#which he was martyred

[fotos-art]

Reflection of Kilchurn Castle in Loch Awe, Argyll and Bute, Scotland

© Tom Mackie

plainpicture

Scotland's National Day is celebrated today in honour of St. Andrew, patron saint of the country and other nations such as Greece, Romania and Ukraine. Although the apostle never arrived in Scotland, his figure is fundamental in the Scottish identity and is present in the iconic flag of Saltire, which represents the cross on which he was martyred.

[abusivelittlebunny]

who has the most tragic backstory Max or Charles? (What have you done to me? I have never watched F1 in my life yet I'm invested now)

Ooooof I think they're pretty evenly matched even though their back stories are very different... I don't want to spoil but what happens to either of them is not for the faint of heart

I think the most interesting thing about the two of them is how differently they cope with the shit they had to go through;

Charles wants to burn the world that wronged him to the ground and emerge victorious as it's new ruler showing that he is the predestined champion and all the suffering he went through had to be for a reason and that he deserves everything he wants, that it wasn't all for nothing. He wouldn't be able to accept going through hell and getting only second place.

Meanwhile Max has been fighting for so long for a throne he never even knew he truly wanted or was just raised to want. We all know Jos is not a good man but here he is worse than you can imagine and making Max suffer is necessary for him to build his perfect machine. But Max knows he's not a machine thanks to Carlos; he could have succumbed to his father's abuse, it would have definitely made his life easier. He wouldn't have had to suffer half as much if he kept his heart closed and never let himself give in to Carlos' love. But he did. And at first he blamed himself for being so stupid as to give in to his base needs and cravings but then the more he achieved what Jos has set him out to do the more he realised that the crown he's been raised to snatch at all cost is just a shiny piece of metal. That the suffering was actually meaningless if it was just for this stupid title. It breaks him at first, the realisation that Charles would never ever accept in this life.

It drives him to the brink, having the title but having sacrificed everything he lived for it because he had no other choice. But then Max also comes to the realisation that he didn't want to let go of the pain he went through either and that's why he can't possibly let go of Carlos. His heart clenches so painfully every time he sees him, but the pain means its real, that what they had, what they still have is more real than anything else. Their love is a pure diamond compared to the cheap plastic crown his father tried to exchange it for.

To Charles victory is what makes him able to cope with the pain, while to Max, who already experienced said victory and knows it's empty, the remedy to his bittersweet pain is love.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

Is gojo truly selfless? Most people think he does it for an ulterior motive and for his personal beneficial reasons & it’s kinda calculated. Like he can gain benefit out of it exp: saving yuuji from execution and saving megumi from his clan, to make his vision/dream of transforming the jujutsu society come true. So it’s kinda selfish more or less?

see . the thing about gojo is that he’s constantly walking on the fine line between ’extremely selfless’ and ’extremely selfish.’ the reason i often call him selfless is specifically in regards to how i see him acting when he’s in love — i think that if gojo loves you, what’s most comfortable for him is to distance himself from you and watch you be happy with someone else. even if it it irks at him. he would do it because he believes it’s best for the both of you.

but you could also make an argument that it’s very selfish because he’s ignoring what he feels for you and what you feel for him, making a decision that’s less paralyzing for him but making it for the both of you — etc. that’s kinda why it’s difficult. at some point selflessness and martyrdom spins back to selfishness; but either way i think gojo exists right at the gap between them. he's an extreme case.

relationship aside though, i’d call canon gojo selfless for very similar reasons — because his entire goal centers around the idea of everyone leaving him behind. i agree that gojo is calculative, and that both saving megumi and yuuji was apart of his dream to nurture powerful allies, but i also think you’re ignoring an extremely important part of gojo’s character by implying that’s all it was. gojo’s main character motivation is the preservation of youth — and another point that’s important to him is personal autonomy. he wants kids to be kids, and he wants people to get to choose how they live their lives. both of these motivations are more important to him than his selfless/selfish dream of being surpassed.

so, basically — i think gojo is very logical and calculative at his core, and he doesn’t do what he does out of the kindness of his heart — he does it because it’s important to him. protecting youth is important to him. being a mentor is important to him. he does what he does for himself which could be called selfish, but he also deliberately does things that bring him more pain, and more isolation, which could be called selfless. so it’s tough. overall i think it’s wrong to treat gojo like a saint but also wrong to treat him like some mastermind — gojo does what he wants, and he mostly wants things that are good.

[winter-wise]

why was he posing like a renaissance saint here

[edwinisms]

seriously wondering why WW1 was never brought up at all throughout the show in regards to edwin and the life he was living before hell. I mean fuck we get a WW1 ghost in the FIRST EPISODE but edwin doesn’t say a single thing about his familiarity with the soldier’s garments and circumstances. you’d think that would come in handy in some way, or at least be an interesting thing to reference to emphasize edwin’s age (for lack of a better word) considering this was all during the expository section of the first episode.

1916 is directly in the middle of the Great War, and depending on how long edwin had been 16 by the time he died, he would’ve been somewhere between 1-2 years off from being conscripted and sent off to the trenches– ie; really not far, so it inevitably would be a huge weight on his mind at the time. since it was the middle of the war, he would’ve known decently well the horrors being faced out there– the mustard gas, the widespread illness, the shellshock– from newspapers and such, and I have to think that he’d feel like there was a clock ticking, counting down the days until he’d be sent to his inevitable death (considering he’s not the most athletic and physically resilient boy to say the least). and if he was exempted from conscription? it could very well be for “mental illness” and/or “moral indecency” if he didn’t hide his “effeminate” behavior well enough. all-around, it’d have to be an incredibly stressful time period for more reasons than just being bullied, alienated, and repressed at school– and yet we never hear about the elephant in the room. will they do something with it later? will it play into his family background in some way? for gods sake I need to KNOW

[funkily]

i think traffic scott has crazy issues with his sense of self . i cant defend this at the moment but i feel it in my heart and also depending on how u look at his character i think there is canon backing

[c1trvswurld]

you're the only one who understands Jimmy and curly and how twisted and fucked up they actually are, everyone else makes curly this gentle angel when no!!! He has flaws!! He fucked up too!! Ohmygod they're all terrible people or victims of the circumstances or both!!

Jimmy has no excuses yes but he's also INTERESTING and TWISTED and FUN TO WATCH like his pov is most of the gameplay and people are so quick to dismiss him entirely like actually I think!! There is much to be gleaned from him and the themes of the entire story when you actually investigate hime as a character!!! And don't dismiss him just cos his pov makes you drastically uncomfortable!! It's a horror! It's meant to be uncomfortable!!!

Also yeah Jimmy and curly fucked nasty and had toxic yaoi sex you're so correct

I'm always hesitant to openly say I like these dynamics because people inherently think that liking these dynamics play out on screen means I'm endorsing it. But I think it's so fun to simply sit down and go " oh yeah they're fucking horrible no doubt, but in their messed up head they have a reason to be and that makes them amazing"

[carnage-cathedral]

systemhood is great because sometimes Patrick Bateman narrates your morning routine and no you cannot make him stop

[worshipfulmercy]

i have so many thoughts about his gender and how he's kind of textually a woman and/or abinary (read tags if interested)

[ladystoneboobs]

oh, so close, buddy, so close. why, yes, it is sexist of grrm to use sansa this way while writing the starkling bonds involving brothers as all but conflictfree! (we only get that one flashback of robb hurting jon by screaming about his bastardy and it's revealed pretty late in the game, near the end of asos, after robb's death. and clearly happened when they were quite young, an isolated incident, without which robb would have been pretty much a perfect brother to jon.) but it's especially bad when sansa/arya aren't just the only stark sisters in present timeline, they're also only one of two developed sisterly relathionships in the entire series, the other being their mother and her sister. that relationship had cracks in it years before catelyn was aware of them, and ended with a death threat from lysa leaving cat bitter towards her. is kinslaying or near-kinslaying the resolution y'all want for arya and her sister or just never meeting again period? what a great sisterly track record that would be for grrm! not to mention a great ending for arya, ignoring her own desire to see all her siblings again and finally have a good relationship with sansa! it's true that you can really tell that agot sansa was created just as a foil to arya and it's clear which sister the writer favored back then, who we're meant to side with. but to think that grrm has done nothing better with sansa since then, has never developed her beyond the token unstark and a "camera pov" for more plot important characters, that she has never once expressed any care for her sister, and that there is never any hope for sisters with a bad childhood relationship to grow and get along better once they're older, that they can never have a good relationship and should never even try, well, i'd say that makes you more sexist than grrm ever was as a writer and also kind of insulting toward his later work. congratulations on that!

[immortaljailor]

I have never seen Gigi although I love Vincente Minnelli musicals, I am very interested in your thoughts on a gigi-esque spones au!!!

Oh man, yeah Vincente Minelli had so many fun films didn't he? But hahaha it was just a passing flash I had when seeing your musings about how Spock gets all horrified and protective when he sees Bones being forcibly tempered despite making comments in that vein himself—for it to actually work, I'd have to sit there and think about how to make the setting and scenario fit the characters better 😭😭

That being said! I'm thinking that the broad strokes of a Spones Gigi-esque AU might go something like this:

Spock, the young scion of a wealthy, famous family and the most eligible bachelor in Shi'Kahr, meets McCoy, fresh out of med school and doing his residency on Vulcan, and they become fast friends

Spock is dealing with various pressures from his family and wider Vulcan society, while McCoy is dealing with culture shock and feeling isolated and lonely on a new planet, and both of them find refuge in each other + find someone with which they can just be themselves

But then, some sort of scandal/something** occurs which would prevent Spock from continuing to spend time with McCoy, who he realizes he's falling in love with, so to get around that, he proposes that they start a public relationship in some form

McCoy is reluctant, but eventually agrees because he doesn't want to be without Spock either, even if it means that he's going to have to accompany Spock in public while following a strict set of uncomfortable social rules

But then when Spock's out there, presenting McCoy to Vulcan high society, he is disturbed by how subdued and obedient McCoy is forced to act while being paraded in front of these aristocrats who praise Spock for his choice of new toy, and he consequently grabs McCoy and storms out of there heedless of what anyone has to say

Then they go off to have their relationship on their own terms, becoming mates and living happily ever after. The end 💙

**I'm a little fuzzy on what this scandal could be. Maybe it could be pon farr-related—I'm thinking like, Spock wants to/accidentally did spend his first pon farr with Bones, which creates a huge issue with T'Pring's family due to the still-existing engagement. Unfortunately Spock's family really doesn't want him to just break the engagement off, because it's a key element of an important political alliance between their families, so he's given an ultimatum to either take Bones on as like, a concubine/escort, or else never see him again to avoid causing any more trouble. It takes Spock seeing Bones miserable to stand up to his family's expectations and break off the engagement/brave getting disowned to be with Bones in a way that actually makes them both happy.

Alternatively, I could make this an omegaverse AU of some sort...or perhaps try my hand at one of them "pre-reform" AUs with complicated social rules and power dynamics that could be used to form the main conflict...

...As you can see, there's a lot of specific details that still need to be hashed out 😅 ...smh now you're tempting me into working on something like this when I've still got other things on my plate 😔😔

(Side note: Obviously this would be a fic, not a musical, but can you imagine Gigi!Bones singing his version of "The Parisans", except it's like, "🎵 I don't understand the Vulcans / Thinking logic's so miraculous and grand / But they rave about it / And won't live without it 🎵" XD)

[grossdyke]

Lily would never be a feminist she doesn’t support women at all

REAL AND TRUE !!!!!

she only becomes a feminist if she gets to become an adult.. 🤍

[austin-friars]

Since I'm drawing Germain Gardiner currently, I'm still wondering if the Catholic Church is gonna go ahead and make him a saint because....it's been a few years???

[gh0stcav3]

reading along w/ the audiobook for mockingjay and the narrator adds like a whole basically sentence so a certain bit? and its not that it doesnt fit but i cant understand why its there. its the like first audiobooks they did so its got whoever did them 1st (don’t remember either womans name but theres the old ones and the new ones). so i thought maybe it could be an edit they did after the first edition but im. reading the 1st edition hardback so??? and i found a version on yt w/ the New narrator and she doesnt say that line so im just. curious where it came from???

[chaiaurchaandni]

#freeAhmadManasra

[garashir]

Black Sails XXIII. // XXVII.