#shes so tragic. to me

[royallygray]

I don't know how to start this post.

I have an OC called Skyler Crownes (CROWN-NEZ), and just. goddamn I like making her suffer apparently. I mean that's what OCs are for but like

Her parents were murdered two hours after she was born. This means that she doesn't actually know them, and therefore doesn't really know what she's missing.

She has an older sister (Sarah, 18 years older than her) and an older brother (Scott, 9 years older than her). And they've taken care of her. So she doesn't know what she's missing.

Her parents were great people, and the only signs of her loss are her siblings' loss and sharing their experiences with Skyler.

And throughout her childhood, they gave her the option of "you don't have to consider them your parents. You didn't know them." And then she chose not to.

So technically Davis and Sasha aren't her parents, because she hasn't ever known them.

She doesn't miss them, because she's never fucking met them.

But this also means that their death wasn't really a loss for her. This was always the case. She never knew them, and so how could she really miss them?

Every loss in namely Scott's life dulled when he compared it to his parents'. It's the worst loss he ever experienced, and ever would experience.

But Skyler? She doesn't have that comparison. As a kid, losing her favorite blanket was the end of the world. Her Greek tragedy. It was the worst loss that ever happened to her.

And she grew up more, experiencing more and more things in life.

And then her best friend of seven years, Helena, died when she was twelve.

And then she understood her siblings' loss. And then everything else dulled in comparison.

And then she fucking understood.

[vor-leser]

"Oh wise Athena, help them see..."

[morganmnemonic]

I can't stop thinking about the relationship between Jon and Helen as perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire show. They are narrative parallels for each other, and they both know it. They've both known it from the very start!

Helen walks into the Archives, paranoid, unsure of who to trust, and Jon sees himself in her. And he thinks "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." Then he can't save her. The next time they meet, she's a monster. They're both monsters. There was never any other way their stories could have gone, their fates entwined from the very start.

And Helen answers his original thought with one of her own: "Maybe if we can help each other, there's hope for us both." But Jon looks at her and sees everything that he fears becoming, and so he turns her away, and refuses to accept that their stories are still one and the same.

Helen went to the last person who was ever kind to her, the only person who both knew her as a human and had the context to understand what she'd become, and he hated her. He hated her because he liked Helen, and told her that she couldn't be Helen.

So she stopped trying to be Helen, and embraced being a monster. Reveled in it even. Then Jon wakes up from a six month coma, more monster than person, and tries so hard to cling to the things that mattered to him when he was human. Even with no support, even with the entire archives staff against him, he chooses humanity and compassion over and over again.

And this is a direct threat to Helen's world view. Their stories are entwined. If Jon can continue to be a person even after everything he's been through, then she could have clung to her humanity too, if only she'd tried a little harder. And that terrifies her! She wants to conceptualize herself as someone who was completely overwhelmed by forces beyond her control, who never had a choice but to become a monster. She want's to be an innocent victim. But Jon argues with his actions that they'd both had choices.

And, Jon, in turn, holds out hope that she might make better choices until the very end.

This is the conflict between them for all of season 4 and 5. Jon wants to prove that they can both be decent people, and Helen wants to prove that they were never going to be anything but monsters. This is why she's so devoted to trying to goad Jon into enjoying his newfound godhood. She knows that they are the same, and wants that to mean that he has a spark of evil inside of him, and not that she was always capable of doing good.

When Jon kills her, she loses her life, but wins the argument. Helen is nothing but a dangerous monster who needs to be killed for the good of everyone, and in the moment he decides that, Jon dooms himself to the same fate. Their stories are one and the same. "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." he thought. But he couldn't help her, refused to, even, in the one moment when it actually mattered. And thus, there was never hope for him.

[hekatiane]

I am absolutely radiating. Why can't you see?

[sapsuckers-and-stardust]

Watching Star Trek IV

Whale biologist: why do you hang around with that weird guy who calls you admiral and why are you so close?

Kirk: *hesitates*

Whale biologist, who lives in San Francisco in the 80s and is rapidly drawing many correct conclusions: that’s okay we don’t have to talk about it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Daddy, don't go.

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[idolomantises]

Sometimes I get messages about certain dialogue in my comics about how a character is being passive aggressive when I'm just writing them as straight forward and blunt.

idk, as an autistic person who's dealt with genuine harassment several times (including a few months ago) because his straight forward and blunt demeanor was misinterpreted as being "rude", "ungrateful" and "bitchy", its just kind of interesting seeing people interpret dialogue in a more hostile way.

it's not a complaint, i prefer those fictional interpretations over terminally online twitter users who need to be coddled over everything but it is kind of fascinating seeing how people interpret certain dialogue.

[foldingfittedsheets]

Some years ago I was having lunch with my nana at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It’s important to know for the sake of this story that my nana is a little old Mexican lady who nevertheless mistrusts everyone except white people. We were having a nice time, chatting and eating.

Then midway through the meal she leaned in close and said, “Sometimes… do you think they reuse the rice to make rolls?”

I turned to her in surprise and said, “No, why would you think that?”

“Well,” she said, “You know… those people never like to waste anything.”

We stared at each other across the yawning chasm of her previous statement and finally I managed, “Nana, that’s racist.”

“It is?”

“Yes. It is. Not all Asian people behave the same, and assuming they do is racist. Just like not all Mexican people are the same.”

She looked down at her meal, nonplussed, and I realized that her actual fear of spoiled food hadn’t been addressed.

I sighed and added, “You know, restaurants all get inspected by health inspectors and have to maintain certain codes. And the health inspector is probably also racist, which means non white businesses have to be even more careful. So the rice will always be fresh.”

She brightened immediately. “That’s true!” She ate another roll, secure in the knowledge that racism would keep her food safe.

Then she said, “I could be a health inspector!” and I nearly choked.

[willyhoos]

FUNNY: baby tails canonically calling sonic his mom

HEARTBREAKING: his reasoning -- "a mother is someone who cares about you, therefore sonic is my mother" -- implies that either he didn't have a mother, or she was neglectful/abusive enough that tails concluded she doesn't meet the requirements of what a "mother" is supposed to be. in that case its implied that NO one has cared for him before sonic

FUNNY AGAIN: despite tails calling sonic "mother" to his FACE, sonic didn't refute it whatsoever. boymom the hedgehog

HEARTBREAKING AGAIN: implying that sonic doesn't seem to know what a mother is either

[ofswordsandpens]

I rewatched Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai recently and it's left me wondering – when Zuko begins to goad Azula into striking him with lightning, was he making the decision to kill her?

Because had Azula shot lightning directly at him like he planned and not at Katara, the most forthright implication to me is that he was intending to strike Azula with her own lightning. And Azula, for all her mastery, would not have been able to counter that.

On the other hand, maybe he wasn't planning to kill her at all and was simply planning to redirect it elsewhere (similar to what he did with Ozai). But given the tone of tragedy throughout the Agni Kai, the fact that they both acknowledge that this fight will be "the end" to them, I don't think it's inaccurate to read Zuko's actions as him preparing to kill Azula, even though an Agni Kai doesn't have to end with death (and in canon it didn't). Also, why goad her into striking him with lightning if he wasn't planning on doing something intentional with it? If anything, it adds another layer to the tragedy to me, because I don't believe Zuko wants to kill her. And it stands in such contrast to the way that Azula desperately wants to kill him.

I also think that there would have even been something sadly poetic in that sort of demise for Azula should the Agni Kai had gone this direction: Azula, struck down by her preferred sub-skill. Azula, struck down by the very bolt of lightning that she intended to kill her brother with. Azula, struck down by her own power.

[madootles]

tma tma tma

[3cosmicfrogs]

oh 12.65 litres of blood clinging to the outside of my body, we're really in it now

[saturnvs]

am overcome with nostalgia and i must draw her

[knockknockitsnickels]

I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare. For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her? For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.

[somewhereincairparavel]

a scenario where, jason grace who fears raised voices even if it isn't directed at him, because he remembers his parents' explosive arguments as a toddler, he remembers beryl begging zeus to make her queen of olympus, and thrashing her alcohol bottles everywhere after zeus refused and left, leaving thalia and jason unprotected, to take the brunt of her anger. he remembers thalia crying in agony because of one of the glass pieces piercing her arm, but still stands in front of baby jason to shield him. she quickly picks him up and runs to her room, locking the door. jason stops wailing as she places him on the bed, and gives him a baby bottle while still crying herself whispering ‘its going to be okay, jason, you are okay, I am here. that monster won't hurt you as long as I stop it’

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl found dead in a hidden room.

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