#what rises above

[rescuebabiesau]

I just love this bit. Chase just in the background while Chief and Woodrow argue-

"Oops, I seem to have... Erm..."

"I'm just gonna put this rock back, so-"

"-And... Nope. Not working, lava's still there. Chief-"

"...Yeah, there's a thing I need to bring up-"

"-Yeah. That." (Sheesh!)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 1: Dread on Arrival

(Part 2)

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres: found footage

[preqvelle]

New old pics of Primo courtesy of rise above records

[tangledinink]

aw poor swannie :( he must be so confused

For the most part, Swannie is feeling more... numb and tired than confused. There are certainly moments when he's disorientated or doesn't understand what's going on, but he can't really bring himself to care that deeply.

But he does still have his moments. There are occasional bursts of energy from him--

Or, on the other hand, rare moments when he will suddenly go very quiet, very still, very stiff--

The rest of the family quietly thinks of these as "my brother is being fucking possessed by a twelve-year-old child," moments. They may be far from the Lake, but Donatello and Odette's souls are still entwined, and so every now and again, her influence will still rear its head. And yes, in those moments, Swannie is always very confused and very scared.

[homestuckinthebutt]

"My love, return to me soon. I’ve begun to forget what you look like..."

Jaya is my favorite ship ever they're just so tragic<33

[jichanxo]

subjugate your shame (uncropped under the cut)

i like yasu's face too much here to not post it uncropped....

[flitsy]

[stormyoceans]

a soft reminder

[foxbirdy]

can you please tell me more about the island at the equator? the one you drew about? i'm planning on becoming a sailor and i want to know what it was like way out there. can you tell me about the stars and the manta rays

I would love to tell you more about that island.

It's a tiny atoll, with a little over 4.6 square miles of permanent land. The hottest sun and most furious rain I've ever seen in my life, often in the same 24 hours. There are no freshwater sources here; everything you drink must come from the sky. Coral reefs surround the lagoons and islands, in vivid terraces that cascade from crystalline shallows to water so deep and blue it confuses your eyes. Sand flats and coral rubble beds stretch around the margins of the lagoons, and sometimes the water is so still and glassy that you can see the ripples from the spotted eagle rays and lemon sharks and schools of awa from a half mile away. Blue bottle jellies come up with high tides every new moon, and the manta rays gather in winding circular trains when the moon is full. Bioluminescent plankton is a rare and treasured guest, making the wave tops glitter cyan and green, illuminating each wingtip on the manta rays as they ruffle the surface of the water. Over one million seabirds make their homes there, and sometimes the chatter of the 'ewa'ewa is so constant and deafening that you stop hearing it at all, fading into the background sounds of wind and water and trees. The 'iwa fly in the highest wind currents, pirates of the sky, with their big forked tails and sharp lightning-bolt wings. The manu-o-Kū catch the tiniest silver fish, the length of my pinky, and flutter down from their perches to chitter at you as you move through the forest. The 'ā - red-footed boobies - crane their heads from side-to-side as they look at you, and when they open their mouths, you remember that birds come from dinosaurs. The stars are close and bright, despite the heavy humidity, and on clear nights the milky way is like a hundred pearl necklaces stretched across the sky, and you can walk with just the light of the moon. You can see the Southern Cross from one side of camp, and Polaris from the other. Cassiopeia sits in pride of place, and her daughter Andromeda is a lightblur in the crook of her knees. Meteors there sometimes fall like brilliant green balls of fire, so bright they put spots in your vision. On nights under one of those big dark storm cells that walk across the ocean like giants, the thunder and lightning moves around you in transient peaks and swells, inconstant, distant and then close. These are the only times you cannot hear the birds, gone silent, as the downpour takes up the place where their voices live.

[posing-as-neurotypical]

You can't be a feminist if you hate men.

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

man. now I'm thinkin abt like. deep sea animals seeing the sun for the first time.. is it beautiful? is it warm and comforting? or is it terrible. is it burning and hatred and blindness. hell is real and it's above them. it's rays through clear blue water, it's dry and dessicating and it means they're visible to predators and prey alike. will they starve first or be eaten? there's no camouflage up there. there's more than just red light. maybe they'll be abducted by those shadows that offer momentary relief from the blinding light. do you think they tell ghost stories about the ones who went up and never came back down? maybe it is beautiful

[fumifooms]

I’ve been seeing a lot of people shit on straight couples in shipping and in general as a "joke" lately, particularly in the Dungeon Meshi fandom. Friendly reminder that, besides the evil straights, when you mock or put down straight couples for being straight/"not queer enough", you also make bi and pan people, and trans and ace people who experience hetero attraction feel unwelcome and lesser. Negativity hurts, love is love, happy valentine’s!

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[turtleblogatlast]

One of my favorite things about Leo’s portals is the fact that they’re tangible.

He can throw those like frisbees and hit people with them like?? The boys’ abilities are so fun and magical and even sci-fi-esque but this aspect of Leo’s portals are so distinctly a Looney Tunes flavor of cartoon-y that I absolutely adore.

And sure this aspect of the portals can be used for fighting, but moreover the sheer amount of visual gags this does and can create is infinite.