#i can't make that any more clear

[devilsskettle]

The X trilogy + "psycho-biddy" influences

[demigods-posts]

I've seen a lot of discourse about Virginia Kull's portrayal of Sally Jackson in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV series, and I'd like to say that I loved her. Don't get me wrong. I love Sally from the original book series, and I, too, would fight the God of War on her behalf. But something that I enjoyed about Virginia's portrayal of Sally that we don't get in the books is the character depth. We don't hear much of Sally's backstory in the TV series, apart from a couple of flashbacks with younger Percy and that scene with Poseidon (Toby Stephens). However, those scenes do an excellent job of showing us that alongside being Percy's mother, Sally is also a young woman who fell in love with a man she could not be with and is enduring the natural consequences of having Percy. She struggles to communicate with him when she's frustrated, gets teary-eyed when she lies to him to prolong the inevitable, and actively sacrifices her happiness to ensure his safety. Virginia Kull's portrayal of Sally Jackson reinforces the character's humanity, imperfections, and determination, and it's everything to me.

[bitchthefuck1]

Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.

Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.

It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.

[angelicdonuts]

Guys I'm so sorry (I'm not) I love fnf soooo much dude

Anyway!! There's one more after this! It's gonna be oc focused :3 !

[ducktracy]

reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

[treasureplcnet]

someone on the bodies production team you have to release more layout/bts pictures of charles whiteman's flat please. this is a great start but i need to know him better. particularly if it's got about as much mould as a second year uni house and if he owns as many chairs as it seems LOL

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Ned doesn't know how to talk with Sansa" Okay but like…where though? Where is it actually anywhere in the books that Ned has trouble speaking with Sansa? Or that he doesn't know how to handle her or "what to do" with her? The conflict people try and invent between them is just so...forced. I wish people would just let it go and stop trying.

[amplexadversary]

Honestly, I think if Rain Mikamura's issues were explored more rather than sanded down by both the show and fandom when they aren't convenient for a joke, she might have had a chance at being one of my all-time favorite characters.

I've alluded to the idea that bringing her jealousy issues to the forefront would thematically strengthen the back end of the show, and tackling her communication problems on the same level as Domon's would have made them work much better as a pairing.

(they have polar opposite issues where Domon needs to be told "hey, people would like to know this, so say it," while Rain expects people to read her mind) (I'd still ship her with Schwarz though tbh)

Also, she owns multiple guns and threw a wrench at Domon's head at one point. This woman is violent and repressing it.

FInally, there's the fact that Rain seems to think that she can, and is expected to, control the behavior of other people. Her meltdown over her father's actions where she concludes that she is equally responsible kind of suggests this, and she spends a lot of time trying to control Domon's behavior even when he's not doing something reckless. I would have really liked if the final arc had some kind of element of the inherent horror in taking that to it's logical conclusion, since we know the DG can literally control people.

I really think my biggest gripe about her is that most people follow the writers in pretending that the flaws they gave her don't exist, and without them, Rain is kind of a boring, can-do-no-wrong type that I really cannot stand, so as a result I can go between really liking her and avoiding the hell out of her.

[basuralindo]

what I would give for transmasc to stop being inherently associated with softness in fandom. especially for trans headcanons to not include toning down the character or making them sweeter and more gentle.

at this point I would kill to see trans fan art that didn't manage to make me feel more dysphoric and distanced from the character ffs.

I'm begging fans to consider why they feel the need to change a character's personality when they wanna hc them as trans. search your soul a little on that. stop making it so fucking weird

[stillresolved]

.

[gen-is-gone]

something something manage expectations something something small town library something something volunteers should not be entrusted with even half the shit they cover here when they by definition have no professional stake in the library and are not held to professional standards

*sigh*

[boyfridged]

Do you agree that Jason, as written by Winnick in UTRH and Lost Days, acts out of character post-resurrection if we take into account his post-crisis robin days? If yes, how would you have him act/react to stuff after he comes back from the dead?

tldr: i definitely agree. moreover, classism plays a huge role in it, and i don’t think that at this point the storyline could lose these implications, which makes trying to conceive what an “in character” (for robin jay) version of these events would be quite difficult. 

let’s just start from saying that i don't think it's a secret that i don't really like winick in general. despite his work being mad interesting on a conceptual level (and style-wise, genuinely well written!), he has no love for the characters he writes about. 

imo utrh shouldn't even ever make it into the mainstream batman timeline. i am aware that this is a radical opinion, but my take is that it would do best as an elseworld story (and in this version too it would need some tweaks here and there), because it made damage both to the mythos of batman and jason's legacy that can never be undone. the very premise of the story is so deeply disconnected from jay's original place in the narrative, and so classist at its roots, that there's not much room to truly fix it. 

(i want to say, preemptively, that i am aware that there are people who read utrh as a story of a revolutionary and a victim – and they have the right to do so, but ngl, my view has always been that it was never written as that. utrh reinforces so many stereotypes that it overshadows the revenge tragedy spirit of it all.) 

another disclaimer is that, to be honest, jay doesn't have a very consistent characterization even in his 80s run, and it also has some classist implications that ideally should be either erased or addressed in the text (that winick instead exaggerated and put at the very front of his storytelling.) starlin's writing is, at the end of the day and very much ironically, more sympathetic and gentler in evaluating jay (simply because at the time he would not get away with changes too blatant) but details such as jay saying that "all life is game" and his random nonchalant behaviour that has its origin in the very beginning of starlin’s run are already signs of it. some readers will trace jason's arrogance prevalent in his red hood era to these issues and say that his actions post-res are therefore a logical extension of his robin days, but i don't buy it. even if you want to lean into starlin-esque characterisation, if you consider the core problem of the garzonas plotline – which is power, jay shouldn’t look into the solution of anything in climbing to the top. and if he did, it would have to be written as a “becoming what you feared/hated most” kind of story, which i can see a certain appeal in (and which would at least acknowledge that it was not his initial personality), but which would go back to its classist assumption of cycles of violence and doomed fates.

so – how to make his post-res era more accurate to his post-crisis robin days (and least classist in the process)?

if we were to follow my fav iterations of his characterisation (barr’s detective comics and the ntt appearances) tbh I don’t think a lot would happen, because his personality is quite mild, and just so hopeful there that i wouldn’t expect any extreme actions from him – but then again, the circumstances that he finds himself in post-res, the trauma, and his sensitivity do warrant grief that should become a driving force in his life from now on. the question is, what to do with this grief as a plot device?

i know that plenty of jason fans hate this take but I actually think the concept of jason trying to be detached and cruel but being bad at it might be one of the least offensive to his 80s characterisation. it’s def not accurate to pre-52 canon (apart from countdown perhaps) but imo for jay to be authentic and nuanced he should be conflicted about his own actions. his overconfident behaviour should be a pose – just as his frantic acts in his origin story as robin were. (again, something that many readers don't take notice of – but reading the rest of collins' writing wherein jay quickly settles into being easy-going and even a bit shy is proof of it.)

these two points lead to the “no good deed” narrative that I often talk about - the reading that jason saw his intuitive and self-sacrificial kind tendencies as something that brought him pain and that never was quite efficient, and that post-res he intentionally tried training himself out of. there are some flashes of it here and there throughout the years of the red hood publishing history, but it never got a true spotlight. and if i were to write lost days, jason flinching at his own violence would be a focal point of the story. 

moving on to utrh; i have spoken about it at length before but I think if he were written 1. with more political sensitivity 2. to have retained the same maturity re: the social order 3. to have the same idea of morality, he should have followed more of actual revolutionary tracks and the whole “drug lord” authoritarian figure schtick along with the idiotic idea of “controlling crime” would have to be thrown out of the window. 

and, later on, forgiveness should play a big role in his story. he's so quick to forgive and justify everyone in his robin run – this is also why i reckon his team up with harvey in tfz was a wasted opportunity.

so, in conclusion – perhaps not that much would have to change re: his actions but definitely a lot should change regarding his emotional journey and his position. i would def throw out a lot of mindless violence and power posturing out of it though. and perhaps make him a bit more polite just for the sake of more consistency (this is not me taking a moral stance btw nor tone policing a fictional character. i just think it would be more faithful to his 80s writing unless you want to make him explicitly scared. and it would be funnier tbh.)

[classicintp]

There is this whole idea that flipping a two sided coin doesn't have a 50-50 probability. It's not a new idea by any means, but the explanation is if you measured the mass of the coin, the force of the flip, the temperature of the coin & of the room, the force of any breeze, wind, or vibration in the air as it traveled, and so on, you could accurately determine within a small margin of error what side the coin will land on every time, and if you kept those constant it would flip on the same side every time. And that idea is also KIND OF the explanation for the conclusion in quantum physics that there is no free will.

A lot of people hear that and either clutch their pearls, roll their eyes, or aren't interested either way. (I mean, when you say some shit like that you're just going to immediately turn off any interest most people would have otherwise had but I'm digressing now). We all like to think we make decisions and choices, and then amateurs who want to talk about quantum mechanics alienate everyone by saying it's not true: you were always going to make these choices with no chance to make the other one.

But what I said in the first paragraph is something-like (but not exactly) what it means when you hear or read that according to quantum physics we have no free will. That if we had an unfathomable device that has been measuring all the variables of every single particle that was expelled during the Big Bang, with an also-sufficient/also-currently-unfathomable algorithm to plug those variables into, all within a computer that could do all of the calulations for BILLIONS of years, we could compute exactly where every particle was going and where it would end up, including those that make up the stars and planets, that make up the ground and oceans, that make up the animals and plants, that make up your brain and all of the proteins and neurotransmitters. That if it could all be measured and an algorithm sufficiently built then the decisions you make are already determined by the ongoing relationships and interactions the particles that make up your brain had in the past and are having right now.

However, humans cannot measure that, they likely never ever will.

Anyone that tells me they don't like quantum mechanics because something something affront to nature blah blah "they" don't believe in free will, etc. literally doesn't know it's just a rescale of the coin toss description. You still believe coin tosses are 50-50 because you aren't going to measure the variables used to receive an answer, you can still believe in free will because you can't measure the variables used to determine the ultimate path of all particles; I mean, I wouldn't become a theoretical physicist if that meant so much to you but I'm not your dad, do what you want.

Edit: I know I described the science mostly wrong, please check out the replies and reblogs for others' corrections and feel free to add corrections of your own for mine and others' learning, thank you.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I feel like the post I just reblogged pointing out the all-or-nothing in how many people interact with their deconstruction of systems of oppression is resonating for me right now with so many different moments in my life where someone decides that because some part of myself has access to some of the levers of control/influence/etc that come with the relationship to power, and decides what that must mean about all the other parts of me that might be explicitly refused access to those same levers.

It has happened in so many spaces/aspects of my life, and it can be so hard to feel safe and seen and trusting of others when that's my chronic relationship to being perceived - half truths and obfuscation.

It doesn't really change regardless of who's doing the assuming either. Like, where they land in relation to systems of power may influence which direction they lean in their assumptions about me, but even that is often inconsistent. Both sides of the equation (those who share my marginalizations and those who exist in spaces of closer proximity to power) will still do it nonetheless.

When I was doing my liminal social identities work in undergrad, this was actually a big part of the conceptualization we explored of traumtic alienation of self as individual from self as collective, and what it can do to people to exist in this liminal relationship with your environment and the people in it. As I'm starting to gather my thoughts about my stress modeling, this conceptualization is bubbling back to the surface. I'm finding myself meandering through it on both a path specifically my own, and in an effort to better understand what other paths may be available to people during their version of the process/experience.

Selfhood is so fragile, and so in need of balance between self-construction and co-construction for us humans, and that gives us so many beautiful, even spiritual, experiences of meaning making and generativity of self. It also createa many pivot points where we may find room in our path for vulnerability or blurring of self. As much as these pivot points can be distressing, I think they also sometimes become our foundations of change/personal evolution, when we find that through the distress of existing in shift, something meaningful is occurring or observable in our experience of self-in-transition.

I think something I've valued especially about my own relationship with self is its transience. It doesn't always end up somewhere I would be happy to sustain, but it always allows me a degree of comfort in complexity that I think has made my body-mind a safer place for me overall.

[corfisers]

the thing about the dudebro discussion, the aita post, the willingness to just take at face value any accusations directed at a person you don't know, is that it's all so painfully transparent, it's so obvious that those conversations are happening at this scale specifically because it's about trans women. maybe it's just me, but you generally shouldn't be using certain terms for people unless you know that they are comfortable with them, and if you fucked up then apologize and move on (if we pretend for a second that the majority of dudebros weren't feign ignorance or just actively malicious to begin with). you should be aware that some things don't affect you the same way they affect other people, and you definitely shouldn't be giving those people potentially dangerous advice on topics that you personally aren't familiar with, this is the baseline, at least don't fucking put other people who were misled into trusting you in danger. and if an anon barges into your inbox with some wild accusations then you should stop and think "hey, why are you coming to me anonymously with no evidence to back any of this up, and in such a way that i have to reply to you publicly so more people get to see this" regardless of who it's directed at. like, those are all pretty simple things, or they should be at least, but because the targets are trans women and transmisogyny is so fucking rampant everyone has to bend over backwards to come up with excuses as to why treating trans women this way is perfectly normal and justified.

[shirogane-oushirou]

[little vent -- tldr definitely not gonna have the planned art ready for the renniversary lol.]

me: "oh hell yeah i'll have a dog-sitting "job" for the next few days, so i'll have plenty of time to work on the art leading up to friday :) "

the dogs: untrained, poorly behaved, require constant attention (not their fault but it's the reality of the situation)

so uh. i might have some simple chibi art for friday if i have enough energy between putting the dogs to bed and going to sleep hghghghgh ;;;;; i'll finish the more detailed pics as i have the time and energy :')