#the inherent tragedy...

[cannibalizecastiel]

WHETHER YOU COME AS A LOVER OR AN EXECUTIONER I AM READY TO RECEIVE YOU.

dean & benny // international small arms traffic blues

[critterbitter]

Introducing! ELESA, the new kid on the block! She's a tiny bedraggled child from Sinnoh and not all that familiar with Galarian, the spoken language in Unova. (One day she'll be amazing. Right now though, she just wants to go play in the mud. And maybe get a better set of hearing aids.)

When not bitterly lonely, she’s scheming to run back to her old home. Or chasing the local patrat. Or watching nervously from the sidelines as other children play on the swings. Oh elesa. (loosely inspired by @/noxstrages' incredible comics about elesa's origins! Ty for the food.)

Masterpost to my submas comics!

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

I need more people to see the MelJayVik vision. Please. Polyamory won’t save them but it can make them so much worse.

What is romance if not two God-like beings and their loser mortal boyfriend?

[strwbrryfire]

ferrari and her devoted predestined

the original painting is by Alméry Lobel-Riche, but the colors/lighting idea came entirely from the lovely @/cuarto_sol on twt

[paper-bag-arts]

the T in Trina stands for Tragedy

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

[windwenn]

feeling so normal about them rn dont even worry

[corsairspade]

I was going to say we need to be weirder about Maglor but then I remembered crablor. That’s on me. We need to also be DIFFERENT weird about Maglor.

Maglor who walks along the coast for thousands of years and does not stop singing. Maglor who after ages of the world have passed, has a voice that is made only for music. When he speaks, there is something too lyrical to the tone. He sighs and the world accompanies him. His raised voice sets the ground shaking, his laments call water like tears from the sky. He has to be careful when he speaks to people, however rare that is, because of it. He weeps and those who can hear him cannot help but weep as well. Maglor with a voice so powerful that he can no longer use it the way he could when the world was young. One more thing lost to the Oath.

[sports-metaphores]

Antigone by Jean Anouilh (trans. Lewis Galantière)

[vala-dreams]

Tumblr ate this yesterday so I'm posting again

I have a cold and I'm exhausted from exams but tfone is eating my brain and I must type

It absolutely killed me to see how optimistic, rebellious and happy Orion Pax was in tfone knowing what was in store for him. Orion and D-16 work so well to me because of their opposing motivations, Orion dreamed of being something other than a cogless miner at the bottom of society while D-16 wanted to follow protocol and uphold a system that oppressed them, if only to secure a space at the top of the leaderboard and live a relatively peaceful and stable life.

D-16 never dreams of being more than the cogless miner because to him that is a delusional concept, a fleeting wish not worth pursuing because there was no legitimate way to pursue it in the world he lives in. He would have gone his whole life mining energon, making quota and following protocol. Maybe he would have landed a job like Elita's. The inherent tragedy of him is that he never would have done anything in life if it weren't for Orion Pax.

Orion Pax, the only one brave or stupid enough to believe that they could be something more. Orion, who got in trouble breaking into the archives because he thought somehow he could help Sentinel. Orion, who dared to race the Iacon 5000 with nothing but a couple of jetpacks and his best friend to show said best friend that they could be equal to the cogged mechs who lorded above them. Orion, who questioned authority and railed against the system in his own way, before ever learning the truth about Sentinel. The inherent tragedy of him is that he loses everything that makes him Orion Pax— his spirit of defiance, his dreams of more, his best friend.

In the end they both pick up what the other leaves behind. Optimus carries D-16's complacency with him by living under the weight of the matrix and Megatron carries Orion's defiance with him by refusing to live under the rule of a Primus sent leader.

They hold each other like a grave holds a body. Like two people who called each other at the same time only for their calls to collide and get sent to voicemail.

[honeysghost]

personally i love the idea that vampires are forced to live their lives in shadows. the shadows of the world, of the night—slinking around dimly lit bars, looking for blood—of their houses, their kings, their makers, their immortality.

the only glimpse at a brighter life porter and sam get are with their partners, and the only glimpse vincent got was with lovely before they were turned and that was stolen too.

[lexalovesbooks]

I love chosen one characters and I love characters that are overpowered as all shit. I love characters with one-of-a-kind powers and I love characters who seem like they’re Just Some Guy until they do something that should be impossible and you’re struck with the realization that. oh. I don’t think this character is human. I love characters so strong they’re basically untouchable and I love characters who are slowly crumpling under the weight of being the only person who can keep the world safe but can never show it and I love characters who spend years hiding who they truly are until circumstances force them to reveal themselves and now they can never go back to who they were before. I love characters who don’t even know exactly how much they’re capable of and aren’t sure they want to find out. How powerful can you become before you stop being a person?

[qiu-yan]

Serious Bitch Opinion: lan wangji...would be a terrible chief cultivator. yes, he is righteous and honorable and has a stalwart moral backbone. however, when you are given the responsibility of leading others, the impeccability of your own moral character must come second to what tangible results you can actually achieve for your people. and if you want to actually achieve any tangible results, instead of getting deadlocked forever or getting done in by your political enemies, you have to learn to compromise on some of your ideals. instead of freezing out the people you find morally despicable, you must learn to cooperate with them; otherwise, you will not achieve anything. and in order to achieve your goals, you must learn that not all of your goals are achievable--that, in order to get the more important of your desired measures passed, you must give up on some others.

now, this is almost the polar opposite of what MDZS as a text champions. arguably one of the central thematic thrusts of MDZS is the importance of not compromising on your ideals, even when it would be far more pragmatic to do so. thus, if lan wangji wanted to become a leader who could actually achieve things, he would have to directly contradict one of the most important messages of the very text that valorizes him.

the moral framework employed by MDZS to evaluate its characters and convey its themes is much more focused on ideals than on results. what matters to MDZS as a narrative is ultimately not the results of one's actions, whether one's righteousness led to joy or to ruin, but rather that one attempted to be righteous even in the face of almost inevitable failure. attempt the impossible, after all. the text of MDZS does not follow utilitarian ideas; it does not condemn wei wuxian for ultimately failing to save almost anyone. rather, wei wuxian's stalwart moral character is celebrated in spite of his failures because he, unlike everyone else, tried.

unfortunately--while someone who is only responsible for their own life can attempt the impossible, someone who is responsible for the lives of millions must instead achieve the achievable.

[ghxst-bird]

I will never shut up about Kenjaku and Geto and dragonflies…..

[lacedspine]

matt murdock is so funny to me like just the way he’ll lose his temper, beat a guy up, and then fling his cane down the nearest dark alleyway and book it to the church to confess his sins. every time without fail like clockwork. i think that every day the priest wakes up and wonders if the hot blind guy is gonna come running in to angst about how much he hates wilson fisk

[chiliger]

Is there anything left?

No, only a husk.