#okay yeah I’m not okay

[starrykitty013]

I’m not crying you are!!!

[the-phantom-peach]

Meeting the Light Dragon ✨🐉

[tagged as spoilers!]

[starbuck]

reading and watching “classic” books and films is such an interesting experience because, before you get into them, when you only know them by name and maybe the vaguest plot outline, they’re intimidating and stuffy and up on a pedestal, but then you finally take the leap and check them out and realize that almost every story that’s achieved such a legendary level of popularity did so because something in its emotional core reached out and grabbed a lot of people by the throat and you are NOT immune.

[ninyard]

exy fans + twitter

[cutter-kirby]

I’m sure they’re fine

[shima-draws]

HELLO?????

[gojonanami]

thinking about gojo asking you if you think you would be together in your other lifetimes and you say yes. and you are — he’s a model and you’re his photographer, he’s a prince and you’re his knight, he’s your actor husband and you’re his singer wife, and he’s your target and you’re his assassin—

and you are together in every life — one way or another — but in this life, you part, as you watch him fall to Sukuna.

and you wait for the next life, where you can finally be together.

[laomelettedufromage]

One of my pet peeves after having gotten very into swing dance as an aroace is seeing videos of people swing dancing or really doing any type of partner dance and over half the comments just being stuff like “how are they not in love😳” or “friends🤨” like please free yourselves, you can have a lot of chemistry and fun dancing with someone and it doesn’t have to be anything more than that!! Just fun!!! I’m not saying a little bit of lighthearted friendly love can’t be involved but it’s not always that deep, it’s just having fun!!

[secretmellowblog]

Another reason I dislike Les Mis adaptations that make Jean Valjean constantly openly angry/violent is because they miss that Jean Valjean is not allowed to be angry. The fact he is forbidden from expressing anger is, I argue, actually a very important part of his character in the novel!

One of the subtler political messages of the story is that some people are given freedom to express anger, while others are forced to be excessively meek and conciliatory in order to survive.

Wealthy conservatives like Monsieur Gillenormand can “fly into rages” every five minutes and have it treated as an endearing quirk. Poor characters like Fantine or Jean Valjean must be constantly polite and ingratiating to “their superiors” at all times, even in the face of mockery and violence, or else they will be subjected to punishment. If Gillenormand beats his child with a stick, it’s a silly quirk; if Fantine beats a man harassing her, she is sentenced to months in prison.

(Thenardier and Javert are interesting examples of this too. Thenardier acts superficially polite and ingratiating to his wealthy “superiors” while insulting them behind their backs. Javert, meanwhile, is completely earnest in his mindless bootlicking. But I could write an entire other post on this.)

The point is that….Jean Valjean has to be submissive and self-effacing, or he puts himself in danger. He can’t afford to be angry and make scenes, or he will be punished. The only barrier between himself and prison is his ability to be so “courteous” that no one bothers to pry into his past.

Jean Valjean is excessively polite to people, in the way that you’re excessively polite to an armed cop who pulls you over for speeding when you secretly have a few illegal grams of marijuana in the your car trunk. XD It’s politeness built on fear, is what I mean. It’s politeness built on a desperation to make a powerful person avoid looking too closely at you.

It’s politeness at gunpoint.

Jean Valjean has also spent nineteen years living in an environment where any expression of anger could be punished with severe violence. That trauma is reflected in the overly cautious reserved way he often speaks with people (even people who are kind and would never actually hurt him.)

So adaptations that have Jean Valjean boldly having shouting matches with people in public and beating cops half to death without worrying about the repercussions just make go like “???”

Because that’s part of what’s fascinating about Jean Valjean to me? On one hand, he is a genuinely kind compassionate person, who cares deeply about other people and behaves kindly out of altruism. But on the other hand, he was also “beaten into submission” by prison, and forced into adopting conciliatory bootlicking behaviors in order to survive. And it can sometimes be hard to tell when he is being kind vs. when he is being “polite” — when he is speaking and acting out of earnest compassion vs. when he is speaking and acting out of fear.

The TL;DR is that I think it’s important that even though Jean Valjean is very (justifiably) angry about the injustice that was inflicted on him, his anger is harshly policed at all times— by other people, and by himself. He has been told his anger is wrong/selfish so often that he believes it. His anger takes weirder more unhealthy forms because he has no safe outlet for it. His rage at society becomes a possessiveness towards Cosette and silent hatred of Marius, but primarily it becomes useless self-destructive constant hatred of himself. And while I might be phrasing this wrong, I think that’s what’s interesting about Jean Valjean’s relationship with anger— the way his justified fury at his own mistreatment gets warped into more and more unhealthy forms by the way he’s forced to constantly repress it.

[idkaguyorsomething]

the 1996 doctor who movie contains a perfect textbook example of fridging, wherein an established longtime character is killed off unceremoniously, with very little agency or time spent on their own perspective when they’re literally being killed, usually as a means to provide shock value, raise the stakes, or make the main character feel bad for thirty seconds before moving on

what sets it apart from every other loving wife and children in every superhero backstory ever, though, is that the person they fridged was THEIR OWN MAIN CHARACTER

[delizbin]

One step, not much

[megamindsupremacy]

Gwen had to say “will you adopt me” to Jessica Drew when they first met because any other dialogue option would have had Gwen being Extremely Gay at her and they could only get away with so much queercoding

[puppydoggraham]

(Context)

[daeyumi]

💫🌟 From the Heavens (Eclipse the Moon) 🌙✨

[Cycle of the Stars]

[tesco-finest-aromantics]

i feel like the queer community lost when we started policing labels and making sure everyone used the Correct™ labels instead of letting a person decide what feels right for them

[shima-draws]

The fact that One Piece has CONTINUOUSLY done character death fakeouts to the point where when someone dies you EXPECT them to turn around and say oh actually haha I survived jk lol not dead. But it’s all just a setup. They’re doing this to me on purpose so that when someone ACTUALLY dies for realsies and STAYS dead it is going to Hurt. And I am not Ready for that,