#and her loathing of the gods

[fanstuffrantings]

Thinking strongly about the concept of a Salem lore rewrite where she was a creation of the God of darkness who was trying to make more advanced Grimm, and Ozma was a hero blessed by the God of light. The only person to never look at her like a monster.

[arson-09]

Tamlin is actually such an underrated character in acotar. Because of feyres very biased narrative she forces readers to ignore the complexity of his character and man. its sad

Tamlin is a character who is genuinely GOOD at his core. He changed so much of the spring court for good, eliminating slavery within the spring lands and mortals having more protection. Hes a morally good character that made a few mistakes and is boiled down to just those mistakes. Locking feyre in the house and the magical/emotional blow up, which are both pretty decent fuck ups (i dont think siding with hybern fully counts as he was a double agent all along and tamlin was decently justified in thinking feyre was being kept against her will. lets be fr here) and even after he’s extremely fucked over by the nightcourt, his lands and court burned to shit, he still saves rhysand. Saves rhysand and tells feyre to be happy, even when he has every reason to NOT do that!

Hes a character that clearly holds himself to a higher standard. throughout acotar he puts lucien and feyres safety above his own, even sending feyre away when she was the only one who could save him. Even though what he did to her wasnt great its not completely irredeemable, rhysand did much worse things to feyre and other people but hes living his best life while Tamlin seems to find himself unworthy of being a person (acosf wheres hes been in beast form for roughly over two years) hes a perfectionist who now doesnt even think he deserves anyone because he accidentally hurt the people he loves most.

Sjm accidentally created a beautifully rich and morally righteous character who is so extremely fucked by the narrative. Which doesnt even work half the time as sjm cant seemingly commit to making him a full villain (seemingly by accident again she gave him quite a reasonable explanation to everything he did ‘wrong’ but still chooses to make him a punching bag)

If Tamlin was genuinely a morally evil character he wouldnt have NEARLY the amount of fans as he does. Hes a character that requires the minimum amount of media literacy and comprehension to understand and i LOVE him.

[justsomecouscous]

og write/creator: yeah these two ppl absolutely hate each other, just like pure loathing, that's their arch nemesis right there and they've been actively trying to kill each other since they met like they just genuinely hate each other so much-

A sixteen year old girl with daddy issues and a new hyper fixation: no for much longer they won't :)

[bestworstcase]

what ruby says: are we supposed to be mourning jaune’s make-believe friends?

what she means: jaune labeled all the paper pleasers with the names of his friends and then abused them for years, ignoring everything they told him about what they wanted because he decided they needed to be protected from themselves because they were too stupid and crazy to really mean what they said. (<- ruby knows exactly how that feels.) the paper pleasers were not his friends, he didn’t care about them—they were props to make him feel better. they were real people whom jaune treated like toys to play pretend about saving his real friends. the make-believe hero. and ruby’s supposed to feel sorry for him now? because his little toys finally broke free?

what wby+j probably hear: ruby thinks it’s stupid to care about the paper pleasers because afterans aren’t real people.

what salem says: none of that matters anymore! why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans when we could replace them with what they could never be?

what she means: the brothers never had the right to massacre humankind, and now that they have abandoned remnant, abdicated their responsibility as its creators, and sworn not to return until they’re summoned, nothing they say matters at all. these humans did nothing wrong and the gods gave them nothing and deserve nothing in return; trying to ‘redeem’ these humans is a waste of time because there is nothing to redeem. the only person alive who needs redemption before the gods is salem herself, and she doesn’t want it—because to redeem herself is to justify what the brothers did, to say that the slaughter of the whole planet and the millions of years she spent in solitude were good and just and fair, and she knows that isn’t true. the gods want humans to grovel for forgiveness? the gods can burn.

what ozma probably hears: salem wants to kill everybody because she doesn’t think these humans are real people.

[carefulfears]

thinking about mulder asking scully's mother why she wore a cross around her neck if she was such a skeptic, and maggie answering "i gave it to her," and putting it back in his hand. and that mulder puts it around his neck, carries it on him through the height of desperation and grasps for connection. his own version of catholic guilt, of being watched over. of holding onto something not because you believe in it, but because you don't have anything else. because it was given to you.

[ncfan-1]

I have a few wants for Mae’s story next season, with the hope that she gets her memory back relatively quickly being a pretty important one, but it’s not the only want I have for the way things go for Mae that I consider important. There’s something else that feels even more important: namely, that Mae find people in her life that deeply love and prioritize her.

There’s something very pointed going on in Season 1. “Everyone seems to want you,” Qimir says to Osha, but by comparison, nobody ever seems to want Mae. When they’re children, Sol professes a connection to Osha, and Mae is little more than an afterthought; as an adult, Sol ultimately leaves nothing for her but the worst parts of himself. Qimir is visibly fascinated with Osha from first sight, and ultimately doesn’t seem to have thought much of Mae even before she attempted to desert his side; he seems to brush her off the way you’d brush a speck of dust off of you.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Osha should have chosen to stay with Mae in Episode 8. It doesn’t make sense from a storytelling standpoint, not at this juncture. This is the culmination of Mae’s character arc this season, where she is finally able to stop clinging to Osha, to accept that what she wants more than anything is for Osha to be happy, even if she isn’t with her. For Osha to choose to stay with Mae at that point would feel wrong, for Mae has to prove to the audience that she has reached this kind of peace regarding her relationship with her sister by accepting that Osha doesn’t want to stay with her without bitterness. As for Osha, this is the culmination of her character arc this season, which has been about taking her life and her power into her own hands, and it would be strange for her to stay with Mae when Qimir has offered to help her do what she wants. It wouldn’t feel right from a storytelling standpoint; for things to make sense, they have to part ways at the end of Season 1.

But even if Osha frames it as making sure that Mae is safe from any reprisals on Qimir’s part, and even if it’s what make sense from a storytelling perspective, what it ultimately amounts to is that Osha doesn’t choose Mae, either. Nobody ever chooses Mae.

And it’s so uneven. I’m not saying I want Osha to be this alone, too—I don’t. But it’s wrenching to watch this woman who has nothing and no one at the beginning of the season still have nothing and no one at the end of the season, because even the memory of Osha forgiving her and loving her again has been taken away from her. Even her memory of the one person she had left who actually loved her has been taken away from her. She had nothing then, and she has nothing now.

Like I said, it feels pointed, the way Mae is never chosen, and what I’m hoping is that this means that it won’t be the case anymore in Season 2. Vernestra, you say, and yeah, I have high hopes for that dynamic, but no matter how things shake out between Mae and Vernestra, that is never going to be a relationship of equals, and I don’t think it’s ultimately going to be the kind of relationship where Vernestra would choose Mae, not meaningfully. Not over every other option.

That’s what I want for Mae, really. Someone who will love her deeply and choose her over everyone else, every time. With her memories and without. Knowing what she’s done, the good and the bad, knowing what she’s capable of, the good and the bad, knowing her past, knowing her faults and knowing that those faults aren’t all of who she is. Someone who would choose her without a second thought.

Because I feel like there’s going to be a scene like the one in Episode 8, where this time, it’s Mae who chooses. But Osha had more than one option. Either Qimir or Mae were viable options. Osha had a solid foundation to rely on, whatever she decided to do. But as it stands, Mae only has Osha. Osha is all Mae has. And if we do get a moment like that in Season 2, where this time it’s Osha asking Mae what she wants, if she wants to go with her or not, if Mae’s options are still “Osha” or “be completely alone,” then it's not the meaningful choice that Osha had, is it? My point is, I want Mae, whatever she decides, to have actually had a meaningful choice. To not be completely dependent on Osha for love and acceptance. To have someone else she could turn to if she decided that she didn’t want to go with Osha. To not have her choices be: Osha—or no one.

[acoraxia]

You guys don’t UNDERSTAND how cool Su Daji x Erlang Shen is

They’re what could have been.

But she had to die because otherwise Erlang would have kept following Heaven’s orders blindly. It took seeing her death for him to realize that, fuck, maybe he is a pawn for Heaven to manipulate and order around. He watched her get executed for something she was sent to do and it changed the trajectory of his fucking LIFE

ERLANG WATCHED SU DAJI DIE AND DECIDED THERE AND THEN THAT HE WOULDN’T LET HEAVEN USE HIM AS A PAWN ANYMORE LIKE BRO

And the fact that if Erlang’s sister or mother ordered him to kill Daji then he would. Because he loves no one more than he loves his mother and sister. So it wouldn’t have been endless romantic heaps of love— it would’ve been just as tragic

How more poetic can you get

[cream-and-tea]

oh man the judge/calliope and pallas&agnes thoughts are really eating holes in my brain tonight,,,,,,

[curioscurio]

I finally decided to finish Steven Universe Future and its a little scary how much I identified with Steven this time around. Who am I kidding it was like looking in a mirror. . I have got to move the FUCK out

[fishareglorious]

irl is liveblogging marcus' event to me and it hurts. the end hurts so bad

[backjustforberena]

guys, the tragedy isn't that the marriage died and then she died, it's that she died before they could make it right.

[anchored-nyctophilia]

carol last was the og sad beige mom

[mydollsaregay]

im opening my birthday items rn (VERY grateful to my aunt and grandma for the gift cards!!), and i could NOT wait until i opened everything to make a post because like. LOOK AT HER!!!!!

oh my god she is just. so beautiful i cannot handle it!!!!! AG had her up for black friday, and im SO glad i took the opportunity to get her (and so grateful to have had gift card money to spend, because otherwise I probably would not have gotten her!)

out of the dolls with colorful hair AG has made, ive always thought she stood out so much - i love the blend of her natural roots with the amazing colors, especially because that’s how my hair looks most of the time (i have colorful hair but I don’t touch up my roots for months at a time haha)

these pictures do not show her beauty in full tbh - but im too excited to take better ones!

i actually held off on getting her for ages, even when i had opportunities to do so, as im not really a tm collector (i mostly focus on historicals), and i kept telling myself “you already have a ton of josefina molds in your collection, you don’t need another one!”

past me, you are very silly!! it is ok that i have a preference for josefina molds lol. i will not give myself such silly restrictions in the future.

now i gotta figure out a name for this little lady!

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

Carpenter: I could not save Em, and I will never forgive myself for that. But I can save you. I would do anything for you, my brother.

Faulkner: *looks at Mason and Sister Thorax*

Faulkner: well that's convenient

[theteaisaddictive]

subjected to lies and slander on the twitter timeline (people thinking that belle wasn’t overjoyed and disbelieving at the prince turning back into a human at the end of beauty and the beast)

[heartofstanding]

There's a new novel about Joan of Kent that's coming out in September: Elizabeth Chadwick's The Royal Rebel.

1338: England has declared war on France, and Jeanette of Kent, cousin to King Edward III, says goodbye to her family and travels overseas with the royal court for the first time. Once in Antwerp, she is captivated by talented household knight, Thomas Holland, just as he in turn is powerfully drawn to her.Although both know their romance is forbidden, their love for each other grows stronger than the danger they face, and they marry in secret. But before they can make their tryst known, Thomas has to leave for war, and in his absence, Jeanette is forced into a second marriage and locked away from the world. Then Thomas returns, and the real fight begins. As hostile family members battle to keep Jeanette and Thomas apart, the defiant lovers vow to be reunited - whatever the cost...From the award-winning and bestselling author, Elizabeth Chadwick, comes an epic love story set against the tumultuous backdrop of high chivalry, deadly warfare, devastating plague, and savage rivalry in the twelfth century - the first of two parts telling the remarkable story of a woman who rose from royal rebel to formidable influence.

I have several posts on this and a glitter text gif but let me just say it again: Joan of Kent was born at the earliest in September 1326 and at the latest September 1328 (her birthday was on or shortly before Michaelmas, the year is unclear). In 1338, Joan could only have been 12 years old and quite possibly hadn't yet reached her 12th birthday when she married Holland. Holland was born in 1314 or 1315, i.e. he would have been around twice her age. No wonder her family was "hostile" to the marriage! That "powerful draw" Holland has would see him on a sex offenders registry.

Either Chadwick has aged Joan up like a tacky romance novelist loosely inspired by history, she didn’t bother to work out how old Joan actually was or she’s like “yeah totes fine nothing to see here Margaret Beaufort was the norm” when every serious medievalist will tell you that Margaret Beaufort was not the norm. Please. No more "preteen and early teenage girls could fall in true love with grown ass men in the Middle Ages and it's completely fine, nothing rapey about that."