#-reflection he needs to go through

[mymarifae]

ever since the thought of robin boarding the astral express instead of sunday crossed my mind i've been mad as fuck

as the one to reject and dissolve the order cult's dream world, this should have been robin's story! not sunday's! it is beyond unfair that she got sidelined so hard and is now just sort of stuck in penacony cleaning up sunday's mess and filling in as the oak family's head representative, which is a role she never wanted. she's a free spirit just like the astral express crew, and she's so goddamn passionate about making a palpable change in reality

the whole conflict was she hates the cage her brother and the order cult designed and doesn't want it imposed on anyone else even if it offers "safety" and "happiness" because nothing is more rewarding than being part of the real world. and then she's put in the stupid cage anyway while sunday slips out to be free

this idea of them switching places - robin giving up her freedom to secure sunday's as a parallel to how he bore the brunt of the cult's abuse and grooming to shield her - doesn't work. not when sunday's wrongdoings amount to reinventing fascism. he would have had to be a far less extreme antagonist for this particular concept to be satisfying. as it is it's like no i don't want robin giving up so much for him are you fucking crazy? i want to see him actually suffer the consequences of his actions, actually. and the fact that the narrative babied him and allowed him to brush everything off onto this stupid "me-but-not-really-me" figure feels gross

there are so many aspects to robin's life that are about confinement. control. etc. and she resists it every time. her fans, her managers, and the paparazzi have such a specific image of who they want her to be in their heads, but she's not afraid to defy that! the pressure weighs on her immensely, and she has experienced the worst the real world has to offer, but she still believes in the good of the universe. she continues to believe that when given a choice, many will choose to do good. and then in comes her brother and the order cult wanting to take that choice away entirely and she's like wait what the fuck, no????? she's the first to break out of the cage when sunday tries to force the "perfect" dream on everyone anyway. and then she leads the way as they all come together to destroy it entirely

like UGH she was set up to become such a powerful and emotional character but it literally all got thrown out in favor of catering to sunday fans as much as possible... to the point of speedrunning his "redemption" arc so they could hurry up and shoehorn him into the astral express crew. whatever role they needed filled for the amphoreus storyline robin could have done the same exact thing, with infinitely more grace. AND they wouldn't have had to write off a bunch of literal fascism before letting her hop onto the train 😭 you can't even begin to understand how frustrating this is for me. oh my god

[tea-cat-arts]

I think the cool and sexy thing about tbhx having an ensemble cast is that they really use it to show different types of people and different types of thought processes (all of which have been pretty well fleshed out for the main chast). It's such a great way of opening up the story to different types of people irl, so it's a little disheartening to see how many people in this fandom I've seen go "this character doesn't resonate with me and because of that, I think they're poorly written."

[sleepyvib-es]

rick bringing percy and annabeth back in cameos just to consistently shit on their characters is enough to ruin my mood for at least a week

[dykedvonte]

A crazy thing about Mouthwashing is that Pony Express lost communication with one of its freighters for months and didn’t send anyone to check.

A genuinely reputable company, or at the very least a decent one, would have sent someone, something out to check after about two weeks of silence. Two months is when the crew start questioning if they are even being looked for which implies they were already expecting it to take a while cause P.E just doesn’t care.

They don’t care about who they hire. They don’t care about the conditions they place their crew in or how safe the safety measures actually are. They just don’t care, made rules and regulations so they can care less and succeed in getting away with it with how little those ideas are discussed.

[gingermintpepper]

hi I love your tags so so much! they were so sweet and so interesting and creative and the whole Aphrodite type of beauty thing sounds really interesting do you have any articles and recommendations to read further into it??

-hogoflight

Hello my fine feathered (I am assuming possession of feathers if you are, indeed, capable of flight) @hogoflight! I'm always always happy to hear that people appreciate my frenzied rambling in the tags :D! I have a lot of articles and recommendations :D!! Ancient Greek notions of beauty and representations of it in their art and sculptures is a pretty well studied topic! There isn't any way for us now to know definitively what the beauty standard was (it varied widely from region to region and culture to culture after all) but here are a couple of my favourite reads about Aphrodite and what her representations tell us about idealised beauty!

Probably the most empirically extensive one I can list is Krönström's thesis which compares statues of Aphrodite and literary text referring to both the goddess and mortal women to determine physical ideals for women in five specific eras of Grecian antiquity. Including measurements of the statues there are many descriptions of Aphrodite as 'curvy' with a 'voluptuous figure' and with 'ample buttocks and bosom'.

"When the beauty traits are described in the texts, they are never extreme or anything that could not be found in normal people just that they are more beautiful in every aspect. Furthermore, the sculptures’ physical forms look healthy, they are tall and have distinct curves. Great examples of this are the Knida sculpture and de Milo (the Melian) sculpture."

Of course, these images are still idealised, and there was still a concept such as 'too fat' or 'too skinny' found in written records (and this thesis even includes analysis of pornographic writings and descriptions of the fashion and stylings of pubic hair of women from different regions!!) but from an interpretational standpoint? There is absolutely no reason why these can't refer to a fuller figure. Height was also a very important factor after all and over the course of many eras, it seems like being well proportioned in addition to the length and appearance of one's hair were the most important factors (and, like Apollo, greater beauty was given to those with curlier hair)

Mireille M. Lee's 'Other Ways of Seeing' essay which talks about the forgotten female viewers of Knidian Aphrodite which is also extremely illuminating on how Aphroditic sexuality and sensuality was perceived totally differently from the well documented male voyeuristic gaze (which was overly preoccupied with the statue's nakedness and therefore over-sensationalised the statue's physical appearance) vs women's perspective on the statue which is more centered on the beauty of simplicity in Aphrodite's garment and decoration and in her power and ability to captivate both in her finery and without it. I think it's especially useful in exploring the importance of finery, jewellry and adornment in representations of Aphroditic beauty.

"Some of the small-scale copies are heavily jeweled, especially those from the eastern Mediterranean, for example the Hellenistic gilded terracotta statuette in the Çanakkale Museum (Fig. 5) in which the goddess wears, in addition to the armband on her (right) arm, the following: a necklace with multiple pendants; cross-bands extending over both shoulders and hips, with a cascading pendant in the center; a coiled snake armband on the left arm and another snake on her left thigh, and a twisted anklet on her right leg. (The left leg has been restored, and might also have featured an anklet.)"

"Jewelry is especially associated with Aphrodite in Greek literature. As seen above, in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess adorns herself with gold jewelry, dress-pins, and earrings in the shape of flowers (162–3)..."

Finally, and to me, the most important one in the argument for an interpretation of Hyacinthus as fat, beautiful and fundamentally Aphroditic comes from Brilmayer's brilliant brilliant thesis done on Aphrodite's work and influence in Archaic Greek Poetry which does away with all of that masculine preoccupation with physical proportion, measurement and bodily ideals for a focus on a Sapphic Aphroditic ideal centered in clothing, ornamentation and, most importantly cunning as symbols of Aphrodite and ultimately a feminine idealised form of beauty. This paper also discusses Pandora and Helen in these terms and it is just kind of a wonderful read tbh.

"Combining Homeric and Hesiodic elements with her own ideas, she [Sappho] alters the way female beauty is viewed. For example, the Homeric war chariot – a symbol of male, military prowess - comes to symbolise the totality of Aphrodite’s power uniting in itself male and female qualities. Having addressed the concept of beauty directly, Sappho then concludes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. With the help of Helen of Troy and her beloved Anaktoria, Sappho sets out to reinvent the concept of female beauty as a godlike, subjective quality that may be expressed in many ways, yet remains inspired by Aphrodite."

The conclusion to all of this of course is that Aphroditic ideal beauty is much more fluid compared to its stricter Apolline masculine standard. The nuances and understandings of both are of course, constantly being studied, analysed and scrutinised but really, if Dionysus who was both bearded and clean shorn, effeminate, birthed and rebirthed (and twice gestated!) and strongly associated with vegetation can be popularly portrayed as fat and handsome, why can't Hyacinthus?!

[tapeworrmart]

So I have consumed that whole SH2 remake James' mental illness and SA theory document and I gotta say.... It fits. I can really see it. My eyes are open. I wouldn't put it past a game like that to make suggestions in that direction.

Also printing the Silent Hill 2 novel off to read as we speak. I'm normal about that guy and his trauma I swear

[nocturnalnewsiestrash]

Okay guys so I know we all lightly tease Charles for seemingly never actually thinking through any of the emotions he ever has but it occurred to me, what if he has alexithymia?!? Between his very obvious ADHD and his apparent lack of ever addressing how he feels, alexithymia would explain a lot actually. I mean even in hell he's saying he needs more time to process how he feels and basically wants to NOT have to think about it in the moment on the stairs. Like that boy has alexithymia. He needs his reflective time Edwin, give him time.

Also also like he never wants to talk about himself, only address other's needs and feelings which is just so alexithymia?? I mean I know it's partly his trauma response but also it's such an alexithymia personality trait too. Alexithymia makes every choice he makes make sooooo much more sense. That and the adhd impulsivity, but it didn't really feel like it was the whole picture. Alexithymia was the missing key

[lemongogo]

more

[applebees4prez]

when i say that this was my 9/11 i fully mean it. i would pull out my computer and write it myself if it weren’t so personal to dan. i will go into debt to make this happen. @danielhowell if there is anything i can personally to get dan is not okay out into the world i will do it i don’t care if i’m a freshman in college i would die for this.

[itspileofgoodthings]

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[amelikos]

The Horizons stage show in AnimeJapan 2024 (last year) was interesting and the bits with Friede and Amethio's VAs are still on my mind. They got to talk about their battles and their characters in general. (The event took place one day after the initial broadcast of HZ044 and before chapter 2 ended and thus reflects the events of the anime at the time.)

Either way, Horie Shun (Amethio's VA) talked about how Amethio changed through his battles with Friede. How Amethio battled out of a sense of duty at first, but gradually, feelings of frustration and his personal desire of wanting to win began to develop inside of him.

And Yashiro Taku (Friede's VA) talked about how through his encounters with Amethio, Friede grew to respect/acknowledge his will/conviction even though they had different objectives at the time.

Very interesting insights from their VAs, hopefully the same this year too.

[zeb-z]

girls when “and I just keep thinking - is he [Arthur] going to forgive himself?”

(he’s going to sacrifice his humanity for answers and fall further than even he could predict because he thinks he deserves it) (the cycle of violence continues)

[lovebuddietothecore]

So it's not that I'm opposed to an Eddie moves to Texas storyline. It makes sense. He misses his kid and his kid hasn't shown any intent on moving back, so even seeing Chris sporadically would be better than none for a parent.

But it's weird to have a whole episode on Eddie allowing himself to experience joy & starting that growth, to then decide to move back to a place that didn't him happy. This doesn't flow with Eddie's narrative for the season.

[luv-again]

thinking,, abt my shadamy week stuff again (ofc as I'm supposed to be focused on school)

[cosmik-homo]

dont think about dragon wing alfred dont think about dragon wing alfred dont-

[beancalzone]

[man who is so normal about his ocs voice] fuck this post happy birthday Alex and Rhys