#oh wow okay yeah

[wellwhatnowlove]

“He looks down at his feet, searching for words. When he finds them, he looks up at me with the raw emotion of his father, but without the anger or the pain. “Mother, your inheritance was guilt. Father’s was surrender. Because of you, because of Father, mine is struggle. That is better than guilt. It is better than surrender. I do not blame you. I thank you. You never pretended the world wasn’t broken, even when a broken world favored you.”

Light Bringer, pg.144

I GOT TO THINKIN TODAY ABOUT WHAT PAX SAID ABOUT HIS PARENTS’ INHERITANCE AND I HAD A REVELATION. okay sorry VERY LONG WINDED ESSAY BELOW. (Light Bringer spoilers too)

If Darrow’s inheritance has always been surrender and Virginia’s has always been guilt, then Light Bringer is a study in how they’ve swapped those burdens, and both grew immensely because of it. Virginia is forced to face the reality of surrender to keep Mars from falling. She must learn to sacrifice lives on an unimaginable scale. She literally has to surrender Phobos in order to hold Mars and save lives from a bloody battle over pride. She routinely seeks out the injured and dying to confront those she sacrifices. It’s heart breaking and hard to read at times, but not once did she not feel like the character we grew to love. She stays true to herself while mentioning multiple times that she now understands Darrow’s plight more than ever from the last decade.

Then on the flip side, Darrow is forced to reckon with his insurmountable guilt when he is put on trial before the daughters in the rim to answer for betraying them in order to secure a victory for the core rising/republic. He talks about how that guilt put a wedge between him and his family. That guilt made him feel unworthy of love, and, therefore, unable to properly express his love to those he would give everything for. This mirrors Virginia’s past struggle with one particularly potent example being her inability to believe that Darrow could love her after he reveals his true identity as a red in the tunnel under Lykos at the end of Golden Son. She says

“They are my family!” she shouts, face collapsing into grief. “My father hanged your wife. He hanged her. How can you even look at me?”

I think it’s this guilt (and probably some feelings of utter betrayal, panic, and overwhelm) that led her to leave Darrow in that tunnel and indirectly led him into the Jackal’s trap. Which I’m sure she also feels immense guilt for. But I think a large part of her journey off page and into morning star is her coming to terms with that guilt. In confronting it she learns to be vulnerable with Darrow again and comes to accept that he loves her despite the insane complexity of their history. This culminating with her leaning into her understanding of her part in the society and realizing that it puts her in a place to make a true change. All of this accomplished with an education in immense humility, flexibility, and compromise. Which is the lesson Darrow grapples with and I think truly leans into throughout this book. In a way, he is forced to reckon with how his guilt drove him away from Virginia and Pax and even veered him away from Eo’s dream.

I think on a character based level, this will exponentially strengthen their relationship when (please please Pierce) they finally reunite, and will make them a more formidable pair than even before. They now understand each others struggles in such intimate ways that idk if anyone can stop these two.

Then, on a plot based level it speaks to the larger themes of resilience, understanding and the fight for humanity. Virginia finds strength in surrender and Darrow finds redemption in humility and compromise. 

Then, add in some struggle, grit and pixie dust (and a cool head tattoo I guess. WE SEE YOU OVER THERE PAX AKA ADEPT AUGUSTUS. HELL YEAH KEEP IT UP BABY WOO) and the rising might just have a true shot. Not only at victory, but at redemption and continued effort in the name of what is just and good.

[peanuttoffee]

Fallen Order Cal is a cinnamon bun and has a precious place in my heart forever

but Jedi Survivor Cal...

thanks for the reference to the dearest @flammabel!

[lotus-lamps]

tysm the weekly light for giving me motivation to draw LMAO

a lil messy but thats ok. it was a lot of fun so thats all that matters haha (I LOVE RENDERING AND DO THE LIGHTING AND ALL THAT SHIT ITS SO FUN) rip mothy gilbert also had too much fun ig lmao

[jaynovz]

Listen. A lot of John Silver meta posts are like 75% there. And the part that gets on my nerves is the *intent*

Assertations that this character is constantly purely calculating and self-aware and consciously scheming and in control are the things that really rub me the wrong way. It discards the strength of the performance and editing and script and the things that that performance indicates as far as expressing vulnerability or lowering the mask.

Does he still keep like five different layers up even while trying to lower two of them? Yeah, of course, we see that on screen.

But for me where a lot of these Silver takes fall short is failing to acknowledge that the character himself doesn't even realize that he's lying half the time because he's the best at lying to himself. And that it's self-defense mechanism and survival instinct and that it's just like breathing. It's a default state.

For many of these interactions, especially with Madi and Flint in s3 and s4, he often thinks he's being truthful.

Anyway, it would be good for people to keep in mind that John Silver is not actually a malicious super villain and is in fact a deeply traumatized and tragic figure.

[b1mbodoll]

um. can i say somethinf

[liauditore]

BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY! BDUBS DAY!

[imaginationblur]

I am cringe but I am free

Funny 420 number haha… unless?

I gave Oswald and Ortensia proper kids with names and junk bc I have brain rot (I had this sitting for 3 years I just cleaned it up yet again)

[grimvestige]

Let's go, fighting from the heart / I'll tear the world apart / No, I can't stand to see you be with anyone but me

---

Shaking my GM (/pos) for using this as nightmare fodder for tiarnán in last night's session

[hood-ex]

I have seen you talking about Dick & Dami's relationship and Dick & Tim as well,but what are your takes on Dick and Jason actually?

Like how you wish their relationship should be portrayed today and where are them missing when it comes to making those two acting like siblings?

Do you think in the past their dynamic was better?

How Dick views Jason and how Jason views Dick?

This is difficult to answer because there are like 8 different stages to Dick and Jason's relationship with various dynamics. They also view each other a bit differently depending on which stage we're talking about.

The way I would like their relationship to be portrayed today isn’t necessarily possible thanks to Jason’s integration into the family and acceptance of the no killing moral code. For me, their ideal dynamic is portrayed in Outsiders #44-46. And I know people are gonna find that regressive as hell but, tbh, that dynamic is far more interesting than the kinda awkward thing they have going on now.

Although, I don't mind that they acknowledge their brotherhood in a serious manner now. Like before they'd kinda be like, "Eh... I mean... we were adopted from the same guy but... brothers? Eh..." And now they're more firmly in the, "We're brothers," camp. So that development is interesting.

Character progression wise, it wouldn't feel right for for them to be super close in the way that, say, Dick and Tim are (unless we saw a lot of trust and relationship building between them), but at the same time, there is part of me that kind of wants them to have that older sibling bond (except Jason is closer in age to Tim than he is to Dick sooo actually let's just leave older sibling things to Dick and Cass... not that Cass is much older than Jason though so LOL this is why Dick has to lone the oldest sibling thing by himself... which is funny because Dick is technically no longer the oldest sibling, he's a baby brother now... except Dick and Melinda's relationship really hasn't progressed much sooo you could say they share blood but don't consider each other family yet, in which case, Dick is still the oldest... I mean, regardless, Dick is the oldest sibling of the Waynes... god why did they have to make all of this so difficult 😫).

[sashabarkovonly]

GOD HE MAKES SO WEAK - 😫

[morganthefey]

Dean’s little comforting “okay, okay” when Cas hugs him at the end of season 11 thinking he’s saying goodbye forever, reblog if you agree

[scabbardsystem]

sure sucks that faucet doesn't like people talking about [ ] because [ ] has the objectively coolest pronouns out of all of us hkjgh

[tartagliatum]

-

[skitskatdacat63]

This is my personal crossover event of the century

[neurotonic]

yeah ok I honestly didn't expect how much this silly spy game series would grip my brain. idk what about it enraptured me (i know. it's the damn characters and writing) considering I don't really consume that much spy media (but knowing me i don't have hard borders on my interests. if i like it i like it nomatter the genre). but im happy it entered my radar. many thanks to my partner frankie for pushing me into the rabbit hole after hearing her talk about and draw her spy blorbos

THOUGH. FUNNY THING IS. I already had a close encounter with ieytd almost two years before I properly got into it. I was arranging an oc playlist on spotify when it suggested me this song:

i was like "oh cool. this sounds like a spy game theme." then I added it to the playlist because it fit this oc's vibes. I did not check it out however.

fast forward around november 2023 and frankie was gushing about this new game she's playing and i was like "huh. hm. the title sounds familiar". whenever she says the title the song plays in my head. IT TOOK ME DAYS before it really clicked in my head that THEY'RE THE SAME DAMN THING!!!! I guess it was really fate that brought me here. and I'm pretty happy about it.

[serenanymph]

Heads Up Seven Up

Tagged by @faytelumos um.*looks at smudged notes* a while ago. Find his post over here. Gently tagging uhhh @space-writes, @macabremoons and @scribbling-stardust, pulling from Beast book 2, Witch's Book:

It’s later in the night – when they’ve brought out the cake and sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and Zephyr has blown out all six candles (one of them larger-sized) – that Madge wanders out of the kitchen where mama and baba are divvying up the cake to track down Zephyr and Kas, who’ve somehow vanished in that short amount of time. The backyard feels quieter than before: peaceful, now, as if all the world is fast asleep. Madge inhales, again, the same way she did earlier with the cake, breathing in the scent of spring – stretching her arms out to the side, her fingertips straining, her head tipping back to look up at the sky. The longer she looks, the more stars seem to appear, spreading out and multiplying, thousands of tiny glittering diamonds spilling across the black. The breath she takes in morphs into a yawn. Murmuring, from up on the roof. She spins towards the ladder leaning against the side of the house, and ah – they must be up there, then.

taglist (lmk if you want to be +/-): @deer-in-headlights-stare, @allianaavelinjackson, @arctic-oceans, @space-writes, @reneesbooks