#you will answer for your crimes

[arabella-strange]

also I'm pretty sure there was a moment (mid-cross talk during the ep) as somebody was mentioning Orym always being in the protective/defensive position and thus in the thick of it, when Dorian muttered almost too quietly, a little admiring, a little (hollowly) laughing, a lot sad, "Always right in the mix..."

and by "I'm pretty sure" I mean I can't stop thinking about it

[inaconstantstateofchange]

So, something that's emotionally devastated me upon reading SVSSS Volume 3 is this sequence of conversation between Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan after the collapse of Maigu Ridge:

From deep within Shen Qingqiu’s mind came the sound of something tearing. In that instant, all of Yue Qingyuan’s past ardent concern, his wordless protectiveness, all kinds of scenes, all manner of details, connected within his mind like a merry-go-round, clear beyond compare. No wonder no matter how ��Shen Qingqiu” dug his own grave, the sect leader never made life difficult for him and instead remained infinitely forgiving, infinitely patient. No wonder the rescuer Shen Jiu had been waiting for never returned. Yue Qingyuan, Shen Qingqiu; Yue Qi, Shen Jiu. So that’s how it was! That’s how it was! “I really…didn’t mean to not return,” said Yue Qingyuan. “Only, it really is true that the world is pitiless, and so the two of us passed each other by…”

This is obviously tragic enough on its own, but the thing that makes it so much worse is the fact that it is a direct allusion to this sequence, taking place just a short time before, where the true shape of Su Xiyan and Tianlang Jun's doomed romance was drawn out:

“This one is an outsider, so he can know nothing of your heart. But what he does know and what he did see was Benefactor Su refusing to listen to the orders of the master who’d raised her for over a decade. Even when tormented in the Water Prison, she refused to say anything, refused to trick or harm you. If not as a last resort, what mother in this world would drink that kind of poison? “It wasn’t that she didn’t care about you, but that she was without alternative. Yet the world is pitiless, and so you passed each other by…” “Tianlang-Jun’s lips seemed to tremble slightly. A long moment passed. Then he said, “Is that so?” Right after those three words, he asked again, “Truly?” “This one swears upon his life that his words contain not a single falsehood,” said Master Wu Chen. Tianlang-Jun turned his head to look at Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan. As if seeking confirmation, he asked, “Truly?” He didn’t even care whether someone was in the know; he was just asking anyone he could. Unable to say anything, Yue Qingyuan silently lowered his head. It was unclear what he thought. Shen Qingqiu deliberated over it further, then finally gave a slow nod.

And, just for another twist of the knife of poignant tragedy, MXTX didn't even stop at that. There is one more use of this line, at the very end of the Shen Jiu extras:

Yue Qingyuan shouldn't have met this kind of fate. For the purpose of attending a decades-late appointment, in order to fulfill a futile, meritless promise. The sword broken, the man dead. It shouldn't have been like this. Threads of blood unfurled, extending outward. Right before they should have converged into one, they passed each other by.

[monstrousdesirestudy]

Holy shit. Okay so so:

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen in his Seven Theses states that “the monster most often arises to enforce the laws of exogamy, both the incest taboo…and the decrees against interracial sexual mingling…usually in the service of some notion of group “purity”.

And I’ve been thinking a long time about the intersection of racial fetishization and monstrosity and the various ways many monsters are both hypersexualized and racialized in a way to further dehumanize. And it immediately made me think of the werewolves in twilight and how they are constantly called “dirty”, “smelly”, “dogs”, etc by the Cullens who want to keep the werewolves away from Bella because they are “too dangerous”. We’ve always known that the portrayal of the indigenous in twilight was very racist, but Meyer’s werewolves quite literally embody Meyer’s anxieties and obsession surrounding miscegenation.

To nail home this point JJC says: “Feminine and cultural others are monstrous enough by themselves in patriarchal society, but when they threaten to mingle, the entire economy of desire comes under attack.”

And this is where it’s REALLY pertinent because the monstrous being in the story isn’t the Cullens but Bella’s desires!! Bella’s attraction to the wolves and her love for the tribe is something that the very white very bourgeois Cullens cannot fucking stand!! Edward wishes to control Bella’s sexuality and relegate it into a safe structure (Heterosexuality as a Regime ™️)

[agentmilayawithshield]

It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well

[linddzz]

Jayce is literally a guard dog from the moment he met Viktor and I just know that he can be wayyy worse in fics if people weren’t playing it safe

So small disclaimer that I can't say much about how he's portrayed in fics or if I have any thoughts there. Tbh when I'm first getting into writing my own stuff for a ship I don't read or seek out a lot of other fics for a mix of weird brain reasons. A mix of a lot of doubts from comparing myself, but also I like getting a solid feel of my characterization without too much general fandom influence getting in there or end up accidentally stealing a concept/dialogue that just sticks in my brain.

(exceptions tend to be made for mutuals who I know are excellent writers already in which case I will psych myself up to not fall into the self comparison issue dkdjdkdk)

ANYWAY!!! Tbh I'm not surprised that there's not a lot that goes super dark on the possessive Jayce OR possessive Viktor just because they are such a weird little mix of legit fun and goofy and dreamy eyed for each other, AND canon pretty much laid out the dark side of their relationship I think. Jayce had already been confronted with Viktor's impending death, they already had their conversation where he had to promise to destroy the hexcore, which was them both in a way accepting Viktor's death. And he immediately broke that the second he was actually confronted with that death.

It's not dark to me as in "grr no one can touch you but me I'm going to lock you up in the lab to make sure you can never leave me and nothing can ever hurt you" which is how most dark possessive fics/romance lit tend to go. And I guess it can be hard to tap into what IS very dark and fucked up about Jayce and Viktor's codependence in a way that doesn't erase how wholesome they can and do come across in canon.

The dark is in the devotional romance of it, the almost instant codependence, it's in how beautiful it all is (like how Viktor's evolved forms are both beautiful and deeply unsettling for all their elegance). It's in thinking for just a liiiittle bit and realizing that Mage Viktor is knowingly dooming timelines by sparking Jayce's fascination with magic (and by making himself the thing that starts Jayce's obsession).

The dark possessiveness for Jayce is best captured when the partner he broke his biggest promise to, whose heart he replaced with the hexcore, stumbled out as something metal and inhuman. The dark side of Jayvik is; when Viktor's voice came out warped and mechanical as he stared at his own hand with confusion and fear, asking "What am I?"

Jayce smiled, laughed with that bright loverboy earnestness, and said "You're alive!"

[year2000electronics]

MORE REVERES BILLFORD AND MY LIFE IS YOURS 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣

of course!! take some from my stash

[thatsbelievable]

[plant-ago]

@quiddie’s use of color and symbolism for Suvi is fantastic. Not only does she wear pretty much exclusively citadel colors (blue) despite her favorite color being red, but her blue hair is a result of flying too close to the sun as a child… getting too excited about the promise of wizardly power in the erith depository, and when she tried to channel it through herself, it nearly killed her, and (I assume) left her with permanently white hair, so that she now dyes it blue. She was so enamored with wonders of the citadel that she gave up a part of herself to become a part of it. It has molded her in ways that she does not fully understand, and she must put parts of herself aside to allow that.

I’m feeling a little emotional about the Sky having to be blue all the time, but secretly liking red better.

[asocialasshole]

Dp x Dc crossover promt

What if GIW was created by Justice League

to answer the never ending calls for help?

I mean, it would be more believable then JL just ignoring it, right? (Black out, blocked off and isolated Amity park - no complaints, you’re doing great sweetie)

Maybe they’re different than what is seen in the show, but what if? They’d definitely hide their actual goals, and try to set the narrative, benefiting them. Maybe while they were formed, the government somehow affected the recruitment and its legal purpose (idk how to word it any other way, bear with me here), so GIW doesn’t turn out how JL expected?

Like, the main thing is the League knows about the problem and thinks it’s being handled, completely blinded by the GIW doing everything to JL from paying more than a glance towards Amity park. Possibly even gently swayed by the GIW , who’re being careful to give just enough info to make JL to draw their own conclusions, but not too much to alert the League of their less then moral goals and methods

[kwillow]

will theo ever be happy

Maybe in another life.

[bookshelfdreams]

Saw a Take earlier today like "Ed stans have only 1 argument and it's accusing everyone who likes Izzy of being problematic" or something to that effect

and it made me think "Nah babe, you're not problematic. You're just wrong."

And then I thought. Huh. Why do I think that?

It's a perfectly respectable thing to read a text in a way it wasn't intended to be read. In fact, "reading against the grain", doing critical readings, shifting perspectives when engaging with a text - all of thee are important skills! You can, and should, do feminist, antiracist, postcolonial, queer, etc readings of texts that were never intended to be read that way. Hell, all fandom (often) is, is doing queer readings! Ask the text uncomfortable questions it doesn't want to answer!

However. It's pretty difficult to do a queer reading when the text already is a queer narrative. The questions you would ask the text if you did a queer reading, or a reading focused on gender roles, or similar things - those are questions the text is already actively exploring.

If you want to do a subversive reading of a text that is already quite subversive - what do you end up with?

"What's the story like from Izzy's perspective?" is a question ofmd deliberately doesn't focus too much on because Izzy's perspective is the default and ofmd wants to challenge that. There's a reason the angry white man is the antagonist in this show, and if you ask "Okay, but could he be right though?" you're missing the point.

Or rather, you're turning everything that's interesting about ofmd back around. You're asking "Okay, but why don't we focus on a white perspective that strictly adheres to oppressive power structures?" of a narrative who already asked itself this question and gave the answer "Because that's been done enough and there are other stories worth telling."

And I think people are aware of that, which is how we end up with completely bizarre takes like "Izzy has the only queer character arc". He hasn't, but he has the only arc that a queer reading can be done on - for everyone else it's text, plain and simple. Refusing to engage with that text in favour of centering Izzy is basically doing a heteronormative reading without being willing to admit it to yourself.

And no, interpreting Izzy as a queer man doesn't change that.

[sforzesco]

15 MAY 392, VIENNE Valentinian II, only twenty one years old, is found dead.

Theodosius and the Limits of Empire, Mark Hebblewhite

Valentinian II has me feeling some kind of way, especially since Gratian had treated his half brother in a similar manner. It’s always been a prison! they’re never going to let you out!

I read about Valentinian II in the Valens biography and didn’t think much of it, but the situation became significantly less funny when I got started on the Theodosius biography. aughhh. Valentinian II……..

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[originalartblog]

this is so random but what if dazai goosamu met feathers mcgraw

how the turntables...

[ayoarticulate]

real ones remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they saw the panic attack scene for the first time

i was on a bus, sitting in my seat, both airpods in. fully immersed yall. i was already having a hard time getting through that scene because of the constant claire and how carmy was about to keel over and die, but i stuck it out

then BOOM. sydney adamu. the light of this man’s life. and carmen berzatto had the NERVE… to calm down and smile. CALM DOWN AND SMILE. what a FUCKING JOKE.

anyways, then we got a double hit with the damn table scene a little while later and i couldn’t watch anymore for the day

[welcome-to-latveria]

Just want to say this is all Bendis' fault. No one would have ever considered this before Infamous Iron Man.

[lydiaas]

KIARA CARERRA & JJ MAYBANK in S03E04 THE DIARY What are we doing? We shouldn't be doing this.