#that generation was so brave

[mrmeepsmadmind]

im obsessed with the way ironhide is abt to get painfully crushed into a literal cube of scrap like in the monsters Inc trash compactor , & his last words are just ' later guys, it's been real'

[obiscribbles]

Week 30 - October 22nd, 2023 'Love Never Fails' - Brandon Heath Spotify / YouTube

Just a few more things to sign and then you can properly fall asleep in his arms, foolish Jedi.

Enjoy~

View a week early on my Patreon!

[lotus-pear]

rewatched madoka magica again today bc i fucking hate myself and to absolutely no one’s surprise i went through all five stages of grief in a single evening

[ink-the-artist]

Workplace Divinity

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.

[lemongogo]

viktor prev 🤖

[deathsmallcaps]

Captain America: Brave New World (CABNW) analysis

This movie is all about themes of rehabilitation, hope, and not allowing your past to define your future.

Sam is redefining the mantle of the shield, and reclaiming his independence. Since reaching adulthood, he has worked as part of the military, or in a major team, and always besides super powered people (not that he was the only regular human in the Avengers, but you know). And now Sam gets to herald a new age of modern values of rehabilitation.

Steve was also a man of hope, but he (as a white man) fought the Other: fascists and aliens. AKA, unredeemables (in the short term) and nonhumans. He was from WWII; while the full truth of the matter is that the USA did not join the war out of altruism and a wish to save oppressed peoples, I personally feel glad that the USA was able to help out in those matters. I feel our part in the war was justified when it came to stopping multiple genocides. Many people also feel this way, and hold WWII up as this bastion of ‘justified’ wars. Many feel it’s okay that Americans went to Germany and Japan and started killing people, because they were doing it first.

Same thing with alien invasion storylines. I love Steve, but the only person he is MCU-canonically pursuing rehabilitation for is Bucky. He has different values as both a survivor of WWII, a witness to the explosive growth of fascism in the early 1900s, and a white man. Sure, Steve grew up disabled and Irish(-American) in the early 1900s, but he was also a blue eyed blond haired American man who shows no trace of an Irish identity on screen. Steve is a hopeful, principled and angry man.

Meanwhile, Sam grew up being othered as a Black child and then man, joined a war that was never justifiable (never confirmed what war he was in but no war the USA has perpetuated in the 2000s, if not even earlier, has been justifiable), and then continually had to be an examplar wherever he went. Except for possibly War Machine (I’m not sure where he fits in), Sam was the ONLY Avenger of Color. Ever. (And the only one from a more rural area)

And yet Sam always chooses hope and kindness. He has it rough - as the only Avenger of Color, he had to always choose others needs over his own. He and Isaiah Bradley (another person restored by Sam’s rehabilitative justice <3) discuss the weight of that. Bradley points out time and time again that Sam doesn’t owe the world his kindness, his willingness to be a hero, his health and well-being. After all, Bradley got fucked over for doing the right thing, a Steve-type thing, in a Black body. But Sam decides to push on anyway.

I’m not saying Sam isn’t angry. He deserves to feel angry, he has as much right to the emotion as any other human being. But every single goddamn time he can, he chooses to be kind. He chooses to believe that people can find worth again. And that takes a strength of will that is frankly insane. PLUS he does it without a consistently optimized body.

And he chooses to be kind to Ross, of all people. Ross, who is clearly trying to be a changed man in the events of the film - but still a man who imprisons innocents and whose first instinct is to pick fights with nations who own nuclear weapons.

But Sam still reaches out to him. Still helps Ross meet Betty while Ross is in prison. Is the better man, every goddamn time.

Hell, they even represent what changes Sam could herald for the fate of the United States, and even the world, visually. In Ross’s panic as the Red Hulk, he destroys the White House*, a symbol built by slave labor. And under Sam’s tenure as Captain America, it will be rebuilt - along with what a hopefully better United States of America.

I love Sam Wilson, and I am SO excited to see his future as Captain America.

*and possibly also the Washington Memorial? I know he goes by but the detail slipped my mind. It also was built with slave labor. Some might quibble and try to claim that the obelisk was built by skilled stonemasons, but many many many enslaved people were extremely skilled laborers. So there is a huge chance that the stonemasons were enslaved. And even if they used completely white/free Black stonemasons, the quarried stone was mined by enslaved people. So yes, it was built by slave labor.

(Also I think it’s cool that Sam’s getting his own villains like Serpent and Leila Taylor made an appearance? She was basically his only canon love interest EVER**, and she hasn’t appeared since the 1970s. I think it’s still possible that he might be given a male LI or they just never pursue that angle of the character, but at least she and Sam have a relationship built on at least some respect and personal chemistry. Unlike Steven and Sharon.

Personally I’m more of a fan of Samsteve or even SamJoaquin than SamBucky, but that’s just mostly because while he’s grown on me in the last few years, I’m not really a Bucky fan. Samsteve probably won’t happen because of the stupid time travel thing (though who’s to say they didn’t at least have a fling? Plz?) but SamJoaquin could happen! I wasn’t sold on Joaquin right away - his sunny personality was tripping my betrayal alarms in my movie expectations brain - but I am glad to be wrong. I’m excited to see him as Falcon again once he heals up!

**There was a werewolf princess lady? But she literally never came back. Which disappoints me because I thought she was funny (I read her issue) and really unique. She was human but had a device to specifically control werewolves? And they do exist in the MCU, thanks to Werewolf by Night…

I LOVED the dogfight scene. Great body work on Anthony Mackie’s part, interesting background, awesome moves (cutting through a plane with a wing? Punching and pulling a pilot out of their plane and letting the rest of it just fall?? Sam and Joaquin together???) and fucking BOMBSURFING

[oscargender]

Heartbreaking: “problematic” danmei everyone told you to avoid is actually pretty decent and has mildly interesting things to say about poverty and class

[revvethasmythh]

you ever think about the parallels drawn between veth's brothers and khaaz, the goblin who had her killed. the way veth sees her brothers when khaaz laughs at her expense. the way they both call her circumstances a "penance" that she has to pay, for the crimes of being "annoying" or fighting to survive. the fact that veth thought she deserved it

[skitskatdacat63]

Roleswap anyone??

Tell me Fernando wouldn't make a fantastic general/emperor, and that Napoleon wouldn't make a fanastic driver/tp!!

[energeticpoltergeist]

FE Secret Santa (Bonus)

Ashe for @silversongmsp

an extra submission as not everybody got drawings during @feshippingpolls secret santa last year

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Taylor has a song about how a dry spell (among other things) lit the fuse about her fantasizing about a man she would come to despise and about her realizing her long-term relationship was dead and some pearl-clutchers think she’s offended that her boyfriend accidentally implied that they cannot relate to that feeling anymore lmao

[the-haven-keepers-collective]

My first attempt at writing that's vaguely like poetry: from a dragon

I am not what you think.

I walk around, awkward limbs and flighty mannerisms, and you think I’m strange. You have no idea how strange you would think I am if you only saw what was underneath.

Underneath, I am a creature of the ocean. Something that could never pass as human, and no longer wants to. Saltwater rushes through my veins in secret, silent to everyone but me. To me, it’s a roaring sound of the waves that I have never seen except for within my soul. It yearns to dissolve into the ocean like it could long ago, but for now those days are over and I am hidden underneath skin and muscle.

Underneath, there are wings; fins; antlers. They ache to tear from my back, through my skull. Nonetheless, they stay hidden for me, safe in the silence. Protected like I protected my kin in a lifetime so close to the surface and yet unreachable. Wrapped in a form that no longer coils around them like a serpent, but keeps them hidden from predators well enough I suppose.

I suppose.

I accept my form reluctantly and do what I can to make it mine. I shape it to feel better when I discover my gender, and when I can’t shape it to fit my true self I cover it in things that feel a little more like home. A little more draconic. A little more like the ocean that I never have seen, but feel homesick for anyway.

I do find joy in being in this body, at least. Out there, there are others. Angels working minimum wage, dragons sitting on a park bench, wolves buying groceries. We hide, but we do so to be free. We walk through crowds, and no one notices our scales and fur and feathers. But we do. We see each other, even if from miles away, and we see what’s underneath.

And underneath, none of us are what you think.

(Tags for side commentary/context)

[frankdelfino]

no gifsets of bianca and vince is crazy… y’all are not seeing the vision

[curiouslymyown]

Darkness at the heart of my love just feels so only the brave jegulus coded