#this whole thing is dedicated for her

[fried-manto]

What?

[kacievvbbbb]

I like to think that on some level Shanks is just a little upset (Beckman knows the truth; that he is deeply, simmeringly, furious) at the unfairness and hypocrisy that is Mihawk still wanting to fight Zoro.

That he still thinks Zoro’s going to be his greatest challenger- the one to usurp his throne, that even though he’s down an eye, even though they are both “lacking”. Zoro is somehow still worthy of Mihawk’s attention when Shanks has been judged and found wanting.

Shanks lost an arm, and they still can’t talk about it, and Mihawk still won’t fight him, but he’ll fight Zoro. Trained Zoro. And he knows it’s not the same, he doesn’t even want the title, doesn’t want to be Mihawk’s “destiny”. He knows that he’s being childish but Mihawk started it and it’s not fair.

[spookythesillyfella]

hey guys . heres my fair share of doodles from the magma i drew on with my big bro @chamom1le-t3a

[carefulfears]

we've both talked about how scully isn't jealous fire. what differences do you see between protective scully vs jealous scully?

yeah to me the main difference is that one is more external and the other internal. she gets very emotional when she’s jealous. in episodes like alpha (literally sitting that woman down and going “i’m watching you.” cracks me tf up. Dana nobody is taking your man.) and war of the coprophages, it’s kind of angry. it’s louder, but still something very vulnerable and true to her (hater-ism). in episodes like the end, it’s heartbreak. that’s one of the very few episodes where i think she was purely jealous, and sad. she usually understands what’s going on and i think she knew as soon as she heard him call diana by her first name that something was going to change. i think it hurt her feelings, that specific display of connection, usually reserved for her.

when she’s jealous she retreats. she watches quietly. she cries alone in her car. she needs a moment to herself.

it’s when she’s protective that you can’t shake her for anything. one of my favorite images in fire is her standing in the doorway while mulder and phoebe meet with the arson specialist. i didn’t even notice she was there the first time i saw it. she wasn’t invited. she’s just keeping watch. later, she’s standing in the hallway. after that, she’s in his hotel room, and doesn’t leave when phoebe comes in. says “are you okay?” the moment they’re alone.

people write off her behavior in this one as being “jealous” because she has a lil crush and there’s another woman there, but i honestly find that dismissive. sometimes people discuss scully through such a wide lens, not taking into account who she is. she’s really surprised throughout the time that phoebe was there. it’s that soft edge that still shocks to cruelty, that she never really loses. it’s what shocks in the pilot when the doctor hits mulder twice. what shocks in the following episode when the government agents punch him on the side of the road. (look at you you’ve radicalized scully). it’s what makes her wary of jerry lamana, even before he stole mulder’s work.

but phoebe is so cruel, and so personal, and has so much history. it’s not jealousy that makes scully linger in doorways. it’s not jealousy that spawns that folie a deux. no one else understands. no one else can be trusted. (which i do kind of think started in fire, i’ve said before). she isn’t jealous that he startles when he hears this woman’s voice.

and i know that’s a lot on phoebe as an example, but it doesn’t stop. she doesn’t stop keeping watch. she doesn’t stop shocking to cruelty. she’ll get loud. she’ll make plans. she’ll surprise herself. and it doesn’t come with jealousy’s mortifying intimacy.

(don’t have much else to say but i found this from an old post of mine and wanted to share: “scully has that kind of protectiveness towards him that you have towards a child that hasn't been touched by the world yet. it's very 'the world is at least half terrible, though i keep this from my children.’ 'good bones' by maggie smith. scully in the beginning is like......there is something here that should have broken by now. and she wants to watch him be able to walk into every room with the most hopeful answer and a hand out to every stranger.”)

she shares him with the world only reluctantly, Etc etc

[kavehayati]

I support girls but NAH THIS IS REACHING “if you look carefully LIKE REALLY CAREFULLY 🤓☝️”

[p4nishers]

thinking about her again (1941 flashback)

[kindaasrikal]

Morro except after all the healing and growing he meets the preeminent again and she destroys his mental state, leaving him once again without his sanity.

[ananke-xiii]

I've written somewhere that Team Free Will is actually Team Dean's Will but it wasn't, like, a criticism or something like that, it was what I personally got once the show was over (and I still have very legit concerns about Dean's choice during the last episode).

I don't think Chuck won in the end because he, as a character, wouldn't have wanted for Dean to die. As far as polysemy goes, Chuck does represent many things but, to be really honest, I don't really think he represents John Winchester on a cosmic level. Like, yeah, OF COURSE, we can definitely put them together in the "Shitty Fathers" box but when Chuck tells Dean that he's not like his father I think he's not that wrong after all. Chuck is much worse and not because he's a John Winchester on a gigantic scale, it's not about quantity. He's worse because he just is.

Leaving aside the many problematic aspects of their relationship, Mary and John can be totally seen as Amara and Chuck (the show does go there and I think it's interesting for many reasons) but it's also true that the one who lied in the couple was Mary, not John. Even if we know why she had to lie and it can be understandable, it's also true that both Sam and Mary are willing to omit a Very Important Thing about themselves that, eventually, gets their partners killed. But, unlike Chuck who's to blame for his omissions, lies and manipulations, both Sam and Mary are two characters that, even more than Amara, are ALWAYS stripped of any choice. So it's almost like no matter what they do, they can only fight for their free will but never fully live it (SPN final thesis: you can never get what you want).

So yeah, if we consider John as a person and, more specifically, as a partner (therefore not in his paternal role), Chuck's not like him at all. Chuck's in control of his narrative, John couldn't even choose his own car at the dealership (btw, in my fantasy John has a love/hate relationship with the whole album "Boys for Pele" by Tori Amos that he keeps hidden like Bobby's passion for Tori Spelling). John is very much mainly narrated by other characters, in this respect he's just like Mary, to be honest. We don't 100% know who he is because he's a character described by absence. So much so that Sam and Dean didn't even know he had a fucking SECRET family!!!

Chuck is portrayed to be less enigmatic. We know he lies because we are shown that multiple times even before "Moriah". He's a character without much depth and that bothers him So. Much. He's a God who wants to be like Keith Richards. LOL!

However, even if Chuck, to me, objectively doesn't win (I also have my own "Billie won theory"), he neverthless does represent the Dictorial Power of Shitty Fathers that some might call The Patriarchy (not me. I would NEVER!). In this way, yes, he sort of wins because, as I've said, the natural order wins in the end and, in SPN, the natural order is Absent, Shitty Fathers. The sugarcoated version of the bygone days, the bittersweet nostalgia for a golden past that inevitably leads to death.

And who, the show tells us, represents all of the above? The absence of John Winchester via the presence of his journal. A man who's become so powerful he's been morphed into a myth. Maybe he is the real tulpa of this story, after all.

What does this have to do with Team Dean's Will? I find that saying that what Dean did in the end is a "choice" is very troublesome. To me personally. But the show does imply that, not strongly enough because it leaves some room for doubt but it ultimately does that. So okay, I'll bite and will consider it to be a Real Choice out of Dean's Free Will. Fine. What about Sam, though?

S15 starts with Sam and Rowena and ends with Sam and Dean. Rowena and Dean both commit suicide that's not 100% framed as suicide. Among other things, it is framed as a sacrifice. And Sam's there with them and he doesn't want that. He says so. He tells Rowena to "screw the books" and he tells Dean that he doesn't want what Dean is asking for.

Rowena's act is framed as being done out of her own agency because she believes in prophecy and magic. To which I say bullshit, not to Rowena but to the show because this is a cop-out. Since S13 Rowena couldn't do what she wanted to do because it wasn't possible. Fine. But how come that prophecy seems to be working only for her? How come the "rules are rules" mindset only applies to her? Why do other characters' books change and hers alone doesn't? How come her sacrifice is both destined and out of her own free will? It means that it can happen then! That destiny and free will can coincide! This change in thinking about the question is so packed with possibilities that they could've done another 15 seasons about it. Unfortunately, destiny and free will seem to meet in Definite Death which meh. Story over.

And Sam? He's still there. Participating and not participating. Against his will.

With Dean things are a bit different because we do know that Chuck is obsessed with him. Once Chuck is out of the picture, we could imply, Dean's finally "free" to choose what he wants. Which is such a naive thought because if it were only the absence and/or presence of things/persons to determine our lives we, perhaps, wouldn't need therapy.

But, as I've said, I'll be good and keep my promise: let's say Dean chooses out of his own free will. It should be cool for us, right? This is what Dean wants. The Big Big Bad is not dead but he's not the man behind the curtains anymore so hurrah! Free/Dean's Will wins. We should feel like we must respect that. And yet, it doesn't feel right.

And Sam? He's still there. Participating and not participating. Against his will.

It doesn't feel very "Free Willy" if the people just let the orca free. It's not very Free Will for Sam if the show tells us that it's Dean literally getting out of the picture that will "free" Sam. Brrrrrrr.

So what does this tell me? That the "destiny vs free will" discourse seems to be working only when there's a villain on the horizon, a commanding power that wants to tell you what to do, someone actually stronger than you whose actions can alter your life's story.

If you take that power out, what's left? Only people with their choices. And your absent, dead father's journal radiating The Real Power (the idea of power inside your mind that controls you). Is free will still in the room with us? Cause it starts to look like somebody's supposedly "free" will might be somebody's else constraint. As far as Sam is concerned, it seems to say: it doesn't matter whether there's a God, Death or that prophecy is real or not. What matters is that you can only stand there, participating and not participating. You don't want that? Too bad, 'cause that's what you got.

Maybe the finale really took the worst from my "Billie won theory" and the worst from the "Chuck won theory", i.e. an idea of natural order that upholds patriarchy. Or, since I can and will go there, that the natural order is the patriarchy.

So what about Free Will, is it an illusion? If it applies to only a few it certainly doesn't seem like something worth fighting for. And the natural order is indeed restored in the end. I don't think the show gives a real answer to that, by the end of S15 there are so many things that simultaneously mean 100 other things that everybody can take what they want from the show.

If you ask me, I think it was a moot question, to be honest. It made sense in S4-5 but once SPN goes full meta in S15 it becomes very superficial. Of course I know they're fictional characters and literally don't have free will, the premises were interesting because I wanted to see how these characters would react to stuff happening in the story. Once the story is revelead to be a bluff, though, what am I left with? Characters spiralling into crisis after crisis. This could be interesting in a novel but in a 15-seasons-long series you have to give me something ELSE as well, the "all die more or less happily" last-minute finale (knowing Heaven is a scam, by the way) is just... not having to deal with the consequences of the narrative choices that were made.

Or, perhaps, Supernatural is a show where one of its themes is "destiny vs free will" that ultimately tells you that there's no destiny but there's also no free will, there's only John's journal aka the Power of the Dominant Narrative. Which is the power of the people who write that narrative for us to believe in it. Perhaps, not even the people making the show were free to do what they would've liked to do. They were also there, like Sam, participating and not participating. Finding ways to cope.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

That's a neat serennedy analysis post but the comment ab the scene being the most humanity shown in all of resident evil is so incorrect and just more proof that no one in this fandom pays attention to female characters or just any character who isn't Leon

[daz4i]

it really is very embarrassing to give teruko 2 pages of a backstory and then immediately kill her. through her love to a man no less

[gingermintpepper]

hey I hope you’re doing ok!! For the ask game, 🌈? Also perhaps ☔️?💧, even?

Hello hello, thank you for participating ☆ Once again, I can't comment on whether or not this extract is particularly fluffy but I do think it's rather sweet and it's definitely romantic so I think it's good for filling out both 🌈 and 💧!! It's an extract from what I've tentatively dubbed my 'Women and Apollo' doc which is essentially just a big running document I have dedicated to exploring themes and dynamics between Apollo and the women he's been entangled with! This extract in particular is from my Melia section 🥰

The night is a cold sheet spread across her shoulders. She wakes in pieces; first, her flesh, bracketed between the raw heat of Phoebus' bare chest and the sharp sting of the night air's fangs, then her mind, pleasure's fleeting haze quickly swept aside by panic then worry then guilt. What would Kaanthos say if he could see her now, bare breasted and stained in a male-god's desire? What would Father? No doubt she would have to cede the seat of the temple to Kaanthos. How could a carnal woman serve the people after all? And her river - oh, her sweet river! Would his waters even deign to soothe her scales when she was so completely drenched in the scent of a sky-god?

How foolish she's been, throwing everything away just because of some sweet words and a pretty face. Maybe Kaanthos truly did deserve the temple after all. Maybe Melia didn't deserve such a treasure if she was so easily seduced.

She sniffles softly, slipping gently from Phoebus' loose grip. His heat wafts off his skin like the warmth of a well-tended hearth, it lingers in her bones as she kneels in the grass of this unfamiliar field. It makes the sear of shame dig that much deeper into her heart. Phoebus had listened well to her warnings. He'd carried her someplace far away from flowing water, somewhere distant where her brother's scrying eyes could not reach. The tears welling in her eyes finally fall as she turns this way and that, utterly and completely lost without a source of water to follow. How could she return now? Even she was not bold enough to have the man she planned to reject take her back to her father's house.

Stupid girl. Foolish. How could she have been so short sighted?

"Melia?"

His voice is laden with sleep's husk, his arm makes little grabs at the grass searching for her shape. She swallows her tears and bids her voice to not betray her, "Here I am, my lord. You may go back to sleep."

The mildest furrow of his brow. When he turns his head, his hair flows like rich golden oil over the dark grass, "Come here," his hand keeps searching for hers, patting the ground, dragging long fingers over the dirt and frowning when he does not find her. "It is not yet morning, why have you fled so far from my side?"

Melia cannot help but laugh at his visage, clumsy and squinty-eyed, less the graceful gentleman who promised her a taste of change and more a bumbling kitten desperate for its mother's teat. She wipes her tears as quickly as she can muster, "If you but open your eyes, I'm certain you would find me."

He makes a grumbling noise, some cross between a boar's grunt and the crow's deep bellow, "Is this another of your games? I'm much too tired for games Melia." Finally, his finger grazes the edge of her ankle and like a child, he lights up, eyes still stubbornly closed but smile positively radiant, "Ah, there you are!" Diligently, he traces the shape of her leg with his open palm, measuring the smoothness of her calf, the swell of her knee, the broadness of her thigh, then he lays his head upon her, cheek pressed close to her stomach, heated back like warm coals against her skin. "So cool," he murmurs and kisses her stomach, throws his arm around her waist and nuzzles further into her skin, "Tell me when you've need of the water -" a dreadfully wide yawn interrupts him. "- I'll fetch it for you."

Melia finds herself laughing again, just a tiny thing as she runs her fingers through the thick waves of his hair. What is she to do now?

As for a fic idea I'd like to talk about since I don't know if I'll ever write it: Among the many, many, many things I'd like to write but probably never will, I really wish I could just sit down and write a story about Tenes and Hemithea. There's a lot of reasons why I have no plans to ever properly tackle anything regarding the Iliad - chief of which being that there's just too much information and the amount of research would be insane - but a lot of what I would potentially focus on have to deal with people and places Apollo loves and his inability to protect those things throughout the conflict starting with Tenes. I absolutely adore exploring Apollo's paternity in my writing and considering how fiersome Tenes was and how both he and Troilus would die protecting their sisters, I've just always wanted to dig into an exploration of their lives and connection with their father and how Tenes' death specifically would've affected Apollo. Like yeah, I know Troilus is usually the point of focus for such works especially because of the manner in which he was killed, but Tenes was also beloved! Also considering he was originally punished for being falsely accused of sexually assaulting his stepmother, I can't help but want to write his wrath when he realises what it is Achilles intends to do to Hemithea. Alas though, I don't think I'l ever get to do more than think longingly about it, at least right now lmao.

[msommers]

i just simply think it's a horrifying but effective way to radicalize the formerly sheltered and spoiled noble lady and get her to immediately understand the desire for vigilante justice when the party member she was just trying to give grace to decides to betray the party and its result is the entire sequence of the fall of val foret

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

finished hazbin hotel and what the fuck it's actually kind of??? good???

[rhaegars-cervix]

imagine you write a song for your dead aunt who you never met because she died in the fire in which you were born and it’s about grief and music and family and she’s a woman named jenny but when you sing it everyone can tell you’re singing about yourself

[laugtherhyena]

Thinking about Hamato and how although he resembles Hikaru the closest on the physical aspect I think he actually takes much more after his mother than him, at least when it comes to his main character trait.

Don't get me wrong, he takes after his dad too with being very kind and always eager to help, but when I think of the guy my mind immediately goes to the undying love he has for his family and how he would literally drop anything and everything he's doing to help them even if it's not something he outright needed to do;

He didn't need to out his studies on hold for several years to dedicate basically all his time to raising his little sister, but he did it anyways because that's his family and he loves them more than anything.

Which is pretty close to how Yukari felt when she was alive, to the point she would rather die herself if it means her kids get to make it. So I think these two are very much alike and Hamato is definitely the one that takes the most after her out of the Ando siblings.

[constantvariations]

Fun fact: if you make a compilation of all Adam scenes - trailers, shorts, and mentions included - it would be 45 minutes long