#it's a symbol of success

[hellcheerocracy]

You know, based on old photos of jq and memories of his early st press push, pretty sure he only used to wear the one thin, shorter silver chain. Like I'm not an expert on him or his jewelry but I only remember the second one showing up during his convention circuits and the logical leap here is that when he started all of a sudden making bank in appearance fees, one of the first things he did was go out and buy himself a second heavier, longer chain and idk how true any of this is but it makes me feel so fond.

JOSEPH QUINN attending Netflix's annual BAFTA Awards afterparty

[theoldkyokodied]

One wedding and three funerals

Background paintings under the cut

[marronje]

Togachako week day 5: funeral

when togachako lose each other in every. single. universe

[turkwriter]

There’s something bizarrely heartwarming about the fact that Willa got the wedding she wanted (small, intimate, lacking press, not about Connor’s political “career,” etc.) and it was Logan’s death that allowed her to have it.

[satturn]

reign (inprnt)

[milktea-grn]

[tarraxahum]

This was gonna be a reply to a reply but I thought maybe I should just make my own post. Yes this is about Vi again.

It's no secret that "Vi should've fought for Zaun" and the expectation of her being Vander's prodigy and feeling like the plot dropped the ball on her in that regard and the betrayal at the fact that she's living comfortably in Piltover now are. Frequent sentiments in the fandom. Which I get, but also I feel that this line of expectations is. Diverging from who Vi actually is by the end and what she was realistically capable of.

Vi in season 2 is basically running on fumes and because she has no other options. It is a well known thing in irl activist spaces that to participate in any kind of fight for justice you need to take care of yourself, otherwise you won't have the energy to be any kind of useful to your community. Ekko also says this - "It's not enough to give people what they need to survive, you have to give them what they need to live". Vi has been surviving and not living in any shape or form for years, she's exhausted and broken in places. That's no mental state to fight for Zaun or make any kinda change. I think it's extremely realistic and human and hardly a flaw of writing or the character if by the end the only thing she was able to do was collapse into the safety and peace she was offered for the first time in forever (aka Caitlyn). It's clear that in her last scene she's still recovering mentally - Cait seems to be excited to have any sign of life (singing) from her at all, and the "Are you still in this fight?" question is very loaded. (But it's indicated that Vi is very much still in the fight, so? It's really anyone's guess what she'll do once she's healed and remembers how to live. And don't bring up LoL's Vi brutality thing, it's clear they're different characters).

I think in wanting to see Vi stand up for Zaun or be Vander's prodigy we often deny her the flaw of being a breakable human and forget just how much she's held together by duct tape. Just because she was full of this 'fuck Piltover' fire as a kid doesn't mean she is still capable of matching that energy. Sometimes after lots of trauma humans grow up into tired adults who just want to sit down and feel safe regardless of where it happens and how questionable it might look (re: living in Piltover). Not to mention, that even as a child Vi's main reason for fuming at the Topside was wanting safety for her family and herself. Well, now she's all out of family, she's estranged from the community of Zaun thanks to being in prison for 7 years and Silco changing the place so much, and the only person who's offering her safety and not more fighting (which she's exhausted and thoroughly burnt out from!) is Caitlyn, so. How is where she ended up any kind of surprising or a failure of her writing/character?

Yes, a lot of people wanted a revolutionary, no, Vi isn't one. Dare I say, never really was one. At her lowest, when she's got no one left to protect, she's not trying to fill in that void by taking on protecting Zaun and becoming a vigilante or something, no, she spirals. That is not something on her radar, that's not something she's visibly cut out to do, she cares so so much but on a smaller scale. Even the whole shimmer factory debacle was less about Zaun and more about her desire to hurt Silco personally for what he'd done to her family. If Jinx agreed to run away with her back at the tea party Vi would ditch the entirety of Zaun (potentially leaving it to Silco forever since he's still alive at that point) in a heartbeat to keep her sister and save Cait in one move. She puts on an enforcer uniform BECAUSE she cares for Jinx (through convincing herself that at the very least she should take her out of her misery herself rather than leaving it to people who don't care, yes) and Cait both.

Perhaps a hot take, but not becoming a leader despite being good at taking hits to the head and caring about people in general and being a daughter of one does not make Vi a badly written character or a bad person. It just makes her a person. And a character whose arc culminated in choosing herself. And choosing yourself sometimes means leaving the fight to others (perhaps temporarily, considering the final dialogue). And that's okay.

Arcane is tragedy about flawed people, not a feel-good story about a successful revolution and rich people paying for their crap, and it was never going to be. Ergo one of our main character isn't an upcoming hero in shining armor who was allegedly robbed of her potential. She's just a broken young woman who barely knows how to keep her own little life together and her biggest victory by the end is allowing herself to take a breath and live for once. Yes, while her home down there is still in shambles. Yes, that sounds selfish. For some people a bit of selfishness is the greatest thing they can ever learn for themselves.

[watchfuldeer]

shawn laib for den of geek "tom and greg are the only succession ending that matters"

[toxicroyjamie]

Roy obviously knows that Jamie admires/respects/looks up to him but I like to think there's some part of him that wants Jamie to think he's like. Cool. On some level he's just a middle aged man who peaked in his 20s and craves validation from his cool gen Z coworker. I'm not like a regular coach I'm a Cool coach

[shivroy]

ok wtf ever

[wildflowerteas]

the red camellia is undeniably soukoku's flower to me. they bloom in the cold, through snow and winter chill. they're at their most beautiful in the harshest conditions when everything else is dormant or dead. they're a symbol of perseverance and strength and passion. but at the end of the line, they 'behead' themselves when they die, refusing to drop petal by petal, choosing to go when they're still beautiful, refusing to compromise the rest of the tree by rotting on the branch.

[clockworkcheetah]

so i am planning to (hopefully) do a project of dghda characters + flower symbolism. at some point.

will i actually achieve this? who knows! dont look at my track record of starting projects and never finishing them

but hey if there are any flowers you associate with dghda characters lemme know (i have some ideas that im juggling, but there are a shit ton of flowers out there and i know i have personal bias on characters, so yknow)

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[figureofdismay]

Anyway, I'll say this on main, with the abduction as abuse and consent violations metaphor that threads through the entire X-Files plot, and I feel like we could do more to occasionally acknowledge the fact that Cancerman can very easily be seen as a subtextual groomer figure in Mulder's life. In both senses of the word. Who has been in the perifery of his life since his childhood or adolescence.

Maybe he was a twisted paternal voyeur who always watched from a distance. Maybe the implied tests and memory suppression continued the metaphor commensurate with the female victims in the show. As it did with Mulder's adult abductions.

I'm in no way denying the medical rape subtext or plot around Scully, and obviously her story is much more explicit. I just find it interesting that the consent violations Mulder goes through, and the long term directly predatory presence of Cancerman hovering over him tends to get a different, less confronting framing in the show and in fic and analysis.

I put some of this subtext into a thing I was writing, and then I took it out because I was worried it would be too dark and off-putting, and then I stopped working on the fic altogether. But whether or not I go back to it eventually, I feel like I want to do more and see more about how mulder is a survivor of having his consent and free will regularly violated, long term in whatever literal or metaphorical ways, and how it contributes to his sense of powerlessness and also his belief that everything wrong is all his fault somehow because he hasn't figured out how to stop it, and also his totally unbalanced scale of risk versus reward.

[unsettlingcreature]

i just wanted to show off this sketch :)

[waywardted]

What's left for you but lightning?