#the story should tell us

[kingcriccket]

Final thoughts on iron widow are that it is very fun to watch someone break stuff for a couple hundred pages but that it was pretty overhyped as anything beyond that. If it wasn't marketed as this groundbreaking feminist ThingTM I would have liked it more I think bcos politically it's a bit incoherent besides being very firm that girl power Is Good and sacrificing girls to be car batteries for mechs is Bad. Boo the patriarchy. Did Wu Zetian effectively utilize girl power when she slaughtered innocent people in her big dragon suit? etc

[cosmicredcadet]

enough stories about how someone learns to truely be happy through love. i want a story where someone is desperately seeking out love thinking it's the only way to be happy only for them to learn by the end that happiness is what they make of it and they don't need love at all to make it.

[nukaposting]

finished mouthwashing last night. amazing game but i was 100% right when i said that it should not have a fandom

[toadminako]

It’s fascinating to consider how What We Do in the Shadows - a modern goofy comedy with the freedom to basically do whatever it wanted in terms of depicting queer characters - still struggled to be earnestly queer in the end.

Then as it was airing, Interview With the Vampire - a decades-old property which inspired WWDITS while having a complex relationship to its own queerness - got a modern adaptation that was proudly, dramatically, undeniably queer.

Just… interesting to think about!

[the-cassandriad]

i've not written poetry in years (i'm more of a novelist) but i allowed myself some cassandra thoughts (as a treat). i actually had a lot of fun with this and i'm desperate to do more with the idea in the future so we will see.

inspired obviously by my own muses, @two-bees-poetry for the brilliant contrapuntal poems about greek myth, and anne carson, specifically when she talks about cassandra's speech being split in two and her bridging of past and future!

more of my logic in the tags because i'm annoying!

[phantomsofmyformerself]

why is lestat's turn of events more truthful than louis'?? like, no doubt about it that louis is an unreliable narrator. which he also does admit to himself, he is very aware that he is speaking from his perspective and he doesn't know everything and time does change memories and views of those memories.

but why do so many people in the fandom believe lestat over louis? why is he automatically more reliable and truthful than louis?

[ambigrueity]

Incredibly long post about Trey and Riddle's Relationship that I vaguely said I'd do in the tags of my posts somewhere

Disclaimer: this is not intended to be shipping in any way I very much view them as family, even more so after these updates. To start with I'm going to separate their relationship into 3 distinct stages and focus on their perceptions of each other at each stage. I think their relationship is wonderfully written As usual, I ramble so sorry in advance, but I really want to analyze how complex they are.

Stage one: Childhood: ||Riddle|| A friend: Trey and Chenya were Riddle's first friends. Riddle had spent his whole life knowing the four walls of his home and his mother and both Trey and Chenya were his gateway to experiencing the world outside his windows. As such, they're immensely valuable to him. Under his mother he had no other way to grow socially, so when provided with a logical reason for going out and playing (Chenya stated his grandpa believed play is a form of study) he jumped at it because he wanted that connection. Trey specifically was his ideal. I think he looked up to him a lot. Normal home life. His mother didn't confine or trap him in any way. And he could eat whatever he liked. That's why when Trey said that one or two slices of tart wouldn't hurt, it was good enough to sway Riddle. All his life he'd grown up hearing about sweets being poison. But Trey seems happy and fulfilled so surely it's not as bad. However, breaking his mother's rule made him lose everything. The momentary friendship he'd built and any chance of freedom. It impressed upon him the importance of following the rules because breaking them lead to loss. And on top of that, it left him with guilt. I talk a lot about Trey's guilt in this situation (and I will talk more) but Riddle has his own guilt too that just manifested in a different way. More on that later.

||Trey|| A brother: While Riddle might have viewed Trey as a friend (no doubt because he was an isolated only child with a different perception and a lot of baggage tied to the world family), Trey saw him as a brother. He expressly states in his dream that Riddle was smart enough to identify plants and flowers and had enough magic control to get their soccer ball out of the trees, and he felt proud to have a smart little brother. And this sort of label is easier for him because he comes from a rather healthy family with siblings and has a blood brother around Riddle's age. Instinctively, Riddle became someone he wanted to care for, spoil, and cherish. That's why after knowing Riddle wanted to try a tart he wanted to let him. Later on, he tries to dismiss or come to terms with his actions in various ways, stating that it was not his place and of course anyone would get upset if their house rules and dietary restrictions weren't being respected. He tries to make it out into a joke, saying it's become a family incident of sorts that they just laugh about. "Who gets that mad at children playing." But underneath all those attempts to bury his own trauma, lies guilt. Because he feels, deep down, that as a brother he should have protected Riddle better. And instead, after just 2 months, he had to see everything that made Riddle happy stripped away again. More on this later. Stage 2: Riddle's First Year

||Riddle|| A stranger. Riddle's changed. He's developed some of his mother's anger. He's been confined for years. And because of that one incident with the tart, he firmly believes that growth and by extension fulfillment can only happen under the rules. Moreover, since Trey represents that period of his life where he learned that lesson rather harshly, he ices Trey out, pretending he barely knows him. After all, they might as well be strangers after all these years. Especially since Trey is banned from his house. This is a result of the guilt I mentioned earlier. He failed to follow his mother's rules and the punishment put Trey and his peaceful family that he looked up to in the crossfire. I think a part of him doesn't know how to face Trey after all that, worried that he might hate him. However, he cannot fully erase his own memories. So it is Trey he consults when he asks how to challenge a dorm leader for the seat. Even if he's distancing himself by calling him "Clover-senpai" Trey still remains someone he trusts to a degree. After Riddle takes the throne he makes a decision I find interesting. He doesn't select a vice, instead he leaves it to the popular vote. This could be read two ways IMO. Either, he didn't feel the need to have a vice because he was so confident in his own skills, but was aware that it was customary to have one so it didn't matter to him who it was. Or, deep down, he was afraid that no one would be willing to work with him. After seeing his dream, I do think it might be the latter. All of the darkness versions of his card soldiers showed some form of disloyalty. Willing to go along with the idea that they might jump ship, or that Riddle could be overpowered. It's this insecurity born from his own fear of his mother. He knows he's become a reflection of her, and he's worried how other people might react to it. In the end, he's still chasing those relationships from childhood, but is stuck believing that rules are the only way to keep what little happiness he has which alienates him from Trey to a degree. ||Trey|| A brother still: Despite the years, Trey's feelings about Riddle hadn't changed much other than being swamped with underlying guilt. Upon realizing that Riddle was going to attend NRC, his first instinct was to create a space for him. Trey generally, is introverted but excited to see his childhood friend again, he ends up talking to the people around him saying that Riddle was a quiet but studious boy and he hopes that people will welcome him. That was at least, before he saw what Riddle had become (he ended up fighting Floyd at the entrance ceremony) leaving Trey with the realization that this was not the boy he knew anymore. And worse, he was pretending not to know him. I'm sure it hurt, but even so, when RIddle asked about dueling the housewarden, he did try to accommodate him (after getting over his initial shock). The thing that gets me the most, however, is that Trey still saw the good in him. Trey in the rose maze part of Riddle's dream tells Ortho that the first thing Riddle did when he became housewarden was tend to the roses. To him that was a sign that Riddle was still somewhere in there and he was willing to support that. He would have been resigned to accepting that he was a stranger to Riddle if he hadn't been elected vice, but regardless of how Riddle felt, Trey still felt responsible for him. Both out of guilt and because he was still family.

[maladaptivewriting]

btw none of my fics, including the golden king, have ever been a democracy. i am a lawless dictator in the universe of my own creativity and you hold no power here.

[ghost-bxrd]

PROMPT

Thinking about Dick in cryo and hypothermia...

What if something went wrong during a Titans mission? Stranded for a bit somewhere cold, rescue took a little while? And Dick ends up going into cryosleep? Talons look pretty dead when in that mode, right?

The rest of the titans freaking out, especially since they still aren't really sure what species or what flavor of meta Nightwing is, and they don't know what to do... (Let them be somewhere where they can't get in touch with the Bats to ask)

All of them convinced Nightwing died, horrified and mourning, and trying to figure out how they will break the news to Batman and Robin...

And halfway through the discussion the 'corpse' just sits up.

Hardcore trauma for sure 😭😭😭😭

Lmao Wally would deadass be cradling Dick’s head so gently and heaving big, gut wrenching sobs and then Dick would just— sit up. Blink.

“Why are you crying so loud?”

And everyone just starts screaming.

(One of the Titans totally tries sneaking Dick’s pulse once they’ve all gone to sleep— just to be sure Dick really is alive and they didn’t dream it— and promptly starts screaming again when there’s none.

Dick is cranky about being woken up. Going to sleep without Jason in the nest is hard enough, did they HAVE to wake him up????

He softens significantly though and explains that, no, he does have a pulse. It’s just really, REALLY slow. And a couple of seconds held to his wrist isn’t gonna do it mate, sorry.)

[mrtequilasunset]

Highkey so sad to see Kim's character get butchered by people who see Harry as whichever addict wronged them in their life.

[hellooobees]

I can't stop thinking about how the show sets up selfishness and selflessness as two sides of the same coin. How do you walk the line between making sure your loved ones can achieve their own dreams even if it means hurting yourself, and hurting your loved ones because you're hurting yourself for their sake?

It all goes back to Thame putting up his wish on the orange tree that he'll make all of the other members' dreams come true. Thame, who agrees to a shitty contract and works himself to the bone and makes it completely his burden to prove that Mars is a good investment for the company. Thame, who is made to believe that that very act of love and sacrifice is only debilitating his friends' dreams and the only way to keep his original promise is to leave.

We see Thame essentially being back at square one in this episode. He has to leave and go to Korea alone so the people he loves can achieve their dreams. But so much has changed since then. Thame had found hope, that he could simultaneously keep his promise and be selfish to want both his band and his partner. He's once again been working himself to the bone, giving up all of his time and attention between the band and Po, because his tiredness is such a small price to pay to turn that dream into reality. Why wouldn't he gladly take on all of that tiredness and more?

But despite all of the groundbreaking things he's achieved and everything he's given of himself, it doesn't work. His friends break down around him possibly reigniting the same insecurities from earlier that he worked so hard to ensure wouldn't come to pass. His boyfriend breaks up with him despite Thame promising to take on all of the burden and tiredness to make it work. He's being forced to leave everyone behind and he's being left behind too.

That flip from Thame being convinced that the best thing for him to do would be to leave for everyone else's sake, to the rest of Mars and Po being convinced that the best thing for them to do is to step back for Thame's sake is so so important to me. It's not just Thame who made making his friends' dreams come true into his own dream. The rest of Mars and Po did the same thing with Thame's dream. But how does it all work when the sacrifices you're willing to make for the dreams of your loved ones are at the cost of their happiness because they're at the cost of your own?

Thame's effort didn't go to waste. We see all of that effort manifesting in how it opens doors for the other members and Po so much more easily now. But it's also true that at the base of those new successes lie the shattered hopes of that shared dream between them.

The show sets up the question of whether the person who's leaving others behind feels hurt, and we see so many iterations of it. We see Earn leaving behind the person who was an instrumental part of his success without a second thought. We see Thame giving himself up and leaving for the band's sake. We see Jun leave twice, the first so that his friend would for once think of himself and his own success instead of letting the others drag him away from it, and the second when he's sure that his friend can be what the person that he cares for deserves. We see Pepper being completely willing to leave if the two biggest parts of his life cannot exist together and we see Gam actually leaving when it proves to be true. And we see Po leave because he cannot let himself become an obstacle in Thame's path and make all of their efforts come to waste. If that's the price to pay so that the people they love can have what they want then so be it, right? Their sacrifices are insignificant in the face of that.

But what happens when all those sacrifices still aren't enough? When the cost becomes too huge to bear?

[1doesnotsimplyhavejust1fandam]

Need an acknowledgement after Buddie goes canon of them having had latent or explicit feelings for each other for years. This isn’t a case of “oh, we were best friends for years and then one day we woke up and were in love.” This is a case of “we’ve been best friends for years, and we’ve been falling in love with each other since the day we met. We just didn’t understand it yet.” We’ve already had Buck’s realization that he’s bisexual, but his arc was chock-full of obliviousness to his attraction to Eddie, his feelings for Eddie, whose attention he actually wants. He still doesn’t really get it, but he gets that he likes men too, at least. Eddie is a whole other ball game. From the Catholic guilt to the toxic masculinity to the childhood emotional neglect to the pressure he keeps putting on himself to perform in relationships. He’s repressed as hell, and he isn’t to “I’m gay” yet, but we see hints of him understanding that how he feels might be a little different (his pause at “follow your heart, not Christopher’s” from Carla, his two talks with Bobby, admitting to performance anxiety on dates to the whole team, his talk with Buck about Marisol being an ex-nun, his acceptance that Ana and a ready-made family was the reason for his panic attack).

We know that the two of them are bad at identifying how they really feel, or at least allowing themselves to feel it. So, it makes way more sense for the show to admit that they’ve had romantic feelings for each other for years, rather than trying to convince the audience that what we’ve been watching these past seven seasons isn’t a product of two characters’ struggles with their identity and relationships. And while I’d be satisfied with a light-hearted snark from Hen or Chim about how they’ve been seeing it for years, I’d be so much happier with a full circle moment of the boys actually fully knowing themselves, acknowledging that they were never just best friends, they just didn’t understand it yet. It would show their series-long growth, as well as being an enormous tip of the hat to the audience. Because we aren’t misinterpreting it. We’re reading the queer-coding directly from the show, yes through subtext of course, but also the literal text. There have been so many moments deserving of acknowledgement in this regard, and I would hate for Buddie to go canon without it being clarified that those moments were exactly as queer and/or romantic as we thought.

[thatsrightice]

The story of these two men is my Roman Empire.

Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov were highly decorated Cosmonauts, both of which made firsts in the history of space flight.

Yuri Gagarin famously became the first man in space on April 12, 1961.

Vladimir Komarov piloted Voshkod 1 on October 12, 1964 on the first space mission to carry multiple crew members. He flew again aboard Soyuz 1 on April 23, 1967, becoming the first Russian man to make two spaceflights.

Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov were close.

The Soyuz 1 was described as being “a piece of shit” and a “devil ship” as issues plagued the spacecraft throughout development and failed testing. Yuri had done everything he could to get the launch postponed, including writing a ten-page memo detailing the 203 structural problems he had discovered during inspection of the Soyuz 1. Any person who had laid eyes on the memo would be fired or demoted.

Komarov knew of these issues, but refused to step down from the missions. In March of 1987 he met with Venyamin Russayev, a then-recently-demoted KGB agent who had been assigned to "mind" Yuri Gagarin.

He met with Russayev and said, "I'm not going to make it back from this flight." Russayev asked, “Why not refuse?” Komarov answered: "If I don't make this flight, they'll send the backup pilot instead." That was Yuri Gagarin. Komarov couldn't do that to his friend. "That's Yura. And he'll die instead of me. We've got to take care of him." Komarov then burst into tears.

Yuri, nicknamed Yura by friends and family, showed up on the day of the launch “demanding to be put into a space suit,” "demanding this and this and this...", doing anything and everything he could to be the one on that spacecraft instead of Vladimir. Unfortunately, his attempts were be futile.

Soyuz 1 would launch on April 23, 1967 and faced serious issues throughout the flight. The parachutes failed to deploy during reentry and the spacecraft burned up while Vladimir screamed and cried and cursed out those responsible.

Yuri Gagarin was grounded from future space flights and denied permission to pilot military jets. This was devastating for the already deeply depressed man and everyone knew it. Even his favorite hairdresser said that “Yuri couldn't live without flying. It was his whole life. A man can't live without his trade. He can't survive.”

He eventually convinced them to let him fly, but on March 28, 1968, less than a year since Komarov’s accident, he was tragically killed during a routine-training flight aboard a MiG-15. The cause of the accident is unclear, though many speculate that the accident was an assassination on the cosmonaut as he had a falling out with several high-ranking officials following the death of his close friend.

Both Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov’s names are featured on the memorial for fallen US Astronauts and USSR Cosmonauts left on the moon by the Apollo 11 crew.

[ladyelainehilfur]

webtoon up to their crappy money making BS again 😐 aren't they already making enough money off their tens of millions of monthly readers? Did they set up this whole coin system with the end goal of using their site as an advertising platform?

Webtoon doesn't even feel like it's about web comics anymore. It's about piggybacking off creators' hard work to suck money from its users, credit card or not.

If the comic is ongoing, there's a fast pass system, with coins to advance. If the comic is finished, there's a daily pass system, with coins to advance. If the comic is popular and finished in another language, there's both. A popular webtoon will be complete and you have 60 days max to binge read before it's paywalled despite the fact you might have kept up with it for years at that point.

Now it's not enough for you to scroll through the episodes to get coins, now they want you to do a quiz. There might not even be enough slots for everyone to do the quiz! There was a time when there was no expiration date on coins you earned. Now you only get to keep the coins for 7 days. Go drop dead, right now.

From what I've read, creators don't get paid if someone purchases fast pass with free coins. I never thought webtoon was a benevolent entity creating a safe haven for aspiring comic creators, but their real greed as a company under multibillion-won-earning Naver is finally showing.

[lokielly]

okay, i stand by the fact that this show isn’t an example of queerbait bc guillermo’s feelings for nandor are very real and canon and just bc they never got together or anything doesn’t mean it wasn’t a queer story. BUT i must say that teasing at the end was a little bit ridiculous.

[yuseirra]

If Kamiki's inspired by this particular god, you can see how Fatal's lyrics are like, "I would sacrifice anything for you" because that's him, he gave up a lot to be with his wife(depending on how you interpret the myths, to the extent of it being his own life too)

Amenouzume has the title: "The Great Persuader". If she was there, he'd have definitely listened to her because that's the lore of those two gods, her husband relents only after she comes and speaks to him so it should have worked out