#punish me about it i hope

[vshouse]

*Cuddles close and blinks up at you nice and cute after a long drag and then puts my cig out on you*

"And what are you gonna do about it huh?"

Minors and Ageless blogs will be blocked

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

"Murder is Werewolves" - Batman

I don't got the SPOONS to do this thought train justice, I have seriously been trying to write this thing for MONTHS so just, idk, have this half baked skeletal outline of the essay I guess:

I don't believe that Batman's no-kill rule is primarily about rehabilitation or second chances.

His refusal to believe that Cassandra could have killed someone when she was eight years old because "how could a killer understand my commitment not to kill" is absolute fucking MOON LOGIC from a rehabilitationist standpoint. No jury on the planet would think for even a second that she could reasonably be held accountable for her actions in that situation! Her past cannot condemn her to being incapable of valuing human life under a rehabilitation centering framework. However, Batman's reasoning makes perfect sense if he believes that killing is a spiritually/morally corrupting act which permanently and fundamentally changes a person, and that corruption can never be fully undone.

Dick Grayson killing the Joker is treated both narratively and by Batman as an unequivocally WIN for the Joker. The Joker won by turning Nightwing into a killer. Note that this is during a comic in which the Joker transforming people was a major theme! Batman didn't revive the Joker because the Joker deserved to live; he revived the Joker to lift the burden on Dick.

His appeal to Stephanie when she tried to kill her dad is that she shouldn't ruin her own life. He gives no defense of Cluemaster's actual life. Granted this is a rhetorical strategy moment and should be taken with a generous pinch of salt, but it fits in the pattern.

When Jason becomes a willful killer, he essentially disowns him, never treats him with full trust ever again, and... Well, we can stop here for Bruce's sake. Bottom line is that his actions towards Jason do not lead me to believe that he thinks Jason can become a better person without having his autonomy taken from him, either partially or fully.

The Joker is, for better or worse, the ultimate symbol and vessel of pure, irredeemable evil in DC comics now. He hasn't been just another crook in a long time. He will never get better, he will only get worse. If you take it to be true that the Joker will not or can not rehabilitate, then there's no rehabilitationist argument against killing him.

Batman does not seem to consider it a possibly that he'll rehabilitate. Batman at several points seems to think that the Joker dying in a manner no one could have prevented would be good. Yet Batman fully believes that if he killed the Joker, he himself would become irredeemable.

Batman's own form of justice (putting people into the hospital and then prison) is fucking brutal and clearly not rehabilitative. He disrespects the most basic human rights of all criminals on a regular basis. It is genuinely really, really weird from a rehabilitationist standpoint that his only uncrossable line is killing... But it makes perfect sense if he cares more about not corrupting himself with the act of killing than the actual ethical results of any individual decision to kill or not kill.

In the real world cops are all bastards because they are too violent to criminals, even when that violence doesn't lead to death. Prison is a wildly evil thing to do to another human being, and you don't use it to steal away massive portions of a person's life if your goal is to rehabilitate them. In the comic world, Batman is said to be necessary because the corrupt cops are too nice to criminals and keep letting them out of jail. I don't know how to write a connector sentence there so like I hope you can see why this bothers me so damn much! That's just not forgiveness vibes there Batman!!

I want to make special note here of the transformative aspect. You don't simply commit a single act when you kill, no, you become a killer, like you might become a werewolf.

The narrative supports this a lot!

Why did Supes go evil during Injustice? He killed the Joker. Why did Bruce become the Batman Who Laughs? Bruce killed the Joker. Why was Jason Todd close to becoming a new Joker during Three Jokers? Because he killed people, to include the Joker.

Even if these notions of redemption being impossible aren't the whole of his reasoning (people never have only one reason for doing what they do) it is a distinct through-line pattern in his actions and reasoning, and it is directly at odds with notions of rehabilitation, redemption, and second chances.

So why does he give so many killers second chances?

Firstly because this doesn't apply to all versions of Batman. Some writers explicitly incorporate rehabilitation and forgiveness into his actions. You will be able to provide me with examples of this other through-line pattern if you go looking for them. The nature of comics is to be inconsistent.

Secondly the existence of that other pattern does not negate the existence of this one. People and characters are complex, and perfectly capable of holding two patterns of belief within themselves, even when they conflict to this degree. You can absolutely synthesize these two ideas into a single messy Batman philosophical vibescape.

Finally and most importantly to this essay: he has mercy on killers the same way that werewolf hunters sometimes have mercy on someone who is clearly struggling against their monsterous nature, especially if they were turned in exceptional circumstances or against their will. They understand that they are sick, damned beasts, cursed to always be fighting against themselves and the evil they harbor within. It is vitally kind to help them fight themselves by curtailing their autonomy in helpful ways and providing them with chances to do some good to make up for their eternal moral deficiency.

I think in many comics Batman views killers as lost souls. Battered and tormented monsters who must be pitied and given mercy wherever possible. (The connections to mental health, addiction, and rampant, horrifying ableism towards people struggling with both is unavoidable, but addressing it is sadly outside of the scope of this essay.)

Above all, the greatest care possible must be taken to never, ever let yourself become one of them, because once you have transformed the beast will forever be within you growing stronger.

To Batman, it is the most noble burden, the highest mercy, the most important commandment: Thou shalt suffer the monsters to live.

[jasperscringepit]

wolfwood....,

Yeah…..,, yeahhhhhhhhh. I am so abnormal about him holy shit.

I have no completed drawings of him yet (was too sad at the time but soon,,,) so have a little WooWoo from memory.

Also I have no idea who made the meme but just know that you are the funniest person and I use it frequently. thank u for ur service.

[crybaby-bkg]

ohhh my god I’m looking at all these sex toys for this fic and saw this like pleasure tape that you can use for a lotta stuff and????? thinking about being a brat to gojo and acting like nothing he does is enough for you and he gets a little fed up about being sooo under appreciated!!!

so he lays you out on the bed and goes to work with the tape. tapes your mouth shut and your wrists together. tapes your tits so they sit up nice and perky for him to nip and lick at whenever he damn so pleases. then moves down between your legs, shushes you with condescending coos when you wiggle and plead through the tape for him to let you up, even though you’re wetter than he thinks he’s ever seen you.

and he tapes your cunt from top to bottom, despite your little hiccuping moans about how mean he is to you. at least, that’s what it sounds like, but for that, he still flips you over to tape your asshole too, biting at the flesh when you groan.

and then he leaves you there, wiggling and moaning and looking so pretty for him like this. tied up and teary eyed, and when you beg through the tape to be freed, only then does he feel a little more appreciated because you need him. that’s all he’s ever wanted from you.

[opheliasam]

god i just cannot for the life of me in good faith ship wincest anymore bc holy crap sam deserves better . It’s a horror story.

[tibtew]

*clutching head* rodya and meursault would have such a good dynamic actually

I wonder if rodya would initially see meursault's indifference as like. a simpler version of her own feigned carefreeness and as a deliberate attempt to place himself as an outsider... only to realise that No, he really Is just Like That. and then she gets annoyed because it turns out that people who don't care about anything don't seem to be any fun.

(ofc he does actually care about a lot of things, just not necessarily his grander place in the world lol)

idk. nihilism vs absurdism. fun duo 👍 rodya would find meursault's genuine comfort with being a speck of dust in the universe baffling, while he would probably find her desire to assert her own importance pointless, but they could probably bond over little things like their shared desire to live in the present and appreciation of/indulgence in earthly joys. and meursault would probably listen if rodya wants to rant about anything without asking any uncomfortable questions. I think they could appreciate each other's presence.

[franeridan]

weird incomprehensible dunmeshi post of the day but I was thinking about that one comic about marcille joining a support group for ex dungeon masters and mithrun saying that it's normal for them to miss the demon despite it all since there's no love as kind as the demon's love, and I was thinking about thistle and how they were able to keep their mistrust for the demon until the very last minute, and how they could seal it for a thousand years without ever thinking about releasing it once - about how you could think the difference between thistle and marcille is that the demon learned from its mistake after thistle and ate marcille's desire to resist first thing, but also about how this isn't applicable for mithrun and yet mithrun never doubted the demon until it was too late, and about how all other masters in the meeting seemed to have been forced to let go of the demon too. About how mithrun says that he and marcille were lucky to have people who loved them enough to fill in for the demon, and about how thistle didn't have that, but their own love for delgal and their desire to protect their people were so overwhelming and all-encompassing that not even the demon could love them enough to make them forget about them? About how all they needed to be really freed of the dungeon and the demon in the end was for delgal to thank them and apologise to them and tell them they could let go. I think mithrun might be right in saying there's no love as gentle as the demon's, but probably it's also true that in the whole story there's no love as powerful as thistle's

[andessence]

@desperuntion | plotted starter.

"Did he enjoy you, Daniel?" Armand asks, turning his head to the approaching figure in the blue glow of the television sets. He's muted the volume of two warring sets of dialogue to focus on his lover, newly awoken, and he's even curled his legs up beneath him on the couch to suggest that Daniel claim the emptied space beside him.

Did he enjoy you? Louis, he means. Daniel had stayed out until after sunrise, and so Armand had not been able to see him off to sleep when he came home from his rendezvous. (With Armand's one-time companion. They're all being very modern about the mutually felt interest. That's what Daniel had called it. 'Very modern.' Armand thinks the understanding seems more like that of the ancients.) But the glass of water and bottle of ibuprofen on Daniel's nightstand were the quiet vestiges of Armand's care, even after the coming of the day had relegated him to his coffin. And late to bed, late to rise, as it followed; Daniel had not emerged from his room until well after nightfall, before which time Armand readily occupied himself with his screens. Now, however, he's eager to exchange the TVs for Daniel's conversation.

He might have asked if Daniel had enjoyed himself, but knows that this degrading alternative will excite him. And Armand has to play along, show his approval of Daniel's extracurricular engagement; he can feel a quiet nervousness radiating from him the second he enters the room, even without peering into his mind. Perhaps he frets that in the hours apart Armand had changed his mind and revoked his permission? He must be assured that this is not the case — that even the giving of permission was in some way theatrical, unreal. There is precious little Armand would not allow Daniel, really.

"Come, sit. Regale me."

[fishandshesmygills]

my childhood pony might need to be put down. we’ve had him since i was seven and this is the first time i’ve had to reckon with his mortality :(

[sunforgrace]

random intersection of thoughts on account of the fact i finally watched iwtv recently and subsequently the vampire armand appeared in my dreams and though this is by no means a 1:1 can i play in this space with you guys for a moment: i think if armand could bear witness to cas’ perfected craft of the 🥺 he would be sooo sick . armand after seeing cas win the divorce every time:

armand after watching cas form plans with the enemy while lying to dean about it and invisibly watching him turbo blast dean’s brother with the agonies tell dean to kneel and declare love for him as his new god and have dean yelling where’s the angel and refusing to leave actual purgatory without him two seasons later and fully believing he’s hallucinating visions of cas out of guilt grief and rewriting his OWN memory by himself because the reality that cas stayed behind is more painful then the illusion that he failed him - because he 🥺ed about it:

[deus-and-the-machina]

ffxiv garlemald discourse is so funny because people will go "ugh people just cant stand it when things aren't black and white" and then you look at how the empire are portrayed in stormblood and shadowbringers and its like hm. that seems like a pretty intense and accurate display of violent imperialism to me! Wow I wonder why people in this day and age may find it hard to feel sympathy for them or even hate them on principal. god its such a mystery.

the games like 50/50 to me on how it tackles these themes because I actually like the garlemald arc in EW, I think it has a lot of horrific and powerful scenes depicting how self destructive fascist propaganda and beliefs are, but I also think it doesn't go far enough on some fronts. the garleans' xenophobia is most notably and obstacle to getting them to accept the contingent's help, which is what they're there to do,

but there's never an admission of harm from any garleans on the uuuuuuuuh massive amount of war crimes the nations around them are still suffering from they're just kind of like "we misjudged you...but you actually wanted to help us all along" like yeah thats great now can we get you all some deprogramming because you keep talking about returning to your prime and glory days and I think we need to unpack some stuff you really SHOULDNT return to. im not even really talking about EW proper but the patches where things are a bit more chilled out and people are recovering.

It feels like they wanted to have their critique of imperialism and also have things end with the beauty of human connection and reaching out and these things just don't mesh well because hey a lot of your modern day audience is not gonna like having to treat people yelling xenophobic things at the cast and your character with kid gloves after you showed them hours and hours of the awful things these people's beliefs have done. especially in the present day hoo boy.

[longagoitwastuesday]

So so indebted to u for posting those lovely illustrations from Cyrano <333 & even more so for yr tags!! I'm completely in love w yr analysis, please feel free to ramble as long as u wish! Browsing through yr Cyrano de Bergerac tag has given me glimpses of so many adaptations & translations I'd never heard of before! I'll be watching the Solès version next, which I have only discovered today through u ^_^ As for translations, have u read many/all of them? I've only encountered the Renauld & Burgess translations in the wild, & I was curious to hear yr translation thoughts that they might guide my decision on which one I buy first (not necessarily Renauld or Burgess ofc). Have a splendid day & sorry for the likespam! 💙

Sorry for the delay. Don't mind the likespam, I'm glad you enjoyed my tags about Cyrano, and that they could contribute a bit to a further appreciation of the play. I loved it a lot, I got obsessed with it for months. It's always nice to know other people deeply love too that which is loved haha I hope you enjoy the Solès version, it may well be my favourite one!

About translations, I'm touched you're asking me, but I don't really know whether mine is the best opinion to ask. I have read... four or five English translations iirc, the ones I could find online, and I do (and especially did, back when I was reading them) have a lot of opinions about them. However, nor English nor French are my first languages (they are third and fourth respectively, so not even close). I just read and compare translations because that's one of my favourite things to do.

The fact is that no translation is perfect, of course. I barely remember Renauld's, but I think it was quite literal; that's good for understanding the basics of the text, concepts and characters, but form is subject, and there's always something that escapes too literal translations. Thomas and Guillemard's if I recall correctly is similar to Hooker's in cadence. It had some beautiful fragments, some I preferred over Hooker's, but overall I think to recall I liked Hooker's more. If memory serves, Hooker's was the most traditionally poetic and beautiful in my opinion. Burgess' is a whole different thing, with its perks and drawbacks.

Something noticeable in the other translations is that they are too... "epic". They do well the poetic, sorrowful, grief stricken, crushed by regrets aspects of Cyrano and the play in general, but they fall quite short in the funny and even pathetic aspects, and that too is key in Cyrano, both character and play. Given the characteristics of both languages, following the cadence of the French too literally, with those long verses, makes an English version sound far too solemn at times when the French text isn't. Thus Burgess changes the very cadence of the text, adapting it more to the English language. This translation is the one that best sets the different moods in the play, and as I said before form is subject, and that too is key: after all, the poetic aspect of Cyrano is as much true as his angry facet and his goofy one. If Cyrano isn't funny he isn't Cyrano, just as he wouldn't be Cyrano without his devotion to Roxane or his insecurities; Cyrano is who he is precisely because he has all these facets, because one side covers the other, because one trait is born from another, because one facet is used as weapon to protect the others, like a game of mirrors and smoke. We see them at different points through the play, often converging. Burgess' enhances that. He plays with the language itself in form and musicality, with words and absences, with truths masking other truths, with things stated but untold, much like Cyrano does. And the stage directions, poetic and with literary value in their own right in a way that reminded me of Valle Inclán and Oscar Wilde, interact with the text at times in an almost metatextual dimension that enhances that bond Cyrano has with words, giving them a sort of liminal air and strengthening that constant in the play: that words both conceal and unveil Cyrano, that in words he hides and words give him away.

But not all is good, at all. Unlike Hooker, Burgess reads to me as not entirely understanding every facet of the characters, and as if he didn't even like the play all that much, as if he had a bit of a disdainful attitude towards it, and found it too mushy. Which I can understand, but then why do you translate it? In my opinion the Burgess' translation does well bending English to transmit the different moods the French text does, and does pretty well understanding the more solemn, cool, funny, angry, poetic aspects of Cyrano, but less so his devotion, vulnerability, insecurities and his pathetism. It doesn't seem to get Roxane at all, how similar she is to Cyrano, nor why she has so many admirers. It does a very poor job at understanding Christian and his value, and writes him off as stupid imo. While I enjoyed the language aspect of the Burgess translation, I remember being quite angry at certain points reading it because of what it did to the characters and some changes he introduces. I think he did something very questionable with Le Bret and Castel-Jaloux, and I remember being incensed because of Roxane at times (for instance, she doesn't go to Arras in his version, which is a key scene to show just how much fire Roxane has, and that establishes several parallels with Cyrano, in attitude and words, but even in act since she does a bit what Cyrano later does with the nuns in the last act), and being very angry at several choices about Christian too. While not explicitly stated, I think the McAvoy production and the musical both follow this translation, because they too introduce these changes, and they make Christian as a character, and to an extent the entire play, not make sense.

For instance, once such change is that Christian is afraid that Roxane will be cultured (McAvoy's version has that infamous "shit"/"fuck" that I detest), when in the original French it's literally the opposite. He is not afraid she will be cultured, he is afraid she won't, because he does love and appreciate and admires those aspects of her, as he appreciates and admires them in Cyrano. That's key! Just as Cyrano longs to have what Christian has, Christian wants the same! That words escape him doesn't mean he doesn't understand or appreciate them. The dynamics make no sense without this aspect, and Burgess (and the productions that directly or indirectly follow him) constantly erases this core trait of Christian.

Another key moment of Christian Burgess butchers is the scene in Arras in which Christian discovers the truth. Burgess writes their discussion masterfully in form, it's both funny and poignant, but it falls short in concept: when Cyrano tells him the whole discussion about who does Roxane love and what will happen, what they'll do, is academic because they're both going to die, Christian states that dying is his role now. This destroys entirely the thing with Christian wanting Roxane to have the right to know, and the freedom to choose, or to refuse them both. As much as Cyrano proclaims his love for truth and not mincing words even in the face of authority, Cyrano is constantly drunk on lies and mirages, masks and metaphors. It's Christian who wants it all to end, the one who wants real things, the one who wants to risk his own happiness for the chance of his friend's, as well as for the woman he loves to stop living in a lie. That is a very interesting aspect of Christian, and another aspect in which he is written as both paralleling and contrasting Cyrano. It's interesting from a moral perspective and how that works with the characters, but it's also interesting from a conceptual point of view, both in text and metatextually: what they hold most dear, what they most want, what most fulfills them, what they most fear, their different approaches to life, but also metatextually another instance of that tears/blood motif and its ramifications constant through the whole text. Erasing that climatic decision and making him just simply suicidal erases those aspects of Christian and his place in the Christian/Cyrano/Roxane dynamic, all for plain superficial angst, that perhaps hits more in the moment, but holds less meaning.

Being more literal, and more solemn, Hooker's translation (or any of the others, but Hooker's seems to love the characters and understand them) doesn't make these conceptual mistakes. Now, would I not recommend reading Burgess' translation? I can't also say that. I had a lot of fun reading it, despite the occasional anger and indignation haha Would I recommend buying it? I recommend you give an eye to it first, if you're tempted and can initially only buy one.

You can read Burgess' translation entirely in archive.com. You can also find online the complete translations of Renauld, Hooker and Thomas and Guillemard. I also found a fifth one, iirc, but I can't recall it right now (I could give a look). You could read them before choosing, or read your favourite scenes and fragments in the different translations, and choose the one in which you like them better. That's often what I do.

Edit: I've checked to make sure and Roxane does appear in Arras in the translation. It's in the introduction in which it is stated that she doesn't appear in the production for which the translation was made. The conceptualisation of Roxane I criticise and that in my opinion is constant through the text does stay, though.

[strwbrymlkshake]

who up praying for downfalls 🤨

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hi this is a very random question with probs no answer but I wanted to see your opinions on it. Who do you think is castor and pollux’s mother/other parent? (Mr D’s kids not the actual mythological figures lol) Cause the main options that me and my friends came up with is that either they were someone who some how came to the camp (specifically not a camper but idk how’d they’d get there) Or they were a camper. Either way Mr D isn’t supposed to leave the camp, so how can he have kids?

(I’m not asking if you think they’re a specific character more so who would their other parent be if that makes sense lol)

So one of the established things in the canon of how deities work - at least the Greco-Roman deities - in PJO is that they can inhabit multiple spaces at once, which is very interesting. We’ve seen this a couple of times in varying forms (less so as the series goes on), in fact primarily from Dionysus. The best moment I can think of off the top of my head in-series that explains this is in TLO, where Percy talks to Dionysus while Dionysus is at a party and he explains how he can manifest at least partially present in either a physical or non-physical form in places relevant to his aspects - in this case, revelry. Mr. D, as camp director, is almost entirely present and locked to CHB, but he is capable of also partially not being there, because he does still have godly duties to attend to in bits and pieces in places where his aspects are present. So, theoretically, we can presume a situation such as that is how Dionysus had Pollux and Castor. (This also plays into my personal headcanons about demigods being primarily born of specific epithets of their parents - as presumably the partial-presence thing would result in only specific aspects of that deity being present to specific things - resulting in a specific range of potential powers depending on which epithet they’re born from, i.e.: Meg being born from an older form of Demeter.)

Though I do also like your idea of Castor and Pollux’s mortal parent potentially being a mortal who visited camp, because we actually have a couple of different routes you could go with that. First is obviously, parent of an existing demigod at CHB, which is kind of a really funny option to me because this means Castor and Pollux potentially have (or had) an older half-sibling with a different godly parent. That also actually fits the myth of the original Castor and Pollux well because depending on the version of the myth they actually had separate fathers despite being twins (or, also depending on myth, actually quadruplets with twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra). Heck, if we want to go more in on the myth paralleling, maybe Castor and Pollux are quadruplets and have or had twin sisters in camp in a different cabin, and their parent had come to camp before actually having their kids to get advice beforehand from Chiron. I actually really like that headcanon now. Dang.

Other options are the “mortal ended up in camp not knowing anything about demigods” routes - and we have two potential routes I can see for this. One being the Lost Pizza Guy™ route of “A deity purposefully summoned a random mortal to camp for Reasons and let them in,” second is actually acknowledging that CHB is, to mortals who cannot see through the mist, disguised as a strawberry farm that is publicly known and theoretically occasionally receives mortal visitors (by accident or on purpose) which is also interesting because in TOA we’re actually told that CHB is surrounded by other farms. Maybe it was people from a neighboring farm visiting, or mortals who wanted to tour and/or go strawberry picking, both of which do actually align with Dionysus’ aspects as an agricultural deity, which is also potentially pretty cute cause that implies Castor and Pollux’s mortal family is most likely local and that Castor and Pollux might have grown up around camp if not actually lived right next to it.

Anyways, options abound! Thank you for leading me down this train of thought because now I have significantly more Castor & Pollux thoughts and they’re all very cute. These are all delightful options.

[minorfamilysupremacy]

quick note: if you're turning on build due to the most recent chat leaks, do me a favor and unfollow, then learn critical thinking skills and ask yourself why you're happily playing into the hands of a known liar and abuser.

[woodlandscab1n]

Seeing a kid being like "my dad doesn't hit me! (only when i deserve it bc im bad)" then telling me when I tell them they shouldnt be hit "nono its called discipline! it works, its how im me :D"