#Which is implicitly

[cupoteahatter]

No One:

Me: Anyone ever think about how because Tyler was tricking her, he accidentally ended up as the one person who was seeing Wednesday for who she is and not who everyone wanted her to be? Specifically not who he wanted her to be, because he didn’t even have another image of her to fall back upon? Weems saw her as trouble/her Mother, Gates underestimated her, Sheriff Galpin only saw her Father, Xavier as his childhood hero, Enid blatantly assigned her a social mask but Tyler looked her full in the face and took her as she was? From their first meeting to their last, seeing Wednesday as she is, as she comes, all her dark edges and bright ideas and meeting her as an Equal Opponent, never underestimating her, never covering her up…. Just her. Only her. (And that in turn blinds her to who he is, until she pulls his mask off by accident).

Me: Anyone else ever think about that?

[justaz]

thinking about arthur who has crazy quick reflexes and is a relatively light sleeper who woke up to the sound of someone in his room and saw merlin crouched down messing with his keys before softly asking “whatre you doing?…before breakfast?”

[kaurwreck]

the port mafia's leadership is wrapped around chuuya's finger; it's deranged. mori canonically unmasks around chuuya, kouyou mentored chuuya, verlaine would kill and die (and has done both) for chuuya. ace is dead.

[friendlyneighbourhoodelf]

happy may the fourth !! have a silly meme <3

[anghraine]

I love that Elizabeth and Darcy are so ready to effectively tell each other they're full of shit. This happens a bunch of times, but I was re-reading their conversation at the Netherfield Ball and they're both kind of refreshingly Done.

[Darcy:] “Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?” [Elizabeth:] “Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet, for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.” [Darcy:] “Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?” “Both,” replied Elizabeth archly; “for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.” “This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,” said he.

It's also pretty funny, because I suspect Darcy is thinking of this sort of thing in a later conversation at Rosings:

“You mean to frighten me, Mr Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me. But I will not be alarmed, though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.” “I shall not say that you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which, in fact, are not your own.”

[revoevokukil]

This emerged in the middle of writing up thoughts on Ciri and Avallac'h based on the books alone.

---

The Witcher’s theme of choice and destiny is complicated by psychological barriers – one must be emotionally ready to accept the way the dice can fall.

Interestingly, Avallac’h’s rejection mirrors how Lara rejected the plans for her destiny. His rejection of Ciri's offer ironically puts him in the position of resisting destiny – the very 'crime' he condemned Lara for committing.

Elves had plans for Lara – to stay and have special children. She rejected this. Elven goals were upended.

For Ciri, Avallac’h has orchestrated a destiny, but when Ciri gets sick of the official programme not working out and offers herself to him directly – effectively suggesting getting the goal they want faster – she gets rebuked. She’s creating an unexpected path to achieving the elves’ goals; one where she shows agency in choosing the father.

In poetic justice, Avallac’h is mirroring Lara’s rejection of the elves’ plans: the man who spent centuries judging Lara for prioritizing personal choice over racial destiny ends up making essentially the same choice, but from the opposite side of the equation. In rejecting Ciri's offer at that point, he implicitly asserts that the manner in which destiny unfolds matters, not just the outcome.

Avallac’h, however, seems blind to this parallel between himself and Lara.

This suggests though, that perhaps Avallac'h's centuries of resentment toward Lara concealed a deeper, unacknowledged understanding of her choice – one that surfaces in his own moment of revelation. You cannot force it if you are not ready for it, but avoiding it will bring consequences. The sword of destiny is double-edged.

Sapkowski often structures his narrative so as to force characters to confront their own contradictions, often without them fully recognizing the pattern they’re repeating or inverting.

[whoopseydaisy]

The River Had Roots already had me by way of it being a fairytale, a conjugation (if you will) of the twa sisters, a story about sisters who sing to trees. But it’s also a riddle and a poem and has really beautiful llinocut illustrations. Amal El-Mohtar you’ve done it again and also I trust your taste implicitly and forever I think.

[acesammy]

The thing about how sam’s arc in season 4 is often discussed is that people simultaneously acknowledge that the angels are bad, while claiming Sam is an idiot for rebelling against them.

like I have listened through three (3) rewatch podcasts and they always seem to fall into this loop of going ‘hey the angels are Obviously up to no good’ while also going ‘Sam is really stupid. Why would he trust a demon when literal angels are telling him to stop’

idk man. Maybe bc the angels are Obviously up to no good????

[hildannette]

the longer i stay in the fe3h fandom the more i like rhea. like i started the game with the distinct impression that i'd hate her and now i actively enjoy her

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT, I hope you are doing well! who is your favorite Weasley?

Thank you! Absolute treat of a question. Oh, man. It's Ron, right? It was always going to be Ron.

So here's the thing: the Weasleys are a really well-characterized family in that you can kind of see a lot of character emerge through limited sketches and contextual information. Bill is Number One Boy, the best at everything, oldest child who was always confident and at peace with his indisputable place in the family; so he's a chill, cool, incredibly competent guy who naturally takes-charge. Charlie is a patented never-grew-out-of-your-middle-school-dragons-phase Weird Kid, but like, mindfully and enthusiastically so, because his parents probably still had plenty of time to support and nurture his interests; plus he's also different to Bill and excels in different ways, so they aren't too competitive (as we see). Percy is the first one to suffer from the pressure of mounting expectations, and he's very quickly followed by the twins, who do the classic "if I can't be the best I'll be the worst" late-sibling trick of acting up for attention, so he gets lost in the shuffle. (The fight between Ron and Percy in Chapter 58 is, hence, in substantially about the relationship between the two most-ignored members of the Weasley family, and that's why Ron is so much angrier at him than the rest of them. Like I've said before, Ron always thinks he's got it the worst, but he takes pride in being able to kinda "tough it out," and nothing pisses him off like other people's self-pity.) Ginny is obviously the baby of the family, a girl with everyone wrapped around her finger, and I love her, but I feel like we didn't get enough grit in her portrait— she's just really successful in everything she does, in a way that can read as flat to some people, and certainly read as flat to me my first time through the books. In fact, Ginny reminds me a lot of Bill: first daughter/first son, described often as "cool" and clever and good at basically everything, charming and generally liked by all. Which is lovely. A delight to read, just like the twins are. But my taste in characters ranges way more fucked-up and mean.

Ron is the last boy, "sixth son of a woman who wanted a daughter" (fascinating line that complicates everything we know about Molly's relationship with her kids — and BTW, how the hell does Ron know that, and how old was he when he learned it? And this also comes into play with Molly's cry of "not my daughter" to Bellatrix which like, as a moment obviously fucking rules, but also — there's a reason she says daughter, not "child," right? Do you see what I'm digging at? Anyway). Ron meets Harry and recognizes himself in how Harry defaults to thinking people don't care about him, or won't help him if he asks, because — although they come from very different circumstances, Ron's home was completely loving, just not as nurturing as he always needed it to be — Ron usually goes in assuming people don't care about him, too. So his first instinct is to go: "Alright. Well, I'll care about you, then, weird stranger. Do you want to share my horrible sandwich, and also my life, perhaps?" Goddamn! Sixth of seven in a house with never enough to go around, and he's immediately like: "fuck it, room for one more." Because he could have been Percy — and you can see it in the way that Ron is mean, sometimes, he's not careful with his words and he struggles with empathy and he's got a vengeful streak that comes out when he's pissed — but he isn't selfish enough, he loves too much and too easily, and it takes shockingly little to earn his loyalty. You just have to pay a little attention to him.

[lizbethborden]

Anyway. Since it appears I have to clarify. My annoyance with the sudden appearance of the term "Bambi lesbian" to describe a lesbian disinterested in sex derived from the following.

The whole phenomenon of microlabeling, most clearly seen in the asexual community (of which this example is arguably a variant), which essentializes different aspects of human experience--in particular libido and active sexual desire, which are often very changeable throughout a person's life, even the course of a week or month--and suggests they are strictly defined and fundamental aspects of individual identity

The dual cultural trends of pornographic lesbianism and uwu lesbianism, each of which function to deny the wholeness of lesbian experience and to freeze the image of lesbians and lesbian desire in non-threatening stereotype, especially by hinting that they are not actually lesbian (introducing a man into lesbian porn scenarios on one hand, being infantilizing and nonsexual and using terms like "sapphic" and "queer" to avoid the specificity of "lesbian" on the other)

The extremely visible phenomenon of obvious nonlesbians choosing to use lesbian labels: "bi lesbians" who date men, "dykes" with husbands, etc. Not to mention the women who convinced themselves they were lesbians via the bisexual-created "lesbian masterdoc" and tried to speak with authority on the lesbian experience--many of them on here!--before returning to the coziness and security of heterosexual relationships.

None of this is world-ending or a massive political issue except where it may be an extension of larger issues in gender politics. I am certainly not beating down these people's doors demanding they stop these behaviors although at times I have wanted to. That being said I think it's perfectly reasonable to be critical of all these things and, in fact, to be annoyed or even mad at obvious expressions of these attitudes and behaviors, given how they proliferate in LGBT online (and some offline) spaces. Thanks.

[tanoraqui]

The Rise and Fall of Empires

Chapter 9: The Downfall of Númenor

24 Days Before the Fall of Númenor

The plan had been, wait for Ar-Pharazón and his fleet to get halfway to Aman, then break every Palantir connection between them and anyone else, cueing everyone else to start their coordinated military campaigns, slave rebellions, etc. On the mighty Isle of Númenor itself, they’d been going to stage a smooth coup in favor of Míriel and get everyone not rabidly a King’s Man off the island, before setting off the volcano in their wake and leaving the rest to Ulmo.

No plan, however, survives contact with the enemy. In this case the enemies were fear, ignorance, and several decades—several centuries—of pent-up aggression between the various political factions of the Númenorean Empire.

“I told you I could’ve started a civil war in just a few years,” Annatar said idly, sitting on the plinth that had once hosted the King’s Square Temple statue of Morgoth-as-Fëanor-as-a-Man. 

[keep reading on AO3]

[hyperbali]

Straight up tripped into (Inquisitor!)Jeanne/Solas and saw into eternity.

It's like. One of the most hilariously fitting ships she has ever had.

Shit boy I die!!

[sp1resong]

yknow people claim that 'tme/tma' labels are supposed to 'not disclose your assigned gender!!!' but the thing is that... when you present yourself as nonbinary.... it pretty much does

[boo-cool-robot]

it's kind of funny that I finished my Naruto read going "oh my god....Naruto and Sasuke are in love....." but it turns out I don't really like most SNS fan content and all my fic reading time is spent on epics about Sakura getting good at punching stuff or Itachi being a little weirdo

[wizisbored]

squinting at netherborne trying to figure out lydias understanding of gender