#no? well fuck you /j

[popdrop]

CREAKS VIOLENTLY FROM SIDE TO SIDE.

[nellyellie]

Please don’t go

I’ll eat you whole

I love you so,

I love you so,

I love you so—

Please break my heart…

[itslilacokay]

"i should probably be careful posting when ava ships are involved, maybe i should keep ava shipart stuff to myself"

i say as i post victim and agent being extremely fuckihg gay

[stark-lord]

Side A

[tradingjack]

citrus trees are odd. like why are they allowed to happen?? wild

[deadsouls-is-canon]

That ellipsis is doing a lot of heavy lifting, man 😐

[mrmeepsmadmind]

starscream has normal reactions

no starscream shall escape being haunted by bumblebee and vice versa. primus said thou shalt be married !!!

[gomzdrawfr]

brain: lets write porn

also brain: no lets write porn with feelings to overcomplicate everything

[ratcandy]

3 straight hours of drawing and editing through a horrid migraine for a whole THIRTY SECONDS of self-indulgence beyond your wildest dreams. we call this being extremely normal

song is Bernadette by IAMX

[hellofastudysession]

am i rlly going to write a death note literary analysis when i could be doing other things

about the discourse going on in the tag abt "death note is acab and thats why the characters couldnt better the world with the note (/written in somewhat jokey matter)" vs "death note is trying to say we all have potential for evil, especially if you get a chance to insta-hurt ppl without repercussions, and it doesnt matter if youre a cop or not", i personally feel like it ignores the things that i like abt death note, which is "both of these things are true", and simultaneously "both of these things do not matter". the first part of this is dedicated to the first point, the latter to the last.

first point. i think its an important part of the message and themes (unintentional or not, and i lean on the former because... come on, can you really say the author intended you to not think of the cops as good people, at least compared to light and l) that light is a cops son, and that almost everyone who gets the death note is cop adjacent/thinks like a cop and is already corrupt/powerful when they get it (mello raised to think hed be just like l, yotsuba group is self explanatory; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me teru "churchill" mikami, who was hand selected by light out of a bunch of rabid kira supporters, is a normal citizen). i appreciated the cop post bc its rlly important to not gloss over that aspect.

all of this would be an argument for "only someone like them would do something like this, and i am not like them, so im above them and immune to thinking about what id do with it", but... misa is the MOST important outlier in all of this bc her murders are solely selfish in nature and shes not doing any of this for "the greater good"!!! her nature of being an exception and still a very very bad person is really really important...

or it would be if death note gave a shit about her character at all!!! im not talking about her tragic side, im talking about exploring the ramifications of her killing people the way lights murders are (somewhat) explored. that would strengthen the message greatly! but shes dismissed and that weakens it overall. firstly, she's dismissed by the characters when l only sees her as a way to get to kira and basically shelves her the rest of the time. secondly, shes dismissed by the narrative when her character is gradually ground down to a stump and (not to sound perilously close to the bad takes ppl meme about) she never faces repercussions for her actions. every other character using the death note is treated relatively seriously, but misa just dies bc her love is dead. im not saying this isnt a... fitting punishment or that it isnt in character, but it doesnt fit snugly into the theme other people are talking about of "you reap what you sow" at all.

we do have something of an equivalent to misa's grayscale motives. surprise surprise, its light yagami. first is light's characterization in the musical (i will also note that misa never kills anyone in the musical). light's thinking is coplike, yes — he literally starts his first song by talking about "throw[ing] away the key" — but also, oddly enough, could be read as progressive and therefore sympathetic to tumblr ("let the corporations make the regulations / and hold no one accountable when everything gets wrong / let the rich and famous get away with murder / every time a high-priced mouthpiece starts to talk, his client gets to walk"). compare to the anime and manga, where his bigotry and pride and disgust come from a place of lukewarm dissatisfaction and boredom. the musical has much less time to play around with lights character, so it gives the audience something to immediately hook on. more on how that actually plays out later.

in the animanga, none of this is justified from the start. animanga light could say he was just killing people to make humanity way, way worse, and that wouldnt matter, because at the root of it, it was always his boredom that made him pick up the note. of course he actually believes in justice and believes hes doing the right thing (no, he believes he's doing the wrong thing, for the sake of the world... the right thing, because he is god...), but it was boredom at the start. all animanga light says about justice and righteousness and the law is a front in the end, bc he is exactly like l and misa — amoral. selfish. searching for entertainment. hedonistic. we know this. he kills naomi misora*. he kills lind l. turner. everything hes saying deserves to be dismissed from the beginning.

"but doesnt that mean you agree with the discourse post you wrote this post to argue against?" like i said, i agree with both of them! but i... still think its not right to reduce death note to the message of "the power to kill people is bad". because that is not exactly what the story is saying, even though that's literally its whole plot and therefore reaching that conclusion is self explanatory (lmao). let's look at the concept of mu. nothingness. "there's no heaven or hell". The Real Slay The Princess (Death Note Essay) Starts Here.

in light's final moments in the death note manga, while screaming about not wanting to die, he remembers that the first day they met, ryuk told light that "there's no heaven or hell. no matter what they do in life, all people go to the same place. all humans are equal in death". it is retroactively revealed that light knew this the whole time, operated under this knowledge for all the years we watched him — the knowledge that nothing he does is actually bad, that nothing any human does is actually bad, that shinigami are not "evil", that the universe does not care. that no one cares except humans. this oblivion absolutely terrifies him more than anything anyone could ever do to him. its what he thinks of before anything else as he flails there, screaming, dying. one could say everything he does after that day is him trying to escape that fact, or wrest control over it. but it doesnt work.

here are the lyrics of requiem, the musical's final song, sung over the bodies of l and musical light, a light who was at least somewhat good-intentioned at first: "sleep now, here among your choices / then fade away / hear how the world rejoices / shades of gray / gone who was right or wrong / who was weak or strong / nothing left to learn". this is the final message the death note musical and the manga chose to leave us with. there is no judgement. even after all that acknowledged hurt, after all the damage done, there is no judgement.

in the manga and anime alike, the world is just as fucked when light picks up the death note as when he dies. sure, we as readers can guess otherwise logically (and be optimistic, believing the world was never fucked regardless), but that's not what death note wants you to think. it ends with matsuda and another member of the task force noting how the world is worse again even though they killed kira (matsuda is clearly much worse for wear, but still determined), we see the shitty motorcycle band again, it ends with misa and a whole kira cult on a mountain even though kira died a long time ago...

its extremely important that light is never killed by any human or any aspect of the law. he is always killed by ryuk: a chaotic force completely detached from human sensibilities, one that does not care about good and evil. same with l; in the anime, manga, and musical, he is always killed by rems senseless, morally gray love (and you could argue in the kdrama that hes killed by love there too lol). justice is just a set dressing.

this is not just because death note is a tragedy, because good and evil can still matter in a tragedy. the theme of "nothingness" and "good and evil doesnt matter here" is also shown in a situation relatively unrelated to light winning or losing, or being good or bad. and its in fucking lawlight of all things. we all know ls not a good person. we know lights not a good person. this is tip of the iceberg death note knowledge. but the moment they start to interact, none of that starts to matter. textually, their relationship becomes more important than the people theyve killed and hurt. and the thing is? the thing is? THAT WORKS STORY-WISE. THAT'S ENTERTAINING. AND IT'S NEVER TEXTUALLY CALLED OUT IN A LASTING WAY. l and lights relationship, no matter how much i meme it, is genuinely important to the themes and "mu" because it makes it clear that despite all the pretensions, despite everything, this was never about good and evil. and it still works in the story. this is why death note is simultaneously a comedy — isn't the battle of good and evil supposed to matter more? well, fine, i'll keep watching this anyway. that suspension of disbelief comes crashing down the moment l dies, though, and a relationship built on nothingness (the "mu" sort, meaninglessness, not "character development" nothingness, theres plenty of character development) gives way to just nothingness (again, "mu", not light's post-l depression nothingness), forever.

(an aside: there is no one to root for in death note, and the only things to root for are either interesting character relationships, convoluted plots, or complete and total destruction: for everything to end so no more damage is done.)

not to say that death note does not encourage its readers to consider what damage they might do with the death note (obviously.), or that its characters never do. look at matsuda, a much easier heroic figure to latch on to than soichiro because of his unique place in the cast dynamic and because he's willing to consider both sides of the situation and kill light instantly for all he's done. its just that the story's own stance on the subject is... complicated by the existence of shinigami worldviews and by its own insistence that the world cannot change for the better.

also, this is not to say that this is executed well by the death note manga at all. it is a very strong tool, artistically, to establish and then violently remove any emotional connections between characters and make your story only about the exceedingly convoluted lengths characters go to to survive and catch each other so the reader can realize how ultimately pointless all of this is, but like... is that a good story choice if that's all you do? i would say not really. add in a good dollop of misogyny that destroys the second-to-last character who might actually be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast's dull one-track focus on winning and justice, and youve got yourself a shitty story that... honestly still achieves what it went out to do, just not in a way id ever want to replicate.

anyway, back to the parts death note's actually trying to say. no matter what any human does in their life, no matter how they try to hurt or help the world, they all die in the end. hey, light, they all die in the end. once dead, they can never come back to life. and the seasons turn. and the world rejoices. and you say "goodbye"...

that's all.

no analysis of death notes overarching theme would be complete without nears final monologue, the definitive roast of light, the "you're just a murderer" speech: "what is right from wrong? what is good from evil? nobody can truly distinguish between them. even if there is a god." if we take this as talking about the actual god in the room (ryuk) as well as light, then near admits that humans will never be able to withstand these overwhelming forces and that, using justice and happiness and selfishness, they are just scrabbling to find meaning in things they ultimately have no control over.

but of course, near does not stop there. "[...] even then i'd stop and think for myself. i'd decide for myself whether his teachings are right and wrong." nears alright with not having control over everything, because near can still control nears own actions. these forces can and do exist, but they have no sway over nears own humanity — unlike light, who caved.

one of the creators of death note said they believe its message is "life is short, so everyone should do their best". the first time i learned this, i was like, thats... nice and optimistic, but an awful reading of the story! "life is short, so everyone should be desperate and striving like light yagami", who literally cut off other ppls lives for his own life? what character in death note are we supposed to strive towards when we "do our best"? they all do awful things with their lives! honestly, maybe they shouldnt have tried their best, if this is what their best is!

but with the view of "mu"... it makes a bit more sense. just a little. maybe.

there is no good and evil. there is only what humans think, and no matter what we do, we all die in the end. it is easy to be crushed and terrified by this in the same way light is, but what is more important than justice and righteousness and finding meaning is... doing your best. not being a person that hurts others too much. not letting yourself get swallowed up by an ideal. not going too far. and simultaneously, trusting yourself.

it leaves a few questions, though... was the currently dead l even a little bit right about his blatantly amoral approach, then? was there a point to this pain, and me slogging through this dumbass manga, and all the people that have lost their lives to a selfish teenage cop's son and the whims of everyone chasing after him? was there a point to any of this...?

the manga** never answers this. it stays clinically impartial until the very end. the musical is anything but clinically impartial (and i love it so much for that), and its ryuk that has the last word.

"there's no point at all."

of course theres no point. none of this was ever supposed to happen. that is what matters more than all the hurt and the crimes and the pain.

and that's... actually okay, because it's over now.

yes, death note has many really important themes present in its story, but its viewpoint is nihilism first and foremost. thats why its so fun and easy to play around with all the other messages, because no matter what fun or torment or awful things or righteous justice or absolute nothingness or sentimentality happens in between, there is always an end.

there is always the end.

[skysmadness]

when sora first woke up in quadratum he's dizzy and confused, can hardly walk, and then strelitzia finds him as soon as he starts to lose consciousness and takes him home.

she takes care of him, lays him down on her soft couch and tries to get him as comfortable as possible. as she does this sora starts to somewhat wake up, but when he realizes his necklace is missing he starts panicking: his eyes grow wide, they were already wet with how exhausted he was and he can't exactly speak but he desperately tries to find it.

the ex-dandelion panics as well but quickly realizes why the boy was this distressed when he finally spots the crown pendant on a small table near the couch and pathetically reaches for it. strelitzia gives it back to him with no hesitation and sighs when he finally calms down, fainting again.

she doesn't bring it up later on, when sora's "better". after all, getting used to the city while also having his mind fogged up is really taking a toll on him.

when she does talk about it though, they're on sora's balcony. it's night and the stars aren't exactly visible but it's nice nonetheless.

"do you remember when you woke up here?"

sora blinks at her, surprised yet not annoyed by having their peaceful quiet interrupted.

"vaguely. i just remember the migraine i got – thanks again for looking after me, by the way."

the redhead shakes her head, then she continues, "no, it's okay, i wasn't bringing it up for that i just..."

she could sense sora was special, that he was there for a reason. another keyblade wielder suddenly spawning in her neighbourhood? that had to mean something, so she was going to try her best to help him remember.

"when i took you in," she continues, "i put you on the couch and i took off your jacket and shoes and also... your necklace."

she points at it, her gaze softening when the moonlight reflects its light on the silver crown. sora automatically follows her finger and looks at it too. he suddenly feels warm. safe. protected.

"you were so shaken when you realized it wasn't with you even for a moment. can you remember why is that?"

she's met with silence and wide eyes.

"what does this necklace mean to you, sora?"

and only for a moment, a comet can be seen away from them, travelling fast in the deep night sky then disappearing. they both quickly turn their heads to look at it.

strelitzia is so mesmerised by it that she almost forgets her question, but is reminded of it when she sees sora crying from the corner of her eyes.

"i don't know," he croaks, "i don't remember and it's making me go mad. i just – i just know that without it i–"

he reaches for it once again, with trembling hands, gulping as the cold metal meets his warm skin.

"i just don't feel safe without it," he simply states.

silence falls between them again, until strelitzia takes sora's free hand in hers.

"sounds like a very powerful lucky charm," she tries. luckily, sora laughs weakly.

"you could say that."

[mybedaniel]

hot take: jimmy should be included in slideshows, videos, and other stuff (not counting censoring him, only just not acknowledging him in general). i dont care if he's generally a horrible person,, he's still the main character and a huge part of the plot. i dont condone his actions but it's getting annoying to just not acknowledge his existence, and it feels like we're putting a really well written villian character to waste because we don't realize how in depth jimmy really is,, also the name censoring jokes like jambalaya are only funny if it's actually creative,, in my honest to god opinion : again, i do NOT condone his actions but he's still big on the plot and a very well written character so ya i hate jimmy with all my heart but guys come on all you guys say about him is "haha rapist horrible guy lets ignore him and kick him off" instead of thinking about how in-depth and complex his character is! lets not waste a very interesting villian character by ignoring him entirely!

[vilecemetery]

the amount of love, admiration and respect I hold for imane khelif

[marionmorse]

MARIONMORSE, DROP ANOTHER HELMETPARTY SCENARIO AND MY LIFE IS YOUUURSS 🙏🙏🙏🙏

do u think... Do you think sometimes when the team has a movie night, when they watch those 60's action war movies like "Von Ryan's Express" and "Battle of the Bulge" or spaghetti westerns like "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and "Death Rides on a Horse," Soldier pauses during or right after fight scenes or duels or whatever to obsessively overanalyze them. Like, he'll try and turn them into strategies to use on the job, takes, uhm, 'notes', (tactical doodles,) sets up nerdy models using a whiteboard map and improvised figurines, uses these examples when he does those psyche-up pre-battle speeches or during strategy meetings.

'Cause I bet he does, I bet he does that, and it completely kills the momentum of the movie to the point where the rest of the team gets disinterested and slowly leaves him behind to do their own thing.

I genuinely bet Engie wouldn't though, nah, I bet he's enough of a patient kind of gentle kind of man willing to stick through these pauses 'cause he's just that into the movie. And maybe he's just a teeny bit into Soldier's dissections of actiony chaos. Maybe gleans a bit of an understanding of Soldier's thinking that way. Admires the guy's passion about his 'research,' how thoughtfully he gathers details in an effort to help the team. Starts mixing in tapes for these sorts of movies more regularly to their movie night pool maybe subconsciously, maybe on purpose. The rest of the team doing their own movie night. losers.

[quarks-pussy]

So I know we here at Startrekfandom love that "came back wrong but from the pov of the wrong" thing and apply it to many different characters and canon situations and I am far from trying to complain about it (I'm "came out wrong" trope myself so I was always gonna obsess over it) but having recently watched a very important episode (you'll know which one) for the first time I think there's a character who hits both tropes mentioned but llike, intertwined, opposite and subverted, and whom I wanna talk about.

Julian Bashir.

From his parents' pov he's "came out wrong but we got him help and he came back better" while from his own pov it's "came out 'insufficient', was destroyed for it, came back wrong and only later slowly came to terms with his new self tho never the process (justifiably so)" and it's heartbreaking because in a way, he's right! Jules Bashir died! His parents had an intellectually disabled child and decided to eugenics him! Julian is not the person he used to be and while I do love the person he is now, that doesn't bring back who he was! Part of me wishes we could've gotten to see Jules at least once and part of me hopes we never do because my heart would shatter.

This isn't a good comparison but nonetheless one I can't help drawing: it's giving similar vibes to anti-vaxxers. "I'd rather risk having a child who is dead than one who's autistic". Obviously this doesn't map over since Julian is still autistic and the procedure his parents subjected him to specifically targeted his intellectual disability and if any folks with id wanna comment on this I definitely recommend you listen to them over me, but it's a similarity I, as an autistic who has encountered anti-vaxxers again and again, can't help but point out. "Give me a normal child or give them death."

This may have been written about already but there needs to be stories about teenage Julian (after finding out and rediscovering who he was) practicing some good ol' recognition of the self through media. I need to hear about how he would encounter a story about someone who came back wrong (I'm gonna assume there's plenty of "wrong" pov stories floating around by the 24th century) and absolutely weep. I need to see Julian mourning Jules, taking years and years to process his feelings, experiencing guilt about how he, the imposter, didn't deserve to live Jules' life.

Came back wrong from the returned's pov but it wasn't an accident. It was done to you deliberately by the people who claim to love you. And now you are here, piloting the corpse of your predecessor.

Jules Bashir is dead. Long live Julian Bashir.

[oldguardleatherdog]

OLD MACDONALD BOUGHT THE FARM: "Barking and meowing" by students is being banned in a hysterical panic by another ignorant Florida school board. How long are we gonna put up with this insidious nonsense?

I've had it. These nutcases are about to regulate onomatopoeia in elementary school. Don't laugh - it's hiding something ominous, and it's deliberate.

First: If you're in the furry fandom - as I've been for 26 years (longer than the average fur has been alive these days) - TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY.

If they're actually banning K-12 school age kids from wearing anything animal-themed (yeah, it's that broad) and restricting the sounds they can utter for Christ's sake, you can be sure that the wild-eyed crazeballs chick who runs LibsOfTikTok and singlehandedly caused the wave of library closings over the mere existence of LGBTQ+ characters in books - to the extent that the State of Missouri legislature has defunded the entire statewide public library system! - already has her sights trained on Midwest FurFest, and the lunatics who closed down Boston Children's Hospital with bomb threats are already booking flights to bring the Nazis-with-guns to every furry convention in America by the end of this year, AND IF YOU DON'T GET WITH THE PROGRAM THEY'RE GOING TO BLOW YOUR oWo uWu ASSES OFF!

Enough dicking around, my fellow furballs. You know what to do.

Here's what I posted to Reddit last night - piss-poor metrics for my posts about the Wile E. Coyote anvils over our heads, but my groaners in the r/3amjokes and r/dadjokes subs get 35,000 views. Go figure.

In the meantime, read, heed, and reblog like your life depends on it, because it does:

---

You may laugh at first glance, or shake your head at "Florida again" - but it's a stalking horse for their next milestone: banning student behavior and appearance that to the MAGAs and right-wing nut jobs carries even a *hint* of LGBTQ+, and then - say it with me -

Identifying students who are mature enough to have come out as LGBTQ+ fully or in part (friends, family); those who are known to be "questioning" and on their way to coming out; those who are beginning to identify as other than heterosexual or show "tendencies" or "predelictions", and students too young to be self-aware in those ways but are seen as suspect by teachers and administrators - and then, gradually at first, then quickly and deliberately separating, isolating, and ultimately barring them from access to public education.

Kentucky has said it out loud just this week, clearly, plainly, with no room for ambiguity: "It's time to eliminate 'transes' from our schools."

If you're still on the fence about getting involved with activism and protests to put this movement down for good before it becomes too big to stop - and we still have time to stop it and crush it - do you think they'll stop after just banning kids?

You don't need to have psychic powers or a crystal ball to see what's heading our way. Soon.

You can choose to do nothing - or you can choose to act. One or the other. Simple, plain, clear.

Joni Mitchell once sang, "it all comes down to you," and she was right, of course, but if you listened closely, her meaning was clear then, and applies now - one choice will save you, the other will not.

Only one of these choices has the potential to turn the tide, the clearly visible, quickening, rising tide that's got crazy Jesus in its eyes and a list with your name on it.

I cannot choose for you, of course. No one can.

Last time I looked, this was still a free country.

But if you do not make the right choice - *you*, Constant Stranger, she sang - no one will be able to save you, or us. And the choice is upon us, sooner than we thought, and now.

Time to choose.