#none of these are like revolutionary but

[moowithmidnight]

Re-re-watching Agent Carter so more observations and thoughts from s1 eps 1-5:

1. When villains typically play the sweet innocent in order to get close to the hero, there’s a moment where they show the audience how much they hate doing it. Silently mocking whatever they just said, rolling their eyes before putting on their persona, etc. etc. But Dottie doesn’t do that, not once. She mocks Peggy with the innocent Dottie persona, but the motivation behind that is very clearly to make fun of Peggy’s idealism and loyalty to America. She doesn’t hate being Dottie.

2. Dottie’s mirroring of Peggy starts long before she breaks into her room- she paints her nails and lips victory red for a large part of S1, but only after she actually meets Peggy.

3. Chief Dooley does not get enough appreciation in this fandom. Yes, he’s a sexist pos, they pretty much all are, that’s half the point. But if Jack is forgiven for his continuous and consistent sexism, why do we not give the man who had his same character development more slack? I’m a Chief Dooley defender I fear.

4. Howard trying to defend himself after he tricked Peggy into stealing back the vial of Steve’s blood is really interesting and very telling. He argues back with Peggy literally using the 1940’s version of “women are too emotional”. And I think the way that he, and Jarvis to a lesser extent, try to manipulate the SSR’s continuous disregard for Peggy’s abilities is interesting too, because I think if it wasn’t Steve’s blood, that might have actually worked.

5. Peggy becoming so enraged by Dottie being a black widow, because she has to confront the fact that she underestimated Dottie the way the SSR constantly underestimated her, is absolutely delicious, dear lord.

6. I have to find a screen grab of this more than I have to breathe but the scene with Jack and Peggy bickering after she’s allowed to go to Russia is genuinely top 5 cinematography moments ever. The way the row of lockers separates them, dividing them into two worlds; the way Peggy is alone in the shadows while Jack is changing with two other men in bright lights. The way he’s wearing white and she’s wearing black as they fade into their respective roles, Jesus Christ it’s so good.

7. Jack seems genuinely surprised by Peggy’s interest in listening to how he got his Navy Cross

8. That quote in Agent Carter Declassified about how Dottie is just what Peggy would be if she truly had no one makes me so sick, because it’s so true.

[boycterium]

I think a lot about how when little Utena begs the prince to help Anthy he redirects the conversation to be about Utena to distract her from his powerlessness, he who is supposed to be the most powerful. He praises her and thanks her for her kindness and kisses away her tears, never assessing the real problem. He treated Anthy as some sort of a spectacle, not as a person suffering, and the most important thing to him was Utena's reaction, not Anthy's suffering. He attempted to push Anthy into the background, but Utena looked at her again.

[dreadfuldevotee]

What frustrates me is that it is very clear that people's idea of Louis being more involved in the story is him becoming Lestat's one and only love interest. There is a unwillingness to accept that Louis lives and makes decisions outside of his love for Lestat; its why there's still talk as if Louis went to New Orleans in the season finale just to make up with him. As long as you fail to see him for the whole, complicated character he is, you will never understand his motives and I think that's a shame!

The profound lack of imagination in regards to Louis specifically is one of many manifestations of believing that he is a prize to be won. THAT is what it means when someone says Loustats/Loumands are shipper-brained. The show letting Louis break out of being just a romantic specter, to laying a path for him to find meaning in eternity for himself is a gift! Letting him play an active role in the story and forge interesting relationships with characters he maybe exchanges all of 30 words with across 13 books.

I don't know where all they will take his character and that's part of the fun. But deluding yourself into thinking that every word and action of his that doesn't bring him one step closer to being with Lestat is wasted and worthless is a wildly shallow way to view the character.

[eastbluecrewed]

1 million sabos . for my health

[shadystranger]

Absolutely insane spn tie-in moments

Sam was taken away as a sacrifice, but Dean was left behind, so Dean worked with a demon (against Bobby's protests) to get Sam back. The demon could beat that God-like evil through a ritual but needed a willing container to contain thousands of dead souls. Dean had the spirits of despair-stricken dead people slammed into his unconsciousness. Their joys, their hopes, their dreams, their doubts, their confusion, their grief, their anguish, their love, their hate, their lives. Dean would feel it to his marrow. Anyone would be driven mad going through this. But he focused on Sam, his joy, his hope, his protectiveness over him, his anguish, his love, and his life with Sam, and that's what kept him grounded. This is the most powerful romance shit i ever seen like goddammit.

Dean lost himself in the dead. He became a treasure-seeker, a girl who committed suicide after being violated, a wizard trapped in a doll. President Harry S Truman, after he dropped the A- bomb on Japan. Ernest Hemingway, when he volunteered for the Red Cross in World War I. A gay store worker. A poet. A Duval Street musician who died in a diving accident.

At the end of each memory, Sam would appear. Dean recognized Sam again and again. Dean controlled all the dead souls in his body by focusing on Sam. This feeling was stronger than the strongest pleasures Dean had ever experienced. Like the entire world was at his fingertips. The love, hatred, sorrow, and joy of thousands of dead souls in their lives were all condensed in Dean.

But Dean focused on Sam. No matter what, he had to save Sam, and that enabled Dean to get the dead under control.

[kishimotomasashi]

Just out of curiosity 😅

Are there truly Madara fans who think he did nothing wrong???

I find this so hard to believe 😂

As Madara is a very tragic character but he did so much wrong 😂😂

as I don’t really interact with the Madara fandom much I didn’t know that

Yeah, I guess I should have clarified. My issue with a lot of Madara takes isn't that people think he "did nothing wrong", necessarily, it's that they sort of box him into this same "revolutionary who was wronged by the narrative" position that they do for, like, Sasuke. And act like their characters are more or less similar regarding their positions in relation to Konoha. It's more "Madara was right" that I have an issue with: I simply do not think that, within the era he existed in it, both Konoha and how the Uchiha were treated within it were bad enough to justify going about anything the way that he did.

And these takes come with a lot of assumptions about Hashirama's actions that paint him as significantly more malicious than he actually is, some going as far to say that him extending a hand towards Madara when Izuna got struck was... intentionally manipulative? There's a lot you can criticize Hashirama on (namely the fact that he is the world's worst enabler) but I think acting like he was leading Madara on to carry out his real plan of establishing Senju domination is a bit of a reach. I mean, sure, I suppose you could imagine he was having those feelings somewhere deep within his heart or whatever, but it's not so canon-text-established that it justifies arguing for it as it is the way I've seen people do.

Anyways. Madara is a victim of the system like any other character is, but I don't think he ever offers up resistance that goes against the grain in any meaningful way. Most of his grievances he had while staying in Konoha could have been discussed with others, and especially with Hashirama, instead of left stewing in his brain until he went insane with it by closing himself off.

[gingerswagfreckles]

God I really didn't think Trump getting elected would lead to another renaissance of "won't somebody PLEASE think of the men???" posts but here we are!!

[funkervogt]

Oh god i gotta breathe and chill out i just got so mad at the biden admin and harris's run defending israel i could feel my heart turn into toxic sludge. Hopelessness is the mind killer

[archivedjuice]

l'eclisse (1962) / dir. michelangelo antonioni

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Absolutely floored at people with USSR-themed profile pictures on Twitter criticising season 3 of Korra because 'Ba Sing Se just riots for no reason when the Earth Queen dies'.

[quatregats]

I love how when you get over orthographical differences in sibling languages you can sometimes see one of them moving phonologically in the direction of another like hell yeah follow those evolutions that your relatives have traced before you

[steevejr]

like genuinely can someone suggest me a queer fantasy novel THAT HAS TRANSGENDER WOMEN IN IT?

[roobylavender]

you know what would automatically change my hatred to love for sasusaku? If their genders were reversed. Majority of the reason why I hate sasuke and sakura relationship is because the type of environment and the culture I grew up in where it's been fed to women since basically birth to always be faithful to her man no matter how terrible he treats her, even after marriage. The pharse, "Just be patient and he will change", infuriates me to another level. Seeing sakura chasing after sasuke throughout the series after numerous rejections and an attempted MURDER on her by him made me roll my eyes so hard like girl just move the fuck on omfg. And even after their "marriage" sasuke's treatment towards her doesn't get better lmao, leaving her alone with a whole ass child to take care by herself?? BYE sakura's patience for him is outmatch cus I would've divorced his ass for that. Though, the more I mature, little by little I begin to understand the complexity of their relationship after putting my gender issues aside for a second and look deep into them. And especially now, after reading your perspective on their whole relationship, it really did made half of my hatred go away and understand the relationship wholeheartedly. Like yeah, I absolutely love the trope of one person saying they don't deserve the other person's love but the other person keep loving them anyway, that stuff makes me giggle and swing my legs in the air and shit. It's just that the only way this trope would work for me if the person loving them has enough self-respect for themselves AND if it's a girl in the former & the guy in the latter. And honestly, I found naruto being borderline obsessed with sasuke annoying too but the reason why I can digest it more well is because naruto can go head to head with sasuke without backing down. Like, I wanted to see at least ONCE sakura having a heated argument with sasuke, or punch him in the face in the series. I feel like sasuke deserves a punch from her at the very least 🤷🏽‍♀️

Sigh, I really did wanna love their relationship and their journey to love (that scene of him catching her when she was about to fall and then having that iconic eye contact had me feeling butterflies ngl) since it has all the tropes I love but the execution is just so...

i mean if it helps any i absolutely hate post-canon and that's where my primary divide with most sasusaku fans lies 😭 i'm not sure if you read the blue-plums post i reblogged but it's a good dissection of why exactly it fails as a conclusion to both their individual arcs and their relationship arc generally. the post-canon we see is a direct answer to what sasuke's and sakura's dreams are at the start of the series, but the problem with this is that sasuke and sakura are nowhere near being the same people at the end of the series as they were at the start. generally, i don't think post-canon really takes the individual arc of any character into much account. its primary goal is maintaining the status quo with a slight veneer of friendship power draped over it for aesthetics. but nothing at the root is changed despite every traumatic development the characters were relentlessly subjected to. resultantly, you're left with a portrayal of sasuke as a neglectful father who glorifies the lone-wolf hero trope, which goes against everything he could possibly have learned from itachi; and you're left with a portrayal of sakura as someone content to keep house despite the bulk of her character arc being grounded in her ability and desire to take initiative not only at home, but abroad. it's not true to who either of them is by that point and, even more than that, it's a disservice to everything they've put themselves through for the sake of the love they were vying for. so while i love sasusaku as it progresses up through 699, i tend to wholeheartedly ignore whatever comes after and relegate that instead to either my own imagination or blue-plums's in her fics

what i will say about the naruto and sakura distinction is that a lot of people are more comfortable with how sasuke reacts to naruto bc they believe what naruto is doing is right. it's kind of like: if the only thing sasuke will realistically respond to is violence then obv naruto can resort to that violence without dwelling on it too much. but if you think about violence in the context of sasuke's entire life, it's not actually helpful at all beyond its ability to physically bring him to a grinding halt. even when naruto finally breaks through to sasuke, it's not the violence that makes things click for him. it's the words he says after, and it's the words he's always said before that that have stayed in sasuke's mind. violence, in contrast, is a poisonous thing for sasuke bc it's the only thing that has defined the parameters of his entire life. it robbed him of every person he cared about prior to his meeting team seven, and inevitably it intimidated him into seeking out more violence once he realized that he was incapable of saving the new people he'd come to care about as well. everything, at the root, was driven by sasuke's traumatically-exacerbated response to love and loss. the idea of losing naruto and sakura to the hands of anyone else was unbearable. so he decided that he'd rather have killed them himself. it was absolutely irrational. but a twelve year old child put through that kind of successive, relentless trauma was never going to think rationally, and certainly not after being exploited by people like orochimaru and obito (and to an extent itachi) in turn

all of this to say: there is of course a gendered aspect to the fact that sakura's response to sasuke is markedly not violence. but i also think people sort of refuse to dissect her response any further and esp in context of the narrative itself. despite being the hallmark of rationality within the team and perhaps even the series, sakura was inevitably always driven by the value she placed on humanity. it would've been so easy and rational and "right" to kill sasuke bc he was an insurgent, a terrorist, a danger to public safety, etc. but sakura knew it was more complicated than that. even without knowing about the intricacies of the uchiha massacre she'd been a witness to his suffering and struggle and helplessness. she was as much unable to kill him bc of her love for him as she was unable to kill him bc she knew it wouldn't be right. bc really, what would it solve. sasuke being written off or dying would accomplish nothing bc he would become one more person in the long line of victims to nationalism and the military-industrial complex. while naruto's desire to retrieve sasuke was driven by his love for him it was also driven by the fact that he was stubborn and relentless and refused to give up on people. if you won't believe in yourself i'll beat the belief into you. it's a very shounen-esque trait. in contrast, sakura's desire to retrieve sakura, while also driven by her love for him, was significantly driven by her ability to see that sasuke needed help. in fact, that's all she ever wanted him to get: help. and it would be one thing for this to be an isolated desire but when you read it in context of her own goals as a medic and a mental health professional, her unwavering belief in sasuke is a lot more striking. she was the only person in the entire narrative who never resorted to violence as a solution to sasuke's problems. and she was angry, to be sure. much as she loves him the struggle to bring him back and convince him that he was worthy of love and healing left her emotionally exhausted. but they're also children at the end of the day. she could've been angry at him, or naruto could've been angry him, and in the end none of it would've mattered in the face of knowing they'd finally gotten through to him. he had a smile on his face, he didn't have an arm anymore, and for the first time in his life he met a loss with utter peace and content. it was a thing of miracles after six years of relentless grief and sorrow, and nothing else could've been on their mind.

at the end of the day, team seven's love for sasuke isn't rational. the farthest thing from it, really. but that's what makes it so radical in context. if love in naruto was only ever meant to be rational then hardly anyone would survive. love was always written as an act of defiance and for however subtle the depiction sakura exemplified it

[leaving-fragments]

tbh i think the barbie film had some good material, the whole scene between barbie and ruth with the whole "i don't want to be the idea, i want to do the imagining" bit, like that had potential. because womanhood is an idea someone else came up with and forced women into. but that scene is so disconnected from the rest of the plot, it's the first time in the film that we see barbie struggling with being an idea, so it kinda comes out of nowhere

before that she was struggling with (not) being perfect and then with not being good enough at anything, which are also expectations many women struggle with. but none of these points are really talked about thoroughly, they come up as one-liners or as ironic quips and it's just. so frustrating because the film never really says anything, it just mentions issues in passing

like, there is no feminist statement made in or by the barbie movie. pointing out patriarchy exists isn't a revolutionary message and the film never really shows anything changing, neither the real world nor barbieland... the ending is basically just everything being the same as at the start of the movie

so apart from all the things other people have pointed out with jokes about colonialism, the playing into incel culture etc. the barbie movie isn't even very feminist

i will also say i personally did enjoy the film, it's a fun watch and has great costumes and music, but i find it quite silly how some people want to make it out to be revolutionary... if that's revolutionary to you your worldview must be very narrow

[egbertdyke]

homestuck brainrot getting worse and worse

[d1anna]

waaaaaaaaaaaaa