#versus who he used to be

[egophiliac]

So.... what are your thoughts on Ace's UM, if you haven't been asked this already?

sneaky magic for the sneakiest boy

no but really, I think it fits him really well! I had thought his UM would probably involve something kinda sleight-of-handy or pickpockety! and I looooved that it made such a nice loop-around back to episode 1. ❤️ I was. kind of half-expecting him to just run out and punch Riddle in the nose again. but instead this time 'twas he who offed the queen's head! it was great! and he did it while stone-cold terrified out of his mind! because Ace is the only remotely normal or well-adjusted person at NRC and therefore the only one who is like "we're going to literally die, this is super effed up". but he did it anyway!!!! I AM SO PROUD

[queenoftheimps]

After seeing Lukas Gage playing cocky, swaggering characters like The Cat King, I was not prepared for how completely protective I am over him in Companion, where he plays the sweetest, goodest robot boy who did not deserve all of that suffering my poor boyyyy

[ingravinoveritas]

Michael Sheen: Repeatedly mentions his attractions to other men, talks about his first crush being on a man, describes one of his characters as "pansexual," talks about how gorgeous/easy to fall in love with/slinky-hipped David is, and otherwise screams into the universe about being bi without saying the word "bisexual."

Misha Collins: Accidentally "comes out" as bisexual at a convention, then walks it back three days later and comes out as straight.

One of these things is not like the other...

[4nythin6]

I havent slept in way too long but smth smth the violence of assimilation and conformity as an old world monster that has to trick and bargain its way into your life. The product of previous colonization and imperialism. Smth smth the violent loss of identity and culture and the resulting hunger for it, then the violent, backhanded taking-appropriation-of what other communities have to sate your own emptiness. How the first one turned is a biracial character. Then the one who invites them in also skirts both "sides". The different reactions from weaponizing it, accepting it, fighting it, but also letting those who choose it, go. They sell the whole deal as equality and community but once youre in it, you're only singing their song.

[made-my-peace-with-all-the-bad]

Cole!Trip’s anger is different from every other Trip’s anger. I think of it like a blue flame. It’s not as huge and consistent as other Trips’ anger is, which I think of as an orange flame. His Trip’s anger is quieter and more hidden behind a trained facade, but when you get too close or he gets too caught up and consumed by it, it’s hotter and more dangerous. But he works to keep it under wraps. Instead of immeditaly going to violence, he tries to shut down instead. Like in JFT when Marcia gets up and goes to Cherry, he shoves his hands into his pockets and maybe balls them into fists cause he feels the anger coming but he knows it’s best to just shut down. But then suddenly Paul is yelling and Cherry is denying and blaming them instead of the kid who stabbed Bob and it’s like gas is being thrown into what is normally his small and hot flame. Suddenly it’s like it’s exploding. It becomes a huge and blazing fire that consumes and burns everything in its path.

[justaz]

arthur repealing the ban on magic and sitting merlin and morgana down to figure out who is going to be court sorcerer and ready to mediate a debate but before morgana can even open her mouth, merlin passes to position onto her. arthur and morgana just stare, morgana makes feeble attempts to spark an argument, to instigate merlin to at least fight for it. even arthur is like “…you don’t even want, like, a room or something for your magic work?? none of the perks?? a different position in the court?????” and merlin’s just like “nope! i’m good!” and morgana and arthur exchange a look before arthur asks why. merlin’s answer is that his position, where he belongs, is at arthur’s side. besides. morgana deserves it. she was snubbed from becoming queen so it was only fair.

[mermaidsirennikita]

frustrating levels of discourse continue happening on twt ugh https://x.com/lara_e_brown/status/1839303817256645101

Lol yeah, I've honestly just given up on reading takes like that because once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

It's an extremely shallow reading, using things like "pale", which you can in fact be while having a darker complexion, with both examples relating less to a physical appearance and more to his aspect in the moment (his face is "white" because he's scared; he's "pale and effeminate" because he's in a wan and weakened state). And I say "both" because you tend to come up with faaaar fewer examples of the text relating Heathcliff as pale than... not.

I also find it funny that this user uses Heathcliff marrying Isabella as an example of why he MUST be white, when Heathcliff and Isabella literally run away together because nobody wants them to be together, PARTICULARLY her brother, and this rips the Linton family asunder. Almost as if.......... it was............... breaking a taboo......................

Like, yeah! 18th century Yorkshire wouldn't have accepted that marriage. And if there's one thing we know about Heathcliff—if it's not accepted, he's not gonna do it.

One of the entire points of his character is that he lives against law and taboo and societal norms (while at the same time being deeply aware of the fact that his existence doesn't gel with them). In that thread, that user references the Byronic hero, with the name drawing from Lord Byron and his own literary fascinations. Byron was obsessed with taboo, lived to break them (most famously the taboo of sleeping with people of the same sex, and probably the taboo of incest as well... COME TO MY TED TALK TO DISCUSS HOW THAT COULD RELATE TO HEATHCLIFF, ALSO). One of the reasons why more recent scholarship (and I don't even mean super recent) surrounding Wuthering Heights has come to terms with the interpretation of Heathcliff as a man of color is that he does embody the taboo even more.

And obviously... some taboos (the incest one) exist for a reason. But the book also seems interested in questioning how much we really gain by treating someone (someone like Heathcliff) as other and wrong simply for existing. Again, we go into the cycle of abuse.

I also find it rather belittling of people to refer to general 18th and 19th century values when discussing how people "would have" seen Heathcliff, or interpreted the text. Because, for one thing—yeah! A lot of contemporary readers did not in fact Get It. Perhaps in part because they did have the biases that people like that user seem to believe would have prevented the author from exploring Heathcliff as a man of color.

... But if Emily Bronte thought exactly as the detractors of her novel (who condemned it as wicked and aberrant) did, she never would have written the book, I think. Who's to say, though? It's difficult for EITHER side to make leaps about what Emily knew or thought, because she is someone who didn't live very long, has been portrayed as an eccentric (and perhaps even maligned by Elizabeth Gaskell's portrayal of her) and definitely had something of an offbeat upbringing. We just don't have much directly from HER. So it's a bit rich to me to make assumptions about the kind of limited worldview she may have had on topics like race, when we really do not have a lot of definitive information about her worldview, but DO know that the book she wrote, which some theorize to be about a man of color, REALLY upset some conventional readers.

Like... why would you contextualize that book within a purely conventional reading when the entire reason why Wuthering Heights matters is that it defies convention?

I do shy away from using the word "canonical" to describe Heathcliff's race, because while I know what people mean when they say it (and I'm sure I've said it at some point) it's just a word choice that people like that user will latch on to. Like I've said before, there is no way to prove with 100% certainty Heathcliff's race either way. Which isn't to say that you have to do so to state that he's a man of color. It's just the kind of pedantic strategy people will use in threads like these.

And I'll notice, too, that she omits Nelly's line wherein she speculates that Heathcliff's mother could be Chinese or Indian. I mean, what's her take on that specificity combined with the lascar speculation? No mention of Liverpool relating to people... not... from America or Spain...?

I do worry sometimes that people see someone's major concentration (say, if someone has a BA in English or something, which for the record I don't) and go "Damn, that's end-all, be-all" A) it's not, there's more to research than getting a degree B) you could also use literal wikipedia footnotes to kickstart your own deeper dive into this, there are tons of people who've made careers discussing books like WH debating the issue C) having a degree of any level never kicks your bias.

To go back to my own degree... I knew old art historians who saw nothing gay at all in Michelangelo's work. You can know a lot about a lot, and it doesn't mean you have an open mind.

I think anyone can read WH, do some research about the era and Emily, and drawn their own conclusions. And you are just going to have to make your conclusions based on your own assessment. There is no smoking gun here, and there never will be because the smoking gun would be a living Emily Bronte willingly telling you what she meant.

And I didn't read Heathcliff as a person of color from the jump, for the record. I was thirteen when I read that book for the first time; I'm white; I picked that book in the context of it being a Great English Classic, and as far as I knew, those were all about white people. Because... that's what you were taught about WH at the time, at least where I was.

But when I was first introduced to that interpretation some time later, it was a literal "OH!" moment. Because like... yeah. There isn't a smoking gun for Dorian Gray's sexuality (and yes, we know a lot more about Oscar Wilde than we do about Emily Bronte; but the absence of knowledge of Emily's interests and attitudes doesn't mean we can assume she DIDN'T have an interest in writing Heathcliff as a person of color) but The Picture of Dorian Gray makes way more sense when you interpret his queerness for what it is. Wuthering Heights makes way more sense when you interpret Heathcliff's race for what it is.

[wisteriasymphony]

I think about how being put into fame at such a young age could/has affected him ALL THE TIME too . The weird part is that if you notice in gorizilla ( pretty sure I spelled that wrong) , his target audience is more than just preteens . There’s literal adults fan-crazing after him . He’s like certain 90s models who started out really young and were turned into sex symbols and “icons” just for their looks , which says a lot about how beauty standards are centered around youth ..

Oh don't get me wrong, there are stay-at-home moms across the world who run his rpf fanfiction smut forums like the fucking military.

[happyk44]

So this post I tagged w/ npd!Annabeth just popped out of the queue and as I'm rereading it, I'm laughing to myself because wasn't there some official post from Annabeth's POV being shocked and annoyed that Percy has better grades than her. Even though Percy has gone to school every year consistently (save for that gap year he was in a coma) and also has a teacher for a step-father, while she was presumably being "homeschooled" at camp where she would be able to prioritize her interests (architecture and mythology) over stuff she could care less about, like biology.

[jackass-jones]

Ever think about Date’s view on family and how that relates to his character? When Mizuki asks him to define family, he just awkwardly offers that its like being blood related to someone. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and Mizukis, but like, he literally had no idea what a real family looks like. He’s an orphan, a man who grew up with no family and no name, but he doesn’t know that yet. He has no memory of his past, no way of knowing if there’s someone out there waiting for him to come home, if he even had a place to call home. His only frame of reference for a family is Mizuki and her parents. Deep down he knows it’s not right, not loving, but it fits the mold of a nuclear family, man and woman, blood related, so that must be what family is. When he’s asked to take in Mizuki, he’s absolutely clueless because he literally has zero frame of reference for how a child is supposed to be cared for. He puts distance between them because this isn’t his place, he doesn’t have the right to love this child as his own because he isn’t the real dad. There’s no place for someone like him in a family. And it’s baffling to him to hear that Mizuki not only loves him, she needs him because he is her family. Date believes he’s a nobody, just a sad, lonely man with no name who absolutely does not deserve this kind of love. But he has it anyway because he chooses it, he makes something that neither he nor Mizuki have ever had before. HES HOME

[itsbeenliketenyearsitsprettywild]

mylo vanderskid arcane, when it was actually him and not a hallucination, didn't call powder a jinx from a place of personal insecurity, as at no point in show does he come off as threatened by the skills she does have. he had a valid point obscured by the fact that he was a stupid teenager untrained in the skill of logical debate, alongside a long-burning personal frustration leading him to get mean in the way he framed the subject. post-timeskip, everything about mylo's deeper point about jinx's behavior is proven true in acts 2 and 3 of season 1 as it comes up again and again as something silco himself struggles with in keeping his political grip on zaun. in this essay i

[nanomooselet]

Elendira the Crimsonnail (I)

I'll start with my thoughts on the Maximum version; maybe it will soften some people's feelings to know I'm fond of her. To be clear, if I am wrong about this and Orange are just backdooring in loli fan service I will extremely displeased, but I don't think that's what they're doing.

When I read Trigun Maximum I couldn't figure out what El's deal was, thematically. Like all of Knives's followers, she had something going on with bodily autonomy (I've also heard it that they're all marginalised in some way, but I don't see it? However, they do all have unusual relationships with bodies and agency over them); she's a transgender woman who impales people with nails. But we learn nothing about her past, save that she's been at Knives's side for even longer than Legato has. We learn more about the inner life of Midvalley the Hornfreak.

The Guns are in many ways an argument in favour of Knives's beliefs about humans, but compared to… well really the majority of the cast, Elendira is self-confident and refreshingly free of angst. She sees no reason to deprive herself of the finer things in life or to refrain from doing what amuses or excites her, especially if it's violent. She's committed to assisting Knives in his genocide, knowing he will not spare her, but she claims to hate the suicidal (such as Legato) and is dismissive of immature men (such as Legato). Knives is respectful of her (in a way he isn't of, say, Legato - to whom Knives is attached, but deeply in denial about). They're very nearly equals. If he falls, Elendira will be the one to bring an end to the world. (Presumably because if Knives hasn't survived, there's no way Legato has.)

(Okay, I'll stop dunking on Legato but the way he and Elendira interact is absolutely hilarious. They hate each other so dearly you can feel the hostility crackling off the page whenever they're both on it, but they also rely on each other without question. I would read a workplace sitcom about these people in a heartbeat.)

There are theories - she has some sort of tragedy in her past ("I don't like nice men. They die too soon," gets brought up in this context) or that her transition was not met with acceptance. I can't disprove either one, but neither do I see solid evidence to support them in particular, I suppose? Beyond planetary society's general horribleness, we're given no clear reason she's in the position she's in. El has decided it's none of our business and that's that. It's her prerogative, though I do feel uneasy if "she's a transwoman" is supposed to serve as the entirety of the explanation for her being a willing accomplice to genocide.

So I have my own theory, and it's that Elendira defines and masters herself. She is resolutely singular. In a story where so much of who we are is shaped by others - via names, purpose, scars, grief, longing, imitation, jealousy, rivalry - Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. Legato was rescued and named by Knives, the first ever to treat him as though he's any other human, and even his powers need other people to fully express themselves; Elendira named herself and presumably sought out Knives for her own reasons. Whatever the tragic backstory reasons for that, we don't learn them, because it doesn't matter to her. I wonder if Knives sees something to aspire to in her total self-sufficiency, or even in her nihilism. Of all the characters, Elendira does most consistently have her shit together, while Knives is… well, he was a sensitive boy.

Regardless, if ending the world presents an amusing enough challenge, Elendira sees no compelling reason she shouldn't take the shot. There's nothing else on, none of these people mean anything to her, and she'll look damn good doing it.

To her credit, she does look incredible. Being well-dressed in the face of the apocalypse is a very specific niche, but El owns it as few others could.

She's pitted against Razlo and Livio (I'd say particularly Razlo) because their purpose has always been to be needed by someone else; Razlo joined the Eye of Michael because it was a place where we will be needed. Not to mention their selfhood is by definition a little unstable, whereas Elendira knows of self-doubt and uncertain identity by reputation, but has never met either one of them face-to-face.

And yet in the end she's defeated. Because, having perfect mastery, she's not learned to recover from the kind of ego-shattering loss she regularly doles out. Razlo and Livio, for obvious reasons, have that shit down to a science - Razlo exists to step in when Livio's at the end of his strength, and Livio learns to step in when Razlo's at his limit. Whereas perfection has no room for improvement. There's certainly prestige in being peerless in your field and unbeatable one-on-one, but who do you rely on for back-up?

Elendira neither needs nor is needed by anyone. So in the end, with Legato fully occupied, when she's pushed right to the limit of her strength -

- there's no one to step in.

@ultraviolet-cello

Part II

[eyrieofsynapses]

me @ my professor: why tf did you have to put an exam the day after election day. wtf. we're already stressed out and bouncing off the walls. cruel

me, today: ...fine. maybe frantically studying is a distraction. whatever

[ebitenpura]

oughhhh I need to. revamp my fake companion quest series for Eight. but it's been so long and I have too many ideas I've lost my touch.... however still obsessed with the concept of Eight being the Commander's first real friend who sits down with them and says, I'm not asking you to save the galaxy, that's spoken for, but are you saving yourself? Are you doing this for you? Who are you in this war? and Whoever you choose to be, I want to be by your side.

[therealraewest]

Crying about Marc Spector

[age-of-moonknight]

“Journey to the Center of the Mind,” Moon Knight (Vol. 9/2021), #27.

Writer: Jed MacKay; Penciler and Inker: Federico Sabbatini; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit