#it just isn't worth it for me

[very-uncorrect]

They really just made a horse game pack and slapped Expansion Pack on top of it so they could charge more money huh

[triaelf9]

"how do you enjoy *insert fandom here* I hear they're the worst"

Find the ppl who enjoy the thing you like the way you do. Ignore, mute or block the ppl who don't.

Ta-Da~

[tee-dohrnii]

This line is just so silly

---

Silly Gale doodle to make me feel better about my art :")

[bitchthefuck1]

The thing about Francesca is that it isn't just saying "loving you is worth any punishment," it's saying "a punishment that keeps me with you is no punishment at all." It's not that you can brave a hurricane if it's the cost of loving someone, it's that standing in a hurricane for eternity with the person you love is still an eternity with the person you love, and how could you be happy with anything else?

[sm64mario]

What do you'a mean I'a can't have one for free?

I'mma ON IT!!! I'MMA RIGHT THERE ON'A THE FACE!

[princessefemmelesbian]

Transandrophobia truthers are so damn racist and white oh my fucking god y'all actually piss me the fuck off every time you tokenize Black and brown men for your stupid as fuck "mra but make it trans-inclusive" ideology created by a creepy guy with a corrective rape fetish(something I'll never let up on for as long as I live, btw). If I ever see another one of y'all say "Black and brown men face discrimination because they're seen as overly masculine and that's why masculinity in men is oppressed in this society" I will literally kill myself. Stop using Black and brown men as brownie points for your bullshit arguments about misandry being real when you don't have the slightest idea how racialized oppression works. White boys are so annoying and dumb istfg.

@punkeropercyjackson @punknicodiangelo @pinkpinkstarlet

[gingermintpepper]

As usual I read your tags always and so you said Apollo did not ask for resurrection of Asclepius and Hyacinthus so i just wanted to share this. About Asclepius death I read it on theoi.com, that earlier authors don't make him resurrect as a god but that's a later development mentioned only by Roman authors like Cicero, Hyginus and Ovid. But still Apollo has a role in Ovid's version

Ovid, Fasti 6. 735 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : Clymenus [Haides] and Clotho resent the threads of life respun and death's royal rights diminished. Jove [Zeus] feared the precedent and aimed his thunderbolt at the man who employed excessive art. Phoebus [Apollon], you whined. He is a god; smile at your father, who, for your sake, undoes his prohibitions [i.e. when he obtains immortality for Asklepios].

So here it is actually because of Apollo the decision was taken to resurrect him as god. And with Hyacinthus, I don't think I've read about Artemis playing the primary role. I know in Sparta there was a picture of Artemis, Athena and Aphrodite carrying Hyacinthus and his sister to heaven.

This is not on theoi.com but I saw on Tumblr it's from Dionysiaca by Nonnus

Second, my lord Oiagros wove a winding lay, as the father of Orpheus who has the Muse his boon companion. Only a couple of verses he sang, a ditty of Phoibos, clearspoken in few words after some Amyclaian style: Apollo brought to life again his longhaired Hyacinthos: Staphylos will be made to live for aye by Dionysos.

So since he is singing inspired by amyclean stories it probably means in that place it was believed Apollo was the one to bring back his lover to life.

Apollo as god of order was very important so i think it shows how special these people (and admetus too) were to him that he decided to go against the order for them 🥺

ANON!! Shakes you like a bottle of ramune!! BELOVED ANON!!!!! I'm littering your face with kisses, I'm anointing you with olive oil and honey - you absolutely made my night with this because, not only did I get the pure serotonin shot of having someone interact with my tags (yippee, wahoo!!) I also got to have that wonderful feeling of "oh wow, have I misunderstood something that was integral to my understanding of this myth/figure this whole time or is this a case of interpretational differences?" which is imo vital for my aims and interests as someone who enjoys mythological content and literature.

I'll preface my response with this: Hyacinthus is by far the hardest of these to get accounts for because his revival itself, as you very astutely point out, is generally accounted for in painting/ritual format which muddies the waters on who interceded for what. I wasn't actually familiar with that passage from the Argonautica - and certainly didn't remember it so thank you very much for bringing it to my attention!

That said, what I've come to understand, both about Hyacinthus and about Asclepius is that in the accounts of their deaths, Apollo's position is startlingly clear.

For Hyacinthus, it is established time and again that Apollo would have sacrificed everything for him - his status, his power, his very own immortality and divinity. Ovid writes that Apollo would have installed him as a god if only he had the time:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book X. trans. Johnston)

Many other writers too speak of how Apollo abandoned his lyre and his seat at Delphi to spend his days with Hyacinthus, but they also all agree that when it came to his death - he was powerless. Ovid gives that graphic account of Apollo's desperation as he tries all his healing arts to save him to no avail:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X. Apollo me boy, methinks him dead. trans Johnston)

Bion, in one of his fragments, writes that Apollo was "dumb" upon seeing Hyacinthus' agony:

(Bion, The Bucolic Poets. Fragment XI. trans Edmonds)

Even Nonnus in the Dionysiaca speaks constantly of Apollo's helplessness in the face of Hyacinthus' fate where he writes that the god still shivers if a westward wind blows upon an iris:

and when Zephyros breathed through the flowery garden, Apollo turned a quick eye upon his young darling, his yearning never satisfied; if he saw the plant beaten by the breezes, he remembered the quoit, and trembled for fear the wind, so jealous once about the boy, might hate him even in a leaf...

(Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 3. trans Rouse)

And the point here is just that - Apollo, at least as far as I've read, cannot avert someone's death. He simply can't. Once they're already dead - once Fate has cut their string - all Apollo's power is gone and he can do nothing no matter how much he wants to. And this is, as far as I know, supported with the accounts of Asclepius as well!

Since you specifically brought up Ovid's account, I'll also stick only to Ovid's account but in Metamorphoses when we get Ovid's version of Coronis' demise, he writes that Apollo intensely and immediately regrets slaughtering Coronis. He regrets it so intensely that he, like he does with Hyacinthus, does his best to resuscitate her:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo's regret)

And like Hyacinthus, when it becomes clear that what has happened cannot be undone, Apollo wails:

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo wept.)

Unlike his mother, Asclepius in her womb had not yet died and so, with the last of Apollo's strength, he does manage, at least, to save him.

(Ovid, Metamorphoses Book Two. Apollo puts the 'tearing out' in Asclepius.)

But it goes further than even that because Ocyrhoe, Chiron's daughter, a prophetess who unduly gained the ability to directly proclaim the secrets of the Fates, upon seeing the baby Asclepius, immediately prophesies his glory, his inevitable death and then his fated ascension:

(Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book Two. Ocyrhoe's prophecy. trans Johnston)

Before she too succumbs to her hubris and is transformed by the Fates into a horse so she can no longer speak secrets that aren't hers to share.

These things ultimately are important because it establishes two very important things: 1) Apollo can't do anything in the face of the ultimate Fate of mortals, which is, of course, death and 2) even when Apollo is Actively Devastated, regretful, yearning, mournful, guilty or some unholy combination of all of the above, when someone is dead, he accepts that they are gone. Even if he is devastated by it, even if he'll cry all the rest of his days about it - if they're dead? Apollo lets them go. In Fasti, when Zeus brings Asclepius back, he does not say Apollo asked him to - Zeus, or well, in this case Jove, brings Asclepius back because he wants Apollo to stop being mad at him.

(Ovid, Fasti VI. Apollo please come home your father misses you. trans. A.S Kline)

Even Boyle's translation which you used above in your findings hints that Zeus made Asclepius a god because he wanted Apollo to stop grieving. (i.e 'smile at your father', 'for your sake [he] undoes his prohibitions')

And like, Apollo was deeply upset by Asclepius' death - apart from killing the Cyclops in anger, in book 4 of the Argonautica, Apollonius writes that the Celts believe the stream of Eridanus to be the tears Apollo shed over the death of Asclepius when he left for Hyperborea after being chastised by Zeus for killing his Cyclops:

But the Celts have attached this story to them, that these are the tears of Leto's son, Apollo, that are borne along by the eddies, the countless tears that he shed aforetime when he came to the sacred race of the Hyperboreans and left shining heaven at the chiding of his father, being in wrath concerning his son whom divine Coronis bare in bright Lacereia at the mouth of Amyrus.

It all paints a very clear picture to me. Apollo did not ask for either of them to be brought back. Though bringing them back certainly pleased and delighted him, they are actions of other gods who are moved by Apollo's grief and mourning and seek to mollify him. Him not asking doesn't mean he didn't want them back which I think is a very important distinction by the by, but it simply means that Apollo knows the natural order of things and, even if it hurts, he isn't going to press his luck about it.

Which, of course, brings us to Admetus. And I'm really not going to overcomplicate this, Admetus is different because, very vitally, Admetus is not dead. Apollo can't do a thing once Fate has been carried out and Death has claimed a mortal but you know what he absolutely can do? Bargain like hell with the Fates before that point of inevitability. And that's what he does, ultimately for Admetus and Alcestis. He sought to prolong Admetus' life, not revive him from death or absolve him from death altogether and even after getting the Fates drunk, he's still only able to organise a sacrifice - a life for a life - something completely contingent on whether some other mortal would be willing to die in Admetus' place and not at all controllable by Apollo's own power.

All of these things, I think come back to that point you made - that Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore these people are very special to him if it means he's willing to go against that order but, I also wish to challenge that opinion if you'd let me. Apollo's place as a god of order is very important and therefore, I would argue, that it is even more important that it is shown that he does not break the divine order, especially for the people that mean the most to him. The original context of my comments which started this conversation were on this lovely, lovely post by @hyacinthusmemorial which contemplated upon Asclepius from the perspective of an Emergency Medical personnel and included, in their tags, the very poignant lines "there's something about Apollo letting go when Asclepius couldn't that eats my heart away" and "you do what you can, you do your best, but you don't ever reach too far" and I think that's perfectly embodied with the Apollo-Asclepius dichotomy. Apollo grieves. He wails, he cries, he does his best each and every time to save that which is precious to him but he does not curse their nature, he does not resent that they are human and ultimately, he accepts that that which is mortal must inevitably die. There is nothing that so saliently proves that those who uphold rules are also their most staunch followers - if Apollo wants to delight in his place as Fate's mouthpiece, he cannot undo Fate. And, if even the god of healing and order himself cannot undo death, what right does Asclepius, mortal as he is, talented as he is, have to disrespect it?

The beauty of these stories isn't that Apollo loved them enough to bring them back. The beauty is that Apollo loved them enough to let them go.

[tiktowafel]

do you ever think about how all you used to draw when you were 10 was ponies and that you should still know how to do that, then get an idea and proceed to draw something like these in nearly one sitting and it turns out better than any drawing you've done in the entire past month

sooo anyway does anyone have cutie mark or pony name ideas for them?? lol

[faerytrait]

i know i probably sound like a negative nancy but it's so hard to be excited about new features when it's things that should've been in base game 10 years ago

[uncanny-tranny]

I love you smile lines and worry lines and grey and white hair and wrinkles and purple spiderweb veins and the process of aging and living in a body that is standing the test of times. I love you experiences that make you wiser and stories that make you laugh, and every little process that happens to get to the point where you have so many memories because you have the fortune to be here and be so radiant

[r0semultiverse]

Hey, Jake & Jack fans, is this anything?

Both men imprisoned (literal & metaphorical).

Both offered an out from their current predicament by an outside force (arguably in the case of Brain Ghost Dirk).

Both have loose ties to Lord English visually.

Yellow initial glow & Gamzee involvement too.

Sometimes a guy just needs to explode (same pose too).

Both dual wielding weapons.

That same said weapon type (for Jack Noir) having killed Jane Crocker.

It's really looking like Jake is going to do her in.

I would also like to point out that we've had interactions involving these three (Jane, Jake, and Brain Ghost Dirk) before that consisted of similar topics & themes.

Brain Ghost Dirk implying that he's just there as moral support, a manifestation of Jake's powers, and as a coping mechanism. Jane also talking about ruling an empire with him while talking down to him, similar to how she saw and/or still sees him in Beyond Canon's Candy timeline. Jake also being uncertain about doing anything to harm her despite all the bad things she's doing.

Brain Ghost Dirk going away tells us that Jake's more hopeful than he's ever been. This is the moment where he is the most sure of his decisions than he's ever been in his life, whatever those decisions may be in regards to Jane and how to handle this situation.

He is probably going to shoot Jane down, quite literally. I would also argue that after all this time, the lad isn't beating the Lord English allegations. We might as well have a parallel of him killing Jane much like how Jack Noir killed her right before he got possessed by Lil Cal & given some of Lord English's immense power.

Alternatively maybe we'll get to see what the power of hope or hope bullets can do to someone whose done so much wrong & come so far off the deep end in terms of moral wrongdoings. Maybe with every shot that hits her, she'll begin to be swayed to the side of good & start to self-reflect.

I'm still not fully convinced that Gamzee actually cured Tavros' peanut allergy, I mean just look at the panel.

This could absolutely be interpreted as Jake injecting his hope power into the epipen and by proxy injecting both his power & the epipen into his son! If younger Jake is strong enough to defeat Grimbark Jade, then adult Jake might just be strong enough to defeat a peanut allergy is all I'm saying! In fact, now that I'm rambling about it, this seems like the more likely outcome is Jake's hope power swaying or (in the very least) confusing Jane mid-fight. Hope bullets, they would look cool & would be pretty strong!

The power of believing in others & wanting things to change can be a strong tool indeed, Mister English.

If there's one person who still believes in changing Jane's mind (or bringing her back to proper canonicity depending on how you interpret the recent lore), it would be Jake English, the believer.

Okay, maybe this is something! Tally ho!

[possamble]

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

[harwin-breakbones-strong]

Men of House Strong | Matthew Needham, Gavin Spokes & Ryan Corr

[budd-ie]

“If I wasn’t destined to be perfect, I at least wanted to be perfectly kind. But…I couldn’t even manage that. It’s really…so unfair."

Yin Yu's dream of perfect kindness is yet another example of unattainable perfection. I love Yin Yu, because he really is trying to be kind to everyone. But "perfect kindness" doesn't exist in a world where other people are unkind, because there's a very small intersection between kindness and justice.

Yin Yu deliberately spends his time looking out for Quan Yizhen even though it drives him mad and only causes him problems.

He tells him not to worry even when his head is throbbing, he tells him it's fine, you didn't do anything wrong, even if everyone else is ready to kill them. Even if Yin Yu is lying, he's not really doing it just to placate him, he's doing this because he genuinely, wholeheartedly wants to believe in the words he's saying. It's not that he's unbothered, but that he wants to be unbothered. Yin Yu knows that helping Quan Yizhen is the right thing to do, so that's what he wants to emulate, and when people give him a hard time for it, he tries to placate them too. He tries to reason and rationalize every side regardless of his emotions; this is his way of trying to be fair and kind to everyone. This is easier in the sect because his peers respect him, but heaven is a little different.

Yin Yu appoints Jian Yu and Quan Yizhen as his deputy officials. We know that Jian Yu is a trusted companion despite his negative attitude, but what about Quan Yizhen? There's no way Yin Yu didn't rationalize his decision as a mix of talent, gusto, and maybe even a little spite. He recognizes Yizhen's potential and knows that helping him hone it is the right thing to do. It's the kind thing to do. Why wouldn't he want to help? Not to mention if he leaves him alone in the sect, who will vouch for him? It will only cause him problems if they aren't together, so really it's best to keep him along.

(continued under cut due to length and book 7 spoilers)

Lo and behold, inevitable problems arise and Yin Yu is under fire as well. Others show the same contempt for Yizhen as before, but the stakes are much different now. In heaven, everyone is a big shot and Yin Yu has no authority and only complimentary respect to his name. Placating the aggressor is hardly an option anymore, so all he can do is take it.

For the next section, lets look at this scene:

It also needs to be established right now that Yin Yu desperately wants to be a god, and it should also be said that a "god" really is something a little different than being a "heavenly official." This is more than a position to him, it’s a dream. Ascension for Yin Yu is proof that all his hard work is paying off, that all the headache wasn't for nothing, that he really is someone remarkable. Only...he doesn't quite feel remarkable. A god is someone who is perfect, kind and benevolent, who always does the right thing for the right reasons. A "heavenly official" is more like a white-collar worker at a corrupt high-end job stuck in meetings all day with a strict social code lest you offend another very powerful person. Everyone thinks they're hot shit just because of their title, which is especially why so many low-ranking deputy officials are so arrogant. With that, Yin Yu is aware that he isn't perfect. He hates that he gets annoyed by Yizhen when he knows there's really nothing he's doing wrong, he knows Yizhen's skills are better than his and he hates that it makes him somewhat insecure, and most of all, he hates that he hates. Yin Yu wants to be a god, kind and benevolent, skilled and perfect, but there are no true gods in this world. So instead he holds on tight to that title and does his best to just keep doing his best, even though he knows Quan Yizhen is right.

So why is perfect kindness unattainable, and why is it so frustrating?

Yin Yu is constantly trying to appease both sides. On one side is the sect and the heavenly officials who are fed up with Quan Yizhen for not following social standards and getting benefits he apparently doesn't deserve. On the other side is Quan Yizhen who holds no value in arbitrary social rituals and only fights when picked on. Despite being a trusted friend, Jian Yu doesn't help any.

Yin Yu's mitigation is always an order to "drop it" and move on with an added rationalization of Quan Yizhen's actions. In the end, Yin Yu is a logical thinker who tries to suppress his negative emotions for the sake of being kind, and thus doesn't reprimand anyone else for being unkind either, but it really doesn't work against people who don't care the way he does.

Lets look at this scene too:

"You shouldn't let others hear you talk about him like that"

This is the line that says the most about Yin Yu. As someone who's met a lot of people who weren't quite the nicest, I can say from experience that these are the words of someone who is afraid of being associated with the sentiment but doesn’t actually disagree with it. It is unkind for Jian Yu to talk about Quan Yizhen behind his back like this, especially in heaven, but Yin Yu doesn't really tell him off. Even if this kind of response is more kind to Jian Yu, it's still unkind to Quan Yizhen (even if it isn't being said to his face).

On both sides of this, there is a decision about justice, and on both sides he's too scared to make that decision lest he offend someone. So what was he supposed to do? As a relevant comparison, let's think about Xie Lian who is notorious for being kind. Kind as he was, he also stated he would defy the heavens if they should condemn him for doing what he knew was the right thing (saving hong-er). He reprimands bullies, hated his own father for his questionable values, isn't really afraid to yell or hit if he needs to, and most of all has little regard for himself or what people think of him if it means justice is granted to the righteous and innocent. He's a headache and a troublemaker in exchange for standing up for what he believes is right.

Unfortunately, Yin Yu's sense of justice isn't as strong. If he wanted to be wholly kind to Quan Yizhen, that would mean justice for him and being unkind to the other heavenly officials. To appease the heavenly officials, he would have to be unkind to Quan Yizhen. Yin Yu's passion for godhood makes him unwilling to defy the heavens and his respect for Quan Yizhen makes him unwilling to do him harm either. It is impossible to be "perfectly kind" because justice is imbalanced by this nature, and that "third path" of equality over equity can harm more than it helps. In the end, someone has to get hurt. If we really want to put it into perspective, you might even also be able to say that Quan Yizhen's sense of justice is stronger than Yin Yu's, which only makes the blow hurt more. If heaven stands for justice, he understands that heaven is unfair by nature and rejects it, where Yin Yu is still willing to uphold it, as it placates him in his own yearning to be a god. But does a kind god really have time to be kind to themself too? Gods are not all powerful, and even after ascension they remain human. All humans have unbalanced emotions, and for these limits of humanity to remain is only natural.

“Yizhen is a genius, but I’m just ordinary. I could only climb so high. I knew that. Even though I knew, I couldn’t accept it. In truth, I felt the same as Jian Yu—I was even more frustrated than he was. It’s not that I wasn’t resentful; it was impossible to be otherwise. After that incident, I could never bring myself to reflect on why I told Yizhen to die when I knew he was wearing the Brocade Immortal. Was I really just driven to madness, or did I actually want him dead?"

He wanted to choose the path to appease everyone, including himself, and he suffered for it. The frustration that overtook him really did just drive him mad, and he can't truly be blamed for it; what he wanted to achieve was impossible, after all. And although his kindness couldn't be perfect, it wasn't for nothing. After Yin Yu was banished, Quan Yizhen went to Ling Wen every day to check for news on his whereabouts and for centuries still believed in him despite it all. Even as Yin Yu dies, Quan Yizhen sobs his heart out for him, broken that there isn't more he can do for him. It's easy to shake Quan Yizhen off as an airhead comedic relief character, but Yin Yu's kindness did genuinely touch him, and he never stopped caring for him. He reminds me of Hong-er, the way Yin Yu was the only person who was nice to him, helped him, and showed him grace. Why wouldn't that be meaningful to him? Let's also remember the lantern contest banquet when Xie Lian interrupted a play that portrayed Yin Yu in a distasteful light, and the way Quan Yizhen later shoved his donation box full of gold bars in appreciation. He always looked to Yin Yu for guidance and trusted him wholeheartedly. He always wanted due justice, or at the very least respect for Yin Yu, and to find the truth about what happened that day. Even if you can't appease everyone, even if the masses don't remember your good deeds, that doesn't mean your actions were meaningless. As long as it touches one soul, you'll never truly be forgotten.

Finally, I want to look at this declaration:

"Yes, I hate him! But so what?! He’s given me so much trouble—can’t I hate him for it?! But…But I only…I only wanted to hate him. That doesn’t mean I want to hurt him."

Despite saying this, I don't believe Yin Yu ever really hated Quan Yizhen at all. He invested so much time in him because he saw what he was capable of. He lied for him to keep his spirits up so he didn't get discouraged when others shot him down. It's just that when he kept being himself, people came complaining to Yin Yu all over again. All of the frustration he was feeling wasn't because Quan Yizhen couldn't take the hint and leave him alone for an hour, its because everyone always took their anger out on him when he did anything. Yin Yu didnt hate Quan Yizhen, he hated that he couldn't be the patient and calm person he wanted to be for him. He hated that he felt so worthless despite working so hard. He hated the unfairness of it all. And if Quan Yizhen was the one at the center of it all, it's easier to summarize these negative emotions into hatred and focus it on one avoidable entity than to wallow in the hollow shell of that person he wanted to grow into one day. It was never really their fault, not either of them. The whole of it was unfair, and they both deserved better for the efforts they made.

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

question!

what's an example of a loving relationship between two female characters (platonic, romantic, familial, whatever) that's a central part of a big tv or movie franchise that's not targeted more toward female audiences?

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.