#this family endured so much

[im-out-of-it]

PSA: WHY I HATE THE WAY TATIANA IS WRITTEN AND A SEMI RANT ABOUT TMI AND THIS IS LONG SO IM WARNING YALL NOW SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

why is it when CC writes a villain, it’s always either the villain and their reasonings don’t make sense or she writes them in the worst possible way.

example: Sebastian/Jonathan is terrible and to show just how awful he is, he’s going to attempt to rape the main character (also we won’t really have her work through that.) just to show how evil he is. BITCH WE KNOW HOW EVIL HE IS AND THAT WAS UNNECESSARY. won’t go on and on about TMI because it’s a torture fest and my mind has already blacked out a shit ton so I don’t remember

another example: Tatiana as a villain makes zero fucking sense. no one actually did her wrong but she came up with all these excuses

but what vexes me the most about Tatiana (this isn’t about TMI, y’all couldn’t pay me to read that toxic series) is that no one really knows or talks about the aftermath of what she did.

I’ve made many posts about Kit (CHRISTOPHER DESERVED BETTER) but he’s barely grieved and the fact is that no one mentions how Tatiana was responsible for Barbara dying. Tatiana desired more than anything- revenge. even after the first installment, she makes a statement about wishing for more lightwoods to die- mainly her brothers children. raising Jesse isn’t her only concern but literally making sure her brothers suffer.

“Why should I believe that?” She demanded. “You let me sicken from that poison, and I could have died. You promised me that only my enemies would be harmed. And look”- she threw her arm out in the direction of the courtyard where Gideon and Gabriel waited for her. “They still live!” (Chain of gold, epilogue)

I don’t really care much about the James stuff (I’m sorry for his trauma but I’m honestly over James and that’s on the writing) and I guess she’s getting her revenge there but is it really revenge well spent if the people you’re trying to hurt don’t give a fuck?

“Those are lies,” Tatiana hissed. “I am not sick! They have tried to ruin me.”

“Not true,” said Jesse quietly. “I have come to know them now. There is a truth much harsher. One I think you know. They have not tried to ruin you over all these years. They have not plotted your downfall. They have barely even thought of you at all.”

(DAMN JESSE GO OFF KING)

Tatiana has always been kinda emotional before she lost Rupert. Will didn’t want her (I still hate him), Rupert luckily didn’t have to deal with her, but in a way Tatiana had been naive and entitled. Benedict never taught her to fight or allowed her to really have her own voice. so when Benedict turns in to some demonic worm and his brother kills their father, she doesn’t really know where to turn. (THESE ARE JUST MY STUPID OPINIONS AND HOW I LOOK AT IT)

her father is dead, she’s having a child, she thinks it’s her brothers fault that her father and husband died. Tatiana feels that Gideon and Gabriel didn’t mourn their family properly. instead they see Benedict for who she is but Tatiana doesn’t feel that way. she sees Gabriel and Gideon as betraying her for some weird reason. look, it’s not easy trying to make sense of a CC storyline but I’m trying here lmao so in a way, Tatiana feels she has no family except Jesse. doesn’t trust the shadowhunters and maybe, she was close to Benedict or saw him as some hero or icon in her life?

then when Tatiana stupidly trusts “evil warlocks” and signs her sons death off, she then again IT WAS MY BROTHERS FAULT!!!! like she uses that reason for any bad thing that happens in her life even though it’s her fucking fault????? like Gabriel and Gideon didn’t come and hire a warlock with a bad reputation to put on some safety marking on your child? Gabriel and Gideon many times tried mending fences or whatever and did what they could to invite you in their lives

if anything, Gabriel should’ve been a dick to you and cut you out completely. you didn’t deserve Lightwood manor. they should’ve took your marks off and put your bloody victimizing ass in prison. I think Gabriel and Gideon have too much goodness in their heart after all she did. like what makes me most mad about Tatiana being a villain is that NOBODY KNOWS SHE WAS BEHIND BARBARA’S DEATH!!!!! she had no issue going to belial and being like let’s have war on the shadowhunters but I want my brothers to suffer the most!!!!

I loathe that it’s never stated. I detest that Christopher isn’t grieved. I hate that Cordelia is the one to kill Tatiana. I hate Tatiana’s whole arc. it’s not convincing, doesn’t make any sense, and it’s basically just mad woman trope. after all their sister has done, why aren’t Gabriel and Gideon upset? Gideon has lost a daughter, Gabriel almost lost his little child, as well as another child, and there’s no anger???? there’s no heartbreak or?????

some have pointed out that they hate the Tessa and will sex scenes and I AGREE FULLY. why is that taking precedence over children dying?????? why is Kit’s death shown as something that didn’t matter? even Barbara’s death got more notice. why is Gabriel absent and why don’t we see their reactions after Kit? why not after Alexander? Alexander is being kidnapped and tortured and Gabriel doesn’t say shit? why is the focus all on the herondales? I get it’s CC’s obsession but it takes so much from the story

like if she didn’t focus 95% of the series on James Cordelia, we couldve had a much better story and wouldn’t be missing out on stuff.

I seriously can’t believe that no one ever tied Tatiana to what Gabriel and Gideon had to endure.

Thomas loses HIS BEST FRIEND and probably more of a parabatai than James and Matthew were. Anna loses almost two brothers within a year. Ari has to leave her second family behind because they don’t accept her- at least her mother finally does. Matthew forms an addiction and overcomes that. Alastair has to endure not having a childhood due to his shitty ass father and then has to grieve actually losing him and all that entails. James has his trauma from grace but that’s not ever handled well. Grace gets adopted and is abused from her adoptive mother. Jesse is a ghost for many years because of his mother and he has to grasp who she is and how that has affected him.

I’m just saying that there are so many concepts and ideas that CC could have focused on but instead she just does the same thing she’s been doing since TMI. using the same tropes, the same toxic storylines, never allowing the story to go through, and putting the complex and fascinating characters behind.

in conclusion, (I’m sorry for venting y’all) I hate how Tatiana is handled and that she never once really has a full conversation with her brothers over what she’s done. no one says she’s behind it. she may not have had her hand on the blade but she was behind it. MY LIGHTWOODS DESERVED BETTER. so tired of CC ruining them or pushing them to the back just so her bloody golden eyed tiger toxic bland white shadowhunters who she deems the best can shine

Gabriel and Gideon went through hell and it’s never shown or talked about. Sophie loses a daughter, Cecily a son but let’s act like they don’t matter. AND ALL THIS HAPPENS IN A SPAN OF A YEAR. so undeveloped but I’ll endure for thomastair and my favs

[lotus-pear]

i love you royal trio (minus akechi)

[vaguely-concerned]

can you even imagine what a fucking horror show the early game is from spite's perspective, though. not only is this funky forcibly severed little slip of the fade having to deal with the reverse cosmic horror of physical reality as perceived by a spirit and being trapped in it against its will -- existentially confused and disoriented and hurting and nothing makes any kind of sense, at the mercy of human cruelty at its most deliberately sadistic. and then the one source of comfort and compassion and some kind of safety and clarity that lucanis surely must have been to him in the ossuary despite everything just goes and shuts himself in his room inside with a seemingly passive aggressive number of locks between them and no explanation and won't speak to him and they're STILL in the fucking ossuary. rook came and found them and they could be free now (rook is here!) and still lucanis keeps them in the ossuary even though he PROMISED he promised they'd get out of there together!!! what the fuck DO you think at that point? like did he trick me that whole time??? he wasn't like zara before, so why is he doing this to me now? why isn't he saying anything? 'he won't move. I can't reach him'. at least in the ossuary they had a deal, a goal, a hope -- each other. at least he wasn't entirely alone, before.

this poor poor poor little spite spirit really was ferried into the real world like 'hey welcome to reality! as your first introduction to it you're first getting horrifically tortured and then getting to vicariously experience one of THE most distressing and harrowing psychological conditions the human brain can cook up for itself (a fully fledged and deeply entrenched freeze response flaring up with catastrophic severity due to an unbroken ongoing and unlikely to let up any time soon chain of Unfortunately... Recent Events). I think spite is being extremely reasonable and patient about the whole thing, when you put it into perspective. I'm not saying let him eat the self-lighting candles or anything, but he's got some extremely valid points along the way lol. spite is not only child-like, the metaphor work going on is a lot more pleasingly flexible and complex than that, but he is also helplessly existentially dependent on lucanis in a way that, if anything, is a heightened version of the way a child (or child part) has to depend on a parent to navigate the world and survive.

tl;dr: we truly don't give enough sympathy to spite for having to live in the head of lucanis dellamorte. a place even lucanis dellamorte would prefer not to be. to be fair to him I think lucanis would be the first person to agree with this lol

[brain-rot-central]

I headcanon that Astarion would sing lullabies in Elvish to his newborn(s).

I read this last night when it came in and immediately wanted to cry. I thought giving it a few hours would change that but honestly it just made it worse.

Tav/Durge sleeping and he's on night duty. I can just see him gently pacing back and forth in their living room, fireplace going and he's softly singing the maybe one or two lullabies he remembers in Elvish (he assumes his parents must have sang them to him as why he remembers them) until the babe settles down. And then he'll sit on the recliner with them cradled in his arms, staring out the window as they're both bathed in the moonlight that pours through. Kissing their tiny little forehead.

He's forever amazed that they exist. And as he looks upon them, it's hard to imagine he ever lived a life different from this.

[denizenhardwick]

i love nicky hemmick. i think about how much he loves his family and how often that comes into conflict with what he wants. how he left the life he was making for himself in germany to take care of his cousins, despite being a pretty ineffectual guardian. how he doesn't understand andrew literally at all but still obviously cares about him so much. how he sides with andrew and aaron at every opportunity. how it was what his dad did to andrew that finally got him to cut contact with his parents.

[wonder-worker]

I've been thinking about the tragedy of Elizabeth Woodville living to see the end of her family name.

I don't mean her family with her husband, which lived on through her daughter and grandson. I mean her own.

Her sisters died, one by one, many of them after 1485. When Elizabeth died, only Katherine was left, and she would die before the turn of the century as well.

All her brothers died, too. Lewis died in childhood. John was executed. Anthony was murdered. Lionel died suddenly in the peak of Richard's reign, unable to see his niece become queen. Edward perished at war. Richard died in grieving peace. For all the violence and judgement the family endured, it was "an accident of biology" that ended their line: none of the brothers left heirs, and the Woodville name was extinguished. We know the family was aware of this. We know they mourned it, too:

“Buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”

Elizabeth lived through the deposition and death of her young sons, and lived to see the end of her own family name. It must have been such a haunting loss, on both sides.

[borgialucrezia]

i'm always fascinated by how brave lucrezia is in a patriarchal world dominated by male ambition and political maneuvering even though she's a political pawn herself! she's more courageous than her father and brothers combined. consistently standing up for herself, confronting her father (something that both cesare and juan could never do btw) and once she feels disrespected and her trust is broken it's over for them. considering she's no longer naive and sees through her father and cesare as the selfish coward he is who's all about ambition and power rather than love and loyalty (a lot of his true nature exposed like how he constantly sucked up to rodrigo, chose to kill juan instead of helping him to get rodrigo's attention and secure juan's position for himself etc) she was gutted knowing that the brother she trusted the most could have stopped rodrigo from mistreating her (such as allowing the humiliation of consummating her marriage in public or killing alfonso to get rid of naples since it is no longer needed) but he always chose not to...

the thing is she never takes shit from anyone and is capable enough to cut ties with those who betray her (like how she did so with juan after paolo's murder and even tried to murder him back for deeply hurting her) she also cut ties with cesare, someone she loved and trusted deeply after he let her down many times and putting his ambitions above her. she even tried to poison him for becoming tyrannical (like how he poisoned an entire city in the apocalypse script) and she pretty much was indifferent after he died which is incredibly tragic considering how intense their love was at the beginning of the show but it's a testament to her strength and self preservation, which is why she's my favorite character of all time.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

The compelling thing about Jason as a character is that I never doubted that he cared about the world just because there weren’t panels of him being overly zealous about “restorative community care”

I’m not coming after anyone who wants to see that kind of stuff, but I do think seeking | that | as confirmation that Jason cares about the world is pretty narrow

[genderqueer-karma]

My little girl's birthday is on 8/15. In just two days, she will be three full years old. She lived ten months of her life between fear, illness, terror, shock, displacement and deprivation. She was deprived of everything: the affection of her father, which she needed from her simplest needs, diapers and milk, even clothes, her toys and clean water. She was deprived of a good bath. She lived through great suffering and was shocked by the killing of her beloved father in front of her. She saw all the events, so much so that from the severity and enormity of the shock, she could no longer speak anything. Her beautiful steps, which I used to look at with happiness, she could no longer skip. She loved to look at ballet dancers and stand on her feet and start imitating them a little. I was waiting for her to grow up a little so that I could register her in ballet dance education centers and see her achieve her dream. But after everything that happened, how can her dream be achieved? It has become very difficult, but everything can be changed with your help. Please do not abandon my little girl. Donate for her, please.

Hello! I sincerely hope you and all of your family are doing as well as you can today; especially Almas.

—————————

Today is my friend, Hadeel’s, daughter’s birthday. So please allow me to tell y’all about her.

Almas is turning three years old today (August 15), but has spent the last ten months of her life in this genocide.

During this time, instead of being able to learn and grow as any child has the right to, Almas has witnessed horrific atrocities, including her own father’s death, directly in front of her. These traumatic events have led her to regressing developmentally, being unable to speak when previously being able, and returning to uncontrollable urination, meaning she requires diapers every day. This isn’t even to speak of other basic needs those of us outside of Gaza take for granted, such as food, water, and secure shelter.

Before everything, Almas was a happy little girl, who loved her family and loved to dance. Here is a photo of her with her mother.

With the occupation increasing the intensity of its attacks, it becomes harder and harder for Hadeel, Almas’ mother and sole provider, to find the things that she and the rest of their 13-member family require for their survival.

So today, I ask all of you out there with the means to help: PLEASE consider sharing and donating for Almas, and for the rest of her family. Let us give her the gift of life and hope for her birthday.

€4,932/€20,000 goal vvvv

(reblogged by 90-ghost)

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

💔

[bartonbones]

unless you can actually look into my eyes and tell me you think carmy would be able to tell sydney or marcus or ebra or tina "you should be dead, you're not good at this" i need you to stop saying he's in his psycho/dictator/nyc chef era it is annoying to me YES he's a bitch NO he's not abusive

[artem1sc0re]

Mr. Lienen || The Lonely Fox

[dent-de-leon]

Thinking again about Lucien’s whole childhood and trauma, the child abuse and loss of autonomy. His own parents selling him out to a hag--forcing him to lead other victims to her when he was just a child, afraid and all alone in the cursed Savalirwood. Memories of how he treated his older brother's wounds after their father hurt him. His own parents later digging up that same brother's grave and handing him over to the hag, letting her turn him into an undead puppet--a lifeless, empty husk, a haunting mockery of the loved one he lost.

The fire he set to stop his parents from ever hurting him, his siblings, or anyone else ever again. How he still wakes up screaming to nightmares of smoke and screams--

Living on his own in the streets of Shadycreek Run by the age of 12, sending his little sister off to Rexxentrum with some traveling merchants because he was desperate to do anything to get her out of that town, to get her away from people like the Jagentoths--the family that killed their other sibling over their parents' debts.

Lucien saying goodbye to his sister and not seeing her again for years because he felt like it was his only chance to get her out of the Run, to give her a better life while he still struggled and fought every day to survive. Lucien throwing his lot in with the Claret Orders and sacrificing his own blood to fight deadly monsters--believing it was a way to prove himself "worthy," to slay other horrors like the witch who tried to make him into an empty puppet. A way to finally make enough money to support his sister and give her the life he always wished he could. A chance to finally have enough power so no one could ever manipulate or hurt him again.

Lucien looking up the Solstryce Academy in awe, yet knowing that a child like him would have never been given a chance there, feeling the ache of his blood hunter scars and believing that he would never truly belong. Lucien who knew from the beginning that he would be an outsider, that people in Shadycreek would only ever see his infernal blood and hate him for it. The heartbreaking realization that blood hunters are ostracized and feared and hunted down just the same, that his own sister looks at the scars he got trying to build a life for her and she's so disgusted and terrified, she turns him away.

Mage after mage using their magic to try and control Lucien and bend him to their will time and time again. The hag who always hoped to add him to her collection one day, hollow him out into another empty puppet. Vess manipulating him at every turn, using him and throwing him away again and again. The Somnovem all branding Lucien against his will, whispering in his dreams, tormenting him through countless visions. Enslaving him just like all the other fate touched souls that mages of Aeor tortured so long ago.

Lucien being betrayed and hurt by the world again and again, losing any semblance of family or home, always knowing he would never be accepted. Blood and debts and fate and all the misfortune entirely beyond his control, a deck stacked against him from the very beginning.

Lucien looking at Mollymauk and breaking a bit when he realizes that this other part of him was so loved, was able to find his own family and home and happiness. Molly carrying the same scars but none of Lucien's painful past or memories, free of every nightmare Lucien's ever been running from for so long. The way Mollymauk Tealeaf is living the happy dream and fantasy that Lucien always ached for, but never believed could be. How the two of them shake hands and join together again at the very end--

[snowshinobi]

nothing gets me like a character with overt flower symbolism ESPECIALLY self-inflicted

[dramarants]

i only want love triangles if it's whatever fucked up polygon junmo kicheol and euijeong have going on

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

I think one of the biggest things that's helping me feel more certain in my transition is the realization that I am extremely good at enduring. I've learned to endure pretty much anything. I can be in a situation that I hate and just switch off and ride it out until it's over. When I was a kid it was because there was nothing I could ever do about it. I hate long loud boring gatherings but I'd have to stay until my parents took me home many hours later. I hate traveling but I'd have to endure it for weeks. It's taught me a great deal of patience, I do it all the time now. I endure long journeys, events I didn't want to attend, trips I didn't want to take, people I don't want to hang out with... It's an important skill to have. but the thing is, I was subconsciously planning on doing that with my gender dysphoria for the rest of my entire life. I WAS doing that for years, not even trying to explore what that horrible feeling was. I'm the endurer! I endure! I switch off and ride it out until it's... over.

Maybe this isn't one of those things I have to put up with. Maybe it's time to stop enduring my life and start enjoying it.