#the point of defiance
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heaven is beholding
what is heaven compared to an october morning spent on the balcony? what is heaven compared to seeing myself reflected in your eyes? if our eyes are said to be infinite pools holding and cherishing beauty, behold me under warm waters and show me gentle, full-bodied drowning. if that's not too much to ask.
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A Whumpee who, at the start of their captivity, challenged Whumper’s stare. Glaring openly, fists clenched around the bars of their cell, undeterred by the threat of Whumper’s approach.
That same Whumpee, weeks or months or years into their captivity, flinching when they hear Whumper’s footsteps in the corridor. Whimpering at the sound of a key fitting a lock. Curling up tighter in the farthest corner of their cell, unable to meet Whumper’s eyes.
#love breaking down defiant Whumpees#bonus points if Whumper mocks them for it#BONUS bonus points if the reminder of their defiance only frightens Whumpee more#as if the memory itself is enough reason for another punishment#aesthetic#whump
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Red Wolf (Canis rufus)
#artists on tumblr#original photographers#original photography#nikon#nature#orofeaiel#red wolf#wolves#wildlife#animals#four legged friends#nature photography#point defiance zoo#tacoma#canis rufus
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(by Josh Hild)| Washington, US
#upl0ad5#landscape#vertical#Josh Hild#Point Defiance Park#Tacoma#Washington#United States#nature#aesthetic
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An Edge Dyad and both of them transitioned in opposite directions a long time ago and now historians often get each of them mixed up with their foe pre-transition is this anything
#like if dearday and torgue were both trans#and now people think current day tourge and pre trans dearday are the same person#and vice versa#bonus points if they both intentionally keep each others old name#like as an act of defiance they both steal each others identity#cultist simulator#book of hours#weather factory#cultsim#boh#edge dyad
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demeter and morpheus
#the terror#fitzier#francis crozier#james fitzjames#myart#love and death growing in defiance of the harsh landscape#is the point i think#thats supposed to be a poppy in their hands#which are poisonous but meant to ease demeters pain in myth#you get it
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btw i love revenge stories i dont think anyone should ever move on peacefully. a bit obsessed with the way weissman went to the synagogue and rabbi and asks, "my choices killed a child. would god take mercy on someone like me?" and the rabbi says "it's not god's mercy you should look for. its the child's" and like you think that would spur this man into charitable activities and to maybe look out for orphans but instead he goes on a 24 hour revenge bender that ultimately ends in two revenge killings and his own death. what's better than righteous anger and wrath and love twisting someone into the worst but also a truer version of themselves <3
#like im not even reaching here. (sort of am. whatever)#rabbi goldstein essentially goes 'think of esther. you need to be a man she would take mercy on. be someone she can forgive'#and it takes all of 10 minutes for karl weissman to decide yeah ok what i need is double homicide#do i think esther would have wanted revenge in her name. dunno. maybe.#she is 11 and very much the victim of this story. maybe she would have wanted karl to just live. kids are cruel and kind in that way#but to be fair this is esther 'fuck with me and you'll hang like a dog' jankovsky#so im willing to believe she was rooting for him#also the immediate choice to make elias suffer by shooting his leg (? maybe arm) before actually killing him#i dont know. the deliberate cruelty right after he visits the synagogue. an act of defiance. giving himself up after its done. it gets me#i love . I LOVE REVENGE :) GREATEST PLOT POINT EVER!!!!!!!!#sorry everyone about the bodies thoughts. i have no idea how long this is going to last#bodies netflix#karl weissman
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I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?
Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate
-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)
-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.
-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.
Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.
-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.
But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')
In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.
All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.
-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?
-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.
I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.
WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.
And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.
Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.
#Sorry this turned into a 100000 word essay on The Iliad it can't be helped#I read Circe by the same author and thought it was like.. better? Definitely not great just less aggravating and kind of boring#Just rote 'you heard about this villainous woman from a Greek myth... Here's the REAL story' shit#It did have a few things I thought were good I remember it starting kind of strong and then just going limp for the remaining duration#I think part of it is that in that case she's expanding on a figure that Didn't have a whole lot of characterization in the source so#like. She had to actually Expand The Character#Again Silence of the Girls is the only Greek Mythology Retelling I have like....positive?.leaning positive? feelings towards#I've got BIG issues with it too but it does pretty much the exact opposite of everything I'm mad at SOA for and in some very#compelling ways (it's just that the author seems way more interested in Achilles and Patroclus than The Main Character Briseis#to the point of randomly starting to have Achilles POV interjections (which I thought were Good in of themselves but#really really really really really really really didn't need to be there) and then get kind of lampshaded by Briseis narrating 'I guess I#was trapped in Achilles' story the whole time lol!!!!!!')#It undermines the book on both a thematic level and just like. a construction level like it's real sloppy at times.#Also the Briseis POV sometimes has these like really out of place Author Mouthpiece Moments where she's very obviously#Stating The Point to the audience and it's like yeah we get it. We get it.#Wow in the scene were our mostly silent enslaved protagonist removes the gag from the mouth of a dead sacrificed girl as a#small but significant act of defiance and grieving in a book called 'Silence of the Girls' you inserted an ironic repeat of the line#'silence befits a woman'. in italics even. Thanks for that. I could not possibly have grasped the meaning of this scene if you didn't#spell it out for me like that. Thank you.#Actually hang on the only Greek mythology retelling I have unequivocally positive feelings for are the 'Minotaur Forgiving'#songs on 'This One's For The Dancer And This One's For The Dancer's Bouquet'. Fully love it. Like not just as songs I think it#does function well as a narrative and engages with and expands on the source in really beautiful and creative ways
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here take this smug Narinder
#i MIGHT be able to finish writing the prologue of the defiance au either later today or at some point tomorrow#it needs some work still tho#defiance au#even tho this technically doesn't have to be defiance au specifically#artist#art#artists on tumblr#artwork#cult of the lamb art#cult of the lamb#cotl fanart#cotl au#cotl narinder#cotl toww#cotl the one who waits#cotl#cult of the lamb the one who waits#cult of the lamb narinder#cult of the lamb fanart#cult of the lamb toww#cotl defiance au#cult of the lamb defiance au#narinder#the one who waits#also i keep forgetting to mention that the defiance au WILL have narilamb but its going to be agonizingly slow burn
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Muskox playing is not something I expected to run into, but I'm glad I did.
Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium
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wait james somerton sounds a lot like some people on tumblr when they start spouting off about queer history or supposed controversies within it. is that where you guys are getting your stuff? is it james somerton brain poisoning?
#i had never watched or heard of his channel before hbomb and todd's videos#im still watching todds video i just got past that stupid nambla part#tales from diana#i suppose there's a lot to say about people making as nick called 'observational' statements but what todd more aptly calls#pulling shit out of one's ass.#it's the same thing as somerton talking about straight women or white women or straight white women being offended at gay sex scenes#yet supposedly seeking out queer media that would have gay sex scenes?#or slighting more chaste/fluffy queer media ie heartstopper?#ppl who have these sorts of biases against certain types of gay people or their media if it's not what they see as#the most radical progressive form of queer visibility and acceptance.#creating strawmen enemies that they stand in defiance of#yeah this stuff is really getting my mind rolling#i swear ive seen a lot of these points james somerton has made being later used elsewhere on social media#was it ppl watching him who were inspired to go on these rants?#bc ive always seen these sorts of citationless rants and ravings in queer-friendly spaces and been like 'what are you talking about'#maybe someone with a scarf and a video essay voice told them smugly that these things were true#crazy. crazy#but also then again how much of this baseless speculation on social media just fueled/inspired the writing of these video essays...#idk. misinformation is a self-perpetuating cycle.
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bloodstains
it's kind of weird the way that we see parts of people we've known in the words and looks that come from strangers.
i see parts of you in every poison seeped sentence that leaves her mouth, despondent. i see the stones you throw in the way he lashes out, wounded more by my bruises than what caused them to form.
i remember the nights you would follow me, twisting every word i said into a dagger to stab yourself with. as you splashed me with your gushing blood i would question what i had done, how this had happened, what could i do. do i wash the blood off of myself or do i bandage you? anything to make it stop.
i never think of you when i feel loved. i never think of the way my jokes brought this certain snicker out of you or the way that you smiled fondly at the stars on that starry smokey night.
none of this is worth telling you. it'd just mean more stains to wash out.
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Jelly Fish at Point Defiance Aquarium & Zoo, Tacoma Washington
#cw: eyestrain#eyestrain#bright colors#glowcore#shinecore#neoncore#point defiance#point defiance aquarium & zoo#tacoma#tacoma washington#washington#aquarium photography#marine biology#fishblr#jellyfish#sea creatures
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Sumatran Tiger at the Point Defiance Zoo
#artists on tumblr#original photographers#original photography#pacific northwest#nature#nikon#orofeaiel#animals#tiger#sumatran tiger#point defiance zoo#tacoma#four legged friends#if not friend why friend shaped#wildlife
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my thoughts about the yunmeng bros is that they are absolutely brothers and think of each other as family, but they would have to be under threat of death to refer to each other as brother because there is way too much baggage going on there
#mdzs#like they are brothers 100%#yanli refers to both of them as didi#they were raised as brothers since wwx was brought to lotus pier#but they would never refer to each other as didi/gege#wwx is probably hesitant to even refer to jiang cheng as shidi#because of jc's outburst when he first called him that the first night at lotus pier#and jc would only ever refer to wwx as shixiong to others#like he'll be like ''this is my shixiong'' but isn't going to call him that. he just calls him his name#they are both so aware of wwx's delicate position in their family#raised as a brother but not really allowed to be recognized as such#and it's a point of insecurity for them#so they refer to each other by name#yanli claiming them both as her didi is her quiet form of defiance#those are Her Brothers and she doesn't care what people think#she will defend them and peel lotus seeds for them#wwx and jc can't really do that bc of their specific insecurities#even if everyone else knows they're basically brothers#they would never admit it out loud
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Something I've noticed about Carson, which is fundamental to his character, is that he can handle being threatened and facing consequences on himself for his own defiance and actions, but as soon as others will or do pay for his resistance, he will fold to guarantee their safety
#he does this in the siege part 3 with ford. entire time the gun was on him he went about trying to talk him down even after ford shot#right by his head but as soon as he pointed his gun at one of the paitents carson immediately moves to get the enzyme#this playing fast and loose with his own safety for the safety of others is why sunday is the way it is#he cares more for other lives than his own. working on the hoffan plauge so michael would stop killing people for carsons defiance. goading#that wraith into feeding on him to kill it and protect thousands of people#liv watches atlantis#carson beckett#stargate atlantis
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