#she’s just not in mine lol

[llumimoon]

Every time I draw Scary internally I’m going she’s not white to ME!!!

[chrliekclly]

more meme dialogue doodles cuz they were fun, wanted to get back to my bb charmac roots w these ones

[silver-horse]

apparently when Astarion is reading the Necromancy of Thay book and he says "No I won't kill them. Well maybe [character name]" the companion he mentions is always the one who has the highest approval with the player (or second highest if he has the highest approval) Lmao He is jealous. I didn't know how this works. I thought it's random but he always said Shadowheart in my game and I never figured out why.

[mayasdeluca]

#that'd be a yes maya

[jeonwon-wonwoo]

minghao: dazed photo shoot behind

[swordmaid]

brienne but she's wearing 1949 cocteau's beauty and the beast inspired fit!!! this is the inspo pic i used if ur curious.

gonna be posting more of this redesign thing (and also jaime's ver) some time in the future but i just wanted to share this one <3

[queenlucythevaliant]

have you ever heard it? can you remember?

i. The gulls were crying. The gulls were always crying, in her memory. Whatever far off places Susan travelled after her family was gone, she always came back to the sea.

ii. The beach at Cair Paravel was the first place in Narnia where she really felt at home. She'd wade into the water with her eyes shut and feel she could be in England, on holiday with her mother and father. She'd open her eyes, and there would be waves cascading endlessly towards her.

iii. Before long, she knew every tidepool, every shoal.

iv. There weren't any bathing suits in Narnia, but no one seemed the least scandalized when Susan took to swimming in her underthings. There wasn't anything else for it, and she had to swim. She just had to.

v. She wasn't the only one of her siblings to love the sea, of course. Edmund loved sand and sailing and reading on the beach, and Peter liked to gaze out at the ocean and think. Lucy spent even more time at the beach than Susan did; she would rise before dawn and sit on the rocks as the sun rose over the waves. Susan was never sure whether her little sister was there to greet the sunrise, or to wait for Aslan.

vi. But for Susan, it was sense-memory. Water was water, wherever she was, and it always reminded her of home. She'd go out past the breakers, pull her limbs into a familiar breast stroke, and she'd feel like she was everywhere she loved all at once.

vii. Aslan came, and she was soaking wet to greet him. He laughed, in his lion-ish way, and didn't mind at all when Susan embraced him.

viii. Somehow, Aslan never got drenched from his journeys across the sea, but he was damp as though with mist. The scent of salt and brine clung to him, an overtone to that fierce, wild smell that was his own. Susan breathed in deep, those two scents she loved most in the world.

ix. In England, back at school, she'd go to the swimming pool and imagine she was in Narnia.

x. It wasn't the same, of course. The swimming pool at her school had no crying gulls, no smell of salt, no cascading waves. There was no Aslan coming towards her from the T-line at the other end of the pool. But if she submerged herself completely, Susan could imagine.

xi. She swam with her eyes shut too often, and her coach was growing irritated. It was affecting her times in practice, which would bleed over into competition if she wasn't careful. Somehow, Susan couldn't be bothered to care.

xii. One weekend, she and Lucy snuck away to visit the boys, and they all went down to the lake to reminisce about Narnia. When Lucy and Edmund spoke of their summer sailing the eastern sea, Susan was positively stiff with jealousy. Yet when they all dove into the water in the end, her heart pounded out a rhythm of home, home.

xiii. Six years after her last trip to Narnia, Susan hadn't touched a bow in four years. She still went swimming every week.

xiv. After the railway accident, she went to live by the sea. She missed her family, and she couldn't stand to live in the places they had lived. She wanted to forget.

xv. Susan had missed the salt air. She had missed the waves. There was a feeling of home by the sea that she couldn't quite place; a soothing echo of long ago dreams and fairytales.

xvi. But there were the gulls crying, "Can you remember?" and it broke her heart all over again.

[mine-loves]

Trigun Stampede | s01e01

"What rope?" ~ ☆

[cutesilyo]

you know how there was a running theme with the NPC encounters in hades? that sisyphus, eurydice, and patroclus were all involved in stories about being unable to escape death?

and its something thats explicitly discussed within hades itself, at least for sisyphus and eurydice. sisyphus had attempted to cheat death three times, one of the most notable being when he bound thanatos in chains. orpheus had found a way to bring eurydice back to life, but couldn't follow through with completing hades' challenge. achilles had a prophecy hanging over him during the war; die in glory at troy or live long unremembered. he chose the war and patroclus followed. they didn't survive. they are all different manifestations of the axiom zagreus is fighting against: that in hades, there is no escape.

so i was thinking. in the hades 2 playtest, we get dialogue from nemesis about how mortals had it better during kronos' time. we get dialogue from arachne too, about being distrustful toward the gods because of her curse.

i wonder if the running theme for the npcs in hades 2 will be people maligned by the gods in some shape or form.

arachne is already confirmed as the npc encounter for erebus. proud athena cursed her into being a spider. will we see victims of a love gone wrong in the next biome, like daphne perhaps? will we see those offered up for sacrifice just to appease the gods, such as andromeda or iphigenia? maybe those who were killed, perhaps unjustly so, because they dared fly too close to the heavens, like bellerophon or icarus? demigods that were cursed because of their birth, ala heracles? its long been a joke that the greek myths are just full of people suffering because of the incomprehensible acts of the gods. if hades 2 goes down this route, theres a lot of material to draw inspiration from.

and its an especially interesting direction because we know that its kronos waiting for us down the line. kronos, who ruled the golden age. when it comes to those wronged by the gods, you cant get much worse than being waged war against, your mountain stronghold so damaged from the attack that it loses height, and then being cut up into tiny pieces.

kronos, the crooked one. i bet he'd have a hell of a time trying to convince melinoe that the gods cant be trusted. and melinoe would be surrounded by all these narratives that would just prove his point.

just like how zagreus was in hades, who was surrounded by all these narratives about how death had no escape. and yet, his story is about how life and love bloom despite it. i cant wait to see what melinoe is fighting against now.

[raggedy-spaceman]

"Amongst all of David's awards, you were recently named on the DILF list. Here's the top five: Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac, David Tennant, Mads Mikkelsen, Cillian Murphy. Oh, and Michael Sheen came in-" "Oh and where is he on the list?" "Michael Sheen's number six." "Number six! And just remind me where I am?" "Three, you're three." "Number three!"

Justice for Michael Sheen!

[iamacolor]

I'm afraid I might have stolen your joy and you might never get a chance to perform on stage because of me.

LOVELY RUNNER - EPISODE 11

[joshoconnaissance]

GILLIAN ANDERSON as MEREDITH PLAYING BY HEART (1998) dir. Willard Carroll

[harbingersecho]

they had to pause their morning workout to drive wash to the ER at 7 am bc he somehow got hit by a car while getting mail. there's traffic. maine fiddles with the radio and carolina is imagining herself parkouring over the other cars

[mustbolt]

KNOW THY ENEMY, katherine + elena.

[curseofdelos]

I finished re-reading TLH recently, and I want to talk about the common fan interpretation of Piper as a pick me girl for a sec (let me preface this whole post by clarifying that while this is ultimately a defense of Piper as a character, it is also a critique of how Rick wrote her, Drew, and the rest of cabin 10)

The way cabin 10 is written in the books has never been great. Very early on in TLT, Rick makes a point to establish that Aphrodite had both sons and daughters:

Take note of how Rick explicitly genders Aphrodite kids in this paragraph, but uses the gender neutral "kids" to refer to the children of every other god. This is a very deliberate writing choice, and I can't think of any reason why he would have done this other than to (initially anyway) avoid associating womanhood with vanity/interest in personal appearances.

...And then in every book after this, cabin 10 heavily skews female, and traditional femininity becomes the butt of almost every joke about them.

Cabin 10 doesn't get any real focus until TLH with the introduction of Piper, Drew, and the rest of Cabin 10, in which Rick spends a lot of time establishing how different Piper is from the rest of her cabin because she rejects traditional femininity. Piper cuts her own hair, she doesn't wear makeup or care about fashion, she hates dresses etc. This is in direct contrast with Drew who's often described as wearing heavy makeup, having perfectly done hair, manicured nails etc.

Note that Piper's description of Drew's appearance is fairly neutral. Her problem with Drew is not in how she chooses to dress, but in her behaviour.

This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that every time Drew's appearance is described, it is directly preceded and/or followed by her doing something heinous. She insults and degrades Piper's appearance within seconds of meeting her, and we see this again in the Cabin 10 scene where she bullies and manipulates their siblings - kicking them out of the bathroom mid-shower, dumping a bin filled with used tampons on the floor and making them clean it up, etc.

Piper and Drew are in direct competition throughout the entirety of TLH. Piper strongly disapproves of the way Drew runs the cabin, they have differing opinions on Silena Beauregard (despite the fact Piper doesn't actually know her but I digress), and they're both interested in pursuing Jason romantically - Piper out of genuine attraction, and Drew out of the desire to break his heart for the Aphrodite Rite of Passage.

The narrative at every turn pits them against each other. Piper's intentions are always painted as pure and kindhearted while Drew is consistently characterised as a stereotypical mean girl who hurts others simply because she can. Drew is never given any motivation for acting the way she does, and her sole role in the story is to act as an obstacle for Piper to overcome so she could become counsellor (which is kind of pointless considering Piper never interacts with her cabin again after this). She's flat and two-dimensional, and never gets any real character development. Her sole personality trait is mean.

The result of all of this is that traditional femininity gets associated with shitty behaviour, while the rejection of traditional femininity gets associated with kindness and generosity. It should be stressed that Piper herself doesn't actually think that she's better than Drew because she doesn't wear makeup etc; Piper's issues entirely lie with Drew's behaviour. The worst Piper ever says is calling all of cabin 10 "shallow" which is no different to how the other characters talk about them (which is still a problem to be clear; it's just not a problem with Piper specifically, but how the narrative characterises cabin 10 as a whole). It's the narrative that paints femininity as lesser because of the way it positions tomboy Piper (the protagonist) as a better person than highly feminine Drew (the antagonist).

In fact, the most explicitly we ever see the book paint Piper's appearance as preferable to Drew's is in Jason's POV - not Piper's. After Piper gets claimed and Aphrodite changes her appearance, Jason spends several chapters going on and on about how much more beautiful and desirable Piper is when she's not dressed up or wearing makeup.

Because of all of this, it's not difficult to see why so many people in this fandom have interpreted Piper as a pick me 'not like other girls' type girl. The narrative constantly presents her as a better person than the more feminine Drew, and Jason (the boy they're competing over) chooses her at least partly because of how naturally beautiful she is without trying.

However, even though I do understand where this interpretation of her character came from, I do want to push back on it for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it is explicitly stated several times in TLH that the reasons Piper doesn't wear makeup and cuts her own hair is because (1) she doesn't like being the centre of attention (see the first screenshot of this post), and (2) she's rebelling against her father.

Piper's entire character arc in TLH centres around her initially being insecure at the start of the book to becoming more confident over the course of their quest. It is stated on several occasions early on that Piper doesn't like being the centre of attention, but by the end, she feels more comfortable in her own skin. She goes from being embarrassed/hurt by Drew's comments about her to laughing them off and standing up to her by the end.

The term "pick me girl" refers to girls who do things for external, mostly male validation. This is the exact opposite of why Piper doesn't wear makeup or conform to traditional femininity. She does this precisely because she does NOT want to draw attention to herself. The only male who's attention she is trying to get is her father's, and she's doing this by acting out in ways he doesn't approve of. Piper does want validation from her father, but she's not cutting her own hair to get his validation; she's so starved for affection that she wants any attention from him, even if that attention is negative.

Similarly, a major point of conflict for Piper is whether or not Jason is attracted to her, but she is not rejecting feminine things because she wants to impress him Jason does find those qualities in her attractive, but Piper held these opinions long before they even met. It was Jason/the narrative that paints those qualities in Piper attractive, not Piper herself. (Side note: there's a lot more to be said about how their relationship was written in TLH, but that isn't relevant to get into that here.)

The other reason why I want to push back on the interpretation of Piper as a pick me girl is that she's a queer woman. In a straight patriarchal society, women (women of colour especially) are often expected and pressured to perform gender in particular ways - wearing makeup, dressing femininely, being attracted to boys and exclusively boys. In much the same way that Piper's coming out now makes it possible to read her relationship with Jason as compulsory heterosexuality, it's also possible to read her discomfort with traditional femininity as discomfort with being a straight girl. It's possible to retroactively read Piper's dislike for feminine things as her feeling uncomfortable with heterosexuality but is too closeted at this point to realise it. She does, after all, cut her hair very short at the end of TBM while she is the process of exploring her sexuality.

(To be clear: I'm not arguing that this is what Rick had always intended for her - I assume he expected Jason/Piper would be endgame at the time he was writing TLH - but I do think there's a 'death of the author' interpretation available here that her hatred of dresses etc is an early sign of her being a closeted queer woman who is beginning to explore her gender presentation and sexuality.)

I feel that sometimes, in their efforts to (rightly) criticise the way femininity gets treated in this series, some people act as if makeup is in intrinsic part of womanhood and that Piper is a misogynist for not wanting to wear it. This is not true. It is not inherently misogynistic for a woman to dislike it - especially when that woman is queer, and especially in today's society where many women are pressured into wearing makeup to be taken seriously. Piper disliking makeup is not the problem.

The problem with Piper's story in TLH is that the narrative consistently presents her as a better person than the more feminine Drew, and a more desirable option for Jason because of how beautiful she is without trying really hard like Drew and the other Aphrodite girls do. Because every highly feminine character is either a villain (Drew) or a joke (Valentina in TOA), the result of Piper and Drew's rivalry is that femininity gets demonised by the narrative. Again, it's not that Piper herself thinks she's better than Drew for hating fashion; it's the way the story puts these characters in opposition to each other that results in femininity being framed as lesser.

I think a writer with a better grasp of women's issues (and queer women's issues especially) could have written a great story here on gender as a performance, and an exploration on conforming (Drew) VS rebelling (Piper) against gender norms! How there really is no winning and women get harassed for being too feminine AND for not being feminine enough (See: the jokes about Clarisse in PJO not being a girl/being manly because she's violent and rough around the edges)! What we got instead was a story that carries the deeply unfortunate implication that girls who don't care about their appearance are kinder and more desirable than girls who do.

It's not Piper that's the problem; it's the narrative. I think a lot of people have been conflating the two, and have been unfairly pinning the blame onto Piper's characterisation when the fault lies with the plot, and with Drew's characterisation as a flat two-dimensional mean girl stereotype. I think if Drew had been given a redemption arc like Clarisse, or some amount of depth that explains why she hates Silena and acts the way she does, or even if she and Piper had learned to respect each other despite their differences, then we would be having a very different conversation.

[sunny12th]

I don't think we need a monologue or explicit statement from Dany renouncing the Targaryens of Old Valyria for owning slaves and the Old Valyrians for spreading slavery through Essos. She never thinks about them, she doesn't have them on a pedestal in her mind. She has a favorable viewpoint of her immediate family, mostly Rhaegar, that she was taught by her brother. I dont think we need to see Dany explicitly state for the readers that her slave owning ancestors were evil and she disagrees with them because her actions show this.