#this goes on this blog for a reason

[some-pers0n]

I might be poking at a bear here but I kinda really dislike the "all or nothing" attitude the WoF fandom has. This character is evil the worst piece of garbage imaginable or is secretly a great character and you're just a fool for thinking otherwise. It's ridiculous at times

Like I recall the stuff with Secretkeeper a while back. Now, call me crazy, but I don't think she's some horrifically abusive and neglectful parent. She did the best that she could. Was it great? No, but she was trying to keep her daughter safe in a hostile world that she was terrified would reject or, worse, hunt her. Her leaving Moon alone for days was bad, yes, but she wanted to keep Moon free from the horrors of the volcano. She loved Moon and clearly took care of her a lot. You can't just look at a character and paint them as being a "horrible abusive POS" for something that, let's be real here, is much more forgivable and understandable than anything Coral, Scarlet, Diamond, Cobra, Jerboa, or Kestrel did

[moonpaw]

[eywaseclipse]

Neytiri’s Selfcare Day Headcanon

Authors Note: Found this in my drafts with some dust collecting lol

Neytiri’s self care day:🦋✨🌱🥭🌲🍯

It’s rare enough for Neytiri to get a day of solitude let alone the time to take extra care of herself away from the kids

She feels guilty at first when she leaves Jake alone with all of them, but he constantly reassures her to go for the day and enjoy herself

She starts off with a hunt. Nothing makes her feel more exhilarated than going back to her roots as a hunter

She typically cleans herself in the communal hot springs on busy days with the clan, even though the family of the Olo’eyktan has a private spot

She makes use of the privacy for once and brings all her salves and scrubs

She loves exfoliating her scalp with a homemade scrub, and then lathering her braids with liquid from the Panopyra plant

She decides that if she’s going to really take care of her hair, she might as well just unbraid her luxurious locks and really get into it

She loves using the healing rose oil to care for her braids and rub gingerly onto her scalp helping to lock in the moisture

She uses the humid air to air dry her hair which is quite wavy out of her braids

She’ll go and find a giant tree branch in the canopy after collecting some fruits and just sit there for a bit enjoying the sounds of the jungle

She snacks on bananafruit, bladder polyps she packed earlier, and some episoth seeds

She can’t help herself and thinks about the kids so she ends up collecting a bunch of rocks that remind her of them

She will take her time rebraiding her hair gently weaving it all together. After she’s done she’ll finish up with some more oil like Lionberry oil to keep her hair shiny and healthy

She loves the Forest Hive Nectar. Clear in color and floral in scent, it makes an excellent moisturizer when combined with some ground up dried Vineshrooms to make a paste, and will rub it into her skin all over her body and face which acts as a nice moisturizer. It has a nice minty smell to it

After a little nap she collects some herbs for her mother and Kiri smiling about it as she harvests them and makes her way back home feeling relaxed and rejuvenated

[dailypav]

hey soooo

i'll be really busy with moving out irl and won't have time to maintain this blog for a bit, apologies for that

I'll probably be back in a couple weeks idk

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Just to minimize my chances of being genuinely misunderstood OR deliberately misinterpreted, and crucified for something I don't think, How Dare You Say We Piss on the Poor website etc...I'm gonna say this right up top. I absolutely understand why people don't like Thessaly as a character, if anyone does completely unironically stan her as some kind of feminist hero who Did Nothing Wrong uwu, I personally see it as a bit of a red flag. I don't like terfs real or fictional. In a vacuum, I could even completely sympathize and agree with the people who want her cut.

HOWEVER.

It's really something to me to see people clamoring for her to be cut, because she carries and expressed an ugly indefensible prejudice (transphobia) in words towards (1) person. Meanwhile Hob fucking Gadling enacted one of the most violent forms of antiblack racism I can even think of against thousands no, millions of people, the ripple effects of which still affect billions more today. Just a little light idk, profiting off the fucking slave trade and had to be told by someone else that it was bad...and he's a fan favorite.

People are saying Thessally being Dream's love interest reflects badly on him or is somehow endorsement by the narrative (?!?!?!?!?!? Didn't she (SPOILER ALERT AS IF IT MATTERS BY NOW) help participate in his extended assisted suicide? She's not painted as a great person to me just another character what are y'all SMOKING whatever fine. It's fine this is fine.) But shipping Dream with Mr. Former Slaver is not only not verboten or frowned on widely in the fandom but its THEE most popular pairing by far. So...why the difference?

Like where are the same fans who are saying Thessaly shouldn't just be more clearly shown to be wrong, she shouldn't even be in the show at all when it comes to Hobert's crimes??? Yes, transphobia is indefensible. Isn't racism?

And I hear the cries of "it's fiction!!!" Already rallying (if anyone who needs to hear this even sees it lol) to which I say:

HORSESHIT. I KNOW you don't, deep down, really agree because if you did, why get upset about Thessaly being included??? Why does what she said to one person matter if it's Just Fiction You Guyze. Fictional characters are allowed to do bad things and fiction isn't reality sweaty....except when you only apply that standard to fictional racists you like and simp for, but fictional transphobes you don't are SO HARMFUL they shouldn't even be portrayed in fiction.

Like. Give me a big fat BREAK. This looks like bullshit, no? I'm sorry, but I'd love for someone to try and give any other explanation besides one personally offended you or hit home for you, and the other doesn't.

And if that bothers you or you feel like it says something negative about you...idk what you want me to say??? You can't control how other people perceive you and that's how people outside this majority-of-the-fandom bubble see it. You don't need to respond, I just wish and genuinely hope this gives you a moment to think about why fans who ARE bothered by both (and not just paying lip service to being bothered by the one but railing against the other) are so frustrated with people saying everyone is welcome but in practice only bending over backwards for the comfort and emotions of themselves, and people they can easily relate to.

You don't have to like Thessaly (I don't. I find her an interesting antagonist, I don't stan her. And frankly imo likability is not. the point of her character) but you'll pardon me for feeling more than a bit cynical and side eying people's motivations for what seems a...pretty obvious double standard, on what fictional crimes related to real world issues matter to y'all, and which clearly don't. Either actually bring the same energy to the table for fictional people who committed atrocities, even if against a group you're not part of and thus don't feel the need to empathize with, or just carry on, but accept that you don't have the SLIGHTEST room to talk about cutting characters who do immoral things. And you also need to accept that you look like a hypocrite when you do.

[bidaryl]

RICK: it's soda and candy. why the trouble? DARYL: it wasn't any trouble.

THE WALKING DEAD; 6.10 — the next world

[ribbonpinky-art]

sideyshowy bobby

[sleepy-harper]

hello, could i do a request? it's a bit self indulgent so i'll put some things and if you don't use all of them that's okay! i'd love a caregiver leon for a disabled regressor if possible. pink (or another pastels) puppy elements, a wheelchair, stim toys or care bear plushies - whichever of those interest you!

no worries if you don't feel like doing it, i know it's a bit of a weird one! thank youuuuu

pink feminine caregiver re4 leon kennedy to a disabled puppy regressor moodboard 4 agere-buppy

I am soso sorry I tried to fit as many things as I could in while keeping it all neat and easy 2 look at 😓🫶

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

I've never met a doily before that looks so much better the further you view it from but this guy really likes to be seen from half way across the room at a 45 degree angle.

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC.

Rafael is driven by his independence and his anger, fighting for what he believes in and deems right to free his people and return peace to Medici. But his tendency to push people away blurs the lines between selflessness and self-destruction, and his desperation for control greatly overshadows the true lack thereof— and it has turned his spark into an all-consuming forest fire, with no way to douse the flames. And everything burned, as promised. OC WEB WEAVE SERIES: RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ.

richard kadrey, aloha from hell // by eyedeeuhs // firestarter; torre florim // by gundula blumi // savannah brown, from 'closer baby closer' // leach; bones uk // ocean vuong, from 'to my father / to my future son' // by ysociety // maybe, i; des rocs // victoria chang, to love anyone // 'smoke and fire 1' by jennifer walton // burn; vorsa // vita sackville-west, from 'solitude' // by spelio // arsonist's lullabye; hozier // shira erlichman, from 'how to become a forest fire'

[callipraxia]

Lying here at 7am, sneezing my head off because of ragweed, and I had a thought about the novelization of Revenge of the Sith.

Early in said novelization, there’s a retrospective on a couple of important moments in Anakin and Padme’s early marriage, specifically around how, since Anakin, as a Jedi trainee, doesn’t own things or have much ability to acquire them, which is an Issue when it comes to giving his new wife a wedding present…so he ‘gives’ her C-3PO, to be ‘a friend’ while he is, as he frequently is, absent, and there’s a sweet moment where Padme politely invites Threepio to join her staff, because on Naboo, droids as high-functioning as Threepio are considered beings, not property. Anakin also notes that technically, since his builder (Anakin himself) owns nothing, Threepio kind of owned himself even before this. Then later, she gives him R2-D2 as ‘a friend’ in return, at which point Anakin starts modifying him this way and that until Artoo eventually obtains at least as much cognitive function as Threepio, setting the stage for the bond the droids have throughout the series. All very nice…but then jump to the very end of the book, immediately after Padme dies and Bail Organa adopts Leia. Y’know. The moment when he casually orders that Threepio undergo a mind wipe to forget…pretty much everything. Who “the Maker” was, all about his years of service to Senator Amidala, where the Princess came from and the fact she has a brother, etc. Then cut forward about twenty years to the beginning of A New Hope, where Threepio fussily keeps scolding Artoo about how “Master Luke” is his owner now and he should therefore forget the mission from their previous owner. It never seems to occur to Threepio, after his years on Alderaan, that they could think for and own themselves, even though again, in the novelizations, Threepio has technically done so for longer than Artoo has; the only difference is that Artoo still remembers everything, whereas Threepio only remembers, at most, the past twenty years.

Clearly, droids did not enjoy the same legal privileges on Alderaan that they did on Novelization!Naboo…but why is that relevant? Threepio, recall, was said to have legal rights on Naboo as a member of Padme’s staff. At a stretch, since Anakin couldn’t technically own Artoo either, one could make an argument that Artoo was still legally Padme’s property and therefore automatically passed into the ownership of her daughter when Padme died*, since Anakin and Padme and Threepio seem to have been the only ones who realized at that time how sentient the astromech had become, but there was really no doubt about Threepio: if Stover’s writing in the official novelization is taken as on any level canonical, then Threepio, as a high-functioning droid, was an employee; certainly this is the case within the pages of the book in question, where he meets the same ends. Padme no more owned him than she owned Jar-Jar or the Handmaidens who acted as her body doubles or her other Senate aides...at least on Naboo and areas where its laws applied, like the embassy on Coruscant, I suppose. They were not in Naboo space at the time of Padme’s death, and apparently the idea that droids could be autonomous was culturally alien to Alderaanians…but we see in TCW that Bail had worked pretty closely with Padme for years. They were political allies, but also friends. They’d risked their lives together before - in the Committee of 2,000 conspiracy, in that episode of The Clone Wars where they investigated a murder together, and arguably, Padme had put her life in his hands without a second thought again on Empire Day when she made that “how liberty dies” remark in the midst of the rest of the Senate’s enthusiastic endorsement of Palpatine’s announcement. Padme also was shown to have a real Problem with the discovery that slavery still existed in the galaxy when she met Shmi and Anakin as a girl, and considering she later married an ex-slave who had…rather strong feelings about the subject, it’s hard to imagine that she didn’t get personally emotionally invested in the issue as well. Anti-slavery measures would have probably been part of her political platform, especially in that gap between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones where there wasn’t a war that depended on slave soldiers to consider. It never, in all that time, came up with Bail? He never said, “It’s strange how you treat that protocol droid of yours - you act as though he were a person,” to which Padme could only reply that “by my planet’s laws, he is”? Padme never voiced any discomfort with the Alderaanian stance on high-functioning droids in all their years of working together? Why would her good friend not think twice about treating one of her staffers as his property before the poor woman’s corpse was even cold? Even if he disagreed, he ought to have at least had the thought “oh wow, I am disrespecting my friend’s memory here,” or even a hesitation about his legal right to give orders about Threepio’s memory, given that there would of necessity have to have been some interstellar agreement on whether Planet A’s laws about droids applied to droids from Planet A when they were on Planet B, especially if Planet B was neutral space like Coruscant, the place where Bail would have been most familiar with Threepio. I’m American and reasonably historically literate; American history was never my favorite branch of history, but I know all about the sort of trouble it causes when people don’t agree about whether laws from one state in a republic apply in another. See also: the American Civil War? And more recently, the issue of gay marriage, back when states determined that individually. Didn’t cause a war that time, but anyone who had the political awareness of a tree branch probably knew of the issue and, however dimly, probably something of why it was such an issue.

It’s now 9am, and yeah, yeah, I know, all this was necessary to protect the Chosen Twins because Threepio is a bit of an idiot, or it would have taken too much time/been too much at the tail end of a plot as dark as that of RotS to have a quick scene where Threepio agreed to become Bail’s property in order to stay with Leia, etc etc. But considering that Bail’s one of the good guys, it’s pretty messed up to realize how casually someone’s rights could just get hand waved away the moment they no longer had anyone politically powerful immediately on hand to defend them. It’s hard not to think…with his memory gone, Threepio doesn’t even know that he was supposed to have rights, and most humans cannot communicate fluently with Artoo. Bit disturbing to put oneself in that position, to wonder, as messy as the world’s getting…who’s the one person standing between us and having our rights almost as casually overwritten? Not quite as casually, I suppose, since mind wipes don’t exist for us (…yet…probably), but almost. Not something Lucas probably meant to put there, given that he didn’t write the official novelization and his apparent failure to think out the droid issue especially well**, but there’s where my brain’s going on this sneezy, sneezy morning.

* Note: this is totally ignoring the issue of whether this is moral and ethical or not. Also ignoring the issue of how that even stacks with the assiduous efforts to conceal that Padme’s child/children hadn’t died with her, in which case, being legally dead/never personified, it’s hard to consider them her legal heirs anyway.

** See also this video essay: https://youtu.be/WD2UrB7zepo?si=HcttHLpZFGnU5bNb

[three-headed-monster]

https://www.tumblr.com/three-headed-monster/761811785436332033/do-you-think-luke-reads-jack-and-quinn-seem?source=share

I'm not sure I can see him as an avid reader just yet. I 100% think he could turn into one but he did say in the athletic interview that he didn't really enjoy school (even though he did seem to enjoy the history side of things) I also remember in the interview when he first joined the devils he mentioned that he would like to have dinner with Julius Cesar etc (lol) compared to Jacks hot women so he's definitely a little on the nerdy side, I would love someone to ask him more.

Sidenote, Secretariat being his favorite movie is one of my favorite things ever. What do you mean a Disney horse movie about a women navigating a male dominated industry in the 1970s (I believe?) is your favorite movie?! 😅 And the fact that he's brought it up several times! Although to be fair I do kinda like it myself

i definitely think though, as someone who is in school themselves at the moment, everyone who likes school also says they hate it while they're in it 😂 removed from it though, *i* personally always feel anxious and like i'm itching for something to do. so maybe he's also the same!

i don't think he's an avid reader either though, cause the majority of the people i know who are into history or humanities based majors don't read a lot during the year. obviously, because the classwork is so heavy, but also because they're generally interested in one particular period of time that is hard to find information on. if someone could dig deeper into that, for my sake that'd be fantastic. would love to know if he's read parts of the illiad for funsies.

AND THE SECRETARIAT LORE. him and jack quinn are both strangely obsessed with that movie, and i have no idea why lmao. i did watch it as "research" for this fic i'm writing on luke, and while i can admit it's an interesting watch, i wouldn't ever go out of my way to say it's my favourite. i will admit though, i made a very pertinent connection to it in the fic, and i think that might be why luke likes it, so you're just going to have to wait to see it 😉

[recurring-polynya]

Good morning, happy Thursday, who wants to read a fun idea I had about giants in Soul Society?

So! I was reading this @littleeyesofpallas post about wuxing symbolism and was particularly struck by this passage in a section about the gate guardians:

There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians even then...

No, I said to myself, of course not. He's powerful enough to control his size, because I was thinking of the part where Grand Fisher claims Isshin is too small to defeat him and Isshin responds with a lecture on soul reaper lore:

Now, bodies are not swords, but maybe the same mechanic applies! It certainly applies to Hollows. Earlier in this same scene, Kon mistakes Grand Fisher for a Menos Grande, and Grand Fisher is insulted by the comparison, but it's the same thing. Menos are huge and scary, but when they become Arrancar, they shrink down and become scarier. [Aside: I think this is why the Yammy-is-secretly-Espada-0 reveal doesn't quite manage to hit. It goes against the lore Kubo has been laying down for ages]

On a meta level, this is just a shounen storytelling tactic where X is an indicator of strength, but then later on, it's like "Reverse Uno! Not-X is the real indicator of strength!!" That's exactly how this zanpakutou-size thing is used when it's first introduced.

Exhibit A: Renji, a court jester, being impressed by the size of Ichigo's sword:

Exhibit B: A handful of issues later, Urahara, an intellectual (lol), sets us straight:

Genre convention or not, I think it lends itself some interesting world-building. Among low-powered people, size is impressive, but as you scale the ranks of power, it's kind of pathetic. Weirdly large people are like the petty bourgeoisie of Soul Society power dynamics.

But that's actually the perfect niche for a gatekeeper! In general, your typical Joe Shinigami is going to be able to take on just about any rando from the Rukongai, but maybe not a particularly strong ryouka. Ganju was able to take on Yumichika, after all. A single shinigami wouldn't be able to take on a planned rebellion, like in the Bount arc, and they've got to, like, sleep and stuff. The Gotei could, in theory, have an entire gatehouse and a gate patrol, etc, but that they are perpetually short-staffed as-is. Instead, how about one medium-powerful gatekeeper whose size makes them well-suited for fighting groups of people (or siege weapons), and who is going to be intimidating overall?

Furthermore, it's implied that Jidanbou isn't actually a shinigami. He wears a shihakushou, but his axes don't seem to be a zanpakutou (he doesn't release them and is distressed when they are destroyed). His neighbors offer this comment on him:

It's not quite right, though: after all, many shinigami are from Rukongai, including Gin, who is the reason Jidanbou is being healed at the very moment this panel takes place. I think what this guy means is that Jidanbou is of Rukongai, which is to say not of the Seireitei.

So what is he, then? Here's my big idea: I think that the gigantism in Soul Society might actually be a reiatsu-developmental disability! It's always been my impression that growth, especially for powerful people, happens in fits and spurts, rather than linearly, and that furthermore, big changes in growth tend to coincide with developments in reiryouku. Somewhere, either in childhood or adolescence, someone's spiritual pressure grows more quickly than their control over it, which results in their body growing uncontrollably. They become very powerful "physically", but their strength is all in their mass/reishi, which takes most of their spiritual pressure to control. This may end up limiting the upper end of power they are able to achieve and some cases means they get cut off entirely from the other forms of power used by shinigami (connecting to a zanpakutou, kidou). I think this might be especially common in children from the Rukongai, who lack access to education and training. I can also imagine it leading itself to cautionary tales in the outer Rukon that if you feed your hungry children too much, you'll end up with a giant on your hands.

This offers one explanation to why Jidanbou is a giant and his brother Jiroubou is large, but not remotely on the same scale (the Souls Data Book lists his height at 7'7" vs Jidanbou's 32'5"). There are a handful of other shinigami of larger-than-human height, which could be a milder form of this, or it could mean that some sort of special training or medical intervention helped keep their growth manageable. I think you can squeeze in a lot of interesting character insights into this headcanon, from Hachi (8'5"), who perhaps worked exceptionally hard in an effort to control his power and ended becoming incredibly skilled at kidou as a result (interesting that he, too, is not actually a shinigami). Or Oomaeda (6'11"), who gets by a lot on his family's wealth and clout, but is definitely on the weaker end of the lieutenant power scale. In his case, his large size kind of speaks to his entire "thinks he's classy, but is really just gaudy"/can't-even-tell-how-outclassed-he-is-by-his-peers deal.

Then, as a counterpoint, you've got Hitsugaya: immensely powerful from a young age, and one of the hallmarks of his character is how in-control of himself he is, down to having developed an actual visible power bar for his bankai. Whether this is some effect of his personality, or whether it's an intervention on Hyourinmaru's part, his growth has been choked off as a side effect. He's the direct opposite of Jidanbou, who additionally seems somewhat childlike in personality (crying over his axes, for example, or his attachment to his extremely dubious "rules of the city"). To me, it's very sweet that their friendship might have roots in opposite expressions of the same reiatsu-growth-fuckup.

Much in the way that the Shiba use some sort of magic that's distinctly different from shinigami-kidou, I guess I really like thinking about other ways power might manifest itself in Soul Society outside of the shinigami-industrial-complex. And also the way the Seireitei may or may not try to control those powers."Guard this gate!" they say. "We won't actually let you live in the city or give you city wages, but you can have a cool outfit and, uh...do it for the exposure?"

[averlym]

i have been thinking about this lyric all day 

[teruel-a-witch]

it's the year 2024 and people are still posting anti shit and other ships in the jeff/annie tag like

GROW UP.

annie did.

[bloodycowboyclub]