#the opposite of love isn't hate it's indifference

[rin-solo]

You are absolutely correct to point this out. Tagging @glisten-inthedark because this feels like something you'll enjoy. The whole "7 years aren't as long for a god as for a human" thing aside, this just beautifully shows how differently they view each other.

To Odysseus, Poseidon was never more than just another obstacle to getting home. A much more competent, dangerous obstacle than any other, but still just an obstacle that he had no particular or special feelings toward beyond, "I have to avoid this guy." Then he spends 7 years at Calypso's and naturally forgets all about Poseidon because he just doesn't assume that Poseidon would care about him that much either.

... But Poseidon does. And that's the beautiful irony of it all ... To Poseidon, Odysseus is so much more than just a mortal who blinded his son that one time; if the Vengeance saga proves anything, it's this. Think about it—he doesn't mention Polyphemus at all anymore in this saga. Instead, he admits straight out that he's avenging "his reputation"—a fancy way of saying, "I'm hunting you for myself and my own reasons now."

And he does. He waited for him—not because of his son but because of himself. Because he does feel something for Odysseus as a person, be it hatred, indignation, or something entirely else. Whatever it is, it's personal for him, and for him alone.

He cares so much about being the one to kill him that he waits for a decade (even if that's only akin to, like, 10 weeks or something for a god, that's still 10 weeks of camping in front of someone's house to get their attention!) I don't think anyone would shame or fault him for letting Odysseus live anymore either, like I've seen some people say, especially since it was Zeus' decree that Odysseus be released.

No, Poseidon waited for Odysseus because Poseidon wanted to wait for him. Poseidon remembered Odysseus because he was "something" to him, as opposed to Odysseus, who just straight up forgot or assumed he got bored and/or had better things to do with his immortal life (a very fair assumption, honestly.) The fact that Poseidon didn't get bored and didn't have better things to do with his life tells us so much about his character that I could write a whole essay on it ... I've covered parts of it in my Get In The Water analysis and also this lil thing, but I might write a full essay on this someday.

And that's the beautiful, poetic, almost ... tragedy of it all since it's so clearly one-sided: Odysseus feels nothing—no hatred, no attachment, not even enough to consider he might still be after him—whereas Poseidon feels ... everything? A lot, at least.

It's literally a case of "the opposite of love isn't hate (or the other way around, either work); it's indifference." Odysseus is indifferent. But what you, dear god of tides, have is a very serious case of obsession. You might want to—oh, no, he can't hear me; he's passed out on some rock shore, bleeding profusely. We can only hope that being defeated, humiliated, and confronted with his vulnerability in this manner didn't only deepen his obsession. Why do I have a bad, bad feeling about this though ...

My favorite thing in Epic that we don't talk enough about is that during the Circe and Thunder sagas, Odysseus was pretty much aware that Poseidon was after him. But in Vengeance saga, considering his reaction at Poseidon's appearance in "Get in the Water", he kinda thought that Poseidon must've forgotten and let go until that time. BUT HE DIDN'T. THE MAN WAS OBSESSED WITH ODYSSEUS FOR SEVEN YEARS

[citizen-of-the-fandom]

I think the most damning thing i can say about the Loki series is that I went from "it's Loki! 😃🤩🥳🥳 when I saw him in The Avengers to "ugh, it's loki 🫤😒😑 when I see anything about the series or his appearance in Ragnarok, like.

what happened.

[successionable]

SUCCESSION - S04E01 x S04E02 x S04E03 x S04E04

"Don't. You'll regret it."

it's Tom's dead eyes when Shiv says something needlessly mean in an attempt to vent her frustrations and/or get a rise out of him for me

[thatscarletflycatcher]

The more the time passes, the more convinced I am that a reading of Jane Eyre that omits the theme of mercy as key to the story is incomplete at best and bad at worst.

[caterjunes]

via @dont-spoop-yourself

One of the funniest things about enemies-to-lovers ships is how they’re almost always obsessed with each other. Like if a character actively chooses to interact with another character over and over again instead of simply ignoring them? Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall

[darkfictionjude]

Jude the ros are so red flag they don't care about someone throwing knifes to a photo of them ☠️

That's just a regular tuesday haha

[handkinkbis]

It's hard to deny that most women don't seem to care about protecting their own rights. Far right parties might be gaining popularity worldwide, but feminist gains are a given, right? It's better to be liked for speaking out against your own civil rights movement than to identify yourself as a feminist and possibly receive vitriol for it, right? A man might say something mean online, right? It's safer to fuse with the wallpaper than to stick your neck out by calling out the misogyny you see, right? Maybe it's a task for someone else - some woman other than you. And life gets in the way of such trivial things as the preservation of your own rights.

You have no love for other women because you've failed to properly love yourself as a woman. It's the self hatred that turns you away from the sisterhood and towards seeking allegiance with women's oppressors. Conform and obey and you might get some of your basic needs met. After all, scraps are better than nothing and you're just trying to survive. You might even receive love from a man if you perform femininity in just the right way for him. Then you'll finally be worthy once he bestows worthiness onto you, right?

But that's all right. I'll love and adore women on your behalf. I'll praise women on your behalf. I'll love both of us on your behalf. I'll fight for both of us, so that one day you might discover that you're worth fighting for.

[ultimate-heartache]

the people i hate most in this world are all people i once loved.

[6qubed]

bold of you to assume these kids are normal

Enough psychoanalysing why people have kinks. We need to psycholanalyse why they don't. Like you don't enjoy getting tied up? Clearly your tumultuous upbringing has given you a patholgical need to be in control at all times. Don't like fauxcest? That's because your petite-bourgeois class background means you view the nuclear family as a pure and sacred institution, automatically reviling anything that undermines or subverts this. Not into piss? That's easy; you're scared of the piss gnomes

[vetinarihavelock]

Yeesh. People hating on enemy ships in 2024.

[pynkhues]

The lack of media literacy and black and white thinking makes engaging with the general fandom of this show so frustrating.

In the last 48 hours, I've encountered 2 insane takes that literally contradict the show because people both need things spelt out in neon block letters and also can't comprehend that life is complex and complicated so 2 seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time.

First was that Lestat didn't actually love Claudia and it's only obvious that he hated and tolerated her for Louis from the beginning. This person literally said that he hated her so it's not possible for him to have loved her.

Second was that show Lestat was a narcissistic liar that used Armand for power and abandoned Armand and Nicky without a second thought because apparently the show took their characters and the relationship between them in a different direction. People who don't believe Armand's story are disgruntled book fans who are conflating the two.

I hope you don't mind me venting, I try to keep myself to a bubble of people who are able to watch the show with proper understanding even if I don't agree with them. But seeing the worst takes seems unavoidable.

(x)

I don't mind at all, anon, and yeah, I agree with you. I do think it's not just an IWTV-specific issue, but it does seem to be particularly loud in this fandom.

[thatonesakudere]

"What did I do that filled you with so much hate?" // mac for mayu

@badtrigger

The light flickers, letting the deep shadows of the night consume it all, her face, the desk, the walls; like a hungry beast that can never be sated. Then, it is cast back into the very corners of the room, squeezed between and under the furniture, banished from this temporary kingdom of hers — an office, larger than most, without a spec of dust and little warmth to it — and everything is harshly bright once more. Mayu's eyes squint at the change, slender fingers reflexively brought up to her face and under the red-rimmed glasses to rub out the black spots dotting her vision. Whether it's the lightbulb or the wiring, she'll have to bring someone to look at it-- Preferably sooner than later, lest the electronics give out on her during one of these work-filled nights. Lately, it feels there's been too many of them to count...

She doesn't bother to anymore.

His presence is hard to miss; a lumbering mass so out of place, drawing her eyes like a lamppost does a swarm of moths. He barely fits through the door, and only because the admin zone has been built with avatars and recoms in mind, soaring ceilings and wide corridors. The tiny flicker of hope that he's here on official business (regardless of the late hour) gets snuffed out as soon as Mays opens his mouth.

"What did I do that filled you with so much hate?"

"What didn't you do?" A humorless laugh slips from her lips, a mix of bile and venom coating her tongue. "You left me. You went out there and died, and I had to live with it. Grieve the death of a man I knew and learn to move on, only to find you here sixteen-fucking-years later. Truly, I cannot comprehend why do you find this simple concept so hard to understand--? Have you lost your wits along with your life?" Mayu's expression could almost be mistaken for one of coy amusement, had her eyes not been cold and hard, akin to shards of black ice. "The thing about my hate, boy, is that until you've walked a mile in my shoes, you won't know anything about it." About the pain it's been born from. For how can she not hate him, when feeling anything else other than contempt will only serve to bring more of it?

And yet, there still seems to be a place in her twice-rotten heart carved out just for him; pity floods it, a cruel sibling of 'compassion', and all that Mayu is capable of feeling at the moment... Nevertheless, it's more than most would have gotten from her; she must have gone soft after Masa's birth. "Go back to your duties, Mac. Or to bed. It's late," she chides him, suddenly drained, and gets up from the desk herself. It's comical, their height (size?) difference, further emphasized by most everything else in the room being human-sized. Perfect for her. Too small for him.

It makes her want to cry.

She doesn't — instead, she makes herself a cup of coffee.

[cbrownjc]

I'm curious about both of your impressions of Daniel's dynamics with Louis and Armand, then and now. Bogosian: For me, it's an evolving relationship [between Daniel and Armand] that begins with puzzlement, then it turns to distrust, and it will eventually move toward hatred of the most ultimate level.

Yep, called it. Though, yes, still a question as to if this will carry into next season (which I think it will) . . .

This interview with Eric and Luke is fantastic.

[keepthedelta]

i will always be a "they're both not normal™ about each other" brocedes truther, but ngl i really do think that nico being able to go into the paddock and both praise and criticise lewis fairly, and talk about him openly and admit that sometimes he was jealous, and he did play mind games and he doesn't regret that but he also didn't want to be that person anymore is infinitely healthier and better adjusted than lewis's "all my teammates have been better than max's [conspicuously fails to mention the only teammate to ever beat him to a championship]" and bringing up unprompted "a better teammate" at the finale of the first championship that he's properly had to fight for since nico left five years ago. like, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. and i don't think lewis is indifferent

[kimboo-york]

Talking with a friend, we both agreed that only way to successfully write Jiang Cheng as a villain is if you love him very, very much.

I am what might be described as a Jiang Cheng stan, yet I totally can see why he would cross the line from toxic to evil. That reason is love.

Back again to the old saw, "the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."

Jiang Cheng loved so much. He needed to be loved so much. He did not ever get the help he needed to become emotionally mature enough to deal with all the ways he loved so much. The push to hate would not be difficult.

He would be monstrous in his hate, because it was fed on love.

His entire life was heartbreak and grief and betrayal all the way down. Making him a villain or a demon might look like an easy thing to do, but if it's not coming from a deep well of compassion for him, then it will be flat and cliched.

If the resolution doesn't involve love and some kind of reparations and reconciliations and acknowledgement that Jiang Cheng's pain was always born out of love, then it's just a flat story with a bland EveryVillain who happens to be named Jiang Cheng.

[morkhan]

It is so buckwild to me what Insomniac did with Harry Osborn and Venom.

In the vast majority of Spider-Media, Venom's defining character trait is his hatred of Spider-Man, and at first, it looks like Insomniac might be going that route. They give Harry ample reason to be absolutely furious with Peter, to resent him, resent the life he gets to live, a beloved superhero with a girlfriend, healthy and strong, a genius of such caliber that even his own father seems to prefer him to Harry. His supposed "best friend" who seems to be withholding lifesaving medical treatment just because he likes how it feels on him, because it's not enough that he be better and stronger and smarter than poor, sickly, doomed Harry, no, he has to be stronger than himself, stronger than the old Spider-Man could ever hope to be. It's not enough for Peter to have his own powers, he has to have Harry's as well, and if that comes at the cost of Harry's life? Well, that's just the cost of doing business. As long as it makes him a better Spider-Man, that's all that matters, right?

It seems like they are going down the route where Harry gives into his anger and resentment, the symbiote whispering in his ear and exacerbating his worst aspects until there is nothing left of the sweet boy that Emily Osborn raised to be so deeply good, only a supervillain hellbent on revenge and world domination.

But that's not what happens.

Instead, almost everything Harry does after the Venom symbiote takes over is framed as helping. As a genuine, if twisted belief that the world he is making is a better world. Instead of seeking revenge against Peter, Harry/Venom wants to convert him. Wants him to stand beside him as they "heal the world" together. And the odd thing is, this only becomes more true with time. At first, Harry/Venom seems almost indifferent to Peter, and angers quickly when Peter calls them a "thing." But we see that the idea of Peter doing this with him, the need for his best friend to be beside him at the end of all things, eventually becomes so important to him that it is ultimately a weakness the heroes exploit.

Think about that; Harry Osborn's love for Peter Parker is so powerful that it almost seems to be corrupting the Venom symbiote, infecting it and twisting its mind as surely as it twisted Peter's, but in the opposite direction. It's so wild to watch the scenes at the end of the game and hear Tony Todd, in his deep-ass Venom voice, read lines like "Thanks for coming, Pete 😊" with the same casual inflection and tone as Harry would. Saying "This is where we became best friends. Now it's where we become brothers!" and sounding so pleased and excited that you'd think he was talking about Pete's mom marrying his dad and not infecting him with alien mind goop.

It's so incredible to me that the defining trait of Insomniac's Venom isn't hate; it's love. A twisted, warped love that doesn't fully understand itself, but a sincere and true love nonetheless, one that holds to the very end.