professor actually likes my writing 🧍‍♀️

[allthecastlesonclouds]

thinking about lucy frostblade and the hatchetfield au pondering even

what if she’s gently aware of webby, maybe heard adaines stories and hangs out at the library, avoiding ayda, though whenever she reads out loud lucy listens in

when she’s fifteen though kipperlilly sacrifices her to wiggly, a ‘pure’ offering for the god of greed

everytime lucy doesn’t beg for her life, she just smiles at kipperlilly and tells her in the next life maybe it’ll be bette

it never is

ohhh my god i'm so so insane about them

she's certainly aware of webby in a great many timelines–lucy's a kind girl, adaine thinks, quiet, and the only lord to get to her has been pokotho, letting her have her belief at the cost of her own death

she and kipperlilly are best friends. she and kipperlilly will never both live. the timeline where ragh barkrock dies, and then doesn't quite stay that way; while penny and riz are arguing whose life is more important, kipperlilly finds a weapon and calls her best friend.

lucy does not fight back. she never does. she never will! it never will be better you're so right

kipperlilly wants to be heard; to be seen. lucy is content with her beliefs and her friends. her friends are not enough for kipperlilly. she needs the whole island to believe in her. the first sacrifice is to wiggly. wiggly is not the last.

kip's a favorite of these lords, she overhears adaine telling ayda when she's sixteen, and she leaves the library to go find her best friend. her best friend is with the girl she claims to hate, and lucy isn't mad about that at all– kristen's been nothing but nice to her, even if she is a little eccentric.

lucy is web-touched, but webby can only help so much, and kipperlilly is– not a favorite, exactly, but a favored. the girl's got a lot of emotions, and each of them do so enjoy twisting her to go along with their plans :) and lucy loves her kipperlilly, so she will not force her to think something's wrong.

you are so incredibly correct. every killing blow that strikes, every bite and axe and gunshot, lucy just smiles at her and promises a hope.

and of course that hope will never be fulfilled. why should it?

[accirax]

got tagged in this game by @samglyph like a week ago but i'm only getting to it now. sorry about that! thanks for tagging me :)

Rules: Make a poll of your favorite female characters (no limits - as many or as little as you want) and see which your followers like the most!

limited myself to one lady per thing. i think it's pretty clear that i generally have a type for which girls are my favorite (silly and/or evil)

iiiiiiiiiii can't remember who i tagged the last time i did one of these so let's try @venus-is-thinking @1moreff-creator @thebadjoe @a-star-that-burns-brightly @gleamingtempest and @sapphireroses282 . for any of those people feel free to not do it if you don't want to, and for anyone who i didn't manage to tag feel free to do it if you want to! i'd love to see it :)

[captn-lovelace]

my biggest movie/tv (but especially movie) pet peeve is when they don’t trust the audience to remember an earlier bit of dialogue, so they reinsert it as a voiceover flashback. it’s so obnoxious it feels like the director is grabbing my arm, shaking me saying “do you get it?!?!”

[papirouge]

Controversial take: "traditionally" feminine black women are more subversive than studs or whatever "alternative" aesthetic they may fashion

[camscendants]

Concerts coming up 👹

[linklethehistorian]

Bitch tree anon, I know what you’re doing 😔 Pls don’t cheat on me with one of my closeted biggest fans, I promise they’re not half as sexy as me and they’ll never ever be 😭

I am your one and only bitch tree 🥺🐕🌳💖

[ahopefulbromantic]

Okay but i genuinely struggle with this. With all the kicks, giggles, and memes i really need to remind myself sometimes that my easiness regarding chastity is a gift from God and absolutely no virtue of mine. Thanks for the reminder, OP, and God bless you!

There were probably some medieval asexuals that were absolutely insufferable on their moral high horse about it. Like "this modesty shit easy - I haven't lusted over any man ever in my life and only fuck my husband out of duty from God and only so that we have children. I am so much better than any of you hoes."

And some other local goodwife would get sick of this and go "well obviously you don't have time for cock, Maergaret, since you're always too fucking busy choking on your own vanity and pride!" and have a smackfight that progresses into a full-on two-woman brawl in the town square. People gather around to watch this until a clergyman shows up to remind everyone that not only is this kind of brawl between good christians definitely a sin, it's also a sin for everyone who's watching to place bets on who's going to win.