#honestly he's complex

[ladymorghul]

people who hate aemond are like if aemond k*lls lucerys intentionally he’s a kinslayer and a traitor and an evil vile man and b&c should happen as payback because he deserves it. if aemond kills lucerys unintentionally he’s a coward and a loser and dumb and not the “war criminal” they know

sorry, but i can’t hear you over the sound of aemond targaryen being one of the best characters in house of the dragon

[angelyuji]

homelander realizing that you could make a great mom to ryan and kidnaps you, but realizes you were partly why ryan is not like him??? yeeah im thinking thoughts.

tw // physical abuse, mental/emotional abuse, implied noncon, homelander being homelander

honestly the ending got pretty sad idk why i think its cuz i feel so bad for ryan becuz he deserves so much better than shitty homelander and i wish his mom didnt die poor baby angel :( anyway....

"what have bullshit are you teaching him." john's face, twisted with wrath, was only a few inches away from you. you try to inch back, but he grabs your face. gripping your jaw with one hand, he forces you to look back at him. "answer the fucking question, (y/n). what poison- what LIES are you teaching my son?" your face hurts and you feel tears well up in your eyes.

"dad, she's not doing-" ryan tries to interject, to stop his father, but john raises a hand at him.

"don't. don't protect her. talk now, (y/n), before i really get angry." his eyes flash red and you feel your heart stop.

you sniffle, "john, i swear i'm not teaching him anything. i don’t know-” before you could finish, john backhands you, sending you to the floor. your vision goes white from the pain and you can’t help the screaming sobs coming out of you. when you look up, you see ryan in tears. you can’t even muster a smile to make him feel better.

“ryan, go to your room.”

“but-”

“NOW.” you hear ryan’s defeated steps go up the stairs. your scalp stings as john grabs a fistful of your hair to pull you up. “my son is the most powerful creation on the planet alongside me. i will not let you turn him into a pathetic, worthless worm like you. understand, (y/n)?”

his face is close to yours. you can feel his fury and you nod, afraid to speak.

"say it. say you understand."

you choke, "i understand... i'm sorry, john." his grip loosens and you collapse to the floor, shaking wth sobs. you hear him huff quietly to himself.

"so fragile and weak, why would you think ryan should be like you and not me, his father?" you look up at him and he stares down at you. you try to speak, but he holds a hand up. "i don't want to hear it." you look down. the room fills with silence, interrupted occasionally with ryan's footsteps from upstairs. "fucking pathetic." you hear him mumble. "go upstairs and collect yourself. i don't want to hear your sniffles when i fuck you tonight." he rolls his eyes and waves you away.

you stumble up the stairs and finally make it to the bedroom, collapsing into the bathroom. you sit in the bathtub, knees against your chest, sobbing.

"y/n?" a small voice comes from in front of the door. you quickly wipe your tears.

you clear your throat, "come in, sweetheart!" you watch as the door is opened, hesitantly. ryan comes in, slowly, and closes the door behind him. he looks at you, eyes filled with guilt. he sits down next to the bathroom. "you're growing up so fast..." you try to smile and brush your hand through his hair.

ryan puts his head down on the edge of the bathtub, "i'm so sorry, (y/n)..." your heart hurts and you cup his face in your hands.

"none of this is your fault, ryan. you did nothing wrong." you watch tears fall faster down his face. you pull him into a hug. the edge of the bathtub was digging into your skin, but you felt ryan relax and you knew you could be in pain for a little while longer.

[crystallizsch]

the besties are judging you for your taste in men

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 317

IMAGINE THIS: Lil baby Damian, bored and being not quite old enough to start learning how to use proper weapons (curse these wooden ones, he wants true steel!) is wandering the base. This is not out of the ordinary, he’s the prince after all. What is out of the ordinary is that his shadow, his Akhi, is not here. 

Technically, he should be napping, but he woke up and neither his mother or his brother- who is quiet but gentle and isn’t a good speaker (mother said it was from a head injury)- is there. Which is how he finds his way to the Pit, which he’s not supposed to be at. Or at least not alone. 

But! His mother and Akhi are there! And- and Akhi is screaming and he’s never heard him scream like that, like he’s in agony- His eyes are green- they were blue, had, had Mother placed him in the Waters- 

And then the pool is bubbling- he should be running away, get assistance or something, he’s five, he shouldn’t be running towards it when everything is screaming to flee. But one moment he’s at the doorway, the next he’s clinging to his akhi as something writhes in the Pit, a mighty bellow echoing even as the Shadows take defensive positions. 

The water cascades, laps at their feet, splashes everywhere as a scaled form rises from the depths, wings like a bloodied sunset spreading as fur bursts into flames. Crimson eyes glare down at them all, pupils slits as they bare down at his Akhi. 

The creature- the dragon- dips its head down, its breath warm as it chuffs at his akhi, wings folding as though it is bowing. His akhi is clinging to Mother, shivering, several scars glowing as they fade and a burst of hair burned white. 

Oh. 

Oh.

@fairy-lights-and-blobs @f4nd0m-fun @hdgnj @radiance1 pspspspsps

[korkorali]

The Misogyny of It All

So a lot of Della Duck Discourse is rehashed all the time, points are made again and again, but one thing that I almost never see people defend -and conversely, see people attack all the time- is The Line.

You know what I'm talking about. The Line from Glomtales.

"Your plans, your schemes, they only lead to bad things for your family. If you want to be a part of this family, you've gotta stop."

That one.

Now, what exactly Della was trying to get across with that line is a whole other can of worms that deserves its own post (basically she -and also the writers- horribly failed her Speech check).

What we're going over here is how that mimics a certain line from the last season, said by a parental figure to a child, that gets so much less flack. That, in fact, often gets paraded around as 'an interesting twist on a character.'

"You are not family!"

I have never seen people attack this line with the same amount of vitriol as they attack Della's, which is funny when they're the exact same line.

Actually, not even that- Scrooge's is worse.

It's more direct, it's literally yelled at Webby, it doesn't even attempt to address the issue Scrooge had (Webby blaming him for what happened to Della) and instead just straight-up attacks her as a person.

Now, to be fully honest- I like this line! I do genuinely think it's an interesting route for Scrooge to take, and is quite realistic to the grumpy old bastard. It's just funny that nobody ever comes to Webby's defense the same way they do for Louie.

Because the thing is- between Webby and Louie, one of these two has genuine, canonical issues with feeling like they're not a part of the family, like they're an outsider amongst those they love the most, like they don't belong.

And it's not Louie.

It is a consistent part of Webby's characterization that she feels like she doesn't belong. This gets touched on in all three seasons (and honestly, it could be argued that it gets worse after this moment).

Conversely, that just is not a part of Louie's canonical characterization. Even in the first episode of season 2, the one where Louie gets the closest to an 'I don't belong in this family' moment, it's less 'I don't belong here' and more 'fuck me I am terrible at adventuring'. And! It gets resolved in that episode!

(Of course, there is absolutely something to be said for how it's resolved- specifically by Scrooge encouraging him to be a scheming little bastard, which then thusly becomes the thing that threatens his family the most. Which would, logically, be a pretty big blow to his self-esteem. This isn't what I'm here to discuss right now but it is genuinely interesting.)

Louie never really shows an issue with feeling like he doesn't belong in his family. He shows a disconnect with his family at times, but in canon that never really evolves into a full-blown feeling of displacement. It does get close in Glomtales, but never quite reaches it.

So it's 'interesting' (read: not interesting) that Scrooge's fuckup here gets brushed away pretty easily. A lot of the time the line just straight-up isn't addressed, and when it is, often times it's about how "Oh he apologized to Webby offscreen, obviously."

Which.

Not he did not.

I mean, let me be clear: I don't mind it when that's the answer. It works for me to just brush it away if it's not meant to be the focus...

But Scrooge almost certainly didn't apologize for it.

As 'New Gods on the Block!' Showed us, Scrooge is downright awful at realizing when his actions have hurt people.

More likely than not, Scrooge would just assume that everything is fine and would avoid bringing it up at all costs because he'd feel awkward about it. Because he is, very importantly, not good at talking about things he doesn't want to talk about.

So why is it that Louie is always the one feeling like he doesn't belong? Why is it Della who is always a terrible parent for what she's said? Why are Webby's feelings of disconnect never really given the same gravity as Louie's? Why is Scrooge's blunder let off the hook super easily?

It just feels silly to me.

And, well.

Kinda like the fact that, since Scrooge is a guy and Webby's a girl, and Della is a woman and Louie's a boy, has something to do with it.

I'll happily give the benefit of the doubt and assume it's not deliberate, but quite frankly it is a double standard.

I think that people would be less upset with the Della Duck Discourse if Scrooge was held in a similarly critical position over what he's said and done. If it was acknowledged that Della isn't uniquely awful in what she says and does, and that a lot of the others have fucked up in extremely similar ways.

(I mean for fuck's sake, everybody goes on and on about how Della left her kids for ten years -which, for the record, wasn't what she wanted to do- but nobody ever criticizes Donald for taking the kids away from their family and never talking to them about Della- which is something he actively and deliberately chose to do)

TL;DR: The fact that Della gets intensely criticized for what she's said and done, but Donald and Scrooge are conversely celebrated as 'interesting' and 'complex' for what they've said and done, even when it brings harm to the kids, is a blatant double-standard. And if you don't think that this double-standard is bad or wrong for existing (or even that it Doesn't Actually Exist), instead of immediately claiming that it's a non-issue, maybe try to look inward and figure out why you really think that is.

[somewhereincairparavel]

just thinking about how Jason grace had his entire life molded from the day he was born, nothing in his life was authentic, even his own name was an offering to appease a goddess.

he also died being so distant from everyone he knew (don't get me wrong, I know he was friends with the 7, but If I'm being realistic here and go by canon, only Leo and Nico were actually "close" with Jason, and maybe Percy a bit) I mean, Annabeth took a long time to warm up to Jason and didn't trust him, Hazel never quite forgave jason for mistrusting nico (I'm still a lil bitter about this one lol bc she easily forgave Leo simply bc he's Sammy's great grandkid, and Leo's kinda the one who initiated the suspicion in the first place yet she got so mad at Jason for simply laying out the arguments and exerting caution?? Yeah I know she was upset that her brother was in danger but she never even gave Jason a chance even after nicos rescue, I'm not tryna blame Leo or anything but I think they BOTH should've been forgiven equally, esp since Jason's encouragement in house of hades fuelled nico to break out of his shell), Frank saw of Jason as more of a hero and looked up to him (still avenged his death tho so big W), Piper dumped him and canonically was outwardly bitchy/a little hostile to him after the breakup.

EVEN coach hedge and mellie were such jerks to him bc they assumed HE dumped Piper. Still wished Piper made it clear to them that the break up wasn't Jason's fault but ofc she didnt. TOA Piper is such an L

He never saw Leo again and never got to spend the summer with Nico in camp half blood like he planned to. His dad is a jackass and didn't shed a single tear at his death, his sister had her own life and he felt like she didn't need him anymore.

Reyna, Jason's childhood friend grew distant from him bc of her romantic feelings + the whole Venus mess (which is no fault of her's tho, mind you)

He never felt "at home" in camp Jupiter even after he got his memory back because all he did over there was military duties.

I don't think he got his full memory back properly either because, Percy had the gorgons blood but he didn't. I'm speculating this because he still felt very disconnected to Camp Jupiter and Rome.

He never got to do what he wanted, and even if he succeeded in defeating Caligula, jason STILL never would've gotten freedom, since he promised the minor gods that he'd build temples on their behalfs, and was Prontifex Maximus. He made a diorama and everything.

His Greek friends never made it to his funeral. They never got to say goodbye.

and as Apollo noted, he died with his fingers pointing, like he was still telling them all to escape without him. His chest was spewing out blood and jason still plucked up the energy to tell tempest to get Apollo and Piper to safety.

Jason Grace was born a Roman soldier, and died a Roman soldier, full circle. He never became a grandpa to his and piper's grandchildren like he wanted to.

[anassemblageofpassions]

The thing abt john winchester is that he is too complex for the majority of the spn fandom and for a good portion of the writers on the show too.

Because at his core john is about love over everything else. When he looks up at his sons (yes, up, the fact that they’re both taller than him>>>>>), there is love seeping achingly from every single pore of his being even as he abuses them, as he destroys their souls beyond belief. He does it all entirely out of love. And he is so, so wrong for it. A part of him knows it. But he wants to keep dean alive, and he wants to keep Sam pure. And he loves them so much. And he damages them so horribly. John Winchester is the foundation upon which they are both built, they only become more of what he made them as the series goes on. Sam stops fighting it, Dean continues to mold into his image no matter how hard he tries to fight it.

Hell puts them both on steroids, but their individual trauma responses that influence this are the foundations that John built into them. No wonder azazel wanted sam to win so badly. John Winchester crafted his sons into alastair and Lucifer’s ideal victims, respectively, and dean was a better (worse) john than John ever was. John held out in hell. Dean acquiesced to his abuser despite all of his efforts to fight him, and he’s never been the same since.

Sam fought like hell, and he fought destiny, but at his core, he did what John always wanted him to by doing what dean wanted him to do, and then he stops fighting at all, loses the fire he showed john in adolescence that john immediately notices when he returns in s14.

And the sad thing is. They filled their roles so well that John is saddened by what they’ve become. He didn’t want dean to break. He didn’t want Sam to be dimmed. He’s sad to see what Sam is like in s14. In the process of recovering his wife, he ensured he would mold his sons into what he wanted them to be, and when he got what he wanted, he was devastated.

John Winchester is so driven by love and grief and he’s so filled to the brim with both that it’s painful to watch him on screen because he destroyed his family because of it. And he wanted this all along but he didn’t realize what he’d have to give up to get it.

[neos-schlond-poofa]

hey so aphmau fandom this exists now

[count-skribula]

Van helsing telling Lucy about how jack is terrible with women is so much funnier given the fact that in the last few entries jack keeps bringing up feeling a little awkward around Lucy because of the proposal.

Like man he was already feeling insecure about his ability to get bitches and then you just dragged him through the mud. He has no wives or daughter. Too busy hanging around elderly insane men all day. But even those old crazies go home to their loving families at the end of the day. Not ol’ jack. Virgin

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I really love about queerness is how somebody's sexuality merges and bleeds into their gender.

I think for some, it can be, in part, a reclamation of the idea of being punished for not truly being your gender or not being enough as-is. A lesbian who's punished for not being a "woman" by cishet society can reclaim themself by declaring they aren't a woman but a lesbian, lesbiangender, in short.

Queerness in any capacity is often (though not always and not across-the-board) punished as a failure in some way. You're a second-class man or woman, a second-class person, depending on many factors. Reclaiming that can be really relieving and cathartic

[seriousbrat]

this says a lot about Snape's character development for me. There are many parallels drawn throughout the series between Harry and Snape; obviously, they're very different characters but there are similarities too.

I think here Snape is talking about himself. The teenaged Snape we see in the Pensieve is very much like this- emotional, heart on his sleeve, easily provoked, a definite wallower in sad memories... weak. Adult Snape, though he retains some of these characteristics that do emerge in stressful moments (in PoA we see how angrily he reacts to Sirius's escape, for instance) on the whole is a great deal more thoughtful, reserved, calculating, measured.

I think that Snape at some point had to force himself to become this. I think he actually relates to Harry here, and is giving him advice based on personal experience. In my fic he begins to learn to control his emotions partially out of a desire to protect Lily; he's fully aware that she's his weakness (or really, his strength, viewed a different way) and that openly displaying any sort of emotion towards her at all makes her vulnerable to the likes of Avery and Mulciber, who will have the perfect weapon to get to him if they want to.

Severus doesn't have the advantages of his peers, he's not pureblood, he wasn't born into money. If he wants to join the Death Eaters and rise in their ranks, he needs to be subtle, cunning, careful. he can't afford to be careless and entitled like mulciber or bellatrix or even sirius. what he's got to offer isn't his name or his money, it's his sheer talent and cleverness. moving on:

When Voldemort decides to go after Lily this becomes even more important. Imo the reason why Voldemort believes that Snape only "desired" Lily is because that's what Snape told him. He lied to Voldemort's face and told him something probably disgusting tbh because that's the only way Voldemort would accept it and agree, if it was a selfish, callous request that Voldemort could understand. We can see evidence of this here:

Asking Voldemort to spare a mudblood because he was in love with her would likely not have gone over well- and as we know, Voldemort actually bore his request in mind, though obv didn't give enough of a fuck about Snape to follow through. Because although asking voldemort to spare her must have taken serious balls, Snape's mistake here was trusting someone inherently selfish to do something selfless for him.

Clearly he immediately realises this and goes to Dumbledore, which is when controlling his emotions becomes of paramount importance, because now he's working against perhaps the most highly accomplished legilimens of all time.

It's also interesting to me that Snape in this conversation is probably the character who is most forthright and informative with Harry in the whole of OotP until Dumbledore at the end; Harry actually learns a lot in this conversation. And Snape also kind of gives him credit which is interesting too:

like for Snape that's high praise lmao. A shame because if he wasn't so bitter (i.e. didn't wear his heart on his sleeve so much around harry) then he might have actually been pretty helpful to Harry and a decent teacher. Again, during the Occlumency lessons his unrestrained emotion brought up by memories of James is a hindrance. He defies Dumbledore's orders to teach Harry Occlumency because of his emotional response to SWM, as well as honestly doing kind of a shit job before that (by not being empathetic and teaching Harry in a way that would've been actually productive.)

At this point Dumbledore believes that Harry learning Occlumency and controlling his emotions is of vital importance; he turns out to be wrong about this. In Harry's case, it turns out to be his emotional nature that saves him- unlike Snape, who is the opposite. Snape's journey is about learning that some things are more important than his selfish need to give into his own emotions.

By DH Snape's learned this lesson fully; his old hatred for James doesn't stop him from doing what has to be done, from giving Harry the tools he needs. Even in the final moments of his life, he can look past James and see Lily in Harry- and, by giving Harry the information that leads to his self-sacrifice, he can let her go.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Down To Fish with the boys!

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[deimcs]

You don't unsettle me, you know that. (x,x)

[miusato]

Honestly the main attraction for Shinjiham is how contrast their personality is and it is always funny for me to think about how people around them would react if they found out they're dating in this AU lol

[the-sage-libriomancer]

Shigure's relationship with Kyo drives me crazy. he doesn't hate Kyo in the slightest - in fact, he pities Kyo, and not in the condescending "oh you poor little boy, cursed to be a horrible, disgusting monster" sort of way that everyone else does. Shigure pities Kyo for the reason he should be pitied: he's just a kid caught up in a system so inhumane it can't possibly be survived without some seriously unhealthy coping mechanisms.

and it drives me crazy because - listen, Shigure is the only zodiac member who's emotionally aware enough to see the other zodiac members as exactly what they are. he knows Yuki is a severely traumatized kid who projects all of his self-hatred on a single convenient target. he knows Akito is really a scared little girl with a raging god complex (literally) and no concept of a healthy relationship. and he knows Kyo is a regular-ass human being who doesn't deserve to be locked up for the rest of his life just because some arbitrary system says so. he KNOWS it's stupid. he KNOWS it's ridiculous and unfair. and he has to share a house with Kyo knowing that Kyo is living with a sword over his head, hating himself and hating others in perfect tandem because he has no other way of coping with the insane amounts of negativity he's had to deal with his entire life.

but the thing about Shigure is that he KNOWS all of this, and the same time he doesn't really CARE. he feels sorry for Kyo, but an apathetic sort of pity, a disinterested "this is how it is. such a shame." sort of pity. in some ways he's worse than the other zodiacs because he DOES see Kyo as a person, someone he likes being around even, but he still considers Kyo below his attention because all his focus is on Akito and breaking the curse. and sure, once the curse is broken Kyo will theoretically be set free with the rest of them, but that's more of a coincidental side effect than anything. despite being in a much more dangerous and precarious mental space AND comfortably in Shigure's reach, Kyo is about as much a priority for Shigure as Ritsu or Momiji.

and it drives me CRAZY because i think Shigure does start actively caring about Kyo as the series goes on, but it's hard to tell when that happens and to what extent. when Kazuma told Shigure he planned to reveal Kyo's true form and Shigure said he was going too far - whose sake was it for? was Shigure trying to protect Kyo, who would be hideously traumatized/emotionally scarred by such a cruel betrayal? was he trying to protect Kyo and Tohru's relationship, which was still formulating and might, under such severe testing, ultimately end up damaged beyond repair? was he only trying to protect Tohru, who wasn't ready to be burdened by such a horrible aspect of the curse so soon, or perhaps simply didn't deserve it? or was it all for the sake of himself, trying to protect his still-forming plans of using Tohru's positive effect on the Sohmas to break the curse?

Shigure cares about Kyo, but they're not close and Kyo clearly isn't a priority. he treats Kyo like a person - offering him genuine advice, teasing him like he teases anyone else, even speaking up on his behalf once or twice - and yet he's too entrenched in the long game to spare much active interest in Kyo. for a very long time, he doesn't care about Kyo the way he cares about Yuki or Tohru, and it's never made clear when exactly that changed. and the thing that gets me about this whole situation is that right from the start, Shigure is in a position where he can meet Kyo at his level - as equals, just one human being to another - but he doesn't, because Shigure is a chessmaster, Shigure is someone who observes and calculates, Shigure never steps in unless one of his chess pieces makes a wrong move and he absolutely has to.

it drives me crazy. Shigure drives me crazy. this series drives me so so crazy.