#very acrobatic

[delicatepointofview]

harry should put a treadmill for him to sing on during his aiw grammy performance

[lefthandarm-man]

Bucky Barnes // The Winter Soldier Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

[avephelis]

just wanted to say it's really awesome seeing the positive reception to chunky mikey LOVE YOU ALL 🧡🧡

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.

[mylordshesacactus]

God though the fight choreography in Ahsoka really is next fucking level.

Like. Every so often I think fondly about the lightsaber duels in the OT because, bluntly, there weren't lightsaber duels in the OT. There were a handful of scenes in which two characters who didn't like each other much both happened to be holding lightsabers, and on some occasions they tapped the lightsabers together to make very satisfying noises. But we've now come far enough in the star war that we're getting detailed attention to genuine fighting styles, and fighting styles as character essays in themselves.

I just love it.

This show does SO MUCH characterization through physicality in combat; there's a whole meta-dialogue happening just through the portrayal of lightsaber forms and it has SO MUCH heavy lifting to do and does it WELL.

Like, for example, all the little character details that have to be PERFECT in the first two confrontations. I'm just gonna do the tower fight at the moment because the forest battle is its own whole thing and the wolfwren meetcute tower fight illustrates it just fine on its own.

Things that had to be established with little to no exposition in those two fights:

Sabine and Shin are pretty much equals, overall, in combat; BUT

Shin has her VASTLY outmatched as a duellist specifically, because she's been training in solely lightsaber combat more intensely and for longer; BUT

Shin doesn't KNOW that, because she's never fought Sabine before and all she knows is that she's facing an unfamiliar opponent who was Jedi-trained; AND

Sabine DOES know she's outmatched in this fight--she's unarmored, not a small deal for a Mandalorian, and armed only with a lightsaber that while she has trained with it pretty extensively she explicitly hasn't touched in years; BUT

Sabine is ALSO, separately, a highly skilled martial artist and hand-to-hand fighter even with the disadvantage of not being in armor. She's not a pushover or a flailing idiot.

Like it's obvious before Shin even draws that Sabine is not going to win this fight--and Sabine at least is visibly aware of it.

It's clear from their stances alone. Sabine stands and moves like a novice--not untrained, mind, but a novice. She's very cautious, very aware of her footwork, and while that's a good ready position it's extremely hesitant, she's not comfortable in it. She wastes more movement. Shin on the other hand is solid, confident, and grounded.

But not arrogant. Sabine is moving like someone with experience in combat, and Shin doesn't know her or her abilities, so she doesn't rush in at the first sign of weakness. Shin might be more immediately confident with saber combat, but she is also proceeding with extreme caution.

She lets Sabine come to her, ceding the first move in favor of giving herself a chance to read her opponent before committing to anything. And when they do start exchanging blows:

Don't get me wrong--Sabine is NOT a flailing idiot, for all this specific shot makes it look like she's leaving herself open. She's just....not fluid with her lightsaber. She drops her guard when she runs, because running with a plasma sword without burning yourself is actually extremely difficult and she's keeping that thing away from her body while moving at speed.

Her strikes are decent, but her technique is sloppy and she wastes movement--again, not in a way that suggests she doesn't know what she's doing, but in a way that highlights the gap between knowing what a technique is supposed to look like and actually being able to pull it off in a live-combat scenario.

Shin, meanwhile, is fluid, deliberate, efficient, fully in control of every movement--but, frankly, she mostly looks like an impressive threat in this fight because it's an apprentice-level skirmish between two evenly-matched opponents, and Sabine is at a stark disadvantage.

Don't get me wrong, Shin's doing very well--but in a way that highlights her main strength as being extremely solid on her fundamentals. None of these are high-level moves, almost all of them would show up in a youngling kata, and the few that wouldn't are mostly flair like this dramatic-ass battle pose.

We do see some signals that Shin's saber training is at a meaningfully higher level than Sabine's, though--she's had time to develop some of her own technique! I love the way she uses her cape as a combat asset; that's not something Baylan would have taught her, he doesn't have her highly-mobile fighting style (to put it lightly) and it feels just practical enough.

So they feel like viable rivals, Shin feels like a viable threat, and there's still a visceral awareness in the kind of choreography they're given that if Sabine fought Baylan, or Shin tried to 1v1 Ahsoka, they would not last ten goddamn seconds.

[akuma-tenshi]

so the new hullabaloo lore teaser, huh??

[mrsthunderkin]

When your Big-bad-bf patron wants to cuddle but he strategically fails to mention which form he wants to do it in.

Miriam belongs to @owlcatchyoul8r

[wraithsoutlaws]

boss battle tag team

[camiesoup]

mike morton wtfff

[oc3anic-ang3l]

Percy: lol guess what

Nico: bitch with the way you live i have no fucking idea

[fauvester]

clays 11.. a professional robber organizes a ragtag team of thiefs to steal a fortune and his ex-fed ex-husband from his frenemy casino magnate martin van buren

[alarstar]

warp train passengers: i have been tortured by my own inability to die for eternities and cannot even remember a time before this pain as every cell of my body begs for release

yi sang:

[fireheartedpup]

HELLO?!?!?!?!?!

[takadasaiko]

Don't talk about her Skyguy that way.

[adrielrook]

MikeNort as trolls!!!

Because I’m loving trolls a little too much and I HAD to do this *cries*

The idea here is that Norton is sad and gray till he meets Mike, and with his help he manages to find a little happiness and get his colors back (even tho his color palette isn’t the most colorful, it’s enough <3)