#it doesn't raise the same questions

[typingwithmyhandstied]

One of my favorite things in fiction is royals whose closest relationship is someone who serves them (bodyguard, servant, adviser, etc). It can never just be simple. It has so many questions. Are they doing this because they care or because they are forced to serve me? Can it be a real friendship if someone is always forced to listen to the other? Are they protecting me because they care or because they are forced to? Are they hating me as they protect me above themselves? Will there always be a sense of propriety that will always have to remain? And most of all, it is a testament to the loneliness of the royal (and sometimes the other too). The only person they have to talk to is being paid to be there. Think about that.

a/n: I have drafted this so many times in my head that I feel like I'm forgetting something.

[jq37]

I've been thinking about Descendants 4 again today and, having had more time to think about it, it's even more disappointing than I initially felt it was. Because it actually has all the ingredients to be my favorite of the four.

-Brandy coming back as Cinderella (along with her prince) is an inspired move (as a Black girl and theater kid in spirit, I obviously loved her as a kid). -I also love a Cinderella focus in general because she's one of my favorite princesses--in Disney and in general. My MFA thesis project is literally a Cinderella retelling. -I love a focus on platonic relationships and an interesting mother-daughter dynamic is one of my faves. -Likewise, as cliche is it is, I love two characters with almost violently opposite vibes being forced to work together and getting close along the way.

This movie has all these things that I love which makes it extra disappointing that the movie seems uninterested in basic tenets of storytelling.

The two main relationship rifts in this movie are between Cinderella and the Queen and Red and her Queen and neither of those relationships grow or develop in a way we can get invested in. They're just fixed by stealing a book. The Red Queen doesn't learn to be a better person. They just erase one bad thing that happened to her and it's all fine now I guess? Ella doesn't reconcile with her friend. Whatever caused their rift (which we never see or even are told about in any detail) is just poofed from the timeline. There's no emotional climax. There's no real action climax. Every time it seemed like something interesting was going to happen or be revealed, they hard pivoted to something else. The connective tissue in the movie is super weak and the foreshadowing leads to very little if anything.

I've really never seen a movie so bizarrely unfocused and disjointed. It has real first draft vibes.

[heterophobiclanwangji]

my favorite bingqiu fic idea i’ll never get around to writing is a no transmigration au where shen yuan was born as shen jiu’s older twin brother who died at the qiu estate, but shen jiu somehow managed to capture his soul so some of shen jiu’s rocky cultivation is that he’s trying to further his own cultivation while also preserving/repairing shen yuan’s soul. shen yuan finally reforms when shen jiu and liu qingge are in the spirit caves before sha hualing’s invasion, so he would be 15/16 at the same time that binghe is 15. so he’s shen jiu’s older brother AND his twin AND much younger than he is AND insists on calling binghe his luo-shixiong to shen jiu’s increasing dismay

[sangrefae]

i Will say it's kind of wild that people are so willing to accept marcille + laios's flaws and understand that they're complicated and nuanced characters while kabru and ESPECIALLY toshiro are torn down and hated for.... being complicated and nuanced. wonder why that is 🤔🤔🤔

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[francisnyx]

What am I suppose to call Merlin. He's hard to describe. What is he, I created him and I don't even know (irony with his lore lmao). He was a person raised to fulfill a role from birth (which I might add that he's suppose to be more of a vessel, like a medium to channel other on to like the previous ones before him but fellas is it clone or simply homuculus if you're create from an essence of the progenitor but is still an individual with some differences or is that more like descendants but also they kinda are all the same person but not. It's Complicated), doesn't know much common sense and is inhuman but grew a heart after the journey but Then Things happen and now he has no body. Became a incorporeal entity. Met the progenitor and awaken the memoeies and discover the reason of his existence and all previous versions and the machinations of things. And he later fused with the awakened will of a star (which is much older than he is but is also not with the complication of maturity of a star conciousness, also the will was an AI built by humanity that has descends to became one with the core and born anew)

Is he the progenitor? Is he the guide they hope for? Is he the guardian of a star? Is he human? WHAT IS HE

Ah i forgot to mention the thousands soul of people he knew and cherished he carries around in his chest. Humanity conciousness is a part of him by the way. With the whole sea of human souls thing in Avalon (the star above, should be called moon really)'s garden

[badgirlcoven-official]

I often think about "Well Camila was motherly to Amity, Gus, and Willow too does that make her their mom too?" Like. Yes??? Do y'all not get how found family works?

Like she was fully willing to raise all of them and I doubt that'll change like do you think that she wouldn't want to meet up with their parents and collaborate with them? She was raising their kids for months, it's kind of similar to a foster parent situation like they all have their biological parents and they are going to return and live with them but I fully believe they all think of Camila as a mother/call her mom?

Not in the way where any of them are Luz's siblings of course (Hunter and her are different imo just cause Luz was sisterly towards Hunter long before Camila was involved anyway) and in Amity's case it's very obviously a situation of "of course you can call me mom, you're dating my daughter/family" like is completely normal for their situation.

But like, with Gus and Willow "Luz's mom" becomes just "mom" and that's natural to them considering neither of them even have mothers so it's not like she's replacing anyone with that title.

Would she legally adopt them? No she has no reason to do that but that doesn't make her less of a mother to them. Eda doesn't legally adopt Luz but she's still Luz's 2nd mom? Luz is still King's sibling?

It's just weird the way that Camila's role in these children's lives is minimized so much that's the whole hexsquad's mom now no take-backsies whether or not they still officially live with her or not is irrelevant.

[Dadrius deniers/haters DNI y'all are annoying, Darius has so much fatherly swag it's unreal.]

[randomnameless]

The more I think about it, the claim Edelgard wants to be a goddess/replace the goddess from Dimitri and Seteth makes more sense. Her believing only she can fix the world's problems, believing the world is too sinful because of "those eeevil lizard people", crushing anyone who dares oppose her and seeing human sacrifices as a means to an end/collateral damage. Heck you can see her war as a rapture and those who don't agree with her burn for a thousand years or in the case get killed/vanquished. And after her war if she wins, then she reforms a church under her name and in Nopes she does the exact the same thing after getting rid of the Slithers with Rhea. And considering how cultish her stans irl behave while trying to claim that they're "good people", yeah it all clicks.

The thing is,

The "Goddess" or at least what we know/heard of her didn't even act like Supreme Leader did.

Sure, sources on Sothis's time in Fodlan are biased, either we're told anything about her by Rhea, or by the Mole People.

But I agree, the game gives us some clues about what Supreme Leader wants to be, at least in Tru Piss. With her Manu support, she becomes the figure people look up to and aspire to be, the source of strength the Goddess and the CoS previously were. You also have the explore sections in the monastery, and how she's found where Rhea used to be when she was doing her archbishop things (the audience chambers iirc?), the CoS being "reformed under her supervision" and the final straw on the camel's back is her ending mural.

The rest is her messiah complex - partly fueled by Adrestian nationalism - and her stubborness, Supreme Leader will walk on her path and refuse to look back or even reconsider, no matter the obstacles standing before her, you are either on her side, or an obstacle needing to be removed.

As for the irl devoted fans, lol, I won't consider their behaviour in an analysis of the character, but if we are to talk about the BESF in Nopes, they are also sure they're doing a favor to the world/Fodlan while ignoring a good part of said Fodlan. Nopes!Ferdie comes to mind, with his nonsense about the Kingdom having more crusted generals, or the general fuckery that is the alliance with the Federation, or people being gung ho and looking forward to sack the monastery/cities/Faerghus to earn some fame.

[cultivating-wildflowers]

💍

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

People say you'll kill a duck with bread.

Sure, that's why the same family for generations would come begging for it.

Staying well fed.

[aficionadoenthusiast]

yes, percy rose through the ranks of new rome disturbingly fast. no, jason did not do the same at camp half blood. yes, percy's rise to leadership at both camps took about two weeks and was completely unplanned. no, the same cannot be said for jason. his rise was carefully planned and took over a decade. they're both children of the big three, but where percy thrums with raw power, jason is a sword honed by zeus and hera. where percy is a survivor, jason is a weapon. where percy is a cycle breaker, jason can't get out. jason's fatal flaw was temptation to deliberate because he never managed to make his own choices. he was every classic definition of a hero rolled into one, and he never questioned it because his happiness came after the responsibility. jason was never going to ascend as fast as percy because jason was raised on hard work and discipline while percy, an abuse survivor and child of poverty, knew when to fight dirty. where jason was a transplant, percy was an invasive species. jason was always going to die because he was never more than a tool for the gods to throw away when he outlived his usefulness, or when he started to question his place. if someone as locked down as jason can question the system, anyone can. now that luke has put thoughts of overthrow in everyone's heads, zeus has to be very careful because while jason was expendable as his weapon, percy was unexpected in every way. zeus has no plan for him. when percy dies, he will become a martyr, so he can't die, except now everyone knows that percy doesn't want to be a god either. jason had to die, and now percy has to live.

[varpusvaras]

My favorite fic trope is the "JLA meets the batfam because they arrested Jason as he was undercover and now the family is coming to pick him up" one, but imagine. Jason gets arrested by the JLA while undercover, and is brought in for questioning, but before any of the batfam members even notice that he is gone, Green Arrow walks into the interrogation room.

"It's okay, Superman, you can let him go."

"Green Arrow, Red Hood is a wanted criminal on the JLA:s most wanted list-"

"What? No, no he isn't, that's just Jason."

Superman stares. Jason stares too.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, that's just Jason, my son-in-law. You can let him go."

"...your son-in-law is the Red Hood?"

"No? Jason's not the Red Hood, he is just dressed as the Red Hood. He's in a mercenary group with my son, he does that. It's pretty easy to dress up as someone who doesn't show their face for a job. Jason's no Red Hood, let me tell you that. Or I guess I don't have to tell you that, since you've already arrested him."

Jason's not really sure if he wants to murder Oliver or not.

Superman stares. Oliver raises a brow.

"So? Can I have him back, please, we have a family dinner today and we're already a bit late."

"...sure."

Jason gets let out. Oliver throws an arm around his shoulders as they walk towards the zeta tubes.

"I hate you, Queen."

"You're welcome, kiddo."

JLA does leave Jason alone after that, though, because every time they see him outside of Gotham, they just go "oh that's just Jason dressed up as the Red Hood again, move on" and Jason doesn't know if he should be annoyed or not. It does make his work easier, but at the same time, it somehow feels like an insult.

[llycaons]

the majority of the shots with lindy are this uncomfortable closeup, which makes sense given the episode's main tech with the zoomed-in faces of everyone being their main interaction with the rest of the world and each other

[ventbloglite]

I think we need to sit down and talk about malgendering.

Not misgendering, malgendering.

We all know what misgendering means. Misgendering is when a trans person (or to be honest, even a cis person) has their gender denied to them in some fashion by implying, suggesting or outright stating that their gender is actually Something Else and not the one they identify as.

e.g. A trans woman being told she cannot attend a certain class because it's 'just for women'.

Malgendering is when the trans persons gender is not questioned or denied and may even be affirmed - but only in a context in which it can be used against them in some fashion (to make judgements on them as a person, to exclude them from something, to incite bigotry towards them etc).

e.g. That same trans woman taking her shirt off on a hot day and being arrested for indecent exposure.

This is misgendering;- "You're not a woman, you're a man." This is malgendering;- "Trans women are women, so obviously they exist to serve men."* *obvs it is also transmisogyny and all malgendering is transphobia.

But what you don't want to hear is that malgendering is a form of transphobia mainly used against trans masculine people and nonbinary people.

Most people recognise malgendering when it's;

Using the term 'theyfab' to ridicule an agender person or making jokes about how an agender they/them user looks (to you) to be a completely cis woman.

But you need to look out for how;

Malgendering is treating trans men like their transition has turned them into women-hating predators because of your own predjudices towards men/trans man were always inherently women-hating predators because maleness is what makes you those things not your actual thoughts, words and actions.

Malgendering is not listening to how trans masc people are marginalised 'because men aren't oppressed though' as if that's not ignoring a huge part of their identity (the being trans part) and how that works.

Malgendering is telling trans men 'this is just what it's like to be a man, people treat you like shit and you have to take it or not transition'.

Malgendering is insisting that any trans man who calls any attention to the fact that he is indeed, trans, and has/had female anatomy and faces misogyny due to being raised and still perceived (by transphobes) as a woman is misgendering himself, all other trans men and 'weaponising his AFABness'

All of this is transphobia. All of this is bigotry. This kind of predjudice and bullying doesn't magically become 'OK' once you find the 'right' group to do it to. You either want to end bigotry and transphobia and identity-specific targetted hate or you want to perpetuate it. But you can't call yourself a trans ally, or escape the bigotry allegations whilst malgendering people. And no you're not being sneaky by slipping in your hateful predjudice comments and actions whilst validating their gender.

Malgendering is transphobia.

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Summoning Failed Successfully

Imagine a warehouse. Imagine a bunch of cultists in dark robes with all the candles, daggers, ancient books, and chanting. Now add Danny.

Only not as the summoned being, no. As a sacrifice.

He is sitting down, tied to a chair, in the middle of the summoning circle, looking as bored and deadpan as he can possibly be. The cultists are chanting, and he frowns, listening to their chants for a moment.

"Hey, is that Latin?" He questions, but to no avail, "You know you're not actually using those words correctly, right?"

"Keep quiet, child!" One of the cultists snaps. Danny leans back in his chair and shrugs.

"I'm just saying, you ain't summoning shit with wrong grammar," he huffs, seemingly absolutely nonchalant about the whole thing. Oracle, who is watching the whole ordeal through the surveillance cameras, raises her eyebrows. Red Robin and Robin are already en route to the building the cultists chose for their extracurricular activities, but now she almost wants to watch this a bit longer.

Gothamites are pretty used to all kinds of shitshows, but this boy is from out of town. She checked him through facial recognition. Daniel Fenton, a transfer student from Amity Park, Illinois.

A few more cultists stop chanting and turn to Danny.

"Do you know Latin?" One of them asks, and the boy makes a half-nod, making a thoughtful face.

"Not fluently, but, like, it's a dead language, I felt kinda obligated to learn it. Just for the meme, you know?" He chuckles.

The cultists, judging by their confused silence, don't know. Barbara doesn't know what he's talking about, either. But she is almost curious now, so she taps Robin's and RR's comm lines:

"RR, Robin, when you arrive, don't jump into the scene," she asks.

"Understood," Tim answers immediately, but Damian, of course, demands explanations:

"Is there an obstacle?"

"Not really," Barbara humms, "The sacrifice is in the process of de-escalating the situation."

She can almost hear the questioning silence over the comm, but, thankfully, no one argues. Meanwhile, one of the cultists pipes up, voice full of doubt:

"So, you can... like, proofread our incantation?"

"Yeah, sure," Danny nods, apparently fine with being sacrificed, "Who you're trying to summon anyway?"

"Satan," that same cultist answers, and Danny laughs approvingly.

"Classic," he nods and smiles, "I'll give you this. The circle is mostly alright, so you don't need an incantation to summon the fucker, I have him on speed dial." And with that, he leans forward, screaming towards the floor: "Ey, Satan!"

Barbara must say the act was actually convincing, but he went a little overboard with it now. She reaches to tell both Robins to get in, but suddenly, a loud, booming voice reverberates through the building.

"The fuck do you want, kid?"

Cultists fall to their knees - it doesn't seem like an act of worship, more like their knees bucking. The whole circle dimly lights up in red, smoke raising from it.

"Do you see this shit, Oracle?" Red Robin questions, and she mhm's at him, not sure what else to say. If this is still an act or a trick, she must say it's a very good one. Although somehow she suspects it's not a trick. She's seen enough magic in her life to tell the difference.

"Do you want to come to Earth, be gay and do crimes?" Danny asks, almost mockingly.

"Fuck off."

The red light flickers and disappears, and Danny looks back up to cultists, grinning cheerfully.

"Welp, looks like he doesn't wanna," the kid concludes and stands up from his chair. Barbara hadn't seen when or how he got out of his bindings.

The cultists just watch him walk out of the circle in bewilderment.

"Pursue?" Robin's voice comes over the comms, and Barbara thinks for a moment.

"I get a feeling like that's a bad idea," Tim mutters over his line.

Barbara agrees.

[mithrun-house-of-kerensil]

Lately, I've been thinking about Mithrun and the ways he is dehumanized in canon.

Before I get started, we know that elven society is incredibly afraid of death and illness. This is obvious in how they look down on the short lived races and see them as weak and childlike. We also know that Mithrun himself had ableist views toward his brother and these values did not leave him once he, himself, became disabled. He is a product of the society that raised him, but I also think how Mithrun is currently being treated contributes to his view of himself.

Mithrun has had three different caretaking groups over the years. The first are the ones his brother hired for him. From what we can see, they did the job, but we can understand that they did not know what to do with him. No one had ever recovered from having their desires eaten so the focus was less on rehabilitation and more on keeping him alive.

Later we see Milsiril take an interest in him because of his desire to return to the dungeon. Since she did not bother to visit him for decades after finding him, we can assume that there is an ulterior motive here. Timeline-wise, this was when the majority of the canaries had just been wiped out. They needed more men, and Mithrun is set up to be the perfect single-focused soldier.

Honestly, we can assume that Milsiril doesn't really care about him or see him as a person. Mithrun is just a new project for her to play with. We can see this in how she's focused on superficial level concerns like the fact that he doesn't look nice and wanting him to be overly grateful toward her. She also talks about him like he's not in the room and can't hear her. This is a dehumanizing trait shared by many characters when talking about Mithrun.

When he finally does recover enough to return to the canaries, the military does not make any effort to accommodate his needs. We know the canaries are understaffed and the ethics are already bad, but they really did not even try to care about Mithrun's safety at all.

Entrusting a criminal with his care was questionable at best, especially when Cithis immediately took the opportunity to abuse her power over him and no one stopped her.

While acknowledging the light-hearted nature of the manga, it's uncomfortable that Mithrun was treated like a child and an animal by Cithis for her amusement. Regardless of her 'learning to respect him' later, the point is that Mithrun was taken advantage of and degraded because she believed he couldn't say no. No one bothered to do anything about this until Pattadol yelled at her.

Truly his treatment is summarized well by Milsiril here. Mithrun is extremely vulnerable to being abused by those taking care of him because he won't advocate for himself. He has one desire so he won't fight for himself in any other way.

It is obvious that Mithrun was not treated well by his caretakers and this has resulted in him identifying his needs through a disconnected and frankly, infantilizing lens.

I understand that it may have been a translator's decision, but I always thought it was interesting that Mithrun says that he's "not sleepy" which is a childish term. Otherwise, he speaks like everyone else, if not rather posh.

This, followed by the fact that he is responsive to Kabru treating him like a literal infant to get him to eat, paints a clear picture of the fact that Mithrun is not unfamiliar with being treated like this. He responds to it because he's used to it and has no desire to argue with being treated this way. When we consider the fact that the chapter started with Milsiril treating an older child Kabru in the same way, it is likely that she also did the same thing to Mithrun when he was under her care.

In these panels, we see that Mithrun does not believe that he can sleep without magical assistance, even though it is immediately refuted when Kabru takes the time to bundle him up and help him relax. Not only does he fully believe he can't sleep without external assistance, but he states directly that there is no point in him getting comfortable.

As Kabru observes, Mithrun's inability to recognize his needs applies to needs such as hunger and exhaustion, but it obviously also applies to emotional needs. Kabru just wanting to feed him something delicious and not wanting him to give up on life is the most consideration someone has given Mithrun in years.

The relationship they form over the course of a single week is enough to shape Mithrun's behaviour completely. Mithrun ignores Cithis's demand in favour of asking Kabru's opinion. It is Kabru's hand Mithrun takes to pull him out of his defeated state. It is Kabru Mithrun confessed his true desire to.

Do you realize how depressing that is? All it took was the new perspectives from Kabru and Senshi to make him consider the fact that he should keep living despite no longer needing to fulfill his duty. Being treated well could have helped Mithrun much sooner and this shift in the way he sees himself contributes to his recovery going forward.

TLDR: Mithrun has no desire to be respected, but why does that make people feel comfortable acting like he doesn't deserve it? Someone not caring about being treated well doesn't give you permission to treat them poorly. This feels like a playschool-level consent lesson: just because he's not saying no to a humiliating or degrading act doesn't mean it's a yes and therefore okay to do. Acknowledging this is the bare minimum of treating him as a person.