#a burden but one i had to bear

[clarkgriffon]

ULTIMATE SHIPS CHALLENGE - [3/6] Current OTPs ↳ “Have I ever told you that I think you're the bravest person I've ever met?” “I don’t think so, but you can try it.” “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” “I like it, it’s not true, but I like the sound of it.” “It is true, and you’re gonna get through this.”

[demigods-posts]

thinking of percy going to school as a small child. learning that some of his peers talk to deceased family members in their heads to cope with grief. and deciding to take the time each night to talk to his father. telling him a funny story of how mom laughed so hard, milk came out of her nose. of how he got a near perfect score on his third grade spelling test. of each time he got expelled from school and how much he knew it made mom sad. of how his stepfather is the meanest bully he's ever met. of how he wished the two of them had more time together so they could share s'mores and stories around the campfire. of how much he grieves the father he never had. and thinking of poseidon sitting in his throne atop olympus. tears threatening to fall at the sound of his son's voice. mirroring the grief of a child he never got to raise.

[good-beans]

My mom, who exclusively loves 80s music, has only the very mainstream knowledge of only a handful of current songs/artists, certainly not my obscure jpop playlist: "oh hey, this one sounds nice :)"

Me, listening to Es' Half cover and unaware of the extreme psychic damage I'm about to take: "Aw, I'm glad you like it!"

My mom, smiling wide, trying desperately to connect to my interests: "Yeah, it sounds like Japanese Taylor swift :D"

[defeateddetectives]

IN THIS ESSAY I WILL

[follow-up to this two-image post that's worth more than twenty thousand words and altered the course of my life]

[cerealmonster15]

the block button isnt enough i need to set things on FIRE

[volfoss]

do u guys like her...

[isfjmel-phleg]

🌋

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon? We could use a man like you on the Wall.”

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”

“Notable achievements.”

“Take me with you when you go back to the Wall,” Jon said in a sudden rush. “Father will give me leave to go if you ask him, I know he will.”

Uncle Benjen studied his face carefully. “The Wall is a hard place for a boy, Jon.”

“I am almost a man grown,” Jon protested. “I will turn fifteen on my next name day, and Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children.”

“That’s true enough,” Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon’s cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.

“Daeron Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

“A conquest that lasted a summer,” his uncle pointed out. “Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn’t a game.” He took another sip of wine. “Also,” he said, wiping his mouth, “Daeron Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?”

“I forget nothing,” Jon boasted. The wine was making him bold. He tried to sit very straight, to make himself seem taller. “I want to serve in the Night’s Watch, Uncle.”

In fandom, we often talk about Jon’s antics in his first AGOT chapter - e.g., boasting about being the better swordsman than Robb, his admiration of Daeron I, his insistence that he is a man and not a boy - as evidence of his immaturity. And there’s nothing wrong with that interpretation at all - I for one think that it’s very valid - but I rarely ever see this exchange with Benjen put in its full context; more specificallyy, the full context of what’s happening this entire chapter (and honestly what’s being going on in Jon’s life up to that point).

Because there’s something so…depressing and tragic about a fourteen year old boy desperately trying to grow up faster than is necessary because once he is a man, then there must be a place for him in this world. Because this exchange with Benjen is not happening in a vacuum. It arises out of the situation where the delineation between Jon’s social status and that of his siblings has been made ever more clear: his siblings get to sit at the high table with the visiting royal family whereas Jon has to sit with the squires far away from familiar company. But more importantly, he is a Snow and his siblings are Starks. They have a place of belonging (afforded to them by their Stark name) whereas he does’t (because he’s a bastard).

So Jon has to nurse his wounds with the belief that despite his bastardy, there has to be something he can do to belong. And what can he do, except grow up and be a man? At…fourteen years old?

So even though Robb can sit among royalty, Jon can still hold a sword just as well (in fact better) and ride a horse. He can be great too, not because of his name but because of his ability; but I do have to quibble with Benson’s (seemingly) sarcastic response to Jon’s answers here. Are you even bothering to actually listen to what Jon is saying, Uncle Ben?

And I have to admit that it makes me quite angry that the notion of bastards growing up faster than trueborns is not at all challenged among the characters. Do bastards actually grow up faster, or are they forced to fend for themselves faster than trueborns naturally would, just like Jon is in this chapter? It certainly doesn’t help that Benjen agrees with he statement, despite literally contradicting it just some few minutes earlier (by saying that Jon is just a boy and thus too young to make any life decisions for himself - like joining the Watch).

And as I was pondering on this, I realized that Jon really has been getting contradictory “advice” all his life: he’s a bastard so he has to grow up faster and cut his childhood short so he can make use of himself, but he’s actually a boy so his abilities and desires to advance are only a boy’s delusions, but then he has to join the watch and be a man and do a man’s job (and make a man’s sacrifices as Luwin would put it 🙄), but then he’s still a boy at the end of it all.

Given all this emotional and mental whiplash, Jon is actually quite well adjusted. I couldn’t imagine having to be pulled into 1000 different directions because at the heart of it the question is: is he a man or is he a boy? And what can he do, boy or man that he is, because he’s still a bastard?

I think this chapter shows that no one really bothered to sit Jon down and tell him that it’s okay to be a child, and that he doesn’t have to age far beyond his years because there’ll be someone to look out for him.

Worse yet, this chapter shows a young boy desperate to find a place for himself in the world, because no one else bothered to do so.

[inannasdream]

i try not to judge ppl for their favorite or least favorite characters and for the most part i don't but ushiromiya maria is one of those characters where im like, if u hate her for being annoying or creepy im def judging u. pls be nice to autistic kids internet challenge impossible 😔

[roobylavender]

(Really long ask ahead i’m sorry!) I think your thoughts on dick and his similarities vs differences to bruce are so interesting! Personally i’m wondering how much of NTT played an influence on this kind of characterization bc i’ve never fully finished ntt but i read like nearly all the pre-80s batman 1940 issues lol and dick very much was portrayed as more idealistic than bruce in some ways while more no-nonsense (? For lack of better word) in other ways, like when it comes to batman easing up a little on selina for romance reasons LOL. Though ofc dick totally turns into - well, a dick - in team books, as i grow older i find myself far more compelled by a potential story of an 18 yr old who seemed to have the whole weight of the world on his shoulders (by his own perception) and breaking under his own impractically strong sense of duty and sky-high expectations for others, then realizing as he grows older that it doesn’t have to be that way esp after seeing the perspectives of characters like kory, wally, joey, roy, etc. Like personally as someone who never really had a huge interest in NTT anyway, i’m surprised at how desperately people want to hold on to the characterization of dick when he was 18-19 and never letting him grow past that, like it’s so difficult for me to believe that at age 25 he would be the same uptight controlling kid that he was at 19. Maybe i’m biased though bc i was like one of those insufferable INTJ internet stereotypes as a teenager, and while that worldview did bring me achievements i’m proud of like the fact that i’m in med school rn studying what i love, i still know that at age 22 i have changed SO much from when i was 18 and i can’t imagine any reasonably mature or normally-functioning person (let alone someone high-functioning like dick) not doing the same lol. Especially since dick is the kind of person who would literally die if he’s not constantly growing and evolving past his faults bc of his insufferable perfectionism, idk how he’d be willfully blind to the negative effects of his worldview in early NTT and refuse to grow from there. He even has a quote that’s like “i’ve spent years as a student of my own behavior” which i always found highly encouraging bc i know he really does want to improve himself even at his worst. It reminds me of that Marcus Aurelius quote: “if someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, i shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone; the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.” But what are your thoughts? (Thank you for reading all this 🥹)

oh i absolutely agree! i cannot tell you how many times i think about the person i was a couple years ago and who i am now like i cringe so much omg.. maturity is an ever persistent process even if we don't recognize its effects immediately and it absolutely is crazy to think that anyone would remain in such a static state of mind for several years on end. esp when like you said dick is someone who wants to be better! so despite his several hypocrisies it is nonetheless in his best interests to look internally and analyze and evolve. and i feel like that very much could have happened had there been any actual segue between dick's breakup with kory and his re-entry into the batfam. i don't think there was much of a connection between these two sets of writers at all and so what you got is what felt like two very distinct parts of dick's life that didn't necessarily reveal a bridge point. so it's not entirely unrealistic that dick may grow to be the person (at least to some extent) that bat canon portrayed him to be in the years that followed but i certainly think as it stands it felt unearned and like all of his issues explored in ntt were conveniently swept to the side without any semblance of closure (albeit i do think some of these issues are addressed in outsiders '03 but in that dickheaded way that winick explores things generally. so i'm not sure it's the kind of closure people actually want). it's very sad and ig that's what people cling to more than anything. it's not that they're opposed to him growing to be a better person but that they're opposed to a version of dick who feels like he sprung out of nothing

[countdown-til-sanders-take-over]

what sorts of hairstyles do you like

Peppermint I am not the one in control here my hair is the one in charge

[seasononesam]

sometimes I hesitate to post a gifset bc I know people will be Wrong about sam in the tags...and yet I still post on 

[fellhellion]

“Miguel can’t be Spiderman because Spiderman doesn’t kill❗️❗️❗️” sorry but him letting the cannibalistic Vulture splat on the pavement was funny af

[scionshtola]

thinking about cori’s relationship to being the wol which has been on a steady decline since the vault and i think. they’re okay with it because they wouldn’t wish it on anyone else lol

[crancisfrozier]

Hi I just finished reading The Calling and I am emotional about Fiona and Maric and Duncan and Alistair and I think I’m just going to jump out of this window now bye

[rollforjackass]

did you ever write anything for the good omens cryptid hunting au ?? Im a little obsessed with the concept of a human Aziraphale having a scam name lol

hahaha it's still one of my favorite concepts honestly.

i wrote up a few bits and pieces of it with a friend of mine, but never a full fic!! i think we were considering that crowley was a cryptid (being the snake and all) and aziraphale — who became a(n) cryptid hunter unexplained phenomena researcher in part to prove to his mother that there's plenty of fascinating things down here on earth for free — ran into him quite by accident (crowley lives in a secret garden shielded from the outside world, appropriately named eden, but aziraphale can see right through the shielding) and decided to stay to keep the lonely old snake company.

i do still have the initial paragraph i wrote for it, actually!!

Aziraphale Heart — named after an angel his mother read about in a deeply incorrect pamphlet that advertised a direct line to several high tiers of Heaven for a monthly payment of 9.99, and who has stubbornly refused the use of any and all nicknames that have been proposed since — has been looking for a garden for almost a decade. He never expected to actually find it. He certainly never expected to find it occupied.