#i'm just still SO UPSET about this

[wistfulwatcher]

i've sat with the episode for two days now, and i'm still just genuinely so disappointed and bewildered by lottie's suggestion that they sacrifice one of the survivors. as presented, lottie's reasoning for the need to offer one of them to the wilderness is because they're all struggling as adults. just struggling, not facing any real and true dangers like the threat of starvation they were facing in the wilderness. she wants one of them to die - the very thing she wanted to prevent natalie from doing A WEEK AGO! - so that the other 5 survivors' lives get a little happier.

sacrificing one of them so they can all eat in the wilderness makes sense. it's an ugly and brutal choice, but it's understandable. lottie's plan is not. and the thing is, they did have an opportunity in this episode to justify lottie's 2021 suggestion, and they just...didn't. because, presumably, the reason for lottie making the suggestion in 2021 falls under the reason the ritual began in 1997. but we didn't get to see that ritual discussion.

understanding their motivation for the sacrifice is crucial. it's been crucial for the past two seasons, it's been what we were building to, and it's the bedrock of their new religion. we know they needed to eat, and that the sacrifice was a practical one. but how did they decide that one life was worth more than another? that a group of lives were more valuable than one? philosophy nerd misty was in that room; did she explain the different schools of thought? did they decide that the overall health of the group was more important than a single life? did they decide that the group as an entity needed to survive? and what does "survive" mean? physical satiation? emotional stability, making a choice they could all live with? did they discuss their possible future selves? the idea of happiness, since that's essentially what lottie is pitching in 2021?

lottie's whole pitch is that they need to do this - LITERALLY DIE - to survive, so that is exactly what they needed to define in the ritual discussion for this episode to make sense. and they didn't.

[ultravioletbrit]

“hold” - Jegulus microfic - @into-the-jeggyverse - 488 words

this, but make it jegulus (i tried to get it as close to the original as possible)

Remus is sitting in an armchair doubled over with laughter. Sirius has fallen out of his chair and is cackling on the floor with tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. Regulus is sitting on the couch trying his best to stay composed. And James in standing in the middle of the room with more passion and fire in his eyes than Regulus has ever seen.

“Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!” James is shouting.

“James—” Regulus tries to calmly interrupt.

“HOLD ON!” James looks pointedly at Regulus and his eyes look like they’re going to literally pop out of his head. “Her sister was a witch, right?” Regulus is trying so hard to hold back his laughter. “And what was her sister? A princess! The Wicked Witch of the East, Reg.” James is yelling, not unkindly just very passionately, looking directly at Regulus and nodding his head aggressively to emphasize every point.

James starts pacing in genuine distress. Sirius is rolling on the floor holding his stomach and laughing so hard his entire body is shaking. Remus has his hands over his mouth, which is doing absolutely nothing to contain his laughter.

Regulus stands up to meet James in the middle of the room. “I’m gonna stab him.” He mumbles under his breath, which makes Sirius laugh even harder—if that’s even possible.

James whips around to face Regulus. “You’re gonna looks at me and you’re gonna tell me that I’m wrong? Am I wrong?” James asks emphatically.

And the thing is—James is, in fact, very wrong. “It’s my favorite—” Regulus tries to interject but can’t even get a word in.

“She wore a crown, and she came down in a bubble, Reg!” And that proves absolutely nothing.

Regulus knows he’ll never get James to listen to him. “I’m not fighting with you.” He shakes his head, chuckling fondly.

James makes his way out of the living room. “Grow up!” He says over his shoulder.

“I’m not fighting with you.” Regulus says again.

“Grow up.” James seems to be losing steam as he leaves the room.

“Get educated!” Regulus yells then flops down on the couch and finally lets his laughter out.

Eventually Regulus, Sirius and Remus’ laugher fades into soft chuckles as they calm down and take several deep breaths to compose themselves.  

It’s a few minutes later when James appears in the doorway with a sheepish look on his face—that Regulus thinks is adorable. He slowly makes his way over to the couch and sits down beside Regulus. He’s quiet for a few moments then turns slightly to look at Regulus.   

“I’m not really mad.” James says in a small voice. “And you know I love you, right?”

Regulus chuckles fondly and takes James’ face in his hands. “Yes, I know you love me, Jamie.” He leans in to kiss James softly then pulls back the tiniest bit. “But you’re still wrong.” Regulus whispers against James lips.    

[leclerical]

This has been one of my favorite 1633 photos for a while now, and i think i just figured out why!

Look at Max's hands

Does anyone else remember the show "Pushing Daisies?" Of course you do, this is tumblr. There's a scene where Ned the baker and Chuck are walking, and because they cannot touch (for plot reasons), they hold their own hands clasped together behind themselves. I wish i could find the image, but i don't need to—look at Max's hands

I wonder sometimes if Max does this kind of thing unconsciously to accommodate Charles and his cat-like avoidance of touch. Max is forever hovering, waiting for an opening to clutch an arm or that curve where the neck meets the shoulder or a hand. Holding his own hands, waiting for Charles to reach out for his first

[arttsuka]

I LOVE Teen Stan and Ford, it’s sad they don’t get drawn enough, so thank you so much!

Does Ford ever help Stan when he gets overstimulated? Or maybe when he has a rage response and suddenly starts crying and calls himself stupid?

Here's the other post with Ford

[gingermintpepper]

Okay, let's finally talk about EPIC's Apollo

I feel very compelled to say, first of all, that I do not dislike Epic. In fact, I am very fond of Epic and have been following its production and status very eagerly! I attend all the launch streams, I watch all of Herrans' update videos; I am, at the end of the day, a fan and I want it to be known that my words are spoken out of love and passion as much as they are spoken from a place of critique.

So really, what my problem with Epic's Apollo?

In the briefest possible terms; the choice to have Apollo be defined by his musical aspect in God Games is thematically strange. And not in the 'oh well in the Odyssey, Apollo was important to Odysseus and his family so it's weird that that wasn't kept in Epic' strange, strange in the sense that Odysseus' character arc since My Goodbye has been getting more and more obviously Apollonian and so it is positively bizarre that when we get to meet Apollo, the god seems entirely disinterested in him and his affairs. So much so that he is not even defined by any station that would indicate that he has been watching over and protecting Odysseus and his family.

What do I mean by 'Odysseus has been following an Apollonian arc'? I'm so glad you asked!

Remember Them is the last song in which Odysseus explicitly uses his sword until Mutiny where he must use it to defend himself against Eurylochus' blade. He uses it to help enact the plan to conquer Polyphemus and, due to Polites dying in that battle, Polites who wished for Odysseus to put the blade down entirely and embrace a post-war life, Odysseus also retires his sword. This is an action that symbolically separates him from Athena - and the image of Odysseus as a traditional warrior set for him in Horse and Infant - as much as My Goodbye physically separates him from the goddess and her war-ways - from this point onwards, Odysseus will no longer be leaning on Athena's wisdom or methods to solve his problems. Likewise, he will no longer be able to rely on her protection.

Odysseus thusly solves most of his upcoming problems through diplomacy and avoidance. He approaches Aeolus - a strange and ambiguous god (both in gender and in motivation) and appeals to them for help. Circe too, he approaches not with wishes to conquer or for revenge, but for the safe returning of his men and an alternate way forward. In all of these scenarios, there is some Apollonian element which is subtly interweaved alongside the influence of other gods; it is with a bow and arrows that Polyphemus' sheep is slain (and thus it is this Apollonian element which is at the root of Odysseus' spat with Poseidon), it is a vision of Penelope that warns Odysseus that his men are about to open Aeolus' wind-bag, Circe's peace offering to Odysseus is to refer him to a prophet of Apollo who has since died.

In this way, Apollo is walking alongside Odysseus for all of his journey after Athena departs - even in the Underworld, he is guiding him. It is Tiresias' proclamation that is the last straw for Odysseus, it is by the power of a mouthpiece of Apollo that Odysseus decides to embrace his ruthlessness. It is with the bow and arrow that Odysseus subdues the siren who sought to trick him, likewise, Odysseus does not attempt to undermine or escape the fate of paying Scylla's passage price - he knows of the doom about to befall the six men and quite unlike the rest of the journey until this point, he does not fight against it. This all comes to a head on Thrinacia where it is a blade which sacrifices the sun god's cow and brings destruction upon the crew once more.

My point with all of this is that when I heard the teasers for God Games years ago, it made perfect sense to me that Apollo would be Round One - he is not Odysseus' adversary and has no reason to oppose Athena's wish to free him. From other teasers about what will happen in the climax of Epic, Apollo will still be walking alongside Odysseus - it is Apollo's bow that Penelope will give the suitors to string. Likewise, it is Apollo's bow that will prove Odysseus' legitimacy and identity. That bow will be the power by which Odysseus hunts his adversaries and cleans out his palace - it is Apollo who is the avatar of Odysseus' ruthlessness, not Athena.

So tell me, truly, what was the point of having Apollo raise a non-argument in God Games? Why have him appear unconcerned, aloof and slightly oblivious? Why have him appear in his capacity as the Lord of Music at all?? And if the intention was never to make Apollo an active player in Odysseus' life like he was in the Odyssey, why keep Odysseus as a primary archer?

The answer of course is that Apollo is inextricable from the fabric of the Odyssey - his influence and favour exudes from Odysseus just as much as Athena's. In Athena's ten year sulk, it would have been Apollo who kept Telemachus and Penelope safe. It would have been Apollo protecting Odysseus from Poseidon's gaze as he travelled the seas (according to the Odyssey anyway)

Forgive me for not being excited about something that I thought was being purposefully set up. I was extremely ecstatic about all of the little Apollonian details that litter the sagas because I know where this story ends up (loosely) but all God Games did was reveal that maybe those Apollonian details were not intentional at all, but merely the ghost of the Apollo who persistently haunts those he favours, even if he cannot explicitly come to their aide in an adaptation.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Every time I see someone earnestly say that Carver hates Hawke, I have to exercise such restraint to not scream.

Every day I get closer to writing a deep dive about him because that's my guy. He's so interesting. He feels so much. He tries so hard when talking to the other companions and some of the dynamics he has with them are so good. He can be so fucking funny and sweet and awkward. He so badly wants to be wanted and appreciated and to protect everyone he loves.

Carver Hawke, they could never make me hate you.

[satsuha]

when i see aa fans not even giving aa5 and 6 a chance it's just so. sad to me. like you can never know what your opinion on something is until you give it a try and why wouldn't you do that for a series you love? i understand that pre-AJ trilogy remaster it was more difficult to play 5/6 but that's also not the case anymore since they're now on all platforms

it's especially bizarre when it seems to be purely a fandom echo chamber perspective like.. aa5 and 6 have the same metacritic score as aa3, one of the most beloved games in the fandom. aa5 is the highest rated aa game by famitsu. i know critic scores are rarely the best indicator for a game's quality but these games don't even have mixed critic/audience ratings and yet they're treated like the worst things to ever happen to the series by large groups of fans?

and it isn't like the older games don't have parts that are heavily criticized but for some reason flaws are just. impermissible for these two games. i don't know it just sucks i wish more people would trust their own judgments instead of blindly following others... everyone has different tastes and will experience things differently!!

tl;dr can you at least hate on aa5 and 6 after playing them. PLEASE

[azure-clockwork]

I love three houses discourse because I'm pretty sure everyone just picks their route based on which house leader they're the most gay for and then tries to defend their pick by pointing out the other sides's war crimes via twitter memes. Reader, all four of them do substantial quantities of war crimes. So many. We're just here because the woman with Issues and a big fuck-off axe said so, and then we gotta justify everything she did in the name of dismantling the class system. I mean, I'm here for that, but you could also try justifying Charm Man uses poison and perfidy to try to stop racism, A Sad Little Meow Meow gives no quarter instead of doing therapy, or the Thicc Pope tries to bring back her mom via human experimentation, depending on your tastes

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - Traverse Town

[janjan-the-ninth]

My brain whenever I hear that Cavill is the Witcher and cannot be replaced:

[the-carlos-cow-eyes]

What Bellamy Blake deserved: NOT FUCKING THAT

[ticklepinions]

No more t*ckling scenes in media. PLEASE

Why is it the ones that circulate always sprinkled with an unhealthy amount of *weird*

Or is it just me because I'm hyperaware of seeing my own interest on the big screen

What happened to lighthearted pokes in the sides why is it so deeply non consensual or used in a way to make fun of it.

Like PLEASE be fucking normal about it!!!! Whether it's as a kink or not don't make it weird 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[good-to-drive]

Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself

I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture. 

Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse. 

It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity. 

It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore. 

I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving. 

One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.

The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.

There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives. 

As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence. 

Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.

And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away. 

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life  – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).

The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need. 

What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence. 

In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.” 

It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied. 

Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.

In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work. 

It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.

When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity. 

It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).

If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?

Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another. 

And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far. 

But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.

[inksandpensblog]

Still fascinated by how much hate Mitsi gets for the whole "dead fem-coded loved one backstory" thing and all the hangups surrounding that when Purple's mom is arguably a much more egregious instance of the thing everyone is upset about Mitsi for but she ultimately got a pass because...idk, she was The First?

[barksbog]

bestest snorbino

[iguessitsjustme]

Something I find fascinating about Wandee Goodday is that no one has kissed yet (I know Ye and Cher have kissed but...) Like not a full on make out session despite having an established couple in the show that they could be using to show us kisses. But we get no kiss sex scenes from Yak and Dee and soft, somewhat chaste scenes from Ye and Cher. We all know both couples are fucking. But the lack of kisses where normally the show would have one couple more active in that department tells me how important kissing is to this story.

Dee has stated that it's silly but he doesn't want to kiss unless he loves that person and is serious with them. But the entire show is respecting the no kiss rule which tells me that it's not silly. The entire show is respecting Dee's boundary here. And yes, Yak and Dee have come so close to kissing so many times, but they haven't. Dee has always pushed him away and Yak has always respected it when he does.

It makes me wonder what's going to happen once the main couple does eventually lock lips. Will that open the floodgates? Will the audience get to see both couples kissing then? Or will it continue to withhold that specific moment of intimacy. There's something the show is saying about the expected parts of intimacy being taken for granted and also deserving of privacy and that's up to the people in the relationship.

Kissing can be an act of love and desire, but what the show is saying is that it is not a requirement for those things. I can be completely talking out of my ass here, but something about this is really sitting with me. Not only do we get Plakao as ace representation, someone who wants a partner to cherish and be cherished without sexual expectations, but we also get the show reinforcing the ideas that love comes in all forms with so many different acts and different people are comfortable with different things. And all of that is okay. And all of those boundaries are worthy of being respected. Regardless of societies expectations for what it means to be in a relationship and be physical, whatever is right for you is right and isn't that just beautiful?