#i know they both do die at some point

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[raticalshoez]

i'm having hyperfixation drought so i did what i did best and created a crossover episode

[drizzledrawings]

.........wdym, 'mattie's death' 😭😭😭😭😭

She dies of old age dw far far into the future after being super cool and an amazing wife after her return to being human

A problem with her lungs

Flora lives a few years without her before peacefully dying in her sleep at like 84

[doveywovy]

thinking about the uchiha and the senju *not* being on equal footing for once. Indra, when chasing power, became the Daimyo of Fire instead of squabbling with his Father and Brother. His relation to the Emperor (his grandfather) ensuring the line. So hundreds of years later, the Uchiha are the ruling family of fire- over civilians and shinobi alike. They rarely, if ever, actually *serve* as shinobi, but they maintain their abilities to the highest degree possible because it's part of how they keep an iron grip on all the shinobi clans who serve under them. (The sharingan is as respected as ever, but now with the 'divine right to rule' implications tied into it's manifestation.)

Tajima is the current head, but he's coming close to retiring and having Madara take over. Izuna's been raised as Madara's advisor; assassinations are still a concern but heirs dying is much less common. They'd never put the main family into danger, so all of their siblings are still alive, but they all got married off at young ages to secure alliances. (Even before they got married off, they were raised with the mindset that they'd be bargaining tools, and so Izuna and Madara were raised separately to keep them from getting attached).

The Senju aren't a noble clan, and aren't even aware of their connection to the historical line of power. But the Uchiha are aware of it, and thus start to pay extra attention when Hashirama marries Mito. Uniting clans...it could be nothing, but it could also be a sign he intends to usurp. They're careful about that sort of thing.

Izuna presses the advantage this gives them. The Senju will have to give in to any demands they make that aren't *too* outrageous, and there's been whispering about Hashirama's brother being a genius inventor. Madara asks for Tobirama's service to their family, separating the Senju from a very useful tool if they are planning a coup and gaining the Uchiha a very major boon if there's no coup in place.

Tobirama arrives, blandly polite, covered in dirt from the road, and the presumption is that he'll get swirled away into court life. He'll either prove foolish and end up dead sooner than later, or prove clever and thus useful. In which case Izuna will keep him in mind if he ever needs something invented, or investigated, or otherwise prodded with a stick. One day the Senju's power will fade- they'll make a political misstep, lose an heir, Hashirama will turn into a tree. Then Tobirama will get returned, with the expectation to politely acquis to any requests the Uchiha make for the rest of his life.

Izuna gets attached instead. Tobirama's extremely compelling to him for all their similarities and differences. The man is a younger brother devoted to his elder; Izuna cares for his brother by handling the tricky court manipulations that elude soft-hearted Madara. Tobirama seems serve his brother by being the harsh one, the firm one, the threatening one. He's ill-suited for court. He lacks any skill at manipulation but is very adapt at biting insults, which is a terrible combination and also very funny for Izuna to watch. Izuna was raised from a young age to be careful about assassinations; Tobirama was raised from a young age to commit them.

Tobirama doesn't know how easily their positions could be reversed, if their ancestors had made different decisions, but Izuna does. He takes a very mean delight in that- especially because he fully believes the Uchiha deserve their place. They *were* the better bloodline, the divine right to rule was indeed always meant to be theirs, and it really only could be fate that a Senju would end up serving the Uchiha. It's a joke that Tobirama can never know, and his ignorance makes it funnier.

[purplecatghostposts]

Thinking about how Hoody!Brian had SO many opportunities to kill Alex but hesitated and couldn’t time and time again. He had the guy captured twice and while you could argue that the Operator interrupted him once, he also HAD him at Benedict Hall. He could’ve ended it there, but he couldn’t.

Hoody!Brian could hate him all he wanted, beat him to hell and back, and mock and threaten him, but he never was quite able to pull the trigger. Even at his lowest, even full of hate and contempt for Alex (and some for everyone else alive too), he couldn’t seem to cross that particular line. Which is incredibly interesting to me.

[introspectivememories]

NICO: WE SHARED THE LIFT THIS MORNING! I WAS GOING TO THE POOL TRAMPOLINE WITH MY TWO DAUGHTERS AND HE WAS GOING TO THE RACETRACK. PINKHAM: VERY DIFFERENT LIVES YOU'RE CURRENTLY LEADING.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

kinda wild to me that one of the most compelling aspects of both Chuuya and Kunikida's characters to me, that I never really see talked about, is how they're heavily set on a doomed crash course towards complete and utter destruction, and how I am so, so worried for them both.....

[zebratimw]

Spirit animal SQH

[notmoreflippingelves]

It's dawned on me suddenly

And for no obvious reason

That I can't go on

Living as I am.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

obsessed with their different reactions to being called starcrossed lovers

[untimelyambition]

i am begging on my hands and knees for jon matteson and bryce charles to sing a song together. since i first watched npmd, every single day without fail i have thought about their harmonies together in hatchet town (“if he gets me next i could be three” and “fits the bill, he fits the bill”) literally the sickest harmonies in the entire show, i turn into a little gremlin every time i hear them. their voices sound SO good together it actually makes me a little ill. my favourite song my favourite line my favourite harmonies, their voices blend perfectly and i am so desperate to hear them sing a duet to hear them singing together again pls pls please pls pls pls. pls.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Full Tech Day One pic today from kiko laureano (denizen of skid row / ensemble) & video (that's four seconds of "ya never know" playing over the static image) from & ft. marcia milgrom dodge (director / choreographer) double captioning "there might be puppets in this musical ;)" & "Well Shake my hand! Come see LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS @guthrietheater featuring @actually_will_roland's hand!"

[jabberwockprince]

since we're all having fun talking about theories and headcanons before the game drops. one thing that i do want for missing link, that is mostly wishful thinking on my part, is a reveal for kairi being a descendant of the player

this is based on their parallels of being shooting stars later found washed up on a beach from the new missing link trailer, plus that one moment from KH1 where kairi's grandma tells her about the age of the fairytales and nothing else lmfao

and i want that so badly because. it would be so fucking ironic and poetic to have kairi be a direct descendant of the one person that raised and cared so much for xehanort. the player, whose memories of ephemer and skuld and chirithy and everyone else influenced xehanort into starting his whole ass spiral and descent into darkness

only for her (and sora) to be the ones to get xehanort to stop in the end. ending a cycle of sorts. for her to be haunted by the memory of xehanort, the same way xehanort was "haunted" by the memory of the player's past life

PLUS. i want it to SPECIFICALLY recontextualize kairi's inheritance of the keyblade from BBS. because kairi's reason to wield a keyblade being nothing more than an "accident" feels like such a disservice to her AND aqua??

if they could recontextualize xehanort into whole new depths in dark road, i dont see why they couldn't reframe that moment as kairi reclaiming a dormant power, her own heritage that her bloodline forgot for centuries, since knowledge about keyblades and wielders began to fade out over time to the point where people who KNEW about them thought they were evil. makes sense that as the age of fairytales is left FORGOTTEN, no one can remember how to summon a keyblade, let alone the knowledge to create one from someone's heart. but having a strong heart (one of the requisites for bequeathing ceremonies) and being in direct contact with a keyblade, could just. help jog the memory a bit

and show that yeah. kairi deserves to wield a keyblade because she has a strong heart, and because this was her heritage that was taken away from her when the worlds began to drift away from each other and so on. not because of an accident

everytime chance, fate and destiny are brought up in the saga to explain why something. happened the way it did. it carries so much weight and so many events that led to That Point. but kairi's inheritance as of right now was just. yeah, an accident. no ceremony at all AND I JUST THINK SHE DESERVES RLLY COOL THINGS OKAY

[queer-pagan-witch]

One day I will learn, that just because the bottle is low, does not mean I need to finish off the bottle.

[gonersgoners]

remember when i said over a year ago that vegapunk's arc would start revealing even more of sanji's power and potential and how hard that was worrying me? yeah