one thing I really really appreciate abt riz gukgak as a character is that he is un-self-aware to the max. he inhabits his body so completely. the arc that would usually be run as "I'm different and unable to connect with my friends in this way that everyone seems to be able to do and so something's wrong with me and I don't like myself" when it comes to riz is actually like no! I have literally no problems or praises for myself personally. I don't stand outside of my own self and judge it. it's phrased as "other people will eventually find someone more important to them than you" rather than centering it on his self-perception. he doesn't know why he doesn't have the best social life on earth even though he's not afraid at all to talk to other people. every time he sees himself in someone else's actions or behaviour he gets startled by it. his latest epilogue is realizing seemingly for the first time that he's not just an agent of causes but an actual character. he's my hero and I want to be him when I grow up
Hi!! I don't know if anyone has drawn this before (sorry if they have!! I couldn't find any evidence of it) but I have recently been plagued with the question of "what if Machete and Vasco were in Bluey?"
Well. Now we know.
To my knowledge, the only Bluey dogs who wear clothes are the ones in uniforms. TECHNICALLY Machete's outfit could count, but I left it out because it's not typical of a main character. He must be naked 😔
what's fun about shipping Tim with Dick, Jason, or Damian is he has, at some point, hallucinated all of them to comfort himself. even when he doesn't like them or particularly get along with them, he has to imagine/hallucinate them just so he has the power to go on. Tim's concepts of the Robin mantle and what it should be is so fun, because he respects the others through the Robin mantle. Tim worships Dick because he was the first Robin. he wouldn't be Robin if Jason hadn't died in the mantle. and a lot of his frustration with Damian is he feels Damian isn't honoring the mantle correctly. when you ship Tim with the other Robins you can't divorce their identities as Robin from it because Tim will always see them as a Robin first and that's so fun and fucked up. like.
batman (1940) #456
Tim perceiving Dick as *Robin* cheering him on, not Nightwing, which is the version of Dick that Tim actually knows? that's just. wild of him. he will always view Dick as Robin first, his personal hero but also the original of the legacy. his love for Dick is shaped by that.
and then of course, even when he's hallucinating/imagining Jason cheering him on, it's *still* through the lense of being reminded how Jason failed? subconsciously believing that Jason got himself killed because of his actions, and that being a lesson for Tim to learn from? Jason isn't a person to Tim, he's a moral lesson about how to be Robin. any potential idolization he could have of Jason isn't because he loves Jason, it's because of the lessons Jason's death taught him.
and then, even though him hallucinating TIm is from the New-52, which makes characterization all kinds of questionable, i do think it makes sense for TIm to hallucinate/imagine Damian after Damian's death in an attempt to cope with it.
teen titans (2011) #18
to an extend, he sees Damian's death as in part his own fault. and even hating Damian, Tim needs the comfort from this to cope with Damian being gone. he's angry that Damian even was Robin, and has to learn something from Damian's death and how it impacts the Robin mantle, and teenage heroes as a whole. like, Tim can pretend he hates Damian all he wants, even getting taunted by the image of Damian, but there's still an underlying love to their relationship.
i think that's just the fun of shipping Tim with any of them. you will never divorce Tim's views of them from the Robin mantle and how fucking Unwell he is about anyone else who's been Robin before or after him, to the point he has to hallucinate them comforting him when he's at his lowest. it's always going to be a little unhealthy, a little toxic, and driven by Tim's relationship with being Robin as well. i need more Tim being weird about Robin in these ships.
thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.
can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest
like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!
if jake had said his "son for a son" shit out loud and spider had heard him, he would have been so beyond pissed, he would be seeing red.
spider loved his little siblings so much, neteyam included, even after they grew apart. he loved them like they were his own blood and protected them like they were too (we see a lot more of them together in the comics, where spider is the big brother without a doubt). neteyam's death most certainly rocked him hard, even if he hasn't really been able to show it (how could he? he's already going through all the shit with his dad and the RDA and their nonsense, he can't grieve around neytiri, he's just so tired after it all. he doesn't have the room or the energy to grieve yet)
so if jake had the audacity to say that to/around spider not even a few hours after he watched his little brother get shot after coming to save him, after he stared at the bullet hole in his back, after he watched him take his last breaths, after he watched the light leave his eyes, after he watched his little brother die for him; if he said that while his little brother's body lay in a pool of his own blood not even ten feet away, not even cold yet, blood still clinging to his chest, the scent of it still filling the air: he would have lost his shit.
because the disrespect for his brother is wild.
jake was an active player in spider's neglect and abuse for the last 16 years, he let it happen, he helped it happen. he tried to send spider with the humans, tried to take him away from his siblings, from the forests, from eywa to live with his foster family that didn't love him (not to mention Nash was an asswipe of epic proportions) and the RDA of all people. he had referred to spider as a stray animal since he was little. he was the reason spiders life was hell.
and after all that, years and years of putting him in shit positions and allowing him to suffer the fate of being forever unloved and uncared for (by an adult authority figure, cause I love the kids, but they don't make up for the gap left by a parent), this is what it took for jake to care about him? his little brother had to die in front of him first? he had to be traded out to fill the space of a corpse, to fill in the gap left by his little brother's death?
in canon, spider was in deep in shock with nothing to break him from it, he wasn't in the place to really think about any of it, and I'm sure we're gonna see this anger in the coming movies, but if jake had said it out loud, that would have been enough to snap spider right out of it, and he would have given jake a piece of his mind, I just know it.
I've seen a few artists I like making human art and I got inspired to make my own.
First version was based just on their character designs and personality, and what inspired their look in the first place. Second version happened when I took into account their backstory and what I imagine human versions of their parents' would look like. I don't consider either of these "canon", because to me they're just trolls but it was a fun experiment to try.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of me drawing little colorful dolls
One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.
I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.
Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.
What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.
Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.
I think people sleep on this moment in the Odyssey...
If I'm wrong, not getting full context, or see something that isn't there, feel free to give evidence to explain why.
Here he crept under a pair of bushes, one an olive, the other a wild olive, which grew from the same stem with their branches so closely intertwined that when the winds blew moist not a breath could get inside, nor could the rain soak right through to the earth.
(Book 5, Rieu)
I think this is about Penelope and him.
Obviously, their marriage bed is made from an Olive tree. If it's just about Athena then why are there two mentioned? Why did Homer mention two when he could've just said he took refuge under one? Or a completely different type of tree? Why mention them being intertwined?
One an olive: Penelope, who has been with society and "safe" in Ithaca ("Safe" because of the suitors)
One wild: Odysseus, who has dealt with literal monsters and immortals and has just escaped from Calypso. Literally naked and filthy, a "wild man".
"which grew from the same stem with their branches": Them both being together at first, before being separated.
"so closely intertwined that when the winds blew moist not a breath could get inside, nor could the rain soak right through to the earth.": Despite being separated, they are still "intertwined". Whether you want to think of it as them being likeminded or simply connected, even though they are apart, nothing could get in between them. 🥺
I don't know what else Homer could be referring to other than them.
the problem with every spideytorch fic ever is that Johnny never has a breakdown when he realizes that he's unfortunately madly in love with Peter like he should be weeping and wailing about how uncool and lame it is to have a crush on fucking Spider-Man