#so complex and interesting

[idliketobeatree]

rereading the book omens again and I must admit, Aziraphale really is That Bitch most of the time. that being said, I really enjoy the special kind of uwu and sluttiness Michael brings to the table

[josephsaturn]

I think that “Anakin was a slave child who was groomed by Palpatine and raised by someone who wasn’t ready to take on a child, thereby leaving him in a social limbo state where he’s surrounded by people but only has a few close confidants, with the one he trusts the most actively trying to take advantage of him”

and

“Anakin was taught right from wrong from a young age, first by his mother and then by Kenobi, but any time he was presented with a choice, actively CHOSE WRONG EVERY SINGLE TIME”

are two sentences that can, should, and MUST coexist to fully understand Anakin Skywalker as a character

Edit: PART 2 of this post here

[akiizayoi4869]

They need to make a comic centered around these two. Or better yet, a novel. A comic wouldn't do them justice, especially not with the way how they're written.

[cutter-kirby]

obligatory “cool characterization, still murder” like I’m not excusing him but it does make him incredibly interesting

(*girl gender neutral edition)

[k1d1c4rus]

thinking about how armand was turned bc he was dying from being stabbed by a scorned grown man who was in love with him. he nearly died from rejecting unwanted advances. its such a key explicit detail of his origin that teaches him yet again that what he wants is utterly unimportant and even deadly in the face of survival. everything about his character is informed by the fact that he adapts entirely to the situation he is forced into because that's the only way he can survive. he adopts the satanic doctrine for 200 years not because he believes in it but because he knows that is the only way he'll survive and as soon as lestat arrives he knows he can abandon it. for half a millenium he believes he can't get what he wants and also survive, he has to choose one or the other. God.

[aingeal98]

Ok so you know how back in the 2000s there were a few jokes about Cass's gender likely because male comic book writers thought it was funny she had muscles? I'm taking that and spinning it to villains genuinely being confused about what to refer to Cass as.

Goon 1: Cmon man she's obviously called Batgirl

Goon 2: Well last month I told him he wasn't Batman and all he said was "Try me."

Goon 1: Have you heard them speak?

Goon 2: Yep. Pure gravel. You really swear that's definitely a girl's voice?

Goon 1: Has anyone ever gotten a good luck at her?

Goon 2: At Batman's stealthier, faster shadow? Come on Doug.

-

1 week later

Goon 1: Jerry you're not gonna believe this. The little Bat saved me from getting my brains blown out by Penguin.

Goon 2: Oh nice! Glad you're still-

Goon 1: I asked them what their pronouns were.

Goon 2:

Goon 1:... And they said "Bat"

Goon 2: Well that settles that then. Why are you still referring to bat as they? You want bat to beat you up next time bat sees you?

-

1 month later

Cass: At first I was confused why villains I save keep complimenting me on my nonbinary swagger. But after Duke explained what that meant... I think I kind of like it. Babs am I... Nonbinary?

Babs, frantically tossing aside her prepared 10 point acceptance speech for when your daughter realises she's a lesbian and scouring her database in search of parenting guides for nonbinary adult children: Honey, you can be whatever you want to be

[noodles-and-tea]

MY BBG POOKIE PIE!!!

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[starssoblue]

“things were so hard with dad in recent years...how did he go from paparapluie to père? i wish i could face him and understand, but while he was still here i didn't dare try to tell him [any of my feelings] and now...it's too late.” * paparapluie is a pun on the words papa and parapluie (umbrella) since the plush is a frog. père is the french word for 'father.'

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Firefly AU: A ragtag crew.

[hood-ex]

I love when people play with the idea that Dick and Jason are bound together by a father that no longer exists. It's something only they can relate to each other on. If one of them goes down, the surviving one loses the one other person in the world who understood what it was like to have Bruce as a father before trauma flayed the skin from Bruce's bones.

[cy-lindric]

Hi! So, while scroling through Pinterest, i came across this art:

which was credited to you. i cannot find the complet artwork in your profile, so i wanted to ask if youre the artist responsible for this piece.

(btw, your renditions of medieval clothing are beautiful!)

Hello ! I did make this a long time ago and the reason you didn't find it is probably because it's almost a decade old (and also very badly tagged). You can find the original post here. I think back then I had no idea what actual medieval clothing might look like, lol. How far we've come.

[pennylaneforthoughts]

It's just so narratively crunchy that Spite writes poetry as his chosen form of self expression. Especially given that he clearly struggles to communicate with the people around him, the fact that he writes poetry in the scant moments he has command of Lucanis's hands really cements other textual indicators that Spite is frustrated by his difficulty with communicating. Over and over again he asks to talk to Rook, to be heard, but when he does get the chance to talk, he isn't understood, which must be unbelievably frustrating for the poor guy. So he practices! In writing! And that writing gives such a neat look into Spite's mind and how he conceptualizes himself and his situation. So I'm gonna dust off my English degree and yell about his poetry.

1.

a PEACE

cut from the ALL

golden stranded weaves

PROTECTION CAGE

keep them OUT

keep me IN

As with all poetry, there's a lot of room to interpretation, and I think that's especially intentional for Spite's worldview as a spirit. He's from the Fade, which operates on perception and emotion instead of concrete immutabilities like the material world. That being said, I think this first poem is Spite trying to process and talk about a.) his own violent summoning from the Fade and b.) Lucanis's mental Ossuary.

Spite was ripped from the Fade against his will, a piece of a larger infinity cut and captured. Likewise, Lucanis creates the Ossuary in his mind as a (poor) coping mechanism for dealing with what happened. Spite recognizes this as an attempt to create peace in emotional turmoil.

The golden stranded weaves evoke the imagery used in the narration explaining how the dagger cuts through the Veil. It's visually represented as gold geometric lines separating the Fade from the material world, which may be a hint to how spirits see the Veil: a barrier made of gold strands that has also stranded Spite from the world he knew. Given that Lucanis's mind Ossuary is also a part of the Fade, this same barrier applies here as well, stranding him and Spite from the freedom they seek.

The Veil and the mental Ossuary therefore function as what Spite calls a "protection cage," designed both to keep its occupants safe and keep them contained. Arguably, Spite could also be talking about the magic that keeps him bonded to Lucanis, magic that is likely similar in nature to how the Veil works given that blood magic is what sustains both. Protecting Spite and Lucanis from being hurt further by the Venatori but also keeping Spite from going home. He's stuck in Lucanis whether he likes it or not. This is further complicated by the mental Ossuary, which Lucanis has unconsciously constructed to keep the people he loves out of harm's way (protecting them) while also keeping Spite trapped.

This is Spite's first cry for help. He recognizes that he is trapped in multiple ways: he is forced to share a body that aggressively does not want to share with him, and the part of the Fade that Lucanis is connected to mentally is also a prison, one that does not respond like Spite would normally expect the Fade to respond. Lucanis mentions in Sea of Blood that "The Fade does whatever a spirit wants. Real walls and chains, not so much," but Spite tells Rook in Inner Demons that he can't touch the locks in Lucanis's mind despite it technically being a part of the Fade. My personal theory is it has something to do with the blood magic that bound them together in the first place, but regardless of why, it's understandably extremely frustrating for Spite to feel trapped both in the material world and the Fade, neither of which respond to him as he expects. To Spite, it must feel like the very laws of physics have stopped working as they should.

2.

scentsing the BEYOND

rememburnings from before

when one was infinity

not a small shade

not a SHARP hooked claw

in a gut

takemeouttakemeoutletmeout

riiiiip

Here we get to see how Spite has been learning to use language to artistically express complex abstract ideas, which speaks to him having mature, adult intelligence, given that abstract thought is a marker of higher-order cognition. In this poem, Spite is no longer simply describing his situation as he is in the first poem, he is self-reflecting and forming his own identity.

It's clear in this first line and in several points throughout the game that Spite's favorite sense is smell, possibly because it is a sense that he can unintrusively access and therefore isn't barred by Lucanis. So he is not just sensing, he is specifically "scentsing" what he calls "the BEYOND," likely the Fade, referencing his ability to pull things from it (especially considering that the little icon on an accessible spot says "a sense of something").

But he's not just talking about the Fade as a place, he's reminiscing of the Fade as a time. But the portmanteau he uses here, "rememburnings" suggests an attempt to explain the emotion he associates with this remembrance. The memory is painful. It burns. It hurts him. He remembers being a part of the Fade, being part of "infinity," and now he is only a "small shade" of what he once was.

But that's not all. He's also demonstrating that he understands how Lucanis perceives him, sees that he is hurting Lucanis. He knows that he was force-fed to Lucanis (quite literally according to his banter with Bellara where he says it happened when "They fed me something. Like he was a parasite in uncooked meat."), which explains why Spite conceptualizes himself as being a foreign, damaging object "in a gut." And, importantly, he doesn't take satisfaction from that. The tone he is using here suggests grief and desperation, especially the "takemeouttakemeoutletmeout." He wants to be free, yes, but he also wants to stop being an object of pain. And yet the last line suggests that Spite knows that separation would also be painful. It would be another ripping, because he is a claw now. As much as he is trapped by Lucanis, he is embedded in him as well, and extraction would tear them both apart.

3.

toes wiggle

when he drinks the brew

a small shade

and a wounded spirit

sitting

there is STILL

we are still

there is an INFINITE

there is a SHELTER

there is a STORM outside the center

UGH Spite your MIND!!! This poem makes me want to cry fr. It's so much more concrete than the other two, showing how he's becoming more familiar and comfortable with Lucanis's body and the material world. The tone is gentle, like a relieved sigh, with none of the urgency and desperation of the others. This is the first time we see Spite describe a physical sense other than smell. He notes that Lucanis wiggles his toes when he drinks his favorite coffee, suggesting that this is something Spite feels as an occupant of the same body, though he likes to manifest himself as separate. It confirms that he feels what Lucanis feels through shared senses, though has his own interpretations of sensory input.

Spite still conceptualizes himself as a "small shade," but no longer is he a "SHARP hooked claw." He is still hurt, still affected by what he and Lucanis went through, but he now sees Lucanis as more than the body he's trapped in. He sees Lucanis as a fellow "wounded spirit," hurting and healing in the same way that he is. They are sitting together, feeling together, and they have found stillness. They've finally made peace.

While he may no longer be a part of the Fade as he once was, Spite has found that being and living with Lucanis is another "INFINITE" that he gets to experience. He is safe, sheltered in their bond. It's no longer a cage. It's just protection now. And while Spite can feel the absolute mess that's going on with the world and the Fade and everything they're dealing with, he is centered now with Lucanis, which makes it all manageable.

All this leads me to believe that after Inner Demons and their little coffee date with Rook, Spite and Lucanis are at a point in their relationship where Lucanis is much more accommodating of Spite and where Spite is able to explore and experience the material world with a certain level of patience. He no longer feels like he has to bully Lucanis into letting him pilot because he understands physical space now and can experience things alongside Lucanis as he experiences them. Lucanis is more confident letting Spite speak through him because he's no longer worried Spite will wrest complete control from him and/or do something to hurt them. As Lucanis says in the final romance scene, they're no longer afraid. Lucanis now trusts Spite's reports about what happened and how much time has passed while he was asleep, which suggests that Spite has earned that trust.

At this point, the line between demon of Spite and spirit of Determination seems extremely blurry at best, and it really makes me wonder if gaining a physical body through means other than normal possession allows spirits to develop more complex cognition and emotional versatility beyond just their purpose.

[turbo-virgins]

Low key very tired of people responding to veilguard criticism with something along the lines of “lol these people have no media literacy, didn’t you understand what the game was telling you??” Yes, yes I understand what the game was trying to tell me. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or the way the writers went about it.

Also the whole argument of “well, the dragon age fandom proved they couldn’t handle xyz controversial character/element of the story so that’s why veilguard had very little references to those things” kinda grinds my gears a bit. I don’t think it can be proven with 100% certainty what writing decisions were made based on past fandom reactions to the other games, but I do think it would be an incredibly shitty move to simplify or remove complexity from a story just because there might be a portion of the audience who doesn’t get it. “The fandom couldn’t even handle Vivienne” Yeah a good amount of people dismissed her as a selfish snooty bitch, but I didn’t and a lot of other people didn’t and to remove complex and interesting characters like her on the basis that enough people “won’t get it” just feels like a disservice to all of us.

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x01 - “Heavy is the Crown”

[casscainmainly]

In my opinion Duke and Alfred should hate each other. Duke should not be so okay with Alfred manipulating him and his friends into We Are Robin, particularly after Troy dies (and Alfred's weird white saviour-y guilt that vanishes pretty quickly). If Alfred ever found out the role Duke played in Bruce getting over his amnesia, he should be all the way pissed. I also think Alfred never wanted Duke to actually be in the Batfam. In this essay I will-