#mother! (figuratively and literally)

[cosmosnout]

The real reason Oda had to get rid of her was not for plot convenience, but bc she would have kicked everyone’s ass. (Source: trust me bro)

[pancake-breakfast]

Love how after Shuro and Laios get in a fistfight in episode 17, the healers take care of the injuries and even deaths of literally everyone else, but leave those two a beat-up mess. Their injuries are the fault of their own stupidity, so now they just have to suffer.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[shield-and-saber]

what's that? oh yeah, i'm just thinking about how sol and osha's relationship is quite literally every iteration of relationship that anakin has with the people he loves

"if you wish, you will train as my padawan" / "i take anakin as my padawan learner"

"mae is alive" "i believe you" / "anakin, you have to trust me now" "ahsoka, i do trust you"

(and also, "i didn't do it" / "i'm not going to take the fall for something i didn't do")

i mean. do i even need to say it. the master killed at the hands of his apprentice

"i did it because i love-" "stop talking" / "come back, i love you" "liar!"

(also, "it's okay, osha" / "there's good in him")

literally, love that becomes so twisted by attachment, greed, and selfishness that it leads to death

[echosdevil]

Emmy Raver-Lampman for The Umbrella Academy S4 Press

[thankstothe]

[seen-the-stars]

thinking about gorgug and the thistlesprings. thinking about how wilma & digby have gone their whole life trying to raise gorgug as a sweet, non-violent kind if guy. how they were so fixated to prove their families wrong that they didn't realise it wasn't healthy for their son. that they've been loving gorgug despite his rage for so long that they haven't even considered to love him with it, because of it.

thinking about lydia barkrock who's been continuously raging for 20 years, and how her rage is so special and noble. thinking about ragh who's grown up with a barbarian half-orc parent. the fact that despite all he's been through, he was never ashamed of his rage.

thinking about autistic gorgug, who's been masking his rage for all his life, being in porter's class where he's told that if he isn't boiling angry all the time he's useless. how he sees all the kids around him having no issue engaging with their rage. if he ever thinks, "why am i the only person who is struggling with this?" or "fig's not even a barbarian why can she do it and i still can't fucking get it?" or "what does everybody want from me and can they just please fucking agree instead of pulling me in 5 different directions at once all of the time??"

wondering if gorgug ever sees the barkrocks together and feels that quiet jealousy bubbling. if he reprimands himself instantly because it's not fair and ragh deserves this and his own parents aren't bad people, they're just.. different. maybe a little too wrapped up in their families' prejudice to allow them to be even the littlest bit of right.

thinking about lydia barkrock looking at this kid who's never been taught that it's okay to feel his feelings, all of them. wondering if she sees ragh's struggle with his identity mirrored in gorgug. does she feel guilty, for not noticing her son was so afraid to be who he is? does she wish she would have been more there, more open, more supportive? does she ever look at gorgug biting down his rage and think "don't do this, kid, don't go down that path, look at how much damage it did to my son"? does she consider talking to the thistlesprings about it? does she know about their parenting?

thinking about gorgug and ragh, having support in the aspect of their life they didn't really need– gorgug in his sexuality, ragh in his rage. do they bond, over this? do they joke about swapping parents sometimes? do they support each other in the ways their parents couldn't do for them?

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[bajaja-blast]

finally finished this fucking book

it took me almost a year because it’s so hard to get through oh my GODS

[kindahoping4forever]

Normal caption!

[pollyannawog]

Funny little cyborg

[ozzo-the-wozzo]

Trying to explain Adrien’s subplot in miraculous to anyone but it’s just this:

[forgetful-river]

Sometimes being in love is like getting your eye gored in a fit of purifying violence, sometimes it's not

[eats-a-berry]

i think another super important nuance of toshiro's character that people miss is how the commentary of his character is so effective because his flaws are not a personal moral failing on his part, that his problems are greater than simply being a "bad person", even beyond the already very reasonable parts of his character like the culture clash. in truth, everything about him and how he responds to things is extraordinarily ordinary. the name of the game here is conformity and the status quo, and not only is that not excerbated by a single person, but it's such a big highlight that this is hurting him too even when he thinks he's doing what's best, what's expected of him, and he starts to realize that over the course of the story. there's a lot of subtle bits of his character that show how he wishes things were different too, how a lot of what he does and says isn't even what he really believes, but his own inability to break free of things is what stifles him. kabru is actually really important to his arc as a Status Quo Challenger, in how he both gets him to admit he would've done the same with going to great lengths for falin and how he challenges the canaries.

none of what he does is fully unique to him, all of the ways that he thinks are present in so many of the other characters, and the issue i have with fan response is how he's singled out in conversations like this because it's not just about one person, it's about everyone, it's about the system. the way he acts and thinks is just as understandable as any other character, and singling him out as the bad party here instead of the overarching themes that are present in everyone... is what disappoints me the most. there's about a million different layers to this conversation because kui is a genius with this stuff.

[kindfrog]

“well ain’t you an odd lookin’ fella” ⚠️

inspired by this

[dmitriyuriev]

*Implied noncon, small Miquella. Link leads to full image.

Miquella's charm compels love, not controls actions, so what were to happen if the one charmed has a twisted view of love? Only Mohg acts that possessive, so no, he did not beat the allegations, and I for one, am happy about that.