#the flaw in my statement

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[lesbianfakir]

Talking about fakir with fakir fans: while fakir is a fun and genuinely likeable character the show dropped the ball on recognizing and holding him accountable for how he behaved towards mytho in season 1. The show has an element of fairytale violence to it—not meant to be taken too seriously—but fakir has been downright abusive towards mytho for YEARS and that leads to some genuinely uncomfortable scenes that are not treated with the gravity they deserve. The show could have benefited from either toning down the extremity of how fakir’s actions or taking the time to create a proper resolution to his and mytho’s relationship. As it stands, the nonchalance with with the show treats mytho’s abuse is, in my opinion, one of its biggest flaws

Talking about fakir with the mytho heathens: YOUR HONOR IN HIS DEFENSE FAKIR WAS JUST GETTING A LITTLE SILLAY WITH IT

[jamandjazz]

I’ll never get ppl that get mad when others point out flaws in their favorite characters like bbg that’s my favorite part???? I LOVED and ADORE flawed characters to my very core because of how real they are. If someone comes on here and starts doing a good well written character analysis on why my favorite characters (dally mainly but it goes for anyone in the gang and other things I like) are bad people or maybe even badly written I won’t get mad. In fact I’ll read it, nod along, if they aren’t completely misrepresenting the character I’ll probably even agree but it has never crossed my mind to get upset.

[jrueships]

zesty lowkey just another way for str8 ppl to say faggot / faggy and get away with it

[asleepinawell]

this little quest chain was one of my favorites in ew because of the perspective it gave into the ancients, a very different one from what little we get from emet and hermes. there’s pretty ample proof that their society was not in any way perfect and was actually really deeply flawed to the core, but this is a look at people, individuals, and ones outside of the main bunch we talk to

put in a read more to spare your dashes

they go to speed up the aether dispersal of some creations (animals) that were killed and they call the deaths distressing and want to find a way to pay respects to the fallen and bring peace to their souls. at the wol’s suggestion they gather flowers for the dead. and they say what amounts to a prayer over the bodies. it’s so very very different from how hermes believes everyone feels and how hythlodaeus spoke of ‘returning to the star’ being beautiful (though even hythlodaeus said a brief prayer for the first boss in ktisis hyberboreia)

and yes, they still talk about life and death in terms of ‘purpose’ and this is no way refutes the callousness towards other lives we’ve seen some of the ancients display in elpis, but my personal take is that it shows that some of them at least understood on some level that there were important things missing in their culture that they needed. even if they didn’t fully grasp why, they were searching for these missing pieces. in this case, a way to process grief and acknowledge the worth of a life, even a non-human life. and they also actively ask for the new ideas the wol presents and talk about incorporating them into their lives and duties

there’s also a ton of little side quests in elpis that involve one person asking you to find or check on another person, or to carry a message to them. there’s so many people who care about each other and are just absolutely godawful at expressing it in person and need the poor wol to act as an intermediary (this happens in present day as well but it was just every 5 seconds in elpis)

there’s one striking one where one person asks you to bring a second person a message about how that second person’s concept was approved and succeeding (I forget the exact details) in the hopes that it would dissuade them from returning to the star. it didn’t dissuade them and the first person accepted that pretty calmly, but the thought was there. there was this hope that they could keep someone they cared about around longer even if the argument they tried to use to persuade them came back to that grim ideology about ‘purpose’. they lacked the framework to think about it another way, but they still tried

it’s definitely a stark contrast from the shade amaurotines we saw in shb (assuming for the sake of argument that they were accurate depictions and not biased by emet which is a big assumption), especially the ones who turned the topic of ‘should we save the lives of others on the planet or just focus on ourselves’ into a casual debate topic as a pastime. there are really terrible ways of thinking about the world that have been ingrained into the population presumably from birth. that’s not something that can easily be changed. but it could be changed. the potential was there

at a societal level the ancient world was terrible in so many ways, and ultimately doomed if it couldn’t change, but at an individual level the people had so much potential and at least some of them were trying their best to make sense of the things their society denied them and adapt their lives

my personal takeaway from all this (which is just a headcanon aka an opinion and i’m not trying to sell as canon), was that if their society could have been changed then the ancients had the potential to have produced people who could have faced meteion. i’m leaving aside the questions of the timeframe and zodiark tempering everyone because that’s not my point. my point is that the ancients weren’t inherently unable to be who was needed to save their world. the density of their aether making them unable to interact with dynamis is highly symbolic of the flaws of their society, of course, but that shouldn’t have stopped them from talking to meteion, from showing compassion and understanding and hope in the face of despair

i’m not trying to take any jabs about any characters’ decisions in the story because the actual situation they were in was extremely complicated (like hey zodiark tempering people!) and that would also miss my point. mostly i’m just saying this makes the fate of their people even more depressing. they were an entire race of people who had all the potential that the sundered humans do despite being stuck in a shit society that happened to be shit in the exact way that made dealing with meteion and the final days a seemingly insurmountable task. their near-immortality and creation powers made it even harder for them to really understand the problem, but not impossible. they had the raw potential and lacked the tools to use it to save themselves. it’s just really damned sad

[catgirlhell]

Hey idk if you've seen that tumblr posts are being turned into tiktok posts with robots reading them out, bu5 you were on one. This one to be specific https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLHukjTk/

This is less about the tiktok and more me wanting to thank you for an explanation of QPRs that does actually explain how they're different from friendships. I've tried to look up what the difference is and been met with "Its like marriage but you're not married or dating." Your explanation actually helped it Click in my mind, and usually I would've just rambled in tags about it, but tiktok doesn't work like that lol

THEY TURNED MY ASS INTO CONTENT???

[true-blue-sonic]

I know for sure I've asked about this a long time ago before but I'm kinda back to thinking about how different the development of Espio and Silver's dynamics would've been in Rivals 2 if they weren't as quick to fully trust each other as they were in canon but remained "enemies" a bit longer and only really teamed up out of necessity. If their dynamic isn't already near-spotless following an inexplicable "for some reason I trust you" type conversation, there's more room (and requirement, really) for growth on both sides; in the original dynamic it feels more like if there's any growth to be had then it'd be solely on Silver, so this thought might also help find a balance

I recall having talked about it before as well, yes. I would say that Espio and Silver alike have quite a few vices that would make cooperating between them far more difficult: they're both tremendously stubborn, proud, opinionated, hot-heated, and just to the extent neither can let evil go its way. While none of those are necessarily attributes that are bad in the situation they are in, I can envision them clashing very badly because of those traits. Considering Espio is actively chasing Silver down to gather evidence of him committing a crime, Silver's hot-headed nature might cause him to fly right off the handle if Espio keeps pushing him about it. And Silver's haughty and rude attitude in turn might make Espio far less willing to see the best in him and try to trust him. I think it speaks to Silver's honest nature and Espio's ability to see the truth in it that they were able to cooperate so relatively smoothly in Rivals 2, but I can also envision many scenarios wherein things did not go so idyllically until far later in the game.

What you're saying next is actually a bit of an issue I have when writing my fics: I've joked before that Espio is "already perfect" because he's just... basically an expert at everything, haha! He completes his missions well, he's driven and skilled, and his overly serious demeanour as the Chaotix's straight man alongside his snark feels like more like comedy than a flaw or something that truly hinders him to me. Meanwhile, Silver is far more 'imperfect' to me: he jumps to conclusions, he can be uncooperative and rude out of nowhere, and even if he is always right in the end, the way towards that end can be tremendously rocky because of those personality traits. That was why I wanted Espio to also go through a development in Stories that made sense to who he is as a character: specifically that he follows Vector's rule to a T regardless of his personal opinion on the matter, which begins to clash with the fact Silver is very much guilty but did what he did for a good cause (aka not a black-and-white scenario at all). And since Silver plays a central role there as well, I think his flaws can play a role also: he doesn't want Espio to be walked over, but the way in which he conveys that (which is rude as hell) might make things worse at first. Vector might be even more pushy about Espio gathering evidence if he gets yelled at by Silver, and Espio in turn might feel needled and put under pressure from two parties now that demand entirely opposite things from him (in his mind). I think such a thing could help make their dynamic more interesting and also different from New Beginnings, while fitting with their personalities.

[jaypgartifacts]

october is coming. which means, of course, that it is time for the horrors. tfw the dream self must confront the Nightmare Self

[texanmarcusdavenport]

every time someone characterizes Oliver as an anxious weak nerd and Kaz as his dumb but strong protector, an aneurysm spontaneously forms in my brain

[235uranium]

back from the barbie movie and I certainly have Thoughts on what the movie was doing but overall I do think it's worth seeing! it's fun

[evermorethecrow]

did you forget that there are actual vampires in canon and that I don't need to make a Twilight au...or?

or was it just comedic material...

i respect both answers btw

no no i need the twilight vampires

i want everyone under brams ability to sparkle like a disco ball

i also forgot about the existence of vampires entirely in bsd

[dylanlila]

sorry to break it to you, but jo march is not the feminist icon you think she is. forget what the 2019 movie told you. stop voting for jo march on that poll.

[talentforlying]

i have like four separately-dated posts in my drafts that are all completely unrelated to constantine, they're just me being excited about the concept of 'the end' in the magnus archives being self-terminating and self-defeating to the point where it might, by its very nature, have contributed to the creation and inevitable triumph of the extinction. what was happening in my life to get me so hype about this.

[gender-euphowrya]

wouldn't it be nice. if people made sure they knew what the fuck they're talking about before talking about it

[everysongineverykey]

if you look on the bright side, technically this is the first full year we've had without a deltarune release since the last release

[chipjrwibignaturals]

while i think it’s p obvious you can pin Current Chip as a chaotic good it’s a bit more vague where he started the campaign at (which. in itself is a critique of the strictness of the alignment system but shhhhhhh)

bc like. for one, he cared for himself above the rest. he didn’t have the drive to do good and in fact multiple times pushed to NOT do good and instead SAVE THEIR OWN ASSES. so. a neutral alignment?

then I was like “still chaotic ig?” but. it not like he DIDNT have rules or standards to how he acted. “lawful” doesn’t have to mean adherence to the posted laws of the land, only following a determined set of rules. early campaign chip has his own rule-set he follows (even if it’s a sparse list), with the biggest one: no killing people. to the point it becomes a point of issue between him and gill, as well as heavily shaking him when he breaks that rule to protect ollie. this isn’t a conflict current chip has tho—

thus, I think one could argue at least that chip began the campaign as a true neutral— looking out for himself and what he wants to achieve over any “greater good” (though not looking to cause harm either), but not without some level of guideline/limitation keeping him from a true “chaos”