#thread: a child

[descended-from-fairytales]

A Child

Waylon pulls up to a secluded place a bit away from where he's headed and parks his truck, killing the lights and taking a moment to breathe before he gets out. He's been casing this guy for weeks. He knows his schedule in and out. This is going to be the perfect time to grab him and make him pay for all the shit he's done. Violet picked him out because he was a serial abuser, and Waylon was more than happy to oblige in taking care of him.

He follows the man until they're alone, quickly knocking him out and carrying him back to the truck. This should be an easy job, take him somewhere secluded, torture and kill him, dispose of the body, and be on his merry way.

But when he opens the back of the truck, there's more than zip ties and rope waiting for him. He stares at the young girl in his truck bed for several moments. "What the fuck are you doing in my truck?"

@fxirytxlcfxtc

[mathysphere]

In 1999, on the 30th anniversary of the first moonwalk, the members of rec.crafts.textiles.needlework shared their memories of the historic event. Transcripts in alt text.

[starry-bi-sky]

my martha knight au in a nutshell:

Danny/Martha: see up here?

Danny/Martha: *taps skull*

Danny/Martha: intense psychological damage

-----------

Danny/Martha: *upon finding out she's pregnant*

Danny/Martha: oh my god i cant be a mom, I'm fifteen and homeless--

Danny/Martha: im going to be a terrible mother--

Danny/Martha: i live in a cAR--

Danny/Martha: what if the baby inherits my powers? Oh no--

-------------

Danny/Martha post giving birth: i've only had Bruce for a minute and a half but if anything were to happen to him i won't even need to fuse with Vlad, I'm razing this goddamn planet to the ground myself

Danny, to Baby Bruce: you are the last remaining thread of my sanity. I'm going to give you the world :)

---------------

Danny/Martha prior to getting pregnant: Fuck it, if everything in my life has led to this moment, i'm allowed to make one stupid decision. I'm getting drunk and getting laid

---------------

Danny/Martha while Bruce was a toddler: i swear to fucking god i am going to kill the next person who talks to me--

Bruce: hi mommy!! i brought you something!!!

Danny/Martha, immediately flipping on a dime: hi baby!! what do you have?

Bruce, a weird child like his mother: a spider :)

---------------

Danny/Martha, talking to Falcone after he made an unsavory comment at her and Bruce: If you ever come near me or my son again, I will dig up your shithead father's corpse and make you eat his skin.

Danny/Martha: do you understand me

Falcone:... crystal, ma'am

---------------

Danny/Martha new in Gotham: *getting mugged*

Danny/Martha: *grabs man's arm*

Danny/Martha: I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF LIKE A TWIG, FUCK BOY, DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH--

(she then proceeds to terrorize Gotham's night life for the next extended period of time, mostly unintentionally)

---------------

Danny/Martha: Danny Fenton?? No. you must be mistaken, my name is Martha Knight.

Danny/Martha: this here is my littlest knight, Bruce.

Danny/Martha: I made him all by myself :]

[ky-landfill]

If ya in the mood: can you do Kon, kid jon and kid Chris please or whenever you can?

Kent household unearthed camcorder footage

[bixels]

Cozy Glow is such an interesting litmus test for die-hard bronies. I was checking r/mlp to prep a post and there’s a discussion post about how she deserved what she got and. How do I tell bronies that children should not be tried as adults. How do I tell bronies that psychopaths and sociopaths deserve human rights and treatment and support. How do I tell bronies that cruel and unusual punishments are bad. How do I tell bronies that the death penalty is wrong. How do I tell bronies that a ruling body should not have absolute say over putting someone to death, least of all a 6-year-old child.

These are all my recent google searches.

[tulliok]

Rare little MLP rant from me incoming. (I don't like talking about my opinions on the show too much.)

I'm getting really fed up with a "debate" that keeps popping up every month in MLP's online fandom regarding the character, Cozy Glow, and how the show ended her storyline. The discourse is specifically about if her actions and motivations warranted her being sentenced to what is the equivalent of capital punishment in a children's show. 

This shouldn't even be a conversation.? Why are fans so eager to subscribe to the show's logic that a child character is irredeemable and evil and deserves to be punished that way? Like, are these fans not seeing the issue with a children's show about friendship and redemption having a storyline like this in the first place? Especially in the season that is literally about a friendship school.

The entire concept is the problem. It's ok to admit that as a fan. Watching the show's protagonists gleefully punish a young child is distasteful. Reading threads and think pieces on why it's actually ok is gross.

I have so so so many issues with season 8-9 but I'm really only willing to talk about it if I am asked about it.

[aerequets]

i wonder if it wldnt go back around to loid against all logic looking suspiciously at bond like "did you teacher her?" and bond anxiously shaking his head no

it's giving "the dog ate my homework" 😭😭

"the dog taught my daughter cuss words"

[s2pdoktopus]

I just did this to show an aged up character design of the precious child to be honest.

[rookflower]

thinking about the character again (cinderpelt) and it's likely unintentional and a result of either her shifting narrative role from young go getter to wise mentor or a shift in how the books display their own politics but i find something really tragic in-universe in how she develops from a character who will actively and willingly break the warrior code when it conflicts with her own morals (immediately lying to cover for graystripe and silverstream, acting in direct defiance of her leadership to nurse littlecloud and whitethroat back to health) but overtime through her role she gradually grows more god-fearing and pious and embodies somewhat of a "starclan is always right, even when they are cruel, and we need to accept that" position

[soath]

Not having the gods be responsible for the Aeor bubbles (Aeubbles) actually felt like a very nice choice to me; I was kind of dreading them turning out to be Erathis’ work or something. Because if the gods did pick and choose who to save, plucking their special followers out above all others, I don’t know if it would feel like a kindness to me! Why does this six year old in a city of horrors get to live while his neighbor dies? For the circumstance of faith? It would be cruel in a way that they haven’t been cruel—at least natural disasters don’t pick favorites. Mount Vesuvius didn’t pretend to be judging the content of anyone’s hearts.

It also gives one last bit of autonomy (and one last final brutal parallel with the gods they hate) to Aeor’s mages. They made something so beautiful and terrible, an awe that brought the god of magic to tears, and even as the gods pulled it down in their ears they had one last paranoid failsafe! One last screw you measure preserving a terrible truth. But just as Asmodeus accuses, Aeor clearly drew distinctions between the people who matter and the people who don’t. That blue bubble we’ve seen in the amphitheater—it’s not any of the panicked masses who were saved in perfect glacial magic, it was the archmage.

At the end of the day, it was Aeor that built a hierarchy to save some people and leave others. They might not have sunk the Titanic but they made sure only the first-class passengers would have access to their last, most desperate life boat. I’m glad the narrative allowed them to have that triumph. In trying to be a godkiller how close must you mold yourself to the shape of a killing kind of god?

[unforth]

ngl I'm absolutely disgusted by and done with the spam asks supposedly from Palestinians. I don't know or, honestly, care if they are "vetted" or if they're just scams. All I know is they drop super triggering material in my inboxes, unasked for and unblocklistable.

Can we please kill this entire bullshit way of fundraising? I'm begging y'all to stop ever posting them. Make this absolutely useless as a way of outreach.

[prismelit]

elena ferrante banging us all on the head with a hammer and shouting 'you can't outrun your mother, you only crash into her'

[crystal-lillies]

honestly RIP Torbin though, he was a padawan just tagging along when the other Jedi masters went to spy on and retrieve Osha and Mae. He got briefly mindfucked by the witches, and he went on to take an oath of meditation for TEN YEARS because he was wracked with guilt over what happened. And he was a PADAWAN. Very little more than a child himself!!

and Mae convinced him that taking the poison was forgiveness. all he wanted was forgiveness, and he didn't even do anything.

sure we don't know yet about the six years between the fire and his taking the oath, but from what context we're given, it's the test and the subsequent destruction of the coven he seems to feel guilty for.

Unless it wasn't just Mae who set the place on fire and blew everything up, but we don't know that yet. from what we know now, RIP Torbin, who did nothing wrong and was convinced to commit suicide for forgiveness over being a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I really don’t think we should be treating morality as a linear thing in ASOIAF because what often happens is that we start to stray from the actual conversations that we need to be having regarding the depths of making a moral choice and even the circumstances involved. To try and blankly paint any one character as the “most morally good” isn’t really taking us anywhere. And it certainly isn’t helpful when people in this fandom want to try and prove that characters are “grey” but not moral (what does that even mean??) because they did one “bad” thing. If ASOIAF stans were to have their way, then:

Jon is not a morally good person because he threatened Gilly

Dany cannot be considered to be compassionate because she sanctioned torture against the wine seller’s daughters

Arya cant be good because she has killed people

and so on, and so on….

But this is such a draining, and oft times frustrating, conversation to have because you see just how shallow the above listed examples are? Readers are listing only singular instances across a narrative that spans thousand and thousands of pages, and there’s absolutely no context involved. Why did Jon threaten Gilly? Why did Dany resort to torture and at one point did she do it? Who did Arya kill and why? And why do those singular instances negate everything else in their arcs?

What usually happens when we have the 12847647282th unnecessary conversation about who is the “most good” character in ASOIAF is that we start getting blanket statements with no elaboration. And the only people ever considered are Ned, Brienne, and Davos, and sometimes the children like Shireen or Tommen. Mind you, Ned and Davos are not perfect or without their own faults either; much has been said about Ned’s abilities as a father and it’s implied that Davos was not entirely faithful to his wife. And based on her current arc, Brienne will surely have to make morally tough choices regarding oaths and knightly honor. Plus theres the irony of including literal children when they have not been put in situations where they actually have to make morally difficult choices and live with the consequences.

ASOIAF shows us that people who are capable of incredible kindness and compassion are also capable of doing unpleasant things.

Jon threatened Gilly….because he was trying to save another child whom he believed to be at risk of human sacrifice(!!) and was stuck between a rock and a hard place. But why does that singular instance negate the fact that his arc has been about him standing up for the “lesser than”? Why does that negate the fact that he stood up for Sam against a superior when there was nothing to gain for him? Why does it negate the fact that he went out of his way to equip Arya in a way that society would have deemed inappropriate? Why does it negate the fact that he dedicated the entirety of his time as Lord Commander to fight an institution that had upheld racism/xenophobia for millennia? Why should we filter out all those moments of kindness, compassion, and deep empathy that Jon has even without him thinking?

Dany sanctioned torture….but she was trying to solve the murder of an innocent victim AND this brought her no joy. But why does that negate the fact that when she gained unimaginable power, she could’ve high tailed to Westeros to use it to her benefit and become queen, but instead chose to stay in Essos where she has no personal responsibility just so she could fight the institutional evil that is slavery? Why does it negate Dany who went to personally treat plague victims at great risk to herself?

Arya has killed some….but it’s in self defense or in defense of others who are disenfranchised. But why does this negate that she is one of the few people in the series how goes out of her way to show kindness and friendship to those who are not as economically or politically advantaged as she is (e.g., Mycah)? Why does it negate that she took fellow slaves under her protection when she herself had little power to fight for her own survival at Harrenhall? Why does it negate that when she saw those caged soldiers whom she was angry with for their actions, instead of leaving them to die instead offered them the only kindness she could at the moment: a drink of water?

Trying to have arguments about morality but stripping everything down to ‘x character did y bad thing (regardless of context) and that’s why they can’t be good’ is, to be blunt, ridiculous. And it isn’t a particularly interesting way to engage with the text. Character journeys, especially well written ones, are rarely ever in a straight line. There’s amazing highs and terrible lows. GRRM gives us so many characters like Jon, Dany, Arya, Sansa, Ned, etc. who even in their lows, have gleams of compassion and exceptional kindness. It doesn’t do anyone any good to filter those moments out to make the books more digestible; and I’m being a little generous here, because so many readers have a very shallow level of engagement with the series and it shows in conversation. And we also shouldn’t pit these characters unfairly against those who have never been in similarly difficult situations that required them to make hard choices. Because when we do, we start to completely miss the point all together.

[writer-room]

Love that the team continued to uphold Lloyd being extremely mentally unwell at all times. Barely functioning but insisting its fine. Plagued by the visions™. Legitimately had a panic attack when everything started to go wrong. Completely willing to fuck over his entire physiology with weird dragon magic because "yeah that'll probably be helpful later". Waking up screaming and shrugging because its totally normal to have nightmares that horrifying on the regular. A+ on this assignment lads, you've broken Lloyd down to his bare essentials.

[gingermintpepper]

One of my favourite little things about Apollo is how casual his and the Fates' relationship was.

Now, this isn't to understate how grave the Fates were in any way, as a matter of fact, it's written multiple times about the complex interplay between the Fates and Zeus (Stobaeus even wrote that the Fates were given the seat closest to Zeus' throne so he could better give counsel on all things from their machinations)

Indeed, even Zeus was beholden to them and even though the Fates usually left things up to natural course (and Zeus in his position as Moiragetes - that is, the Leader of Fates could even intercede on these events, even interrupting when a someone was set to die) in a lot of ways, there are many, many things that even Zeus could never interfere with, things that were above even the King of the Heavens. Some really good examples are things like Persephone's Abduction which the Fates ruled as necessary for the propagation of the seasons and his marriages to Themis and Hera.

By all accounts really, the Fates were incredibly stern, incredibly grave deities who presided over law, order, birth and death and even worked with the Furies to punish those who broke the sacred laws!

And then you have Apollo who was also known by the title Moiragetes (In Delphi, there were only two Moirai depicted and in place of the third was Zeus and Apollo Moiragetes according to Pausanias) but who did things like, checks notes, send the Fates to be the midwives of his paramour Evadne when she had to deliver his son alone in secret (by the way, he also sent the actual goddess of childbirth to help. The Fates absolutely did not need to also be there, he was taking every precaution:

and get the Fates drunk so they would agree to save his bestie Admetus' life:

Keep in mind btw - this con Apollo pulled for Admetus was multi-layered and even included getting Heracles to wrestle Thanatos and keep him still so Apollo could proceed to help Admetus cheat Alcestis away from Fates when Admetus expressed regret for making his wife die in his place:

And I cannot stress enough that Apollo faced zero consequences for this nonsense. NONE. The Fates weren't even cordial with other Gods - they're almost never referred to directly, they were often depicted apart from other deities or described as old, ugly and unable to walk (though, generally speaking they were artistically depicted as young maidens!) and apart from comforting Demeter by going to personally explain what happened to Persephone in some versions of the story, they didn't really get humanised the way most of the other gods or spirits did. Usually they're referred to euphemistically, or someone will speak distantly about a prophecy they once heard was designed by the Fates but Apollo? Apollo knew the Fates! He was good friends with the Fates! And I think it's even cooler when you consider that both instances of Apollo showing off his Fate's Favourite privilege have to deal with birth (of Iamus) and death (of Alcestis/Admetus) which were the two points most deeply associated with the Moirai and why there were usually depictions of them as a pair over that of a triad.

(Excerpts sourced from Theoi, Aeschylus' Eumenides, Pindar's Olympian 6 and Statius' Silvae; though just a note, one instance of the Fates' involvement with Apollo is misquoted on Theoi - that is the Fates being present for Apollo's birth, that's actually a misinterpretation of Evadne's birthing of Iamus.)