#in ways they cannot even articulate

[padfootastic]

no thoughts just voldemort lying down on the cold marble floor of malfoy manor with music blasting around him. the song is ‘teenagers’ by my chemical romance.

every single one of his death eaters is listening, slack jawed, bug eyed, as the lyrics ‘TEENAGERS SCARE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME’ blare from the closed old. snape, the sole halfblood, is terrified because??? who installed speakers in malfoy fkn manor????

(inspired by this wonderful post because i also firmly believe that a second war voldy’s boggart would be harry)

[qoldenskies]

i think its so funny when people take the way donnie acts at face value even though its a horrible lie because he's a horrible liar, while understanding leo is bullshitting very well despite him actually being GOOD at bullshitting. many such cases

[egophiliac]

I don’t think we’ve ever seen you draw knight of dawn before 🤔 what are your thoughts about him? Or take?

I've drawn him a couple of times, just really little/in the background. but I should draw him more, I love this guy a lot! I have many, many thoughts about him and the way he parallels Silver...and also I think it is extremely funny that his ghost is stuck in a ring. especially considering where that ring has been for the last 16-ish years.

[fraternum-momentum]

pls ignore this is vv personal

[jade-of-mourning]

sorry sometimes i think about mako and my heart hurts so much. this kid raised himself and his brother on the streets in homelessness and utter poverty from eight through fifteen, promptly after seeing the violent death of his mother and father. he turned to the triple threats because they couldn't survive as a pair of wretched kids without any adult support, and the environment forced him to turn into the exact character that killed his parents in a terrible twist of irony. and after sheer-fucking-luck hits and they aren't homeless anymore, their livelihood wavers on the outcome of what's a literally game to everyone but them; and after things are finally starting to look up and their team is going places and things just might be okay, his gradually stabilizing world unceremoniously expands and everything goes to shit.

and the city that chewed him up and spat him back out, ruined him as a child and took away his ability to stay afloat in a true sense of normalcy as an adult — when it's on the verge of destruction and falling to pieces before his eyes, he gives himself to save it with the full expectation to die. he went from the kid who didn't and couldn't care about anything outside of himself and his brother, to finding redemption for his younger self in his police work despite its injustice against him, to willingly sacrificing himself to a world that had never loved him.

he's a desperate people pleaser, socially and emotionally stunted for the adult he had to be as a kid, unable to navigate interpersonal relationships easily yet still trying his damned hardest. he's intensely and entirely devoted to the things that matter to him and for so long it was only him, bolin, and ensuring their survival — yet by the end, that devotion has expanded to protecting the rest of the world. he starts out entirely self-reliant and ends in trusting the people he cares about to know their own needs, to be able to take care of themselves, to be okay without him despite having spent so much of his life defined by his role in others' well-being.

just. what the fuck i'm such a big fan of this fictional guy and i'm unashamed about it at this point. also let him cry please (if you won't i'll do it i'll let him cry)

[knickynoo]

Two of my favorite little scenes from BTTF part II are the moments where Marty stops to watch his parents in 1955. I mean, he was only just there living through those events one day prior, but he didn't actually have a chance to soak any of it in or process it. (He'd come flailing into the parking lot just after George punched Biff but hardly had time to appreciate any of it on account of his picture still fading, and then at the dance, he was. You know. Actively being erased from existence up there on stage for a while.)

Even though the stakes are still unbelievably high when he returns to '55 to try to track down the almanac, and he's just experienced what may be the most stressful and terrifying day of his life with all the 1985A nonsense, he makes it a point to slow down enough to watch his parents at the dance. And there's just this look on his face—a mixture of awe and relief and happiness. You can tell. You can tell this is getting permanently etched into Marty's memory. He's taking in every detail. He's holding tightly to these sweet moments of watching his parents (who had been unhappily married most of or all of his life) FALL IN LOVE. A real, true love that he's never had a chance to see them in before.

Not to mention the fact that in the reality he'd just arrived from, his mother had been forced into marriage with Biff, and his father was dead. Marty's just come from a place where his family had been completely destroyed, and now he's watching the very foundation of it coming together. This is the beginning of it all, and it's a reminder of what he's trying so hard to save and get back to.

And it's so very nice that we see him hitting the pause button for a few seconds in this chaos-fest to look at his mom and dad with such love.

[bonnieura]

every time i hear a freaky grandma nitpick JFK's weight after 1960 an angel loses its wings and god kills a kitten. I cant ever understand why they [american public] are so fixated with his appearance and especially his weight. It just screams fatphobia. literally no one is dying if he gained a few pounds . its not ww3. The way its said is always just so condescending and backhanded? putting his early life his illnesses his medications and his plenty near-death experiences into consideration i am damn glad he managed to be even if only a little, HEALTHY . something he literally never got the chance to say about himself

you can say that it's a given considering his whole campaign strategy was built around his *youth* and looks in general but that does not take away from the RUTHLESSNESS i see from people when his weight is the subject of matter. and thats from today in *2024* like jesus christ imagine how it was in the 60s 😭

you can say that the "reason he put on weight" (as if it even needs a reason, he wasnt overweight or anything at all) was to look less boyish and more like formidable or something for the elections. he already had to deal with criticism on being too young for the presidency. And all of that isnt something to be ashamed or remorseful of at all either?? I genuinely dont get why so many to this day just outright degrade him for it. as if a middle aged man not being borderline underweight is satan's incarnate.

speaking of underweight, he was the aforementioned for YEARS during his service in the senate and the house. having just returned from ww2 with near fatal injuries he was clearly ill and malnourished. And yet i still see people romanticize it as if its something commendable. You can commend him pulling through and getting his health together even if just barely, not whatever people glorify of his illness

If you read a little back you can see i mentioned his early life. well yeah thats cause his parents single handedly almost gave him and his siblings [tw] || eating disorders || [unfortunately i wouldnt be surprised if he had one] from disturbingly young ages . Im certain that it did a number on him and stuck to some degree. So I am damn glad he was able to break out of it [or at least look like he did , i cant tell you whether he did manage to break out or not considering he was hypervigilant on his appearance till the day he hit the grave atp

plus im pretty sure some of his medicine consisted of cortisone [known for puffing up the face and leading the patient to gain weight]. I hate how hyperfixated people are with his weight and body. yeah no damn wonder he was so worried 24/7 and love or hate the man literally no one should have to go through that. theres so much more i wanna say rn but im tired of yapping

[sengoku-nadeko]

[yellllowstar]

slowly I'm recovering the beauty of discovery

(creature by half•alive)

(textless + timelapse below cut)

[disastercit]

haha what a silly cartoon episode. but nothing like that would ever happen to me in real life, right?

right?

there are seven inches of snow outside of my house right now.

[wildsaltair]

one day I will find sufficient words to describe how much I love Maximus. until then, screencaps and fanfics and incomprehensible long tags must be my heart’s balm

[snapbackslide]

happiest of birthdays to my favourite guy 💚💚💚

fav4ever.

[ninkaku]

when i think about the fact that dazai was the one who chose the location of the safe house for oda’s orphans i feel the need to walk into traffic

and then this was just straight up AURA. not to mention that mori is witnessing dazai experience the emotion he needed him to in order to fully calculate his potential as his successor. it’s a no brainer that dazai can lead an organisation but before oda i don’t think mori ever witnessed dazai serve to protect something or do something that didn’t benefit him (mori is a slave to the organisation as much as he is its figurehead as he explains, this shows him that dazai has the full potential he needs him to have. and hence why he keeps his executive seat open without replacement because dazai joining the agency to protect people and thus, the city, only furthers this point for him)

[greenishness]

You can’t force people to be honest with you. If you’re an up-front person who doesn’t have a problem asking for what you need, it can be easy to interpret wishy-washiness as cowardly and manipulative. It obviously sucks to be in emotional limbo, and I don’t blame you for interpreting their silence as a punishment. But have you considered it might also be a form of self-protection?

“Why won’t X tell me what’s wrong? I’m not a mind reader!” is a common complaint. But the question which often occurs to me is, who does that clarity benefit? Does the teller have reasonable grounds to believe expressing their anger is a safe or productive thing to do? Is it going to lead to deeper understanding, or just another argument? Is the person demanding an explanation going to listen, or use the teller’s complaint to retaliate, linguistically outmanoeuvre them, or adopt a position of victimhood? Often a request for clarity is disingenuous. We know what we’ve done and just don’t want to have to be the one to bring it up, because we feel guilty, and it’s easier to take a defensive posture than proactively apologise.

Not to mention that when we’re upset, the last thing we want is to give the person who offended us an opportunity to relitigate the situation. Especially if there’s wounded pride involved. It can be humiliating to confess the depth of your hurt feelings. That kind of honesty is an act of generosity, not emotional obligation. 

Help Me Hera: Our Couple BFF's Won't Forgive Us

[autism-alley]

now that the show is over, i’m slowly revisiting things that are less fundamentally dysfunctional and more symptoms of the overall problems. one of those is hephaestus. the way his disability is so… reduced is. almost incredible. like, they started off on the right foot casting a disabled man, i appreciate that, but the way they utilize hephaestus’ disability, or rather don’t, leaves a lot of room to be desired.

first off, allow me to be annoying by saying he is not there in the book—but i don’t think the decision to add him is inherently a poor choice. it could work.

in the lightning thief, the way the kids get out of his trap is through annabeth’s intelligence in an action-packed scene. in the show, i was alright with the fact they changed the trap—foolishly assuming they were going to actually make something different of equal craftsmanship—but the end result is one of many instances of sacrifice way too early in the series, and an utterly underwhelming solution to that sacrifice—annabeth literally just asks hephaestus to free percy and. he does? i thought she was going to figure out how to reverse the throne’s trap; while she’s not a child of hephaestus, you’d think a child of athena with a passion for architecture would have some understanding of mechanics. it would have been different from the book, maybe not the best approach, but still emotionally satisfying. but alright, we’re… making an emotional appeal to hephaestus. putting aside my feelings about her rant of what exactly it is that makes percy different and worth freeing, why is the show’s hephaestus… so generally underwhelming?

my man was tossed from the fucking heavens by a parent—in pjo it’s hera—they could have visually used that to show hephaestus, like annabeth, does not want to repeat his mother’s cold and selfish ways. but he’s just. alright, first just look at these two guys.

before we get to the meat and potatoes, tell me which of these two guys look like they’ve spent a millennia in a workshop? the guy covered in grease and sweat, dressed in a stain-littered apron, tool belt at his side, muscle built for lifting heavy parts and swinging a hammer century after century? or the man with a neatly brushed, trimmed, washed beard and head of hair, clean hands, remarkably unstained sweater and flannel, crisp, new overalls, and academic-looking glasses? which looks to you like the embodiment of blacksmiths and the flame of the forge? yeah. but that can all be lumped in with my other wardrobe complains of the show, now we get to the section of this post where i would like to tread lightly.

i want to start by saying not all disability is visual, or even overtly visual, but hephaestus’ is and that visual is important to his character and the story. as a disabled person, i love that they cast a disabled actor, but based on how it was handled in the show, i had no idea this man was disabled. i thought he was an able bodied actor, and i am so sorry i came to that conclusion, but i really see no other one i could have come to based purely on what was in the show itself. i had to google who timothy omundson is to know he’s disabled and with what disability (he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side in 2017 and has been in recovery ever since—godspeed my man, i hope it helps where it can). i am so glad it was a disabled actor and not an able bodied one, but he’s still not hephaestus. while obviously no mortal has fallen from the heavens, i think they could have made it work, but a man who’s had a stroke and a man who’s had his body crushed are not the same. i am not here to belittle this man’s experiences or say one is more severe, i am saying they are different, and not interchangeable.

regardless, a disability that is visual is no less than one that is invisible and timothy omundson’s paralysis is visual, but it was hidden. it was NOT clear to the audience timothy omundson is paralyzed, or that he is disabled at all. the gods can appear however they choose, but it’s a point that hephaestus generally does not, or his disability is implied to be such a hindrance on him, no matter how he chooses to appear, he cannot escape his disability, how glaringly visible it is. his body itself is a story of how the gods betray each other, how they literally eat each other alive and are so hypocritical about it. think of how impactful the visual of hephaestus is—has a parent ever rejected your existence so violently, your divine body is broken and disfigured for all eternity? it is a brutal establishment of the godly norm as ruthless, cruel, and petty abuse. and the show, for all its talk of how the gods are awful, just did not highlight his disability and its origins it at all.

again, i think including hephaestus in this scene could have worked, but not how the show went about it. imagine. annabeth, desperately fiddling with the throne’s inner workings, makes her emotional appeal to hephaestus. he’s partly obscured by shadow as he stands, watching from afar on the balcony, but we see a gnarled hand grasp the railing. annabeth, still pulling back the machine’s inner workings, tearfully describes how her mother punished her for embarrassing her. as she does, we receive a few close up shots of hephaestus, still leaving him mostly in the dark, but providing peeks at his disfigurements, and a hesitant but pained look in his eyes tells us he is reliving painful memories—a conflicted bead of sweat runs down the side of his face. it wouldn’t cost any more run time to use these shots while annabeth makes her plea to him, and the disability is in the spotlight, the parallel between athena/hera and annabeth/hephaestus is clear as a younger, more hopeful version of this emotionally broken man begs him to help her be different than both their mothers.

free my friend, she says. and for a moment, he just shakes. he opens his mouth, and annabeth—and the audience—lean forward to hear his reply. but then his face crumples with regret and resentment. he is still apart of the same wheel that crushes everyone in their path—if he, a god, could not escape, why would a demigod? why should a demigod?

no, the god of the hammer tells annabeth, you cannot escape.

annabeth, in her hubris, replies, maybe you can’t—and we cut to her hands, tearing away a gear to reveal a switch—realization flashes across her face, and she grasps the trap’s mechanical release. percy is free, and hephaestus, in his misplaced anger, unleashes more of his creations (mechanical spiders!!) after them, mirroring the book as the kids use quick-thinking to escape waterland.

it’s not perfect, but that would work. instead, they finally show a god rather than just talking about them and it’s so underwhelming. and yes, this hephaestus carries a cane, clearly the potential to show front his disability was there, but you cannot throw me table scraps and tell me my frustration at not receiving the feast i was promised is unfounded. it’s laughable. most of the time it’s on screen it’s not in use and there isn’t even reference in the show as to why he carries a cane. casual viewers unfamiliar with the books or greek mythology might mistakenly assume this is just how this god chose to present himself and he doesn’t need this cane, and not that disability is at the core of who this divine figure is. it is NOT clear to the audience this is a disabled character played by a disabled actor. it is, indefensibly, a watered down depiction. what in the book needed to be ‘fixed’ with hephaestus—? this is a disabled god, you dare not give him to me in all his disabled complexity? you dare not show him as he is?

one of the most insulting things you can do to a disabled person is reduce our disability and the show has done it to the greek god of disability, with such a cheap payoff. if they did not want to be true to hephaestus, to his actor, they should not have shown him at all, and maybe—i don’t know, stuck to the book whose narrative makes sense in this scene?

[misterdrwilson]

I wanna watch dead poet society but I’m not emotionally well enough to do so.