#Reflected Glory

[haine-kleine]

don't mind my self indulgence but uhh Touya being healed with the combination of rapidly evolving technology, healing quirks and Endeavor's funding to the point it's like the fire on Sekoto never happened. he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize the person that looks back at him. the burns were such an intrinsic part of him, even before he became Dabi, even before he woke up sixteen years old with stitches all over his face, back when he was a child and trained his fire with the parts of his body that he he could easily hide under his clothes.

it's nothing like when he woke up from the coma and looked in the mirror for the first time, seeing something his mind struggled to comprehend as himself, the too-old boy with desperation in his eyes and a garish smile cut directly into his face belonging in his worst nightmare that has come true. accepting it back then was easy, the wretched feeling of brokenness following his every footstep since he was four years old. the outside matching his insides was a relief, in a twisted way, as much as it hurt to imagine his family looking at him and not recognizing Touya, as sorrowful as it was to live through that fantasy.

this- just feels wrong. he doesn't see himself in this new, unfamiliar face. what he sees is rather a mosaic of his family's features: his mother's soft white hair, his father's eyes, Fuyumi's eyelashes and Natsuo's stubborn eyebrows. the combination of so familiar but foreign features combined into a mask that was plastered on his own ruined face.

he hated that forlorn looking boy's picture sitting on his altar and he hated thinking that that's how his family remembered him. it's the very same boy's older face that he sees in the mirror.

Touya was never this pitiful, desolate boy. he was always burning, even when the others couldn't see it. being stuck with this hurts worse than being faced with the consequences of his reckless self-abandoning training.

and worst of all, he knows that if he ever starts using his quirk, the cremation process will start all over again.

[cametotheshowinsd]

Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince (1989) dir. Taylor Swift ✘ They whisper in the hallway, "she's a bad, bad girl."

[jessamine-rose]

*lovingly tackles Aine*

Read my Yandere! Pierro longfics first ♪( ´▽｀)

Last week, my beloved mutual @ainescribe surprised me with Savior! Darling fan art and AHAI9232@2-!/! CRYING SCREAMING I WANT TO LOOK AT THIS ART AND WORSHIP YOUR VERSION OF SAVIOR THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BLESSING ME WITH YOUR ART—

*clears throat* Anyway, now that I finally have the time to properly sit down and comment on the fan art, I’ll do just that. Feedback will be in the tags and it will be unhinged. Once again, thank you so much to Aine for drawing this <3

[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?!

[autumns-glory]

[otrtbs]

The thing about the "I love you, that's all." in Art Heist, Baby! really is this moment of reflection for both James and Regulus at separate times and in separate places.

They're both grappling with impending death and taking stock of their lives. All the things they've said and done and all the things they'll never say and all the people they'll never see. It's a jumble of all the could've, should've, would've's in their mind but one thought shines through the clearest.

Love.

That's what they both want to leave with. That's what they want to take with them when they go. In the end, that's all that really matters. They had loved each other and been loved in return. Through crimes and heists and tumultuous families and soul-killing bank jobs, they loved each other. That's what mattered.

That's all.

[zeravmeta]

The thing about skadi alter that makes her hilarious is that even though skadi literally has the seaborn god inside of her, it's not as simple as just physically taking over her body, because skadi's own willpower is like a cap that prevents the seaborn gods from spilling out. thats why instead the seaborn evolved to actively communicate with skadi and try to open human channels of communication, because it's not just taking her, but convincing her to give in to the seaborn cause

thats why skadi possession isn't some kind of angsty eventuality where she slowly loses herself in her own mind, but rather that skadi's possession and transformation into skadi alter is more like this

[ghostdrinkssoup]

idk how controversial this is but I’m actually such a big fan of s3a. it’s the exact kind of phantasmagorical bullshit that makes me kick my feet and grin like a fool. the whole show goes haywire and completely abandons the generic structure of the police procedural, and it totally gets away with it because at this point the narrative has unravelled so much that the show can safely let go of whatever conformity it was barely hanging onto in s2b. and on a metafictional level the shift in external genre strangely parallels the progression of the two main characters: just as will and hannibal have changed each other, the show too has revealed its true nature

[knoxise]

finished patroclus's idle sprite last night !

achilles' sprite was done by @1000dactyls hence the slight size differences but limbus idle sprites of achilles + pat together 🥹 (fixer patroclus (from the past) / sinner achilles (current day)

[hawkogurl]

Ok we’ve had the sunshine midnight rain poll but i think this might have a very different answer

There is a right answer btw

[roseofcards90]

I love characters who literally just say fuck the world I’m going apeshit and I’m so angry I’m taking it out and being violent because I’ve been beaten down by the people around me my whole life and I want revenge

And yet there’s still that sliver of kindness, that sliver of care they have for their loved ones that despite still hurting them in their process of lashing out, they make the choice to hold them close because it’s the only thing reminding them of their humanity, that they’re still a person at the end of the day with ambitions and friendship and family and more importantly, happiness and hope that it will get better and they have people there to support and love them

[boleynqueenes]

"...the hill on which the Queen and John Dudley stand collapses into the earth... " | Nowe Thus | Chapter 21.

[sandshadow9]

Does anyone else see the cosmic parallels between Sora and Icicle?

Like how they were both consumed by grief and fear in their own ways which led to terrible choices? And how, in their path to avenge/prevent the death of a sibling, they ending up killing innocent dragons and brought about their own downfall???

[etirabys]

the capstone to the pleasure of reading a gripping and genuinely excellent novel written by someone in tumblr-y leftist spheres is logging into goodreads dot com and reading the reviews by other leftists tearing them apart

[arrowsperpetualcringe]

"“I-...I hope this is what you were anticipating…” he stammered, smiling nervously."

[crackedship]

why is no one talking about Consort's Glory by abigail kelly? it's urban fantasy, dripping in smut, mild enemies to lovers, just soft and tender loving all around. it is booktok at is peak and it's actually good.

also like it's a series of standalone romance books? i read the second one, and it's kind of second chance love and i hate that trope with my whole soul and i still loved the book so I AM ONTO SOMETHING. WHY ARE THESE BOOKS NOT EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!