#my top five so to say

[applejongho]

so now that I've listened to like every single song a billion times today, I am a silver light, emergency, we know, crazy form, and arriba lady 🫡

[cassandracain52]

And people say Jason doesn’t think of Tim as his brother smh

[andromeda-after-dark]

Honestly I’ve never come across a character people want pregnant more than batman which is kinda funny to me, especially in the context of superbat, like you’d think they’d take advantage to the cop out of alien biology to make Clark the one to be the carrier but nope, this 6ft 3 brick shithouse of a fully human man is too mother coded, he grew a working uterus out of spite

[royaltea000]

Putting my pretty princess in different outfits again

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

hm. human Sundown....

[hopeswriting]

imagine you're luce, and you're born the heir to a mafia family. you're mafia-born, and so of course also mafia-raised, and then also a donna-to-be. you're raised to be able to take on the role, to be good and capable at it, are taught to make one of your core beliefs about how the many must come before the few, because the family must always come first. you're going to be the donna, of course you must always prioritize the family above all else, it's your foremost and most important duty.

if caring about the few too comes at the price of the many, comes at the price of the family, is it even worth it? if the happiness gained from it comes at the price of a greater suffering for others, is there even any meaning to it, even if it's your happiness we're talking about? you understand, don't you?

you're not sure if you do, but you care about your family, love it, want to do right by it once you become their donna, so you nod, listen and learn.

(you don't have to be taught the pain and loss and guilt and anger and bitterness is a fair price to pay for the pain you decide has to be inflicted and the sacrifices you decide must be made, including by yourself. it's the least you could do, even.)

imagine you're luce, and the gift of foresight runs through your blood.

you would not call it a gift. you did not ask for it either. and you'll never come to see it as something wanted by you.

you can see the future, and it happened exactly as you saw it would, so of course it's exactly the way you wanted it to go. you can see the future, and it happened exactly as you saw it would, so of course you didn't care to try hard enough to change it. you saw the future before the shape of it had yet to be breathed into existence, and who's to say it didn't come into existence only because you saw it happen? you saw the future, and it happened worse than it had to for it.

you can see the future, but you still can't make it anything else than what it was always going to be. you can even make the visions happen at your will, but you still have no say on what you see or how much you see. you still can only be the witness of it before anyone else can.

it does mean double and longer the happiness sometimes, means relief and gratefulness and hope beyond words, and it'd be cruel of you to voice out loud your feelings for others to hear the many more times it means something else.

you can see the future, and it doesn't make it any kinder on you than on anyone else, does not give you any more power or control over it than anyone else, but at least you can see the future. you're given the time to make peace with it, to brace yourself for it, to bargain with it, to plead and beg and fight against it however desperately and hopelessly, even if in the end it still happens exactly as you saw it would.

(you can see the future, and it still doesn't hurt you any less than anyone else when it happens, but you don't expect anymore for anyone to hold you any less responsible for it anyway. it would be nice for someone to do it one day, but you understand.)

you can see the future, and you decide it's a kindness to both yourself and others to keep it for yourself as much as possible whenever you can.

imagine you're luce, and your family has this set of rings they've looked after and protected for as long as your family has existed. they're one set of three of the most important artifacts in the world, ones that help in safeguarding its existence and balance. they're duty, the very first one and the most important one your family was created for.

the pacifier around your mother's neck is duty too, and the most important and powerful artifact among twenty-one in safeguarding the world and its balance. it's been passed down in your family too, from mother to daughter. it's duty, but less tied to your family and much more to the blood running through your veins. it's a curse, in fact, as it demands heavy sacrifices the rings don't, and one that can only be tied to the blood running through your veins.

(your mother looks at you as if expecting some kind of reaction from you, and you can only wonder at which point you weren't supposed to see it as a given. duty and sacrifices have been one and the same for you for a long time now. is it even duty if it doesn't require any sacrifices from you?)

imagine you're luce, and your mother dies for duty. she's the donna, and so she dies for your family. she's the sky arcobaleno, and so she dies for the world. she's your mother, but she dies anyway, doesn't fight it either, even knowing she will leave you behind, even knowing she won't ever get to see what you look like all grown-up.

everywhere you look, duty stares back at you, from your mother and the pacifier around her neck, her love for your family and the life she gives up for it, her love for you and how she dies anyway while you're still only a child. duty, from your family members and how they die for you and kill for you, how they do both at your command, how their lives are in the palms of your hands and how they weigh only as much as you allow them to at a time. duty, from the knowledge your foresight gives you and the shackles tied to the blood running through your veins.

your mother's only duty while she lives too. she loves you, but she'd have had to give birth to you anyway even if she didn't. she loves you, but she still gave birth to you even knowing the kind of life you'd have to live, the kind of hands you'd inevitably end up with, the burdens she'd have to lay on your shoulders, passing them down from her own. because she loves you, she finds the resolve to raise you to be able to face all of it head-on and come out on top, but she'd have had to raise you much the same way anyway even if she didn't.

(she doesn't die for you, doesn't fight to be able to keep living with you, and this, too, is your mother surrendering to duty one last time.)

(you're so sick of it, so angry at it, so hateful and resentful against it. you're so stifled by it to the point you've stopped being able to breathe for a long time now. or you would have been if they had taught you how to face duty in this way too.

it's for the better they didn't. a silver lining, sparing you pain that isn't necessary for you to go through. everyone you turn to only teaches you how to keep holding your breath longer, and you listen and learn, obedient and dutiful as you've ever been.

you're grateful for it too. really, you are.)

everywhere you look, there's no room for you to so much as question any of it, let alone anything more. duty is commendable, something you ought to look up to and strive towards, strive to achieve. duty is the right thing to do. of course it is.

(you exhale a breath of relief that shakes you down to your very core.

thank god, it's at least the right thing to do.

you're grateful for it beyond words. really, you are.)

imagine you're luce, and before it even happens, you know the choice you'll make when climbing that mountain, when standing on top of it, when waiting for a bright light to shine down on you from above. you know the choice you'll make then, even when pregnant with your daughter.

it doesn't matter since how long you knew, be it years, months, days, hours or minutes before. all that matters is that before you can even contemplate the idea of making another choice and all its implications and possible consequences, before the thought can even come alive in your mind, you already know the choice you'll make.

(you can see the future, but just because you already saw it, it doesn't mean it's now set in stone.

you can see the future, but just because you're given the chance to fight to change it, it doesn't mean it still won't happen every bit like you saw it.

it doesn't mean it can't still happen even worse than how you first saw it happen because you fought to change it, no matter how already dreadful it originally was.)

imagine you're luce, and before it even happens, you know they'll be others with you standing on top of that mountain. you're the only one who'll know it before it happens.

(because you can see the future.

and oh, you did not ask for it.)

they're strangers, people you don't owe anything to. adults who choose to show up at the first meeting, and to show up to every following mission after that. the chosen seven, whose ambitions and prides lead them to walk the path of the seven strongest too once laid down in front of them.

you don't force their hands in making any of those choices for them. you're not responsible for any of them.

you become coworkers then, accomplices, your hands stained in blood to various extent, but now dipping in the same pool of blood as you strive towards the same goal together. you have each other's backs, learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, learn each other's personalities, likes and dislikes. you keep having to spend more time together as the missions keep coming your way.

inevitably, you come to care about them. even more damning, they come to care about you in return. enough so they'll look after your daughter even after what'll happen on top of that mountain. enough so they'll look after your granddaughter too, warmly and fondly enough she'll call one of them uncle.

you're still the only one who knows they'll stand together with you on top of that mountain, not knowing what'll happen on it like you do.

and you do care about them, you swear you do. really, you do.

(you care about them the same way your mother cared about you, and how she still raised you to have steel in you and be made of sharp edges you know how to use. you care about them the same way you care about your family, and how you still send them to their deaths as needed so the rest of your family you care about just the same can keep on living longer and safely. this is the only way you've had the chance to learn how to care and love.

duty and sacrifices have been one and the same for you for as long as you can remember. it doesn't matter at which point sacrifices came to mean love to you too.

and most of all, you love your daughter more than anything else in the world.)

imagine you're luce, and this is who you are. this is who you've been raised to be, the only way you've been given room to grow up to be. this is the life you've lived and the kind of life that has shaped you as the person you are now. this is what you've been taught and told is the best version of yourself you could have grown up to be. this is who you ended up being by what you've been taught and told are all the right choices to make.

you're still the only one who knows what is about to happen on top of that mountain. it hasn't happened yet. the fate of the world hangs on what'll happen on top of that mountain, the same world you'll have to give birth to your daughter in. the same daughter you're currently pregnant with.

now imagine you're luce, look me in the eye and tell me you'd know how to even form the thought of the possibility of there being any other choice to make. look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't look at the only choice in front of you, and know deep in your bones it's the only right choice to make. that it is right of you to make it. because it simply has to be.

(imagine you're luce, and you're not doomed by the narrative. of course, you're not.

why would you need to be when the narrative has painstakingly shaped you all your life to become its perfect, faithful and dutiful sacrificial lamb?

and then, imagine you're luce, and you're even grateful for it, so, so very grateful it held up its end of the bargain too.

truly, you are.)

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[salsa-di-pomodoro]

Ok but can we talk about the absolute horror of being watched and monitored 24/7 that the ancients must have had. The citizenship drones being like an Alexa that's constantly following and listening to you (except it's five pebbles and not Alexa lmao). The fucking OVERSEERS. THEY'RE CALLED THAT FOR A REASON. BECAUSE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE WATCHING THEIR CITIZENS AS WELL AS THE ENVIRONMENT ALL THE TIME. (I would talk about the fact that they all show arti fucking ads as well but honestly idk what else to say about that. Capitalism got yet another society 😔). That's some fucking nightmare fuel dystopian society settings we are being hinted at. You know the Big Brother Is Watching You thing. The book. Yeah that's what it reminds me of.

The Iterator Is Watching You.

[astrobei]

every byler creator who has ever felt unappreciated or has never seen their work on a rec list or has stayed awake for hours working on something for it to get no interaction or has had their work passed up in favor of the big fandom favorites or has never been taken a chance on or has ever come last in a poll they didn’t ask to be on or has felt self conscious about posting or about calling themselves a creator if what they’re posting is not a magnum opus or has created something for themselves and still hoped deep down that people would love it: get behind me. i’ll protect u

[thevioletcaptain]

To the countless strangers who keep sending me asks with links to fundraisers:

I will always gladly boost any fundraisers that have been vetted by those who possess the knowledge and skill to do so, or which have been shared with me directly by someone I know and trust, but I cannot in good conscience share links that have been sent to me via unsolicited messages from complete strangers.

I've been getting such a huge number of these lately. I've only been able to verify one of them was legitimate.

All of these messages come from people I don't follow, who don't follow me, and who've had their blog for a month at most. All of them asking for donations or signal boosts for their fundraisers. Some of them spell their own names three different ways between the asks they send and the posts on their blogs, which, when combined with the fact that the messages and blogs are largely indistinguishable from that tumblr scam with the sick cat and the expensive vet bill, makes me extremely doubtful of the source.

I wish I could give you the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't anymore.

Basically, if I don't personally know you and cannot easily confirm that your fundraiser is legitimate, I will not post your ask. Your ask will be deleted.

[soupmanspeaks]

you ever wonder if the Glamrocks's face tracking acts up when they look at Glamrock-Freddy, like they'll look at his face, and the recognition will register as Freddy, but their systems for whatever reason or another think that there is a face overlapped on Freddy's do you think they see two small squares next to him, at his side, roughly child sized, but no one is physically there.... right...?

[seagreenstardust]

The album Phantoms by Marianas Trench is so bkdk coded!!!!!

Only the Lonely Survive, Don’t Miss Me, Glimmer, I Knew You When, Death of Me, UGH THEY’RE ALL SO GOOD

He’ll never scar you like I do, but he’ll never know you, not the way that I know you

Can we forgive and forget, can we lay to rest, can we catch a breath

Never more to leave here, you should never be here, I know my love can be the killing kind

!!!!!

[necrotic-nephilim]

ok so sending my question here bc this is more marvel comics than mcu related so im like. sliding you a note in class about an somewhat related but mostly tangential topic here 😂

so i've been wanting to get into bucky comics (and winter soldier comics) recently but as a dc fan now whose only marvel comics background is reading matt fractions hawkeye (the best ever, currently rereading it to feel something again actually) and part of wilsons ms marvel run back when i was in high school i have no idea where to start. you said that you have read comics for bucky; do you have any recommendations?

hello i love being slid notes this is so sweet <3 bc luckily Bucky is one of a small handful of characters i can *actually* give good recs for on the Marvel side of the fence! so i'm MORE than happy to give recs bc i actually already have a list i'm happy to share. also, BIG agree on Fraction's Hawkeye run, oh my god. that comic means *so* much to me and though i haven't really read Hawkeye comics outside of it, i love it a lot. 10/10 taste <3

so when it comes to Bucky, he has a *lot* of Golden and Silver Age comics as Captain America's teen sidekick and all. skip them. they're not worth it and they're not the version of the character you want to read. honestly, you should just start with his return as Winter Soldier, and go from there so

Captain America (2005) - this is Ed Brubaker's run, it's fantastic and it's the run that brings back Bucky as the Winter Soldier. i will warn you if you're used to DC comics, Marvel does this really confusing thing called legacy numbering. (DC sometimes does it but not as much) so you're gonna notice it'll jump from issue #50 to #600. you did not somehow miss hundreds of comics, it's just numbered that way bc it's the 600th Captain America comic overall. this run is super good though.

Captain America & Bucky by Ed Brubaker - once again numbering is weird just don't mind it. but this will give you a primer on Bucky's backstory as Cap's sidekick without you having to read all the Silver Age stuff and it's a great comic.

Captain America: Forever Allies (2010) - if you want to read where Bucky was Captain America for a bit, this comic is good for that. it also briefly touches on Secret Allies, a team he was on as a teen during the war. i'm not the biggest Cap!Bucky fun, but this is decent.

Winter Soldier (2012) - by *far* the best Winter Soldier solo run. Ed Brubaker my beloved. this is just amazing. this was where i started with Bucky and tbh if you vaguely understand his comics backstory and don't want to read all the Captain America stuff, i think you can start here. you get to see his relationship with Natasha, his spy work it's just. everything <3

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March - if you want to see a story that takes place during Bucky's time brainwashed under Hydra, that's what this one is and it's pretty solid

Thunderbolts (2016) - this comic is most known for the relationship between Bucky and a young girl who's a cosmic cube named Kobik and it's just so delightful. the whole team is really fun and explores moral greyness in superhero work, but mostly i love this one for Kobik.

Winter Soldier (2018) - i really enjoy this mini-series, it has Bucky trying to save a young boy who's forced to be a weapon and there's just a lot of good stuff. always have a soft spot for Bucky trying to do right by kids.

Falcon & Winter Soldier (2020) - a good team up mini-series. also Bucky has a cat so yk, that's delightful. <3

there are other Winter Soldier comics and comics he's in but Marvel's comic world is big and fucking confusing (to me as a DC fan, anyway) so these will be the easiest to start with. my top recs are probably Captain America & Bucky and Winter Soldier (2012), though i'm incredibly biased to any comic written by Brubaker for Bucky. i love Bucky so dearly. he is everything to me. i hope you enjoy!

[skeletoninthemelonland]

i'm sick and coughing so much my soul leaves my body multiple times but here's the first ever Springtrap drawing I made. This is from 2015

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

not to out myself on main but Katsuki Bakugo continues to make me fucking insane

[thedissociatives]

Heeeyyyy, I'm so so intrigued by your hockey posting. I'd love to know more about Fedorov, like what's the lore, what makes him special? Have a nice day/ night <333

good morning/afternoon/evening anon! since you asked so nicely i'll try my best but i do tend to forget everything i know when i have to actually explain it. there is a lot of lore tho so i'm not gonna go over all of it (mainly the bits that interest me the most + some other stuff). i guess what really makes him special (at least to me) is the fact that we don't get players like this anymore. and i'm not talking playing style here (the impact of euro hockey players of the 90s on the nhl today is still so obviously there). a lot of his early career was directly impacted by cold war politics, and since those circumstances haven't existed for a while now, we don't get this insane type of backstories and lore anymore. i should also make it clear that i'm a massive nerd who sat in classrooms for years learning abt soviet stuff which i think definitely has an impact on who My Guys are

seriously there is a lot under the cut so be warned because i did get carried away with myself A Lot (i literally wrote over 1k words on this. sorry in advance)

ok so. sergei started playing "pro" hockey in the soviet union in the mid 80s (i don't think this is the place to explain whether these players were pro or amateur so will leave it like that), first in minsk (only for a year) before being picked up by cska moscow- the central army team. these guys made up most of the national team, which can probably be explained by the fact that their head coach also coached the national team (god that's a bit of a mouthful, but incredibly relevant). he wasn't the only rookie on the team that season; another kid (i think they were both like 16 at the time ?) called alex mogilny had also just arrived in moscow. they would become good friends. sergei would play three seasons for cska before being called up for the national team- he was going to the 1989 world championship. alex would be there, too, having already played on the team before. naturally, the ussr won gold (as they did almost every year). but that doesn't mean everything was good with the players. not long too after the tournament, some of the older players would finally get permission to play in the nhl, but for the younger guys it was looking like they had no way of getting out any time soon. in the days between the end of the championship and the soviet team's flight home, mogilny apparently approached fedorov and asked him to go to america with him- sergei said no, worried about what would happen to his family. alex would go anyway, disappearing for a few days before popping up in buffalo ready to join the sabres. (this might seem irrelevant right now but it's actually really not- i'm getting there now)

that same summer, sergei would be drafted in the fourth round by detroit. this choice may or may not have been influenced by steve yzerman telling them sergei was better than him. after a bit of back and forth, they got him to defect after cska played a series of games in north america. it literally sounds like the type of shit they write in spy films it was fucking mental. this made him only the second soviet to defect in order to play in the nhl i'm pretty sure (defo the second in like 18 months- funnily enough it was his bestie who was the first one. what a coincidence), but they weren't the first two from the other side of the iron curtain to do that. might be wrong but i think that honour goes to the stastny brothers. anyway. when sergei got to detroit he wore 91 because he wanted to "be like stevie" or some insane shit like that. which i literally think about all the time. like seriously what was that about sergei.

okok can't not talk about the russian five so doing that now. since idk how much you know about hockey i'll do a better job on this bit. after sergei arrived in detroit, management must've figured they could get more russians. over the next couple of years they got vladimir konstantinov (who was drafted the same year as sergei) and slava kozlov to make the jump to the states. since i'm mainly talking about sergei i won't go into how they got those two but it's just as unbelievable as you'd expect. after the 1994-95 lockout, the wings traded for another russian- slava fetisov. if you ever want to learn about soviet hockey you'll hear a lot about this guy, and for good reason too. he won two olympic gold medals and seven world championships with the soviet union, and captained most of those teams. obviously adding a guy with that much experience winning was a smart choice imo, even if he hadn't won anything in the nhl yet. by now the wings had four russian players- why not add a fifth ? in 1994 the wings were embarrassed in the playoffs, losing to san jose. it just happened that sj happened to have two of the older soviets who had fought for the right to play in north america. one of them was igor larionov- probably the smartest guy to ever play hockey. it was his tactics (and refusal to change his style of play) that led to his team's success in the first round. and i guess detroit didn't ever want to deal with that again because they ended up trading for the guy in the first part of the 1995-96 season. the russian five first played together in calgary, where they played that style of soviet hockey that nhlers could never really wrap their heads around at the time. they walked all over the flames in their own building, and would continue to do the same to the rest of the league. the five would be a key part of the 1997 stanley cup-winning team, which was the first wings team to lift the cup in over forty years.

sergei stayed to win a few more cups, and then left the city. he signed w the ducks in anaheim, bleached his hair and moved out to california (i think we can all resonate with wanting to change our appearance and move thousands of miles away from where we've spent over a decade building out lives amiright). from what i can tell, this move was Not Liked by detroit's owners (honestly i can't see any other reason his number hasn't been retired there). he'd bounce around a couple more nhl teams before going back to russia to play on the same team as his brother, eventually retiring in 2012.

jumping to 2015, that year's hockey hall of fame inductees included sergei (and nick lidstrom, one of his detroit teammates and one of the best defencemen to every play the game). it was basically a 90s wings reunion. in sergei's induction speech, he did like everyone else and thanked a bunch of people who helped him out throughout his career. and, you know, it was all the expected stuff (hockey guys can be so predictable sometimes), but "to my captain, steve yzerman" still fucking gets me. it had been twelve years since he'd worn a wings jersey. my captain. i think you get my point but i'm gonna have to stop there because i can't carry on and be remotely normal about it.

oh and in 2021, after spending a few years bouncing around random jobs for the team, cska announced that fedorov would be taking over as head coach. he went back to the team where all this started. now i don't know how exactly he is with his team but i sure hope he learned enough from his days there as a player under tikhonov on exactly how not to treat your players. cska won back to back gagarin cups (the trophy awarded to the khl team who wins the playoffs) in sergei'd first two seasons behind the bench, and they're probably looking to make it a threepeat with the playoffs starting today (?)