#grief is a powerful powerful thing

[bhaalspawnshitposting]

Ketheric Thorm is one of my all-time favorite villains in any piece of media. I just can't hate him. I've loved so hard, and had death take those loved ones from me, and I know the feeling of being willing to do anything to bring her back.

There's a Fall Out Boy quote I really love that I think sums up Ketheric's character so well,

"For you, I'd burn this city down just to show you the lights"

He is utterly devoted, not to his gods, but to his daughter. Selune didn't protect them, Shar couldn't make him forget them, but Myrkul promised Isobel back. And to Ketheric, that was enough. Damn his morals, damn the lives of everyone else in this plane and the next. For his daughter, any price is worth it.

And for an evil man, I can't think of a more noble cause.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[corsairspade]

I was going to say we need to be weirder about Maglor but then I remembered crablor. That’s on me. We need to also be DIFFERENT weird about Maglor.

Maglor who walks along the coast for thousands of years and does not stop singing. Maglor who after ages of the world have passed, has a voice that is made only for music. When he speaks, there is something too lyrical to the tone. He sighs and the world accompanies him. His raised voice sets the ground shaking, his laments call water like tears from the sky. He has to be careful when he speaks to people, however rare that is, because of it. He weeps and those who can hear him cannot help but weep as well. Maglor with a voice so powerful that he can no longer use it the way he could when the world was young. One more thing lost to the Oath.

[multifandombullshitbabes]

have we ever thought abt the fact that zuko is literally azula's older brother. like she's his little sister. that's his little sister. throughout a big, big part of atla plot, he was actively running away, scared of his little sister killing him because he KNEW she would/could. can you imagine that? your little sibling, wanting more your father's approval than your companionship to the point of death? every time they fought, zuko was fighting his baby sister. azula was fighting her big brother. this is making me so sick. they were 16 and 14 years old.

[pocketgalaxies]

laudna might be horrifically corrupted by an endlessly evil and manipulative presence but she does have a fair fucking point and i wish someone in the party explicitly stood up for that. it's inappropriate to assume that the people around you will be comfortable with you wielding the blade that they lost their life by, or watched their love die by. just because you died by it and your love died by it and you still want to use it to strengthen yourself and for poetic justice doesn't mean that everyone with that experience will be able to stomach it, let alone support it

and laudna especially, plunged into darkstone for what felt like a lifetime because of it and struggling for weeks on end to come to terms with how she was changed by it. the implied trauma olympics of "that sword is orym's to do with what he wants" is so invalidating to the complicated, messy, scary, ugly experiences and feelings that laudna (and fearne) has attached to it. it doesn't matter the body count of loved ones felled by the thing, it only matters how each person is affected by it

[gingermintpepper]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.

I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.

Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.

What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.

Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.

And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.

[lagosbratzdoll]

This is a very very unfinished thought but I've been thinking a lot as I reread the books about how the women of House of the Dragon don't really get catharsis and how that'll likely be worse in S2. Say what you want about asoiaf but a number of named women there experience catharsis.

They kill their abusers (Lysa, Cersei, Dany). They regain some agency after a violation (Lysa, Cersei, Lady Stoneheart, Dany), and they refuse to forgive the people complicit in their subjugation (Lysa, Cersei, Dany, Lady Stoneheart, Jeyne Westerling).

Obviously, three or four isn't enough in such an expansive cast of characters but the point remains that they claw back their autonomy however they have to. They're allowed to be angry, bitter, unforgiving and cruel to their abusers in a way women in House of the Dragon just aren't allowed. They're allowed grief, grief that is violent and destructive.

The women of House of the Dragon don't get angry. They stand around and stare plaintively at the camera, they cry prettily, and they plead for peace and non-violence. They suffer and suffer and suffer and there's no relief.

[moeblob]

OC again gomen ... (her name is Yuma)

[buggaboizz]

I have, once again, made fanart for @batbitesthebat 's Frankenstein au!

//TW: blood, open wounds, stitches, death//

Here's the full completed version!

Here's the version without shading (I worked FAR too hard on this for all my little details to be obscured by shadow)

And here's Bat as she creates The Horrors™

I'm SUPER happy with this piece, it's gotta be my fav!! I also get the bonus of Bat having a seizure whenever she gets fanart, lol :P

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

Mercer tries to tell Brynjolf that you died. But Brynjolf just grabs him by the shirt and yells at him that he's wrong. You didn't die. You did not do everything you've ever done for the Guild to have just died.

You're different, he tries to explain. Obviously you didn't die, you just got hurt. Mercer clearly accidentally left you in Snow Veil, where you're definitely still alive.

Brynjolf is going to go to the Sanctum himself, with a sack full of potions, get you back to health, and bring you home. Mercer would have to chain him to the wall to stop him.

So off he goes, to find you. He goes to the Sanctum, gets through it, and sees-

You.

You, on your back, your face turned away, surrounded by blood that can only be yours.

He spots you from a distance. He doesn't get closer. He can't see you like that. He doesn't want to remember you like that. He wants to always remember you as you were. When you were at your best, when you were by his side, when you were alive.

He leaves the Sanctum. He returns to the Cistern. Obviously, he's alone. Everyone understands why he went out, everyone understands why he came back. Mercer tries to talk to him, but Brynjolf isn't interested in an "I told you so."

But that's not what Mercer says. Mercer, instead, says he's sorry, that he should have done more, that he tried to do everything he could, that Karliah is just too good. He had expected her to attack him, not you. After all, she was still mad he had uncovered her murder of Gallus.

Brynjolf, fragile and broken, hurting and grieving, believes Mercer. He is at his lowest, and his friend of so many years is showing him sympathy and compassion. Mercer could tell him just about anything and Brynjolf will believe him. And he does.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

[blows a kiss out to sea] for the Mighty Nein pirates arc

[galadriel-blue]

There better be a scene in TROP sometime in the future where Galadriel dances and Theo gets to see it. She told him that story and he took it with disbelief, but I want him to see that even the most cold, heartbroken people were once full of joy, and if Galadriel can feel happiness in something so simple after so many years, maybe he can experience that joy again too

[redactedresearch]

I think Handsome Jack cried so hard he threw up once he really stood and acknowledged Angel's passing

[safety-pin-punk]

yall Im so fucking tired. This month has been exhausting. I promise Im alive, just barely functional atm.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[crocodilenjoyer]

what if you 🫵 wanted to take a nap 💤 but god said ☝️ asl dunmeshi au 💥