#logic says he did it all right.

[lunar-lair]

(tw for death, and rise movie spoilers. the premise is just ‘what if he DIDNT get out of the prison dimension though’ as we all tend to think of sometimes. nearly teared up writing this good luck)

There is nothing left of him.

There was no hope.

There was never hope.

This was simply the tale of a sacrifice,

A laugh and a smile and a katana left,

A world saved,

And a life lost.

The sky receives howling wails,

The ground receives salty tears,

The walls of their home receive the silence and the empty hollow nothing of it all.

A room abandoned.

A grave without a body. 

What a world, what a world.

What a world, saved, but without him.

Was it worth it?

Was it worth it, boy of blue?

Was it worth it, leaving one katana and a laugh and three mourning brothers and two grieving fathers and a broken sister and a devastated brother, the one that lost you twice?

Was it worth it, starchild? Darling, sweetheart, everything you were and are and could have been?

Here you wander and see and live and dream and die.

There is a ghost, wandering the streets of New York.

It was worth it, the starchild whispers.

Darling and baby boy and blue and aoi and Nardo and love, 14, 14, 14.

He smiles, and the sky receives nothing but a quiet laugh.

New York, what a town.

Thank god I saved it.

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[faaun]

my research partner and i are huddled in a blanket in paddington waiting for a too-late train i already miss you and you and you

[dirtytransmasc]

Yes, she decided. The moment she continued to go in his chamber, she could advice him to wed laena instead of trying to have a relationship with him, she could have remember him of his duty. She had a choice as everyone has

clearly logic is something that will not reach you no matter what I say but let's try again shall we.

first off, Viserys married for pleasure, not power or political gain. he knew his duties he knew what was best and had no interest. he married Alicent because that's what he wanted. it would be insanely inappropriate for a girl to advise a king on political matters AND it should not be the job of a 14 year old child to tell a king what he should be doing.

second off, she had a father to please, cause again, to reiterate, she was his daughter and she had a duty to him and her house. this was not a duty she wanted, but she didn't have a choice. she was young but se wasn't stupid she knew what her father expected of her, and if word got back from Viserys that she was actively advising him to marry someone else, she would then not only bring disobeying her father but going against him.

thirdly, and more minorly, "she should have pushed him to marry laena" isn't the gotcha you think it is. laena was even younger than her, and even if it was politically expected of him, still fucking gross.

lastly, cause I apparently can't stress this enough, SHE DIDNT HAVE A CHOICE, plain and simple. she had no agency, she had no power, she had no out, she was at the mercy of her father, she had to obey him, she had to do what he said, even if it meant walking herself to slaughter. once she met with the king, he took a liking to her and DEMANDED her presence, he the DEMANDED her hand. again, there was no point she could have said no. she couldn't say no to her father, she couldn't advise the king (he barely tolerated it when she was literally the queen, let alone if she had just been some girl entertaining him in his chambers), she couldn't deny the king of anything, she didn't have a choice.

she was 14 and scared, 14 and trying to survive, 14 and trying to please her father, 14 and sent to a man 3 times her age's chambers, 14 and lusted after by the king, 14 and knowing of her place in the world and what was expected of her. like every other woman in their history, she couldn't escape, she couldn't, there's no plainer way to say it. she faced her duty with poise and a stiff lip, cause that's what you had to do, but she was just a child.

you can't expect her to have been some radical icon, there were none, women who went against their station in life were punished or killed or put into god awful betrothals to lessen the shame brought to her family. she was a nobleman's daughter, she had a house to bring honor to. she did the heartbreaking thing of giving up, for the benefit of her father and house, doesn't mean she wanted it, doesn't mean it was ok, doesn't mean she isn't deserving of pity. giving in to your duty =/= wanting it.

"she had a choice as everyone has" she had a choice every woman has; accept it with grace, be forced into it, or damn herself to a fate much worse (and that's being generous, most didn't even have that many choices). it's the men who had choices, Otto offered his daughter up, he didn't have to, he had no obligation and nothing to lose if he didn't. Viserys had every choice, he could have married whoever he wanted, he could have denied her the second she entered his chambers. the men in her life had every choice to change her fate, yet they didn't take it, and you would rather blame her over them?

and listen, I know your set in your mindset of victim blaming a child bride who was raped until her husband didn't have the health or stamina to keep it up, and that you'll choose to blame her over the men in her life who damned her to such a fate. nothing I say will ever convince you, cause you clearly hate her past where logic will reach. you can keep sending asks with your terrible takes that have no backing or logic and actively ignore the political and societal state of the times and what it means for her as a young noble girl, and I'll keep answering them cause I have nothing better to do and I'll defend my girl to the grave.

[cerealmonster15]

haikaveh... save me haikaveh...

i KNOW it's been talked about to death but. the haikaveh research project. it literally haunts my mind. i cannot get over the implications. alhaitham going through his school life as someone that most people dont even really know about because he keeps to himself and doesn't socialize, with kaveh being the one exception to that, finding his way into his life as his Best Friend, and then leading to alhaithams one and only time he participated in a research topic. his bio says he only ever did ONE joint project!!! one!!! the one with kaveh his best friend and i think also his only friend at the time!!!! and then it ended in not only the project falling apart but also alhaithams only friendship. kavehs best friendship. they were each others closest person. they had no family around - alhaithams parents having died when he was young and his grandmother dying before he joined the akademiya, and kaveh's dad dying when he was young and his mom having moved to fontaine. like even if you dont look at it through a romantic lens it's still undeniable how important they were [and are] to each other..........

i'm getting off track but my point is very specifically for alhaitham, the one time he got close to someone, made a friend, even agreed to join one(1) group project ever, it ended in disaster. it led him into a fight so bad that his one and only friend said he regretted that friendship!!!! it was so bad alhaitham left the project and he and kaveh didnt speak for ages until they just happened to run into each other again at the tavern!!!!! like obviously it has to be incredibly awful for both of them but i just think how this probably had alhaitham in the cynical mindset that friendships and collaborations like that might just never work out for him because the one time he let someone into his life, it blew up on him and he was all alone again. even though alhaitham never seems to care much if people dont like him, that clearly cant still apply to someone he was exceptionally close to. like if he didnt care he woudlnt have been the one to take his name off the project and mutually not speak to kaveh...... kavehs words are the ones that hit the most significantly to alhaitham.......... kaveh is said/implied to have had at least some other friends while at school / people knew who he was, but not so much alhaitham. people didnt know him and the ones that did just knew he didnt socialize/he was not easy to get along with. he only had kaveh and then, for a while, he lost him too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[designernishiki]

just a thought but like. if akiyama, who’s established as being a bizarrely talented investigator in y5, suspected kiryu’s death to have been faked (or at least “fishy” in his own words) basically on the fucking Spot, i feel like it just makes sense that majima would’ve been just as quick, if not quicker to see where shit wasn’t adding up and become skeptical that the whole thing was a coverup. reason being, in y5 he put shit together and figured out the grand scheme going on so damn early most people didn’t even suspect yet that there was any scheme going on. he then faked his own death well enough to get it in the papers and had masterminded himself all the way to the final boss (with some help of course) before things backfired on him. so he’s got some crazy good skills when it comes to reading people, figuring out their intentions, putting puzzle pieces together, etc– way better than he wants people knowing, generally– and he knows the hallmark signs of a faked death because he’s literally done it before. all that on top of knowing kiryu like the back of his hand and knowing damn well how hard this man is to kill, and how prone to running away from shit for the sake of the safety of people he cares about (for better or for worse) he is. he could absolutely put together that, if given the opportunity by some faction or powerful individual, kiryu would sacrifice his identity and status as a legit living person for the assured safety of others, or for yakuza tensions to diminish, or maybe even as an act of self-flagellation.

tldr: I think the reasons majima didn’t go rogue/apeshit after kiryu’s alleged death are that A) for once he has saejima around to reign him in and make it feel less like Everything has been lost, B) I think he’s legitimately known pretty much all along that kiryu didn’t die that day; nor would he believe it unless he saw it with his own eye.

[roobylavender]

im really sorry if this question ends up being repetitive: but, if not for bruce’s over reliance on dick to regulate his thoughts and emotions, why would dick grow up into feeling like he needs to repress his emotions so much and his eagerness to act as people’s support? i know youve spoken about wolfman and his altering of their relationship but if ntt is generally an accurate portrayal of an adult dick, to me this nevertheless sounds like the consequences a parent-child relationship where the responsibilities are titled too much towards the child

i suppose this could also segue into asking for recs that would help me better understand your interpretation of their relationship 👀

not repetitive at all! to me the irony of wolfman's depiction of dick lies in that it is simultaneously something you can logically ascertain from prior canon but not for the reasons actually presented by wolfman. if that makes sense. he does extra work that isn't actually necessary to help explain why dick would act the way that he does because there's plenty of reasons for it without rewriting his history with bruce to have always been suppressed and edgy and dark. to me it makes far more sense to capitalize on the inevitable disconnect between bruce and dick as an adult and a child. batman: full circle is a good example of that dichotomy (and although it was published in the early 90s it built on mike w. barr's prior understanding of the relationship between dick and bruce that he wrote into the early 80s). bruce's primary concern for the people he works with is never standards or finesse but safety. he worries constantly about others coming to harm under his watch and with a child in particular those worries were exacerbated. he ran a tight ship not because he believed dick had anything to prove but because the only way dick could keep being robin was if he went about it safely. that was obv easy for an adult to understand. but not so much for a child

to bruce these worries were practical and par for the course (as well as an expression of his love and protectiveness) but for dick their consequences formed the crux of his entire world. as a child he idolized everything about bruce. his heroism. his work ethic. his skill. his resolve. his preparedness. if dick couldn't live up to the standard he set for himself in idolizing bruce then what could he ever hope to amount to? that was the thought constantly going through his head. and it's why the bulk of his childhood and primary tenure as bruce's partner was so precariously protected by the fact that nothing bad ever really happened during it (and admittedly this framing is convenient because even chronologically speaking nothing very significant happened in their history with each other until dick left for university in 1969) (i know dixon opted to write that whole shtick with dent in his version of events but personally i never found it necessary to do so). there is enough there in the idea of dick working hard for the course of a decade to embody who he believed bruce to be that lends itself to it eventually being difficult for him to healthily express himself once the rift between them actually began to emerge

because what about bruce was there to actually see that was broken and dark before dick became an adult? i know a lot of dick fans hate batman #408 because they don't like that it enforced "retirement" upon dick (which i personally believe is a conclusion they come to because of the way batman #416 re-framed the same scene) but to me that's an inaccurate reading of the text. batman #408 was about bruce (admittedly far too belatedly) recognizing that he could not in good conscience continue to ask dick to go out and be a vigilante on what he considered to be his own "orders". he viewed dick's close call with death at the hands of the joker as something directly of his own making. although their tenure with each other had been wonderful if dick wanted to continue to be a vigilante it had to be on his own terms and of his own volition. obv that was logical to bruce and it was something dick managed to accept in the moment. but it's still hard to go from always having a purpose alongside someone you idolized to finally being entrusted entirely to forge your own

in general i like the idea of dick the adult becoming privy to all of the personal problems and conflicts that come with being a vigilante. he was conveniently shielded from a lot of those problems as a child because all he had to do was be bruce's partner and hope to live up to the title. bruce had no reason to trauma dump on him or talk about his worries and concerns at length with him because it was never supposed to be dick's job to field those worries and concerns in the first place. he was a child. the only thing bruce wanted to do was to help channel his emotions through an outlet and provide him with a home to grow up in. but when you become an adult often that dynamic shifts. you're still not responsible for fielding those worries and concerns but you can perhaps be trusted with them. that's why i like the framing in batman #408 of dick now being a man. it's a subtle way to frame the double-edged sword of adulthood. the world is in your hands now but so will be the horrors that come with it. coming to terms with the real world that bruce lives in should be hard for dick. coming to terms with who bruce is when he's not perfect should be hard. coming to terms with how quietly bruce kept his grief because he did not see fit to overwhelm a child with it should be hard. that dichotomy of dick both wanting to be bruce's brother and his son should form the crux of their conflict with each other because you can't hope to be someone's equal and someone's protected at the same time in that kind of relationship. for dick to transition into the position of equal he has to expose himself to the fact that bruce is not in fact an idol but someone irrevocably human. and that should interfere significantly with his head and his own standards for himself

[anxiously-sidequesting]

anyways seeing Duncan still with the Schism at the end left me like ☹️

[stardust-sunset]

can my history teacher please shut the fuck up i get it’s a college class!! i get that! you don’t need to keep telling me i’m gonna fail!!

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[pericky; a look into ricky's head during their meeting.]

---

"I'm glad you came, I wasn't sure you would." The wine pours, the sound of it drowning out the missing word in that sentence: back.

Of course, is the response, and the part of Ricky that's spent twenty years tearing itself apart to understand why vibrates with relief. It doesn't matter anymore. Of course, of course, he thinks giddily along with the words. He never needed to wonder why Pericles wasn't coming back in the first place; he was always going to.

I'm happy you invited me, and of course he thinks again. A lifetime of pretending he wasn't always going to either falls away. However harsh and lonely the world has been, all's right with it again; and the shy voice of the boy inside him that he's tried so hard to kill says, so quietly, I missed you.

[todayisafridaynight]

daigo promoting mine to junior assistant early on was INSANE. i know people were spreading rumors cuz id be pretty salty like what’s so special abt this mine guy and what’s with this daigo favoritism!!!!!

daigos not even trying to be subtle about how fond he was of mine he's giving him The Most Public promotions possible 💀💀

[evl-qn]

like. you’re telling me that someone who was, for all she knew most of her life, abandoned on the side of a road, left to grow up and be raised in the foster system, bounced around families and group homes of which some could’ve been good ( only to then also abandon her ) but also some of them could’ve been not good ( hello childhood trauma! ) who then made the difficult and selfless decision to give up her unborn child to said system knowing she was in no place to raise a baby let alone ready to be a mother herself. you’re telling me that she sees and knows that her child was loved and cared for and raised in the best possible environment, given everything she was never given as a child, and she somehow thinks she deserves to take him and call herself his mom? seriously? yes, regina’s a psychopathic bitch with homicidal tendencies but she would also do anything for henry and what, emma’s not supposed to see that? she’s not supposed to actually be relieved that her child has someone in his life who is that capable of protecting him? i’m- i don’t Understaaaaaaand!

[faaun]

i feel rly sad and conflicted abt one of my best friends on earth but idk who to ask for advice bc i usually would have consulted her in this situation lmao

[quietwingsinthesky]

soulless sam was at his best when he was still being written as a version of sam, to accentuate parts of him that normally get held back, and not as 'guess he's evil now'. soulless sam when he's reflecting sam's tendency to lose sight of everything else in pursuit of a goal. soulless sam when he's just kind of rude without thinking about it without his filter on. soulless sam when he's equal parts intent on keeping dean with him and also happy to lie to him and keep him shut out of the things he knows dean won't like so that dean won't leave. soulless sam when he equally recognizes that he is a better hunter now, and also that he probably can't continue to exist without his soul. (you know. before they went along with making him just kind of evil.)

...soulless sam when he's begging for literally anyone to acknowledge his autonomy in this situation and not force him to take his soul back without knowing how much it could damage him and being ignored.

[stairset]

Love the idea here that the other rebels' problem with Saw is just that he blows shit up and not the whole "torturing prisoners and endangering civilians" thing

[youcanthandelthetruth]

Texas 💖