#heck! even when he loves them

[terrence-silver]

Can you please do Terry (or twig) losing his v card to beloved 💌

Okay, but lets make a little funnier and it's this era of Terry;

And him just flat out lying he's a virgin. He's lying. His justification and explanation for his lack of action is (and I'm making this up as I go along and so is he) that deliberate celibacy and sexual ascetism is good in preserving high levels of chi and chakra energy, that witholding from physical pleasures strenghtens the body's core and makes a person a better, more disciplined fighter due to surpressed aggression and he knows this for a fact, because after learning Tang Soo Do under his Master in Korea and returning from Vietnam, he's also travelled all over Asia and observed the Shaolin monks do it. Yes. Shaolin monks. He strived to emulate the best of the best since. Isn't every man's goal in life to be the next Bodhidharma incarnate?

Might even gift you with a book on the subject.

You know, for references and sources.

You could land yourself with a tome called The Private Lives Inside the Shǎolínsì.

It takes all the willpower in the world not to royally chortle at that one even as he says it. So, he's well into his thirties or even early fourties, it's the 80's, and yes, he's a virgin by choice. Of course, again, he's lying and making things up for the fun of it. Mainly to gage your reaction. See how you'll treat him for it. How you'll act. What you'll do. If you'll be surprised. Disappointed. What your opinions on the matter even are. If you'll even like him after that. If you'll believe him because the man isn't a fool and he's aware of what he looks like and the effect he tends to have on people. There's no particular gender or age limit to virgnity but he also knows he isn't the usual poster child for purity. Maybe it'll add to his mystique in your eyes. Maybe you'll try to dissuade him from maintaing such a strict standard of living and he can act all coy and hard to get about it. Maybe you'll admire him for it and he'll pretend to be humble. He doesn't know, but he wants to discover because it holds so many possibilities and it is also so damn amusing, this little social experiment, and lets admit; the man's very much a troll. Just the entertainment value of it turns him on, and there's always the chance of him roleplaying being despoiled and being on the recieveing end of it without you knowing it is all pretense. Of course he's not a virgin, though. Far from it. Which makes this whole thing even more schemey, sinister and juvenile. He's quite possibly ludicrousily experienced and has apetites to match for every vice under the sun and he's, pardon my language, bullshitting you, for lack of the better word, but does it so convincingly and sweetly one can never tell. Could even be a test he poses for himself; to see what type of misiformantion he can sell to people and get away with.

How well he can act certain things out.

Not to mention how much he wants to dangle himself in front of you like the forbidden fruit you can't have because of his, ahem, convictions and beliefs. Convictions and beliefs he doesn't even really have. Quite the contrary. The handomest man you've ever met also being sexually celibate? He wants you to explode with desire and frustration and him having the last laugh.

But, Terry Silver is definitely the type of man who would land himself in bed with you, after much back and forth and pretending celibacy goes hand in hand with his particular style of martial arts, and believably pretend not to know what to do once he gets to that very same bed. Worse (or better) yet. Doing something like this isn't nessecarily a sign of his distaste for a person. Could very much like you and still play a prank on you.

[egophiliac]

this is basically what happened, right?

(these guys are very lucky that everyone at NRC 1) has the combined intelligence of a sack of bricks, and 2) is easily distracted by shiny things.)

[phoenixcatch7]

It's always funny to me when in an lu fic the chain is offered bananas and don't accept them. Like, you're offering these high energy adventures free food?? Fruit they'll have never even heard of before??? A ridiculously expensive imported good at best?? AND it boosts your attack?

Not ONE of these idiots would ever turn down something new and interesting to eat at least once. They'd be all over those bananas and immediately get dubbed yiga and I'm honestly surprised no one has used it in a fic yet 🤭

[lilithofpenandbook]

Sirius Black is proof that love doesn't make someone selfless, Severus Snape is proof that hate doesn't make someone selfish

[call-me-pup2]

On the train zooming! Might as well have wore a scuba suit with the weather though, going to go charity shop hunting for a cute waterproof trench coat so with me luck!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Ngl it's weird finishing the Knuckles tv show and going to tumblr about it only for people (even who I consider bigger name fans) who also watched the entire show to claim that it "confirmed Knuckles Wachowski"

Like

I'm sorry

Did you somehow miss the part in the last episode where Knuckles had a whole montage of hanging with the Whipple family and Wade and saying "home" or something?

[sysig]

Butterfly kisses (Patreon)

[licorishh]

Replayed Modern Warfare 3 2011 on Veteran tonight and goooooooood night. Blood Brothers never gets any easier to watch no matter how many times you've done it and the ending really never misses huh

I apologize for the amount of yapping in the tags I reread it all on mobile and started giggling because it went on for so long but eh. Blessed are those who won't shut the freak up and all that

[goblin-enjoyer]

I swear why are half the things i like/fandoms im in made of mostly younger people while the other half are mostly older people? what are the zoggin odds with that?

How it feels being 20 in a fandom with a bunch of 30-40 somethings.

VS how it feels being 20 in a fandom with a bunch of 14-17 somethings.

like am do i just have extremely odd luck with things i like or is this just what being 20 is like?

[firstroseofspring]

thinking pondering to me john torres is like. what if u met a woman. with confidence and dignity and a strong moral backbone. you meet and she makes a distinct impression with her honesty and her frankness and she seems like she's always sure of what she wants and what she needs and she's so different from anyone else you know and thats exciting and she's exciting and she likes you specifically you. and you don't think much of you but it feels good to be liked by someone like that. you love her of course. you marry her. of course!

[koishua]

shining solo ep 8. my reaction rn 😐😐 took it a bit hard lmao

[discoreptile]

Zaptor from Elestrals!

[oveliagirlhaditright]

LOL. In the Buffy tie-in book I read ("Unnatural Selection"), Buffy had to come up with the cover story that she and Angel were married and had two daughters: Ginger and Joy. And she came up with those names because ginger (the spice) was right in front of her, and the brand of the dishwasher she owned was "Joy"?

But an AU--or better yet, a continuation of this--where they have daughters and actually name them that. Pfft.

Also, interestingly enough, in these tie-in books, Buffy dreams of having kids with Angel quite a few times (like in moments where she gets to see her perfect life).

Not that that's what this was, but it's still definitely interesting.

[darabeatha]

/ The process of me picking a f.go muse is basically reading from 745738483 different sources about the actual character or historical figure in question and -then- reading whatever their f.go description says; then turbo analyzing their designs

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

My gosh this is beautiful and I have to reply because this is EXACTLY why I project onto him so much (a Very Healthy reason I know. When I first read Les Mis, I cried, bc I have felt exactly that pang). Ten million percent agreed with everything you said above!

I love your point about Cosette and Marius bringing up his (long-buried) feelings of envy: the tragic irony is, Jean Valjean--so often defined by his one act of theft--feels, himself, robbed.

Because ultimately, underneath it all, Valjean has a desperate desire for love--total, enduring love. Every time Jean Valjean has allowed himself to be truly known, people have immediately turned on him; all the goodwill he's built up over years of charity and suffering fades immediately. He feels that he will always be abandoned. So he's desperate for someone to stay. What first allows him to love Cosette is her helplessness: he is her savior, so she cannot leave him. And because of how enmeshed his identity is with Cosette, becoming anything less than her everything is a brutal extraction for him. He believes, since it is all he has known, that love is total and all-consuming; therefore, he believes Cosette can only really love one person, just as he only loved her, and that person (by Right™) is Marius now. After all he has gone through, and all he has done, he feels abandoned once again--even though Cosette may still claim she loves him--because he is not her everything, so he is nothing. And that literally kills him.

Valjean's perceived abandonment by Cosette is so devastating to him because in a way, he uses Cosette as a stand-in for God. He has never believed God could love him--in fact, even in the convent, he's described as kneeling before the sister "as though afraid to kneel directly before God." He has never allowed himself to see himself as anything other than the "miserable man" he was at the start of the story. And how could God love that? Instead, he finds Cosette, who is initially desperate and has no other choice but to rely on him (and he believes as soon as she does have a choice, or if she learns who he really is, she will leave him), and uses her as the foundation of his identity. She's also the center of his virtue; with someone to care for, to sacrifice for, maybe he can earn God's love somehow. And if someone so pure could love him, maybe there was something in him that could be loved. So of course when she begins to love someone else, Valjean crumbles--her love felt secure because it was desperate, but now she can choose. And he could never imagine anyone, including God, loving him willingly.

But I love Les Mis because he's wrong!!!! He's wrong about that, and he's wrong about himself, and he's wrong about what love is!! And the story tells him so!!!

From the start of the story to the end, God has always been with him, guiding his path. The narration throughout the story makes it clear--he even recognizes "the hand of Providence" in guiding him to the bishop and the convent, in bringing him finally to the trial to save the innocent man; to stumble upon Cosette in the woods was no coincidence, nor was it chance that Cosette and Marius found him (because they were looking for him!! Because they love him!!!) right before he died. He has always been loved, wholly and forever, even in the midst of his sin and suffering.

It's a love that knows him fully, and endures.

And I love that his story ends with that.

Jean Valjean's Canon Toxic Unhealthiness around Romantic Love

( alternate titles: “Does Jean Valjean is Gay?”, or “Does Jean Valjean is Asexual?” Or: “Why is it so difficult to slap an identity/sexuality label onto Jean Valjean?” Or “LGBTPTSD+”)

I was looking at the responses to this poll about whether people interpret Jean Valjean as gay/asexual/straight or something else….and it got me thinking again about Jean Valjean’s canonical intense, complex, awful, toxic, and overwrought emotions around identity/ romantic love. I want to talk about that for a bit because I think it often gets overlooked in fandom!

I've noticed that Les Mis fandom/analysis often tends to interpret Jean Valjean as being far more content, more "at peace with himself," and more "comfortable in his own skin" than he ever is within the novel. This is also a common change in adaptations. The musical's version of Jean Valjean is great-- but he also seems a lot more self-actualized, more like he's gotten himself completely "figured out" by the end of the story. Other, bad, Les Mis adaptations — the adaptations that generally portray Jean Valjean a worse more violent person — also usually make Jean Valjean more confident in himself, more confident in his own feelings/desires, more certain that he’s entitled to certain things, and more willing to demand or take what he wants.

But one major aspect of book Jean Valjean's personality is that he does not have a healthy relationship with anything about himself. He has a tortured broken relationship with his own identity. He repeatedly thinks about “Jean Valjean” as a person outside of himself, a person who he finds frightening, repulsive, savage, and horrible— like a wild animal he needs to sedate, or beat into submission. He is obsessed with self-denial and self-repression. He is fixated on the idea that he is subhuman, that he is not allowed to want things or to pursue having any kinds of relationships with other people-- and that the most heroic thing he can do is "grab himself by the collar” and violently force himself to stay away from the things he wants. He is desperate to be loved and fixated on being unworthy of love and on denying himself love. He is absolutely not at peace with his identity: to paraphrase Jean Valjean in one of the later chapters, he believes he can only gain inner peace by “eviscerating his own entrails.”

He is never truly content with who he is, what he wants, or what kind of love he wants— and he never learns to be. The novel ends with him cutting himself off from his only family, breaking ties with the only person who loves him, and essentially slowly killing himself out of self-loathing.

There are other characters in Les Mis who seem very content with who they are and what they want. Enjolras is self-assured in his identity, and doesn’t appear to feel like there is any kind of love that is missing from his life. Whether you interpret him as gay or ace or trans or w/e, book!Enjolras is written as someone who is extremely self-assured and has a loving support system that is enough to keep him happy. But I don’t think that’s true for Jean Valjean at all XD.

And that’s why it's hard to apply labels like “aromantic” or “ace” or gay/straight/etc to Jean Valjean, when talking about his canon characterization. Those labels imply the person has a basic level of comfort with acknowledging their own desires/lack of desire/identity. And Jean Valjean never achieves that level of comfort. What “label” do you give to someone whose relationship with their identity is “I do not belong in a family, I have no right to want things, I have no right to be happy, I am outside of life, and I will never be at peace until I eviscerate my own entrails?” Is there a “self-disembowelment" pride flag? XD I've seen a lot of interpretations that go "Jean Valjean never expresses any interest in romance, he's perfectly content just to have his relationship with his daughter" but I honestly don't think that's true. Jean Valjean tries to content himself with having only Cosette. But part of why everything explodes so catastrophically in the end of the novel is because he needs more than just a paternal relationship. He doesn’t try to have a “normal” father-daughter relationship with Cosette, he tries to force his relationship with Cosette to be literally everything and everyone to him, for her to be his entire world: and it doesn’t work.

There’s a passage in the novel that talks about how all the love Valjean is capable of ends up being suppressed/sublimated into his relationship with Cosette. The love of a brother, of a friend, of a father, of a husband, the love of everything he is capable of, gets repressed so that he can throw every part of himself into being a father. There are Bad les mis adaptations that incorrectly misinterpret that passage to mean that Jean Valjean is incestuous/grooming Cosette. But in context, that’s not what the passage means at all.

The passage specifies very explicitly that Jean Valjean “did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father,” that “no marriage was possible between them,” that his feelings for her are absolutely paternal. But the passage does show how Jean Valjean is doing a very different unhealthy thing: he’s relying on Cosette to fill every single emotional void in his life.

He’s relying on parenthood to fill the grief/emptiness left behind by all the other kinds of love that he has wanted, but never been given.

To quote a bit of that passage:

Jean Valjean did not love Cosette otherwise than as a father (…) Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we have insisted on it more than once, all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering Jean Valjean a father to Cosette. A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother, and the husband, that existed in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a father who loved Cosette and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.

Jean Valjean reminds me of a Failmode I’ve seen in a lot of different real-life parents? There are parents who cope with their own hard lives by telling themselves that parenthood is their sole reason for being alive, and who obsess over their child’s success as their only source of purpose, meaning, love, happiness, community, and validation. But it’s a bad idea to rely on one child to provide the emotional support that should be shared by friends, parents, siblings, every possible loved one, etc etc—- One child can’t actually heal you from your trauma, be a replacement for your broken relationships, pull you out of your grief, save you from your adult loneliness, etc etc etc etc.

When I see the common interpretation that Jean Valjean is perfectly content just to be the father of Cosette, I think of this line:

Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes this crushing proof: “another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her father, I no longer exist”; when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself: “She is going away from me!” the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being nothing!

On one hand, the terrible Les mis adaptations that portray Valjean as Incest Creep are incorrect and wrong. On the other hand, though, Jean Valjean IS unhealthy about Cosette— just in a different and actually sympathetic way.

He has made fatherhood his only purpose, to replace every other purpose he could have in life. So he can’t be “just Cosette’s father.” He can’t imagine her becoming an adult and leaving the nest, like children do. What does he have if he’s not taking care of her? What is his purpose in life if she doesn’t need him to be her parent? He's not just being her father, he's relying on her to be his entire reason to exist. He hasn't been allowing himself to have things outside of her.

And speaking of things outside of Cosette: segue time. This post was supposed to be about Jean Valjean and romance, so let's switch gears and talk about his canon 'romantic experiences' more:

We’re told that in his youth he “never had a sweetheart” because he “never had time to be in love.” There is no indication that Jean Valjean never wanted to be in love. The opposite is implied. Hugo frames it as a tragedy that Jean Valjean’s does not experience young love; it’s the horror of poverty taking yet another thing from him.

Within prison, Valjean is “gloomy” and “chaste;” when he traumadumps to Montparnasse about it, he talks about women looking on galley slaves with horror and disgust. Romance, at least “normal” heterosexual romance, is no longer something that is permitted for him. Jean Valjean knows very little about romance/love/sex and it repeatedly messes up his life. He spends 19 years in the all-male environment of prison, then about a decade in the almost-all-female environment of the convent. He has very little experience with how men and women are supposed to interact. The oppression Fantine faces as a sex worker, and Cosette's relationship with Marius, are both two big 'blind spots' that he struggles with.

At one point romantic love is described as “The only misery Jean Valjean had not yet experienced, and the only one that is sweet.”

In his massive confession to Marius, he agonizes over how he is not allowed to be part of a family, and is incapable of being part of a home. He compares himself to someone sick and diseased, that poisons good and normal people with his presence, and cannot be allowed to make himself part of their families.

So Jean Valjean doesn’t frame Romance as “a thing he doesn’t want:” it’s a thing “he is not allowed to want,” it is one of the many things he is banned from wanting. It's impossible to tell what kind of things he would want, if he were allowed to want them.

One of the most interesting things to me, however, is his general attitude towards Marius/Cosette.

Obviously his first reaction to Marius snooping around is fear and resentment— he doesn’t know to interact with romance, having never experienced it, and immediately begins catastrophizing. He views Marius as a privileged booby ruining his life for something as frivolous as a love affair: it reads to me as partially envy, envy of the fact that Marius lives the kind of safe comfortable life that allows him to experience young love.

Jean Valjean added: “What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I? What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old without having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives, without friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.”

But, even though Jean Valjean views romance as something he isn’t allowed or have or to want, views it as a threat and catastrophizes over how it will ruin his life……he seems to also put heterosexual romance on a pedestal.

The way Jean Valjean idealizes marriage is one of his weirdest character notes for me.

He views marriage as Cosette’s “happy ending.” It’s her “happily ever after” point where she won’t need him anymore, where she won’t need anyone outside of her husband. A Man And a Woman Are Meant to Get Married, It's Fate, and It Means They Will Live Happily Together Forever. Marius is “the goal of her heart, the wish of her life; her dearest one.” Nothing outside of that matters anymore.

He treats her marriage as if romantic love is inherently always more important than any kind of platonic relationships, and always takes priority over them. He later dismisses the unconventional family structure he has with Cosette, saying that despite his love for her he was only a "passerby" and was not actually her real father, because they were not biologically related.

There's a moment where Jean Valjean is described as someone whose ideal is to be angel on the inside and a bourgeois on the outside. Jean Valjean's worship of bourgeois social norms, norms he can never truly be a part of, is one of his character flaws. He has a similar "guard dog" energy as Eponine does when she defends Rue Plumet from her parents.....Eponine and Jean Valjean both become the guard dogs of a kind of romantic relationship they believe they are banned from having. Jean Valjean believes that getting Happily Straight Married in a Middle-Class Home with a Picket Fence(tm) is the ideal path for life....but believes himself broken/incapable of ever following that path. And so he instead throws his entire life into securing that future for Marius and Cosette.

In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast. Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even riches. And this was his doing.

TL: DR:

Jean Valjean's gender/sexuality label is “idk but he’s super fucked up about it.”

[starkwlkr]

happy life, happy wife | hugh jackman

an: “you attract what you fear” GUYS IM SO SCARED OF A 55 YEAR OLD AUSTRALIAN 😭 definitely thinking about making marvel actress!reader x hugh an actual series… i have ideas

marvel actress!reader

Deadpool & Wolverine Press tour - Hot Ones

Hugh felt like he was going to die. Each wing was getting hotter and hotter, but immediately when he heard his wife’s name he forgot all about the spice.

“Hugh, your wife is part of the Avengers, how does it feel having your wife be part of such a huge franchise? Have you two talked about a potential team up with the X-men and the Avengers?” Sean asked.

“My wife . . . Oh god, I think I’m crying-”

“I can’t tell if you’re legitimately dying or completely in love with your wife.” Ryan told Hugh.

“Wait . . I am completely in love with my wife and I would legitimately die for her.” Hugh gasped as he rearranged Ryan’s words.

“Is that in the contract she made you sign when you married her? ‘I vow to die for you’. My contract said I had to give all my money to my kids and wife.” Ryan said.

“No, she’s amazing, um, if I start talking about her I think I might go on for hours,” he laughed. “Our kids do want to see their parents fighting the bad guys together. We would love to team up, maybe it could happen.” Hugh smiled.

“The entire movie would be them making out and her beating the shit out of you. I’d pay to see that.” Ryan added.

•••

Comic Con 2024

Like RDJ, your last Marvel movie had been Avengers: Endgame. After being in ten mcu films, it was time to say goodbye to your character.

But that was in 2019.

At this years comic con, you were back. The cast of Deadpool & Wolverine had taken the stage and showed their appreciation for the fans. After their panel, it was time to announce Marvel’s upcoming projects. Kevin Feige announced the Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts, Captain America 4, and finally the new Avengers movies, which everyone was extremely excited about.

After showing the title card for the upcoming Avengers film, Kevin turned to the audience.

“Something people have been asking, as of late, is who the heck is going to direct these two movies?” The audience clapped.

From the side of the stage, you were nervous. What if the fans didn’t like the idea of you directing the next two Avengers films? Your worrying caused Hugh to come to your rescue.

“Hey, they loved you as an Avenger, they will love you even more.” Hugh kissed your forehead. “If anyone says anything about this decision, they have me to deal with.”

You laughed at his words. “I really love you so much.”

“Love you too, bub.” Hugh was about to kiss you when Ryan cut in.

“I really love us too. I convinced half of the people here that we’re a throuple.” He said in the most serious tone ever.

Kevin announced you as the director. Your doubt of the fans not liking the announcement was proven wrong when you walked the stairs to the stage and stood next to Kevin. They cheered when they saw you were back.

As you said a few words, thanking Marvel, Kevin and the fans, you were being recorded by Hugh, who was being recorded by Ryan.

“That’s my wife!” Hugh cheered from backstage, holding his phone in his hand.

“She’s Marvel Jesus now, holy shit!”

•••

WIRED autocomplete interview

“Is Hugh Jackman married?”

“Yes, to me, Y/n, probably to half the population,” Ryan answered. “He’s Australia’s biggest slut.”

“All the times, I proposed.” Hugh laughed. “But yes, I am married and I love my wife very much. She’s stuck with me forever.” He lifted his hand to show off the wedding band.

“Funny, because she texted me right now. Her and Blake are in the courthouse getting married. So Deadpool three was actually made so our wives could divorce us and marry each other.”