#i think abt this a lot clearly

[infernumequinomin]

SEE YOU GET IT YOU SEE IT

I do think Kabru is proud of his ability to manipulate people, though! Not in any sort of especially hubristic sort of Pride as the source of a fall type way, but in the way any person can be proud of a skill they have deeply and lovingly cultivated over the majority of their life. Kabru's being able to read and see humans and humanity for what it is, and twist that as a means of controlling his environment is absolutely a self defense mechanism, but I actually think Laois' love of monsters is too.

Laois' growing initial interest in monsters, the way he wished and hoped that monsters would show up and destroy the people in the village he was from, a sort of escapist fantasy of his, kind of shows in a lot of ways the way Laois uses his fixation as a defense mechanism to pull himself farther away from that which hurt him. He has GENUINE enthusiasm, absolutely, to say he didn't would be a disservice, but while Kabru learned people to know exactly how to push them away, Laois ran the other direction to do the same thing, I think. Monsters, how they work, the intricate balance of the ecosystem, isn't LESS complicated than people are, but it is something that provides him a measure of comfort in how simple and easy he finds it to his mind, it's self soothing. It's maladaptive daydreaming to deal with his sense of displacement within society.

Kabru learned to mask to keep himself safe, and Laois didn't. He struggled instead to find something somewhere that could fit him, that he could fit into as the person he was to begin with. And the whole series really does show that. Laois, by virtue of what he's learned and cared to know, becomes the most valuable person to the people Kabru is trying to keep close to ride along with, not because he tried to fit but because he tried to push that away. What he knows suddenly becomes more valuable, more leverage, and Laois pulls back both from Kabru and the other factions trying to take control of the situation harder than we ever see him pull away from others when his knowlege is just helping his friends. Laois is more than happy to help his friends with usi knowledge and skills! But he actively is avoiding the Canaries and the larger groups that also would have benefited from his skills. He doesn't really WANT to be useful to humanity. He wants his sister to not be dead! Because of course he does! She's the only human that has really tried to understand and love him! And also he loves her! That is his baby sister!

In a lot of ways, though, I do think it is disegenuine to Kabru's character to suggest he ONLY wants to push other humanoids away, but that is the function of a lot of his effort. I think with how passionately he talks about wanting to relieve the disparity between the longer and shorter lived races, he DOES want some measure of closeness and reciprocation between himself and other people, but largely we only see his social manuvering with ELVES. A race who he... Frankly is pretty open about not being terribly fond of because of how elves disenfranchised him. The few times we see him interact with his party, he approaches it a lot more delicately and less openly hostile, and I do think that shows rhat even if he CAN'T connect with people normally, he probably wants to.

I think that both of them want to understand each other, and people in general, but when it comes down to it, Laois missed the mark, and Kabru went for the win and ended up overshooting. Kabru put all his money on "Knowing people means I can help them" and then realized a lot of the same things that Laois did about the faults of humanity, and pulled back, but hey, lost cost fallacy, he's already this far, gotta keep pushing forward and it'll reveal itself. Somehow, the secret to saving humanity HAS to be within humanity.

Anyway, I just think they're neat!

Have we considered what it means that Laois is so good at killing monsters, the one thing he loves, and so bad at fighting humans, the thing he feels most distance from. And inverse Kabru is terrible at killing monsters, the one thing he wants to destroy, but so good at killing humans he would have killed Falin 6 different times when he tried to kill her if her anatomy had been more human, despite his love for and drive to protect humanity? Have we considered what it means to be able to kill that which you love but not that you hate? Has anyone fucking considered the imposter syndrome that has to come from only being good at killing that which you love most??? The fear of not being able to protect yourself from the thing you most think is a threat simply because you cannot find a way to understand it enough to take it's life?

[beescake]

im a sollux kinnie and ur art is great. like a delicious meal. 1 million courses. my compliments to the chef.

AOGHHH TYSM I REALLY APPRECIATE IT

in gratitude i present a little guy doing setup for the first time 🐝

[thefloatingwriter]

the victors as complex characters will always be more interesting than making them amazing people.

like these are people who did absolutely everything in their power to survive something as traumatic as the games. most of them probably sleep with weapons in their hands. the thought on the forefront of most of their minds is survival. everything else—anyone else—can wait.

they sacrificed everything to crawl out of a killing game. their mental stability. their innocence. their childhood.

and after all of that, they realized that the games never really end. that they would sacrifice ever having a good night sleep without being plagued by nightmares. they would sacrifice their brains to help the capitol. they would sacrifice their bodies, something that should have always been their own, now snatched away from them. all for surviving a killing match that twenty-three children didn’t.

no victor is immune to this either. do you think cashmere doesn’t regret being so excited to go into the games after her brother after staying the night in a strange man’s bed that she doesn’t know? do you think gloss doesn’t regret not warning his sister about the horrors that await her after she wins? do you think brutus doesn’t sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after having yet another nightmare about being on the receiving end of his weapon, just as all of his victims were before everything faded to black? do you think enobaria doesn’t run her tongue over her sharpened teeth and wonder if it was worth it?

do you think beetee doesn’t flinch every time he sees lightning? do you think wiress doesn’t think of how if she hadn’t learned acrobatics that the 48th hunger games would have gone very differently? do you think finnick doesn’t see nets in the same way ever again, after he saw the girl from nine begging for her life tangled in a net he set up before he stabbed her with a trident? do you think annie doesn’t think about if she hadn’t spent all of that time on the beach growing up, playing in the water, that she wouldn’t have survived the dam breaking in her arena? do you think mags doesn’t think about how she left her district partner to die in the first ever traditional career pack? how if maybe, if she had been there to take the blow for him, there would be a different victor of the 11th hunger games?

do you think that blight doesn’t wonder what would have happened if the boy from two had looked up a little bit sooner, looked a little bit closer at the treetops above him, before the knife previously in blight’s hand found it’s way to the boy’s back? do you think that every time johanna picks up an axe, she doesn’t think about what if felt like to stab someone with it, what blood felt like when it splattered you? do you think she doesn’t wake up in a sweat, thinking the moisture on her skin is blood, that she’s back in the third quarter quell? do you think she doesn’t ever walk into her house in the victor’s village and think she sees a glimpse, a shadow, of her lost loved ones?

do you think that woof doesn’t use real knives anymore because every time he sees one, he remembers how it felt to stab blindly at the boy from seven? that even when he was seventy-five and the male tribute from eight for the third quarter quell, he couldn’t even look at the utensil and had to get cecelia to take it away from him? do you think cecelia can’t look at seashells anymore, that she could barely stand district four on her victory tour, because the girl from four was her last kill? that her necklace, a pretty one her sister made for her with a seashell strung through the string, was what cecelia used to choke the life out of her?

do you think that chaff doesn’t ever feel the phantom feeling of his hand? doesn’t ever touch the stump where it used to be and feel the phantom pain of it being sawed off like it was yesterday, even thirty years later? do you think that seeder doesn’t ever feel the hot sun of her arena on her body, doesn’t ever think she’s back, waiting for her death to come?

do you think that haymitch doesn’t start shaking every time a blowgun is provided at the cornucopia? do you think that he didn’t see the gold pin on katniss’ arena wear and have to sit down, remembering a very different girl with blonde hair and a quick witted humor with the same pin? do you think that peeta doesn’t hear foxface’s voice during her interview, over and over and over, until it’s so distorted he can’t even remember what she had actually said? that he doesn’t ever think of the girl from eight, a girl he might not have even known the name of?

do you think that, years down the line, katniss doesn’t realize the fate that waited for glimmer if she had won? do you think that she doesn’t wonder what would have happened if cato was a little quicker to get to the cornucopia to save clove? do you think she doesn’t wonder what the girl from four was like, what her name was, what her parents were like, what she was like? do you think that she doesn’t think about what would have happened if marvel was just a little bit quicker with his spear than her with her arrows, what would have happened if she was just a little bit slower to get to rue?

the what-ifs plague them. their games will never leave them. they will never escape their experiences. their lives will never be their own, if they ever were, ever again.

[c-kiddo]

people talking abt asha as if she is a massive contrast/change to the wildmother in cr2 is confusing to me like were you paying attention? like, obviously she is softer, exandria has had a long time to heal from the calamity (though, not particularly long on a nature scale but long enough for healing, enough for civilisation and nature to be more balanced hence her less-strained relationship with erathis) so she's far calmer, but she's also fully the wildmother again rather than a wolf. but even then, as much as a commune with her feels like she's a mother holding caduceus like a child she also does give him the power to swarm people with insects that burrow into their eyes and eat their tongues. she's the fish and the osprey that catches it, shes parasites and snakes and foals and rabbits and wildflowers and mountains and springs and thorns and teeth. thats literally part of caduceus' whole character - his softness and compassion contrasted with him being very clear and open about the violence of nature and that death happens and things are killed and their bodies feed the earth. like the brutality is always there, but its more balanced now, and at present the wildmother's just not as cornered (or suffocated in a city with so much light pollution that you can't see the stars). she's not starving anymore

[77ngiez-archive]

project sekai is crazy because literally every character is queer trans neurodivergent physically disabled or some combination of the above

[clarisse-doodles]

Cass + ballet 🩰 (ft. supportive siblings and good dad Bruce)

I love the idea of Cass enjoying dance. It's an outlet that allows her to express herself without words, and I think she would enjoy the highly technical aspect of ballet combined with its storytelling and emotional side. and as a former dancer I always have fun imagining my fav characters do ballet :)

[urdreamgirls-dreamgirl]

the duffers were heavily inspired by the cia’s secret operations called mkultra which targeted women, people of color, and poor people most heavily and completely destroyed their lives to experiment with torture tactics and “mind control” during the cold war, focusing heavily on experimental drug use and electroshock therapy. el’s mother in the show is a victim of mkultra and el is the product.

what the show fails to acknowledge and what would have been so fucking interesting for them to explore in a show abt GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY is that mkultra was built on the intense and extensive manipulation of the american capitalist propaganda machine that instilled fear in americans of becoming victims of these very same brainwashing tactics the american government was experimenting with but at the hands of the “big bad scary communists.”

now, in the 21st century with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the american people were being manipulated and lied to by their own government abt the “dangers” of communism in an effort to manufacture consent for wars in vietnam, south america, afghanistan, etc. that allowed the us and us-backed military regimes to torture and execute millions of people associated with trade unions and leftist organizations. we killed che guevara, salvador allende, attempted assassinations on fidel castro, and facilitated the murders of millions of regular people to maintain the lie that communism is evil and a direct threat to the american people.

instead of exploring these themes they laid the groundwork for in season 1, the duffers succumbed to the pressure of the hollywood propaganda machine and the promise of continued funding and guaranteed marketing and viewership by creating characters like dr. sam owens in season 2 that allowed their audience to begin sympathizing with the us government and framing brenner as simply a “bad apple” within a system where people were just trying their best. brenner is evil and he’s a villain, but he’s no longer a representative of the us government but rather an extremist leading a covert cell of other extremists within the bureaucracy.

in doing this, the show allowed for the introduction in season three of the big bad communist boogey man in the form of the russian government/military and thus allowed stranger things to enter into a series of media products that, though seemingly unrelated & from different studios, nonetheless all work together to manufacture consent in the present-day for us wars abroad that claim to be protecting us from the perceived threat of “brainwashing,” “indoctrination,” and, in some instances, communism/threats to the capitalist machine (think specifically marvel and star wars). “the evil communists are doing this evil thing so we had no choice but to also do this evil thing” becomes the thesis of the show—the ends will eventually justify the means.

except that now it doesn’t. because to remain a part of the hollywood propaganda industry, the duffers have to sacrifice the themes they first established at the beginning of their show. they have to abandon any characters that offer a deviation from these new themes they’ve introduced. and it’s becoming apparent that the duffers lack the talent and the ability to execute complex storylines that go beyond what was introduced in the first season—perhaps they have the ability to conceive, but they lack the ability to follow through and it’s the very nature of the capitalist structure of the white male artistic genius that has now trapped them in this position—their inability to let go and let others take over the creative execution of their product will be their downfall as their series comes to a close.

[dandeyrain]

i've been rotating the "this doesn't make any sense!" response to boy and the heron in my head and i wonder how much of it comes down to like...the kind of audience that engages with ghibli movies vs the kind of audience that mostly only engages with weird art movies vs the kind of audience that only really engages with blockbusters and marvel movies, and the overlap of those groups in the theater.

because, like, the boy and the heron is far and away more straightforward, from a plot perspective, than a lot of other Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies i've seen and love, but it IS a Weird Extremely Personal Art Movie even so. usually the only people seeing Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies, especially in theaters, are people who like that and expect that and have seen those types of films before and are therefore capable of engaging with them even when things aren't as clear as they'd be in an average blockbuster flick. like, nobody who only cares about Cinema to the extent of marvel movies and MAYBE john wick is going to see beau is afraid, and if they did they wouldn't have the tools to engage with such a dream-logicy movie. it would just be a weird thing that doesnt make sense to them, at least until they worked their media engagement muscles with other weird films. there's a lot of self-selection to the kind of person who usually sees these kind of movies.

while boy and the heron is weirder and more complex than a lot of other ghibli movies, as far as weird art films go it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY straightfoward. every weird plot point is explained very clearly to the audience, very little is up for interpretation from a strictly "what was the plot" point of view. boy loses mother. father remarries and moves the family. boy struggles to contend with grief. boy is pulled into a magical world by an old man who wants to use him. time is weird and fucked up in the magical world, but the movie is going to go out of it's way to highlight who's who and make it clear how the time travel works and the characters' relations to one another. the boy refuses to take over the magical world because he wants to live in the real world with the real people he loves. boy leaves the magical world having learned an important lesson about moving on. but the boy and the heron trusts its audience, doesn't handhold, and expects the audience to engage seriously and with focus to its plot and characters and stories.

a lot of people never watch movies like that! a lot of people are used to uncomplicated superhero movies and romcoms and that's it. the difference is that those people were never going to see beau is afraid, so the discussion about that movie instead comes from people who have the tools to engage with it. but because of the aesthetic-ification of ghibli, a lot of people who don't Do art films but are really into the aesthetics of cute little guys and girls in pretty dresses went to this art film and were confused that it was weird and dream-like and dark and strange and requires more of its audience than just passively watching.

anyway there's nothing wrong with not having the muscles to engage with weird art films, though i do think everyone should challenge themselves with the kind of stuff they watch. there's nothing wrong with preferring simple straightforward uncomplicated plotlines. but it is really interesting seeing people talk about the movie like it's insanely weird and doesnt make any sense meanwhile me and the friends i've chatted with about who DO have experience with this kind of film all feel insane because the movie is SO clear and SO straightforward by the standards we're used to. its just a neat crossover re: the kinds of movie fans that exist

[lucabyte]

🐮

[codacheetah]

It's deeply important to me that Loop kind of sucks

[dickpuncher420]

i read the phrase “i access my femininity through my masculinity” once (in the context of butchness) and it’s stuck w me ever since. now that i feel like i’ve grown into myself as a butch i find myself able to enjoy more stereotypically “feminine” things that i tended to reject when i was younger and still figuring myself out. things like makeup, jewelry, nail polish, colourful clothes, cutesy aesthetics, heels…they no longer feel stifling to me. my relationship to them has changed because i no longer feel like i’m obligated to perform femininity. rather, i can pick and choose which parts of it enjoy, and simply leave the rest behind. and i’m secure enough in my identity as a masculine person to know that enjoying these things doesn’t detract from my masculinity—in fact, i can use them to construct and further my own masculinity in a way that feels genuine to who i am.

[randomminty]

blease gib johto e4 hcs and dynamics chart its the only thing I have I love em sm I need sparks to put immmmm fanficc bc the situation is so dire. (nothing exists in this fandom for my interests, this is one of the only bigger things that get. some attention.)

Absolutely here you go please enjoy. This is insanely self indulgent

[idolomantises]

there's something so comforting about artists you admire talking about their own struggles and insecurities

[imerian]

I think i should grace all of with another charms i did, this time it's galex edition ✨

As always version without doodles under the cut and all details in the tags bc i physically cannot not put thoughts into what i do

[mamawasatesttube]

heres how t4t timkon can still win.

[puppyeared]

If I close my eyes and concentrate realllyyy hard I can pretend im in my animal crossing room