#the nature of choice

[thebiballerina]

[Image ID: Tumblr tag(s) from @888jazzy888 reading: #The joker sweating as he tries to count how long they've been talking /End ID]

Honestly, "just one bad day" being some sort of gotcha has always made no sense to me. Does anyone actually think the idea that we're all just a tiny bit of stress away from snapping is some sort of… breaking news? Spoken like someone who has never had a meeting that could have been an email.

Joker: Just one bad day.

Tim: That's ridiculous

Joker: That's all it tak-

Tim: A whole day???

Joker: What?

Dick: what?

...

...

..

Joker: The day thing is supposed to be really short, like its- its supposed to surprise you, your supposed to say Just One Day!!?? 'o' surely not!

Jason: Wha, how did you say that?

Tim: Dude, I'd only need like 5 minutes

Dick: FIVE??

Joker: W- I-

Tim: They don't even have to be bad

Joker: I dont-

Tim: Like, 5 really annoying minutes

Dick: Tim-

Tim: I'd kill all of you.

[flagellant]

yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it

[meticulousmaker]

another random thing that stands out to me rewatching Steven Universe as an adult:

throughout the show there's this clear Vibe that Steven has inherited some big magical destiny, right? and it makes sense narratively: he's the son of Rose Quartz, leader of the rebellion, now being raised by her friends who were the last remaining survivors of an interstellar war. he's like a human child in most ways, except he has magical powers that start to become more obvious as he's getting older. no one like him has ever existed before. it's a big deal. raising him and figuring out how he's going to grow is its own unique challenge, because nobody knows what to expect. so of course there's this magical destiny vibe, given all that.

What's interesting to me, though, is that this magical destiny is in no way literally, physically present in the story, it's just something everyone kinda feels. Like, there's not some ancient prophecy about a half-gem, half-human savior. He's not the Chosen One in any literal sense, he just happens to give off Chosen One vibes. And I say that's interesting because it means that the fact he was kinda raised with this Chosen One vibe is completely a decision everyone around him made, for better or for worse. And the show is aware of this, because the weight of Rose's legacy and everyone's expectations of him is a constant theme, and as Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl all grow and develop, they also realize the downsides of them putting those expectations on a child. Like, Steven spends his whole childhood being told about how great Rose was, and how because he's inherited her gem he will probably inherit her powers - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine how awful things could have been if Steven had no exposure to the Gems and no knowledge of what they were or how they worked, and then his powers started coming in? It was hard enough even when he was surrounded by the most qualified Gem Experts on Earth. But being primed for all of this "you're going to have your mother's magical powers" stuff put a heavy weight on his shoulders, and then the fact that nobody else quite knew how his abilities worked meant he was constantly faced with the adults in his life looking to him with concern because they didn't know what was happening with him. That's gotta leave an impression on a kid - and, well, throughout the show and especially in SU Future we definitely see that it does.

I like the way the show handles the pressure that's put on him, and the fact that everyone is just... trying their best in a completely unprecedented situation. Nobody knows what to do or how to raise this kid, and that inevitably causes problems but everyone is trying. And Steven can feel that everyone is trying without knowing what to do and he just wants to help and not be a burden and none of his caretakers have said that he's a burden but he can feel everyone's confusion and concern and the expectations he's not living up to and he cares so much, about everyone, about everything. He's in an extremely unique position that grants him opportunities to help that nobody else has, and he feels like he's failing everyone if he can't fulfill that, and in the end it never should have been his job to fix things but somebody had to try. Somebody had to try, and he was one of the only people with the ability to stop the Diamonds, stop the war, stop the lies, stop his world and everyone on it from being destroyed... and he was just a kid.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Neighbourhood Dispute

A mudskipper and a crab have a territorial dispute in Roebuck Bay, Australia. 

by Ofer Levy

Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award

[canisalbus]

I kidnapped ur long-nosed cat for a sec

.

[luckkythirt33n]

8 AND A HALF MONTHS TILL GINGER GENDER TWINK AND ACTING CHOICES BIMBO ARE BACK

The second I see a GOS3 BTS photo I'm going to simply pass away, stimming won't be enough I will simply explode out of this skin prison-

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[ffcrazy15]

Someone needs to do an analysis on the way the Kung Fu Panda movies use old-fashioned vs. modern language ("Panda we meet at last"/"Hey how's it going") and old-fashioned vs. modern settings (forbidden-city-esque palaces/modern-ish Chinese restaurant) to indicate class differences in their characters, and how those class differences create underlying tensions and misunderstandings.

[yellow-g0ache]

YOUR MANHOOD DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU OF YOUR COMPASSION. BE SOFT. BE CARING. BEING KIND IS MANLY AS FUCK

[utilitycaster]

I think the two most obvious foils for Ludinus Da'leth across all of Critical Role are Essek and Keyleth, which is both fascinating given how different those two characters are from each other (Essek being a foil in terms of isolation, single-mindedness, harm in the name of ambition, knowledge, and other such wizard themes; Keyleth being a foil in terms of people who have lost something at a young age to the gods and bear resentment for it, political leadership, belief that the world belongs to mortalkind, and longevity) but also it's extremely funny that they both are the partners of Liam's character.

[forwomenbiwomen]

Sometimes it just makes me deeply, helplessly angry that we don't even have a word for women that doesn't originate from "wife man". And then I get into a spiral of realising over again just how powerful language is, and how immensely saturated it is with both subtle and overt misogyny. And THEN I get into a spiral of how unbelievably long "women" have been subjected to misogyny that we literally don't have a word for women that doesn't position us as property of men.

[nellasbookplanet]

I do think that referring to Essek as irredeemable for regretting his actions only because he was caught and risked losing his friends is both kind of reductive to him as a character and a misunderstanding of the concept of redemption arcs in media.

A person generally isn't changed because you sit them down and hand them a bunch of political theory to read. They change because their circumstances and relationships do. It's like that guy who was deradicalized because he got a bunch of shrimp and started to care for them. It’s our relationships that change us, because they give us not a logical but an emotional reason to do so.

Caleb explicitly says "these people will change you" (or something along that line; I don’t remember the exact quote). Essek, before the m9, didn’t genuinely care about anyone. The people who would die if a war started because of his actions were irrelevant and abstract to him. Caleb, similarly, also started c2 not really caring about others. He had no interest in taking on Ikithon or the Assembly to save others from going through what he did, too preoccupied with his own trauma and his own goals to care. In that sense, he started the campaign in a similar place as Essek post ep. 97: regretful, but too busy wallowing in his own self-loathing to productively do anything to prevent future harm due to his previous actions.

Being with the m9, being reminded of the importance of other people and realizing that they’re capable of caring for them, is what changes Caleb and Essek both. Of course Essek starts out more concerned with losing the nein than with strangers killed in a war. They’re his starting step, the opening through which he realizes that the people hurt by his actions are real, that he cares, that he has the ability to, if not undo his harm, help stop furthering of it.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

A Rare Sight

An Ethiopian wolf sits among purple flowers in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park.

by Axel Gomille

Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[crocuta1]

Wayyyy late splatfest art my baaaddddd

[blue-mood-blue]

I can pinpoint the moment that destroyed my life today:

It’s been a handful of weeks since Murderbot came within inches of having a new, organic governor module implanted in its head via infection - do you think, maybe, that’s also been hiding behind the redacted? Not the way everything else is, just as a deep-seated reminder of what it can’t afford to lose?

What a way to be told “I love you” - to be told “I will not lose you, I will not let go, I will do the hard part of holding on even if you don’t want me to”