#sorry that didn’t help at all

[elviraaxen]

listen listen

I know Donna and Albin are end game. But entertain us for a quick non canon second-

✨ polycule✨ can Ricky get to kiss boys and girls too ? Mayhaps? A tad even? Albin has two hands

guys the story has like. barely begun and you’re already shipping?? 😂😂 patience, patience!

It’s probably for the better if I wait to answer shipping related questions until the story has progressed a bit. I mean technically I can’t even discuss non-canon since it’s my story so everything I say is technically canon, if you know what I mean!

[planetlongjourney]

Ds9 characters going through genuinely the worst trauma over and over again, finding new ways to have the most horrendous time:

Ds9 crew in the next episode:

[darkmuffinstudios]

The struggle for sleep is super hard sometimes

[guccigarantine]

I’m 100% supportive of people becoming obsessed with a background character in something but when people start saying something is bad because those background characters don’t get any character development we gotta slow down a little

[randomalistic]

Wait you guys are actually buying Disney products I thought it was a joke

(READ TAGS FOR FULL CONTEXT Sorry it’s long dies

[turtleblogatlast]

Things I make for myself when insomnia kicks in

Just a chart about what I wanna change up and keep consistent in my art - I mainly wanna draw Raph with a tail because he deserves one, it fits too well. Donnie gets a long tail too because I didn’t realize how dino-like he looks until I gave him one, and now it’s a must for me haha.

[mauvemischief]

Could I handle being known on the level that Andrew Joseph Minyard and Neil Abram Josten know one another? No, most certainly not. But does that stop me from craving a relationship like theirs on every possible level? No, never in a million years.

[everytimewetouch-dot-mp3]

i am in hell i am trying to find a scum villain fic but the only line i remember is something like ‘binghe fell. you pushed him.” from sy to sj after the iac

was sy a disciple? sj’s brother? his son? i have No Idea. all i remember is ‘binghe fell. you pushed him.’

[nartothelar]

guys look what I made 💀

[wrightfamily]

don’t worry guys trucy wright WILL be at tgs tonight.

[faerygardenparty]

also I apologize for my doomerism but I’m getting real sick of seeing “you survived through last trump election you can survive this one!” posts because motherfucker thousands of people did not survive and it’s privileged as hell to be able to say as much

[theotherbuckley]

Okay but Tommy drops out of high school — he told his father he was gay and he told him he could either be homeless or go to military school. He goes to military school and joins the army and he likes flying the helicopters because it means he doesn’t have to do any of the killing himself. And he makes some friends.

There's one guy who's like the squad leader who's a few years old and built like a Greek god and Tommy's young and a little bit in love. And they're friends maybe even family because this whole group of people spend every waking (and sleeping) moment together. And they all talk like a family and they all say they love each other and tease each other and it's nice. And one night it's just the two of them trading a flask of some sort of alcohol that Tommy doesn't know the name of and the man asks Tommy why he joined the army and where he wants to be in five years and Tommy trusts this man. He's half way in love with him so he doesn't even think twice before he tells the story about the time he came out to his family and his father nearly beat him to death before sending him here. And the conversation tapers off after that and he doesn’t register the change in the air but when he wakes up the next morning he’s being dishonourably discharged because he poses “unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”. He knows what that means.

Tommy joins the fire department because he doesn’t know what else to do. He represses anything regarding his sexuality because he knows now that it’s wrong. He almost feels like he has a family again because his captain seems to like him and some of the guys are cool even if they say things he doesn’t agree with. And then he starts agreeing because maybe they’re right and he’s wrong and he’s just inherently wrong. So he follows their leads and is just straight racist because that’s how he can fit in.

And then a black lesbian woman joins and says she’s a black lesbian woman and Tommy doesn’t understand that either because you can’t be queer you just can’t be because it’s wrong.

But he nearly dies and and an Asian man saves his life and a black lesbian woman comes up with a better idea than any of them had and she tells them she’s no different and she is just as capable. So he improves himself he does and he tries to be better but he still can’t be who he is because the last 2 times he was honest about that he was betrayed.

Tommy leaves the 118 and “don’t ask, don’t tell” is lifted and he meets this guy he likes who likes him back and the 217 don’t seem to have a problem with the gender neutral pronouns and he slowly but surely lets himself open up again and be who he is and when the thing with that guy doesn’t work out because he’s moving to New York and Tommy’s not sure he’s ready to leave, it’s okay because his crew is there and they support him and he can still be himself.

[gumy-shark]

Do you ever think about Mobs repressed anger. Do you ever think about his manga lines about just how badly Reigens lies fucked him up. Do you ever think about how he felt like nobody would actually come to help him, nobody would actually be there if he needed, nobody would actually be around him if it wasn't for the Mob persona. Do you ever think about how he felt like any good traits in him were a lie he made to be liked. Do you ever think about how he thinks the only way to be truly seen is to tear apart his life from the ground up so nobody will try to use him anymore. Do you ever think about Shigeo

”the only one who ever saved me was me” but angry! because he shouldn’t have had to save himself! (and also him Needing to shatter everyone’s perception of him in the most destructive way possible because if there’s even a chance that they genuinely liked him. that they would accept him even when he’s the monster he’s been afraid of his whole life. then everything he’s done and believed and every part of himself he’s suffocated to death- wasn’t necessary. if people other than tsubomi (or possibly ritsu as per the manga) can understand and accept him as he “truly is” then he could’ve been a Person this entire time!!)

[beautysurvives]

On Woman Coding in Supernatural

supernatural is a show where male characters want to become the new God and seek to create a new world that is better than His, by returning to an idealized past, creating an idealized future, or maintaining an idealized present. But in their pursuit of his power, they find that they cannot create anything new, they can only destroy. The first time this happens, it is in the death of Mary Winchester and the goal to create Lucifer’s perfect vessel for the sake of ushering in the apocalypse. Azazel is searching for a woman who will give birth to Lucifer’s perfect vessel. Both Heaven and Hell play a part in engineering things so that both Sam and Dean (Michael’s perfect vessel) are born, but no one can create them out of thin air.

The last time this happens, it is in Chuck (God) attempting to reunite with Amara in order to not only destroy his world (the canon spn universe) but to also leave it behind and create a new one. He tells her that he needs their combined power to achieve the one thing he can’t do on his own — a “reboot” or “reset.” Joining with Amara looks a lot like absorbing her into himself. We can’t see her, but he assures us that she’s “with him.”

Actually, the last time this happens, it’s when we see Sam with his son Dean II, and his blurry wife in the background. Sam has created a Dean who can have a better life than either of them. A reboot. A woman’s worth in this world is not herself or her identity, but the function of her sex organs. Her ability to house and then expel new life.

In season 4, Sam believes that he must kill Lilith to prevent Lucifer from rising / the apocalypse. However, her death is actually the last step in unsealing his cage. In this scene, a blonde Lilith wears a white dress, similar to both Mary and Jess in their deaths. She is the whore to their mother and maiden.

In mythology, Lilith is Adam’s flawed first wife, and the mother of monsters. In spn, she is Lucifer’s first “creation” — an already existent human soul that he himself corrupted. The first demon. Hence, Lilith is, symbolically, both mother and child. And her death at Sam’s hand signifies his role as the unwitting killer of his own mother, and the symbolic killer of the feminine. Similarly, Ruby’s presence at his side, feeding her her own blood (as Azazel did) and encouraging him to drink the blood of others, makes her (like Azazel) a sort of wet nurse or midwife, helping Lilith to birth the apocalypse with Sam as both the symbolic father and son. The man who brings Lucifer into being through violent action, and simultaneously the son who must continue to nurse on demon blood in order to grow into Lucifer.

Though there are many different ways to describe possession in Supernatural, it is clear that Lucifer’s possession of Sam is intended not as an act of violent penetration (in contrast to the language used to describe Michael’s theoretical possession of Dean), but as a literal embodiment. Sam is not just going to be “worn” or “wielded.” He is going to become, and as a matter of fact he always has been. This is illustrated to Sam through the revelation that many of Sam’s closest friends, advisors, and allies throughout his life were, in fact, planted there by Lucifer. And, just as Lucifer plans to take his vengeance and set things right, Sam undoubtedly wishes to do the same. Sam’s ability to cage Lucifer is the one instance in which victory does not require violence from him, but the opposite. Restraint. When he is reminded of his relationship with Dean, when he realizes how badly Lucifer has hurt him and allows himself to feel that pain as if it is his own — when he goes from embodying Lucifer to caging him within himself — from being to being a vessel — he sacrifices himself, discarding any hope of a future in order to protect his brother from any further harm. The same thing that Dean tried to do for him when they were children (informed by his own mother), and the same thing that Mary in her death.

In season 5, Cas takes Claire Novak as a vessel, and tells us that she, like Jimmy, is chosen. Jimmy pleads for Cas to release Claire and take him instead, and Cas, seemingly moved despite having just been forcibly reprogrammed as punishment for his empathy, repossess Jimmy.

In season 6 Cas takes Eve’s (the mother of monsters) children — the souls in purgatory — into himself. In this same season, Dean lives with Lisa and attempts to be a parent to her son Ben. He admits that he has started to feel like Ben is really his son, even though he isn’t. In episode one of s6, Exile on Main St, anticipating ridicule about his new domestic lifestyle by his family, Dean refers to himself as a soccer mom. Samuel Campbell, their resurrected grandfather, sincerely (not tauntingly) tells Dean that he reminds him of Mary. Dean, who, as we learned in s4, is named after Mary’s mother and Samuel’s wife, Deanna. In this world, settling down is always associated with becoming feminine. A man who quits hunting to live with a woman has been symbolically castrated, losing the aspect of his masculinity that is violent and heroic — a version of masculinity that Dean simultaneously rejects and feels compelled (by duty) to return to.

In season 11 we meet Amara, who was (symbolically) caged inside Dean, and who first manifests as a baby that he saves against Sam’s recommendation — as Sam very pragmatically wishes to focus on saving as many people as possible. In doing so, Sam finds himself afflicted with the same monstrous condition that plagues the people in this town. He can only save them and himself by expelling the sickness. In this same season, Crowley, still trying to get over his previous connection with Dean, raises Amara and guides her through her childhood, feeding her demons — which are corrupted human souls. As she matures and breaks free, she seems to prefer human souls, but she is seen eating angel souls/essences/grace as well. One human who had her soul taken describes it as “being with Amara” and seems to feel mainly release and relaxation. This is the same offer she makes to Dean. Though the language and implications are of sexual and romantic union, there is a clear womb-like connotation in her proposition. To be with her is to have ones soul kept safe inside her. The apocalypse she promises to bring is not only destruction, but a return to the state of being inside the womb. The state the universe was in before she and Chuck “split apart.” A state unruined by existence, everything preserved in a state of potential being, reduced to ideas, concepts, feelings, urges. Everything unconscious and unformed — the archetypical feminine. The darkness as ignorance.

Throughout the series, a primary question is whether or not any of the hunters (or Cas or Jack) can retire from hunting and live a normal human life. This is an essential part of Sam’s character journey — can he ever “settle down” and have a family of his own? Answering this is always contingent on the presence or absence of a woman at his side. We are asked, how can he achieve this if every woman who enters his life will inevitably be killed? He does not show the same consistent desire that Dean does to raise a child until s13 when he meets Jack. And then, in the final season, Eileen is reintroduced into his life, and the question comes up again about Sam “settling down.” Resurrecting Eileen is presented as a heroic act for Sam alone to achieve. Dean’s plan was to house her in a crystal — Rowena’s soul bomb — a metaphorical womb that can be repurposed as a weapon (only if enough souls are inside, just as Amara gained strength from consuming souls, as Cas gained power by consuming souls, and Dean was made into a bomb by absorbing the souls into himself). But Sam wants her to live again, and finds an opportunity through the spell that Jack forced Rowena to make in order to bring their mother back to life. The spell that failed, because Mary’s resurrected vessel was not capable of holding a soul within it. Like Mary herself, it fails at being what Amara was, a symbolic womb for the infant soul. It is empty, and incapable of being filled. Infertile.

But Sam is able to achieve it with Eileen, through a scene that mirrors both birth and baptism. Eileen emerges naked from a tub, her soul itself transformed into flesh. Where Dean, Cas, and Amara have all been related to the soul, gaining their power from it, ingesting souls and becoming, themselves, wombs — Sam is only concerned with the physical world. He is a character of action, who constantly leaves and returns to his heroic starting point. His blood drinking arc — in contrast to Cas’s soul eating, or the soul-bomb climax of Dean’s moc arc with Amara — is the physical alternative to the soul. Demon blood is also human blood — it is like the symbolic blood of Christ, the son of God — where Dean and Cas habitually ingest the spirit. This is further symbolized by Dean’s becoming a demon in s10, fulfilling his demonic duty by carrying out soul contracts for Crowley.

But in season 15, a season all about undoing the past and returning to an idealized one — to the beginning of the show itself, when it was just about two brothers hunting monsters, without angels and without God — Sam’s ability to leave hunting and finally accept a “normal life” is put in the spotlight, directly mirroring Chuck’s desire to leave this world behind and start a better one. Concepts like normal, human, Heaven and Paradise in spn, have always been related to the feminine — impossible to achieve for characters who view themselves as soldiers, only accessible through the consensual use and death of a woman and/or sacrifice (Mary, Kelly Kline). Those who seek to create a better world — a world safe from monsters — are not allowed to enjoy that world, because they can only seek it through violence.

For Chuck, a better world can only be achieved by abandoning any attachment he has to these characters and this world — and he can only join forces with Amara on his own terms, otherwise they will be locked in a constant power struggle. He only gets what he wants when Amara loses her own remaining attachment to the world (as before, she was content to passively enjoy it even while it was destroyed before her eyes) — her trust in Dean. She loses her tie to him an episode before he loses Cas, his own reason for existing.

Amara’s willing fusion with Chuck is neither her death, nor a fusion of their identities, but a reabsorption — or, consumption. It is the loss of her identity in favor of his. The final victory of the masculine aspect of God, the final act of submission from the feminine. Not equality or balance, but the continued structural placement of the masculine as higher/holier than the feminine despite her having power he cannot access. It is her becoming an organ, a womb — internal and unseen, but giving him the power to be able to leave this world behind. It’s the strength to be able to release. A paternal strength, both of them lacking emotional attachment to what they once loved. Chuck no longer desires to put himself in this story, just as he wants to end the show, he wants the death of this character — Chuck is the weaker version of God, the one that he wants to escape. He wants to transcend this earthly state, leaving this identity behind to create a new and improved one.

So every death in this final season, including Dean’s, Cas’s, Jack’s, and Eileen’s (as well as her erasure from the narrative), like Mary’s death and Amara’s absorption, are presented as necessary sacrifices. Like Jess. The symbolic death of the motherly/feminine aspect of God, which can nurture but attaches to the point of self destruction. Dean’s death was, I think, a suicide framed as an accident — his sacrifice, in order to force Sam to leave the hunting life behind, but also to ensure that, if one was truly destined to kill the other, he would never have to be the one to do it. Dean’s death is presented to us as the only possible end to the series which can not only scrub clean the sins of the past and return Sam to an idealized state (one of potential that can be fulfilled), but also allow him, like God!Jack (the better, more powerful version of Chuck, still containing the symbolic womb Amara, like the symbolic womb of the blurry wife), to set in motion a better future. A “reboot.” This is only possible in union with the feminine — but this union cannot look like becoming or attempting to replace, embody, be contained within, or contain the feminine, as it has been implied in both Dean and Cas’s past parental / Godlike roles — it must be done through consumption or use of the female as an organ. The womb (and vagina) as tools — a means to an end, but one which does not alter or lose the male identity.

[hikaruchen]

Reading this blog and procrastinating what I should’ve been doing at the moment, but it’s super helpful if you want to know more about the Anglo-Saxon and Viking material culture but don’t want to be bored to hell. All articles are done by an archaeologist specializing in mortuary archaeology, and he has already written several ones about burials and pagan practices during that time through the lens of The Last Kingdom. I’ve linked one of his posts before on ao3 when discussing about the historical accuracy of Alfred’s tomb effigy in the show under the pic Prayer from the Pagan, but didn’t really had the time to check others out. I just did it and find his other articles are actually super interesting to read as well.

For instance, back when I post this pic in January I said the colour palette was inspired by the Alfred jewel, but I completely forgot that it actually appeared in the show (2x04) where Alfred handed it to Æthelwold and said “Take this. It is a symbol of my kingship. Bear it with authority.”, which might be partially true but is hilarious if you give it another thought.

Because, why, in God’s name, would Alfred hand an ARTEFACT version of the piece he commissioned himself to his nephew? As Prof. Williams already stated (in this post), the Alfred jewel has long been assumed to be the handle part of a pointer stick for following words when reading a book, and if you look at the artefact itself it is quite clear that there’s a part that’s been missing as well. The reason why scholars think it has something to do with Alfred is because:

1) It’s written. The text on the frame literally says that “ÆLFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN”, which means “Alfred ordered me made”. The more detailed explanation below (with the help of beloved wikitionary since I don’t understand Old English at all)

ÆLFRED (subject) Alfred, obviously MEC (object) me; accusative of iċ (I), but in the West Saxon dialect it’s actually an uncommon version of iċ’s accusative and is more often seen in the Anglian dialect. The frequently-used version for West Saxons is mē HEHT (verb) ordered; third-singular past tense for hātan (to call; to order etc.), often followed with infinitive verbs, cognate with heißen in German GEWYRCAN (verb) to make; I honestly don’t know if “to make” and “to be made” is just the same word in OE help And since the word order in OE is random as hell thanks to the case system (much like German which I eventually gave up learning because I don’t have a brain big enough for that. IT MAKES NO SENSE TO A NATIVE MANDARIN SPEAKER THANK YOU), it is eventually translated into “Alfred ordered me to be made”.

2) It was discovered in Somerset and has been dated to the late 9th century, and we all know what Somerset meant to Alfred

3) Alfred did say he would send a copy of his translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care to every episcopal see in his kingdom in the preface to it, with the book accompanied “an æstel of 50 mancuses”. Mancus was a term to denote a gold coin or a unit for coins worth about a month’s wage for a skilled worker, such as a craftsman or a soldier. Whatever that æstel is it must be worth hell LOTS of money

But honestly while I do think this interpretation sounds very much plausible I’m thinking about other possibilities as well - how many Alfreds exactly existed during his time? We know that Æthel in OE means noble, so people bearing this prefix in their names were usually royal members or at least aristocrats, but what about Alfred? Was Alfred a popular name? Or was it unique enough that he could just go by this name without mentioning his title at all? Imagine if it were an Æthelred who made this, who the hell would know which one of these it was referring to, Æthelred the King, Æthelred the Ealdorman, Æthelred Ealhswith’s father, or even Æthelred the fucking Archbishop??? And yeah, I know Alfred was the king ™ here and there isn’t really much space left on the frame after all, but surely it wouldn’t cost a bone to add a cyning behind his name, right?

Sadly, as it was in the pre-Domesday-Book era, I can’t find the statistics of Anglo-Saxon names at that time (but keep in mind that there were at least 19 Alfreds worthy enough to be mentioned in Domesday Book even after the conquest. I don’t know if this says anything at all but I do want to mention it) What I’m trying to say is while it is highly highly highly likely (and I do believe and want to believe in this theory!), we cannot be one hundred percent certain that this jewel was really from the Alfred we’re talking about. And even if it was, it apparently wouldn’t be carried around by Alfred like THAT. Because that would be like, “Bear this with authority! Even though the symbol of my kingship is broken!”, said Alfred to a king wannabe. Lol.

The other thing I want to mention is this post about the show’s use of Fuller brooch, the one Alfred wore in S2 when he was in his war gear.

First of all, it is indeed dated to late 9th century and is assumed by scholars to be made by metalworkers of Alfred’s court. Everything is fine except I don’t think you would want to wear jewelry that luxurious to war…but then there’s this thing:

MEET GIANT FULLERS!

Well, can’t blame them since I am basically doing the same thing with my drawings (i.e. using patterns on jewelry and illustrations from manuscripts for embroidery design). But it’s worth noting that designs that are suitable for one art form doesn’t mean they can be applied to another well, and that’s why I claim my art is inspired by Anglo-Saxon art but NOT historical accurate for the Anglo-Saxon period. The reason I still do this and think it is understandable for TLK crew to do so is because we simply don’t have that many resources to reference from when it comes to this time period, and fabrics and wooden buildings are just extremely hard to preserve by nature. Instead of screwing up the design on your own, it just has more fun to add real historical elements into your work. Look at those easter eggs!

Ok, that’s it. I hope you enjoy my long rant and have a good read from Prof. Williams’s works!

[gomzdrawfr]