#so yeah the privilege is on show

[mariniacipher]

the way you're watching a video of two women talking about interior design, and the way they judge some spaces seems kind of judgemental to you, but it's all in good fun, right?

Only for them to show a picture of the home of one of the women- and she cannot even hang up her pictures on the wall and made midcentury look like High End IKEA via the vice of minimalism and cowardice in regard to colour and décor- which would explain why she couldn't hang up her picture, if she's so afraid to make a fucking statement.

[the--firevenus]

Like to think about Jason being the most over protective Robin between all the Robins, like they all are protective of the batman but he's the most vocal about it and will not be shy saying it cuz it's the truth also that's his dad bro hello? Yes he'd say it out loud!?

Like to think that habit didn't die actually, just repressed really really well but the second a threat was aim to Batman's head suddenly you got punch good square in the face by red hood, it's scary cuz for a big guy (bigger than batman) they didn't hear him coming nor does they expect the goddamn crime lord to protect batman, but he did, he's very pissed about it too, then he yelled at Bruce for his lack of awareness to the surrounding

And if Bruce felt nostalgic for a moment from that, well, he won't say it to anyone but his ever slightly soft smile on his face as he type his report would gave it away to anyone observing

[meanderingstream]

Eliot at peace with being Damned

One of the things that makes Eliot hard to write for in-character (but also such an interesting character to explore) is that he believes he is damned to Hell and he is at peace with that. He has a lot of guilt, oceans of guilt, but it's not so much the tortured, anguished catholic guilt à la Nate or like, Daredevil. 

He has done monstrous, unforgivable things. But, on his own, he came to a realization of what he had done, and pulled away from that world. On his own, he left the worst person he ever worked for, and stopped using guns, and stopped killing. On his own, he switched from wetwork to retrievals. This all occurs before we ever meet him, so while there are many hints and inferences, the specifics of how that happened, how he came to those decisions, are left up to the audience’s imagination. 

Eliot wants to make the world a better place, and he works everyday with the team to help people, and he genuinely enjoys helping people and the work he does on the job. But he does not believe that he can be redeemed. (Not my own personal belief about him, but it is what he thinks). When he dies, he will go to Hell for his sins, and there is nothing that can possibly be done to change that. He doesn't need to angst over it, because it’s just a fact. It is what it is. There is no point agonizing over whether his soul can be saved, because he knows it cannot. This is both a keystone of his character, and also something he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about day-to-day, because it’s a settled matter. 

And as much as we love Eliot the character, he has a point that lives are not tradable for equivalent exchange. If he killed a specific family 25 years ago, that was snuffing out the light and potential and future of those particular parents and children. The surviving extended family lost those particular relatives. Saving a family now does not balance that ledger, because each person is a unique life and not interchangeable for another. While I may have different beliefs about Hell and redemption than Eliot, I still want to acknowledge that he has a point. That changing now doesn't necessarily help the people he hurt in the past, and unlike Harry, he can’t work down a list of making amends, because almost all of his victims are dead. There is no atonement to the dead. 

Eliot’s redemption is in seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and helping others get to it. Particularly the team, and particularly the pair he’s going to protect until his dying day. He will stay down there in the dark forever (he believes), but getting the others out is his redemption. 

I do not believe that Eliot will actually go to Hell when he dies, but his belief that he is damned is fundamental to who he is as a character, and he is going to believe that for the rest of his life. It can be really challenging to balance that when writing his POV, particularly when delving into events that dredge this stuff up for him (which we writers love to do because it’s so delicious). Eliot doesn’t exactly have a low self-esteem. He knows he has many skills and is exceptional at them (cooking, fighting, grifting, guitar, sports, etc). He pretty much knows his teammates love him, and care about him, and want him to stay alive for them, and spend the rest of his life with them. He has professional pride, and he will argue when he wants something. He is certainly not a doormat. However, he also believes he is fundamentally and irrevocably a bad person. Balancing between him not being too self-deprecating in normal situations / about his usefulness to the team, with his inherent belief in his own moral depravity can be a thin blade to walk without falling to one side or another. But it is also one of the biggest aspects of his psyche that makes him such a fascinating and complex character to explore.

[edwin-paynes-bowtie]

Dead Boy Detectives being canceled is still one of the Top 10 Worst Feelings I Have Ever Had, but hey. Could be worse. Guess it could have been canceled on a cliffhanger with the obvious Set(TM) on different planes of existence, not speaking to each other after a desperate kiss

[beatcroc]

homest[ar/uck] posting. this was meant to be supplementary to the gerome comic as him 'explaining the joke' but i uhhhhhh forgot.

i'm not much for crossovers in the the traditional sense, but it IS one of my favorite character exploration exercises to just go like 'if x media existed in this universe, who would and would not be a fan of it?'. and these ones are pretty notorious and always very fun to mess with for that and so here we are

[gingermintpepper]

I have finished the book. It was not a very good book at all. My preliminary thoughts are as follows:

Prose is the best part about it but also one of the worst. Evocative and lovely language was used for what I can only describe as manipulating the reader. In a different book by a different writer, perhaps that would be the mark of a good unreliable narrator but this is not that kind of book and the writer, I fear, is not clever enough for that kind of narrative.

The characters - I do not think of them. Trapped as we are in Alcestis' head, she is a passive, dull thing who I do not know any better at the end of the book than I did at the start. I couldn't distinguish where her voice ended and where the author's began and it is through that haziness that all other characters are observed. Admetus is an objectively phenomenal husband but his kindness and regard is made bitter because he loves Apollo not her. Apollo is no more than a ghost haunting them both. Hippothoe and Phylomache exist as images of what Alcestis could be - a woman who dies of illness or children - and Heracles is awkward and small, quiet and passive in the way everything is in this book. Persephone and Hades are perhaps the only characters of some interest in here, but Persephone is a volatile mess of power masquerading as empowerment while Hades, like all the men in this book really, is small and passive and really only becomes worth something when out of Persephone's massive shadow.

The romance - What romance? There is no romance in this book. Alcestis imagines that what occurs between Admetus and Apollo is a romance but we do not get to see that story. The obvious regard and kindness Admetus holds for Alcestis would be romance in any other book - but in this it is described with so much apathy and loathing so as to make Admetus' actions seem unremarkable and lacking. As for Persephone and Alcestis; Alcestis wants nothing to do with her until Persephone forces her. She assaults her, like Hades assaulted her, while speaking the words of that tale into Alcestis' flesh while Alcestis rejects her and somehow this becomes the catalyst of their 'love'. There is no romance in this book.

The queer themes - I am not sure how one makes a story so easily given to a queer imagining biphobic, lesbophobic and not poly but it sure did that. Alcestis' ideas about love and sexuality and how it might possibly have different forms and fashions is unchanged from start to finish and homosexuality, for all that it is what she blames her ruined marriage on, is never explored past a few fleeting, derogatory descriptions and quickly brushed over allusions.

The Apollo Thing - Listen to me so carefully. Apollo is only in a single scene of this book. One single scene and it is the wedding scene where Admetus calls upon him to save them from the poisonouse snakes. Every other mention of him in this book is in passing, an offhanded mention of a person praying to a god, or with the underlying scorn and anger of a wife thinking of her husband's mistress. Apollo is not even there when Alcestis dies. He wasn't even responsible for Heracles eventually going down to the Underworld to retrieve her. If the author could've erased him from the wedding scene too, I'm sure she would've invented a way to do it. Apollo has no relationship with Alcestis, we do not get to see the nature of his relationship with Admetus and every other opportunity which existed to show him on their side was neatly and entirely erased. Thanatos, naturally, is completely absent from this novel.

In short, this was entirely unpleasant from essentially start to finish. I was very excited when I started this book and saw the quality of the prose and also the ambivalent character sketched of its gods but things went so rapidly and extremely downhill that I am left wondering how it was possibly flubbed that badly.

Regarding this book's feminism, I will dedicate a separate post to that entirely. To this book's credit, it did not have the superficial girlboss feminism that many of its contemporaries tend to champion but to its complete and utter detriment, the feminism it champions is perhaps the most insidious kind. The sort that excludes the disenfranchised, the impoverished and the normal woman. This book's feminism is for the privileged and the powerful and it is a deeply upsetting thing.

Lastly, I would like to thank @superkooku , @konu-d and @waterlinkedgirl for cheering me on through this absolute torment. I would not have finished this without them. Take that as you will.

If you are interested in the tale of Admetus and Alcestis or just want to read a retelling, I urge you to just read @reawakened-revenant (CiCiRose on ao3)'s God of the Golden Bow series. It is captivating, enthralling, impeccably researched and so utterly submersed in passion, love and care that it is breathtaking to read. It is a personal favourite of mine and the standard to which I hold all other Admetus and Alcestis retellings.

With all that done, I am going to stare at a wall and contemplate the horrors now. ✌🏾

[finalacts]

the way under the bridge has becca see herself in the teens of seven oaks, particularly josephine and warren, when in actuality she has much more in common with kelly (background-wise, at least), coupled with her anti-police beliefs vs cam being a first nations cop + the historical & institutional baggage that carries, is so interesting to me. not fully sure how to articulate this yet but the show is putting forth a specific form of (anti-institution yet still benefiting from/privileged ?) whiteness i don't think i've ever seen in media and is really a testament to the thought that the writers have put into in creating becca and cam's characters and the larger paradigms they're meant to portray

[agentscamander-romanoff]

Headcanon:Danny Rand sometimes forgets he is a billionaire

[sibillascribbles08]

Drew some office gays

Kinda late for valentines but I got the idea rly late oops

ID in alt text

[followerofmercy]

Hey who wants to play Poverty Simulator from my roommate's social work classes

It's great. It's miserable. It's a little unrealistic because grocery prices have skyrocketed.

[mando-forgive-me]

Male privilege is fucking wild. It’s like they haven’t grown up in a reality where they are constantly assessing what level of threat half the people they meet could pose.

[generic-enthusiast]

so i watched the movie version of dear evan hansen and... it's definitely... an adaptation someone could make

[jayviked]

LESBIAN COUPLE IN THE MUSEUM

[tricktack]

y'all ever notice how quickly people will start calling a nb person a man again as soon as they're mad at them?

[willesredlights]

.

[cushfuddled]

I finished Hazbin a bit ago and call me crazy but I honestly hope Sir Pentious' ascension had nothing to do with redemption as a concept.

I hope it was just a glitch in the matrix from like, the raw, holy power of Adam's laser blast + whatever magical artillery Pentious had revved up at the helm of his ship. I just think it would be VERY funny if Adam accidentally baptized some guy so hard he rebooted him to Heaven.