#i’d like to clarify

[asquared-ohgodnotthehorrors]

It’s weird to me how Amanda Waller is always both one of the most body positive character in the DCU, being a plus sized black woman who is never treated as lesser for either, and one of the few really well written morally gray and government backed antagonists in the DCU.

Like if she was always the former? Fantastic, great representation!

If she was always the latter? Great, good writing for a character!

The thing that’s weird to me is how consistently she’s both. Both of those archetypes are rarely ever done consistently for characters in Superheroes with long legacies. Amanda Waller has a long legacy and is probably the most consistently written characters in the DCU. And the fact it’s *her* of all characters and those two archetypes of all characters is… just odd to me.

Probably because it’s something very positive I want to see more of mixed into an archetype that’s so realistically hatable. Like she’s only allowed to be good in this regard because she’s antagonistic or morally bad. It’s like Queer Coded Villainy in the Hayes Code era.

I know that’s not remotely what’s happening, but Waller is such a strange and consistent outlier that it just stands out to me, and I’m wondering how she manages to stay so consistent and “writer’s secret racism/sexism/fatphobia” is all that comes to mind. Even though I know that’s not what’s happening.

[itwaslegendary]

Since I’m not seeing many posts about what’s happening in Venezuela, I will make one myself. Please do not turn a blind eye to their ongoing crisis.

First I will put you into context, please note that all this information is taken from posts, threads and statements made by Venezuelans so I will hyperlink each one of my sources.

From 2002 to 2013, Hugo Chávez was the president of Venezuela. Not only did he ruin the country’s economy, imprison people and remove liberty of speech in the country, but he also changed the constitution, allowing unlimited reelection. His regime became a dictatorship disguised as a democracy. Here’s an entire page about this period. (And you can read more searching “chavismo”)

After his death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro took the presidency. Venezuelans started protesting and, as a response, they were repressed and killed, universities were burned down and Venezuela became massively poor, people lacked basic needs (supermarkets were empty, increasing famine and malnutrition), hospitals lacked resources and, consequently, illnesses spread and infant mortality rates increased severely.

This Sunday, July 28th, 2024, elections were held and Venezuelans voted for Edmundo González to be the next president of the country. Exit polls expected him to win the elections.

Later, the revealed results were that Maduro had won with the 51,2% votes, while Edmundo González had only 44,2%. But, as of right now, already 75% of the electoral records confirm that Edmundo González was, in fact, the chosen candidate, meaning that Maduro once again cheated on the elections. This is electoral fraud. This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship.

Now, Venezuelans are protesting and the government are once again repressing them. Civilians are being persecuted, attacked and killed. Innocent people are being arrested. The government is cutting their communication and are planning on cutting the electricity next.

I urge you to check this thread on Twitter by @/postmortemria. Her account is full of information about Venezuela and their crisis, please check her posts and share them to spread the voice. Try to raise Venezuelans’ voices and donate to them if you can.

At the moment, there aren’t many ways to help other than speaking up, but under this tweet you can find many talented artists and commissions are their way to make some money to pay for basic human needs. If you can, think about commissioning a piece or donating to them.

In addition, here’s another tweet with information to donate to the people affected in the protests. They’re in desperate need of assistance so anything can help.

[theswedishpajas]

I don’t think I ever posted this but he’s here now about a week late 🦇✨✨✨

[thefleshyougoveggie]

i love when ppl draw elias slutty. like yeah. he does have slut energy💯💯

[uh-ohspaghettio]

Spn + textposts 3/?

[tap for better quality]

Part 1 2

[dragonseeds]

what are your thoughts on rhaegar and lyanna?

oh i love them! there’s all this talk of them haunting the narrative and they do, but i’d take it further and say they are the black hole at the center of the story. the choices that they made, starting with lyanna’s decision to defend howland reed and what that meant to both him and rhaegar, who was very likely at his lowest point at harrenhal after the ruination of his careful plans, touched or changed the lives of every character and plot line in the series. the story itself is such a fun mashup of tristan and iseult, lancelot and guinevere, helen and paris, the fall of camelot and all of arthuriana really, the classic trope of the princess in the tower and the dragon and the knight: all of that in one couple and we don’t get to experience any of it with them. we can guess and speculate, but we can never truly know them. we experience their story only through the memories the people who survived the war they ostensibly kicked off, and those memories are all heavily colored by trauma, guilt, nostalgia—alternately faded and sharpened by time. it’s this incredibly fun and brilliant reconstruction of some of the most enduring tragedies in folklore and mythology and i adore it.

hate beyond articulation the way asoiaf.tumblr.edu approaches their relationship and the individual characterizations of both of them, though. just absolutely some of the most insufferably sanctimonious disingenuous decontextualized analysis i’ve ever experienced—much of that coming from people viewing this through a historical lense instead of a thematic one. like, imagine approaching the battle of the trident as “rhaegar is a bad person for fighting for his father who was evil! he lost the moral high ground with that one” as opposed to “rhaegar as a character exists to fail and die; he was the last dragon, carrying the unbearable weight of his family’s legacy and the burden of the prophecy for which they conquered westeros: the end of his life is the end of the targaryen dynasty. he must fail and he must die, so that dany and jon can grow up free of that weight and that power. daenerys gets to redefine what it means to be targaryen on her own terms. she and jon separately and unknowingly do the things that he thought he had to do—the things he was conceived and born to do—but never knew how: they do it because of their circumstances, because of the people that they have grown into, because they believe it is their duty, because they have the power to do it.” also, like, re: interpretations of battle of the trident, is there maybe another battle that occurs later in the series that is exactly the same thematically and contextually? where perhaps a character who was missing for a while shows up on the eve of battle, knowing that the opposition is right and their cause is just but that his family will die if he doesn’t fight with them? anything that adds an extra layer of meaning to what happens, aside from dany’s own connection—which is not as thematically similar but is still incredibly meaningful. like i certainly don’t think there’s any one interpretation of a character or story, but the worst ones are consistently applied to rhaegar.

and then with lyanna in particular, it’s like people cannot stomach her or find her sympathetic as a character unless they’re wallowing in her eternal victimhood. the constant dismissal of the importance of lyanna’s actions and what they meant to rhaegar is pure misogyny, by the way. her choices and her agency, the inherent meaningfulness of the struggle for both of those things in a system that seeks to reduce her to her body and the use men can make of it—all of that is important. the person she was and what that meant to people was important, but from the way i most often see her discussed, it’s like her gendered death is the only thing that matters. it’s okay to lament her because she got crushed by the wheel. if she hadn’t, if she wasn’t a victim to write flagellatory meta about, she would be a hypocrite, someone who needed to learn a lesson—as difficult for some of these people to relate to as dany or rhaenyra apparently are.

like, it’s just wild to me because her kindness to howland reed and her choice to defend him, to disguise herself as the knight of the laughing tree and risk her life and reputation to fight for him—is the answer to and the embodiment of one of the most thematically significant questions in the series. we see it most prominently in dany’s chapters because she asks it directly: why do the gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves? that’s what lyanna did, when no one else was doing it: she had more honor than any knight at that tourney or any man sitting on the small council, and it meant something to rhaegar. like what about this is hard to understand? i think he must have idealized her immediately: she must have seemed like something out of a song or a story to him, and rhaegar was a singer, a songwriter, a bard: he knows how stories are supposed to go—how to finish a song, or at least he thought he did.

bran, who also loves stories, says it himself: “and the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” like obviously bran has some critiques i cut out, but he has the ending right—only the wolf maid was the knight, and she couldn’t have won. in the feudal gender prison, women are rewarded for being beautiful and their worth is derived from that and from what their bodies provide. she should’ve won the whole thing, but the system doesn’t allow that, so rhaegar—in a fit of single-minded capital r romantic hero idiocy—dedicates himself to winning the tourney to honor her in the only way he can: the only way the system allows him to recognize her. it was the worst possible move he could make at that time because of the romantic connotations, but i love him for doing it, as stupid as it was and even though there is no way it didn’t hurt and humiliate elia, or make him look terrible when he desperately needed to make a good impression on the lords of the realm—it’s just such a Moment. being reminded that there’s good in the world—feeling hope in the face of endless abject overwhelming despair—how do you express gratitude for that? the idea that he could only doing it by hurting someone who didn’t deserve it and making himself look like an ass is fucking awesome. i’m genuinely so sorry for people are incapable of enjoying that. could not be me!

but that’s just my interpretation of what happened at harrenhal. like i said, part of why i like them so much is that we truly don’t know. while i love darker relationships in general, the idea that he crowned her at harrenhal because he wanted to impregnate her then does not work for me. it’s a popular theory, but it renders some of the very few contextual clues we are given about what happened meaningless. for one, he didn’t know that elia wouldn’t be able to have more children at that time. this was discovered after she gave birth to aegon, and that is the point at which the question of the third child appears to have become a motivating factor for him. i personally think he left for the riverlands to consult with the ghost of high heart—the one whose prophecy is the reason he was born, the reason is parents were forced to marry, the reason his family burned alive the night he came into the world—and ran into lyanna somewhere near harrenhal. it’s possible he had been in contact with her prior to this (how? without her family knowing? what are the logistics of that?) but i think it’s just as likely it was pure chance. i really like the idea that his crowning her queen of love and beauty caused lyanna’s father to set a date for her wedding to robert or talk of moving it up, maybe even suggest a double wedding at riverrun, which would have almost certainly caused her to balk. either way, high heart is located between harrenhal and riverrun. arya also stops there while she’s kidnapped by the brotherhood without banners on the way to ransom her to her family at riverrun, and they trade songs to the ghost for her dreams and prophecies. i think it’s worth noting because arya’s journey in the riverlands mirrors lyanna’s right down to her “death” as arya stark when she leaves for braavos, paying the ferryman’s fee with the coin jaqen h’ghar gave her—just as jon’s journey at the wall mirrors rhaegar’s in many ways right up until his own death.

i also don’t think rhaegar and lyanna eloped because they were in love—this is implied by lyanna’s famous quote—but that they did come to love each other deeply, which is suggested by the way they died: her roses and him saying her name. notably, rhaegar did not leave the tower of his own volition—someone had to come and get him with news of war, which is hilarious because i think the tower of joy is right in the middle of like three major battles of the rebellion? like quite frankly, if he didn’t love her or care for anything beyond the prophecy and if she didn’t love him despite how badly things went wrong, then where in their story is the heart in conflict with itself?

i do want to clarify that i love the tower entrapment and the power imbalance aspects of their relationship as much as i love (what i interpret as) the genuine respect for each other that grew into love: it’s really the tension of those disparate elements that interests me. a dragon can love the maiden, but he’s only ever a dragon—still liable to hoard her like treasure or burn her up and rip her open trying to be gentle, to protect. that FUCKS, sorry! love is sweet and hopeful, but it’s also at exactly the same time horror, consumption, destruction.

idk it’s myopic to act like the beginning or the ending of their relationship—of their lives—is the summation of it. i think people want their story to be easy when it’s not: a clear case of a villain and his victims where everyone knows who to root for and no one has to think too much about things that are difficult or uncomfortable, questions where there probably isn’t an answer that doesn’t hurt someone. what a sad, tedious way to approach any text, but specifically this one. i’ve sometimes seen it suggested that if their story is romantic then it’s an endorsement or justification of all the “bad” things that happened because of it, and that’s also stupid. grrm as an author is never going to be someone who tells us how to feel about anything: he presents these characters and situations, often as a means of exploring certain facets of the human condition, and each of us has to come up with our own answers and find our own meaning. i don’t think he always knows what he means, or what those answers are, you know? but for me rhaegar and lyanna are one of the most fascinating parts of story, and whatever the truth is—if we ever find out—i can’t imagine a scenario where i don’t love them or find them really interesting and wonderfully sad.

[devilst0at]

What I would be doing if I was in that interrogation room fr … he better be ready cause im crawling over the table

(This is essentially longlegs self-ship art if that’s too cringe for u look away friend)

Note height difference I’m 5’3 and kobble is like at least 6 foot I think 🫣 I’ve never been a selfshipper but this creepy old man drives me fucking insane guys. I think if he let me be his best friend and give him kisses maybe he’d stop killing people with dolls

[franklyimissparis]

tormenting my sister with catboy mccartney

[vindicated-truth]

I’m now watching Beyond Evil on Disney+ (3rd platform now lol, first was Netflix, second was Prime Video) and the English subtitles on Episode 13 are interesting.

Unlike Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video have the same subtitle when Dongsik answered Jeongje as his friend finally confessed to killing his sister: “I don’t think you killed her alone.”

I can’t remember the exact subs on Netflix since Beyond Evil isn’t there anymore, but considering I watched the Netflix version twice, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what was on the Netflix version, which is more along the lines of: “I don’t think you killed her”—period.

And despite the slightest difference in wording, it makes a world of a difference in meaning.

In the initial autopsy by the KCSI, they mentioned that someone must have “repeatedly ran over Yuyeon” to kill her. Which means it was never really proven whether the initial impact with Han Kihwan’s car had been enough to kill her, or that she was only passed out (as the subs in both Prime Video and Disney+ also imply) and it was Jeongje’s car hitting her again that finally killed her.

Because when the KCSI studied her body, it was after both cars has already hit her, so it’s impossible to tell which of the two accidents had conclusively killed her.

(Perhaps it really was a combination of both. “I don’t think you killed her alone.”)

The difference in subtitles makes a world of a difference in the story because it means Jeongje was more culpable in her death than may have been initially shown by Netflix.

[zootopiathingz]

People get so shocked whenever they find out about the wildehopps age gap as if that isn’t what makes it so hot

[sugar-salt-n-spice]

does roach actually have antennas on his helmet or is that something artists have taken creative liberties with and added themselves?

[kewpiekills]

i don’t like men but just went down your whole smiling friends tag just cause like. it’s really in character? tbh i don’t even like smiling friends that much but it captivated me. had to say it since some of those have like 4 notes and it’s not the kinda thing i reblog

haha yeah i’m glad you like em! i wasn’t influenced by the fandom because there really wasn’t one back when season 1 came out. and i was totally spiraling at the time so i latched onto the show real hard. i definitely got a lot more attention on twitter, so i don’t mind my backlog not gettin too many notes doesn’t bug me ^_^

[shootingthe-stars]

i’m having trouble with tagging my fic cause i’ve had it in there as minor james/regulus since literally 2020 but i’ve switched my plans around so many times to the point where it’s so Not? like there’s a present Thing that will happen that i still haven’t fully figured out yet but it’s tagged with the same weight as marylily which it’s not at ALL😭

like i don’t wanna take it out and then surprise people with the existence of the (not fully planned) thing i’m doing with them but leaving it feels like bait???? girl idk if this is a call for help i just have no idea what to do with that thing

[gay-little-axolotl]

DAY 6 OF @lambsappreciationweeks

Ezra Lamb was really 13 years old dating two people and selling drugs huh? (good for him, good for him)

[jaketiri]

Lo’ak & Neytiri

I often see posts from people claiming Lo’ak is exactly like Jake and he’s Jake’s mini-me and it’s not that I disagree with this, exactly, but I disagree with the evidence people use on why they’re similar.

I would argue that Lo’ak’s “hot” anger and impulsiveness is exactly like Neytiri, not Jake. 

Jake is shown throughout both films to be calm and even-tempered, with him not taking the bait even when Grace insults him to his face. It’s implied that his training as a marine has taught him to see even the most high-stress situations as problems to be solved rationally. It’s through this line of thinking that he’s able to humble himself enough to appeal to Tonowari, or see taming Toruk as just another challenge to undertake rather than a glory/honor to chase. He pushes away his emotions until after a fight and knows when to retreat. 

Neytiri, on the other hand, is as quick to take up Ronal’s challenge as Lo’ak is quick to take up Aonung’s. Remember the scene in Avatar 1 where Neytiri is so incensed over Seze’s death that she’s willing to rush into certain death just to kill even one more sky person? Jake is frantically trying to get her to make a tactical retreat but she wants to push forward.

Across all of The Way of Water, Jake is holding Neytiri back from taking her revenge or taking out her anger in each fight. She gets just as impulsive and reckless as Lo’ak - we can see this in several sequences during the fighting, from when Jake has to cover her because she becomes exposed and Quaritch chases her tail, to the final battle sequence where she kills Z-Dog, where she stops her with an arrow to the hip while she kills someone else, knowing Z-Dog could still shoot her. She becomes completely taken over by the rush of the battle. She loses control of her anger to the extent that she breaks her father’s bow.

In the same vein, it’s Lo’ak’s and Payakan’s joint anger that leads to the rush on the boat in which Neteyam is killed (in my opinion, had Payakan intervened with Jake already on the ship, the fight would have gone much differently and much more quickly.) When all of the children are untied and have the opportunity to escape, it’s Lo’ak’s desire to re-enter the fight that leads to Neteyam’s death (remember, the ship is sinking and once the non-recon humans escorting Spider are in the water, they’re easy pickings).

[bobzora]

there’s definitely a lot of room for interpretation in his character but i think it’s really funny when people misunderstand parts of Akechi Lore that are like. just straight up told to you. like i’m not trying to say anything but i think some people need to rewatch engine room.