#to walk it from the very beginning

[franeridan]

came to the conclusion that the reason why aventio has such a strong hold on me these days is that they're the highest purest greatest dumbest form of "I have feelings for you" (that feeling was friendship, but neither had ever experienced it before) and I find that stupidly compelling atm

[gingermintpepper]

There are many things people expect from one called 'God of Blood'. Always, the first thought is the blood of war, the blood of violence, the blood of the weak shed for the goals of the strong. Ares doesn't think of the blood of battle at all. When he thinks of blood, he envisions the many tied knots of blood bonds and bonds forged in the blood of battle. Blood sons and blood daughters, blood brothers and battle sisters, blood oaths and blood vengeance - he watches over them all and keeps close each one of these bonds.

One cannot begrudge his displeasure then when he realises he cannot tell Leto's offspring apart just by looking at them.

It was easier when it was just Artemis. Dark hair curled about her shoulders, a fierce mien whenever Father summons her to the mountain, a scattering of bones and blood shed whenever she was disturbed; the eldest child of Leto was a wild thing, sharp toothed with sharper claws always at the ready. There's whispers of her being a twin, of her other half being made to crawl on their belly as penance for their sin of god-slaying but Ares pays it little mind. What twins look alike among their number? Even dog litters are born distinct with all their unique markings inlaid in their fur. Artemis' twin too would be much more than their sister's mirror image.

Pouring over his list now, he wishes anything about Phoebus Apollo was that simple.

Mirror image did not begin to describe it. The twins were the same height, the same build, had the same colour and texture hair, ate the same raw food and drank the same amount of nectar. There was no difference in how they dressed, no difference in the company they kept, no variance in the weapons they used. There are some days Ares still cannot believe Phoebus will grow into a man and not some nymph with the way his ears have that slender point. He watches them now, sitting together beneath a shady palm and stringing their bows in an uncanny unison and curses because he still cannot tell them apart. What use is his skill in knowing blood when they both have the same damn blood running through their veins? What bond is there to sense when they are tied so tightly together, Ares can scarcely tell brother from sister?

He sighs. Unadorned and completely alone, the only way to know who is who is to speak to them. He'll have to find more ways to tell them apart from a distance. Surely they cannot stay this similar all the rest of their immortal lives.

[posletsvet]

It's only just now clicked for me that all the despicable horrors Sukuna drags Yuuji through time and again, all the feats of grand, unseen violence he puts up just for Yuuji, all the heinous atrocities and pain he inflicts on Yuuji -- they actually carry an inkling of something strategical, coldly calculated. Don't get me wrong, doing all that Sukuna clearly enjoys himself, his rampage in Shibuya sizzling with euphoria of finally getting to move freely, unshackled, and in the end that is the very nature of a curse -- cause suffering for the sake of suffering and feast upon it. But Sukuna, perhaps rather oddly, doesn't strike me as someone who would hold petty grudges and act upon them spitefully. Especially in regard to someone like Yuuji, who Sukuna considers little different from the filth beneath his feet and doesn't hesitate to make it known. So why even bother hating something so insignificant, miniscule? Why spare an effort to make this particular life miserable when suffering is already inherent to human condition? And while I'm at it, here's one more question, perhaps more on point with what I'm trying to say: why retreat of your own free will to the state of entrapment and give up the reins of control so soon after they fell into your hands?

Back to the point I started this rambling with, it seems to me that in the chaos Sukuna causes there is calculation. I think he's trying to do to Yuuji what he did in the end to Megumi -- crash this boy's beating heart and drown his soul. Sukuna's actions appear pointed, aware of the effect they make, targeted directly at that very thing which would hurt Yuuji the most, thus pushing him to the breaking point. Countless casualties, pointless bloodshed and utter devastation -- all to crack Yuuji's resistance, to eliminate the ability to fight back in a boy who was careless enough to wear his heart out on his sleeve in a world that grinds the kind down and spits out their bones.

But the darker the weather, the better the man. Where every other human being would break, Yuuji stands unyielding. The more is taken away from him, the more reasons he has to keep fighting. When the only sacrifice he could ever accept was his own, he lost too much. So he ploughs on -- because that's the only way he can pay the unfathomably high cost of him being alive. And for all his experience and cunning wit, Sukuna's miscalculated with this one: he cannot destroy Yuuji's heart for it was never Yuuji's to keep. He gave it away a long time ago. It beats with other people's pulse.

[an-ruraiocht]

sometimes it's like. i don't really wanna have an opinion about this in public because i don't feel that strongly. but a lot of people are having ill informed opinions about it and i don't feel i can offer correct information without also an opinion. so i just have to suffer

[codenamesazanka]

.........Did Deku ever smiled when he was 'saving' Shigaraki/Tenko?

Not just a slight upturn of the corners of the lips, but an actual smile. The smile Nana promoted; the smile All Might whenever he saved people has that Deku aspired to; the smile that Shigaraki resented because he was never saved.

(We never see Shigaraki/Tenko smile big either, despite that being Nana's wish for Kotarou - a life full of smiles and joy, and presumably wants for her grandson too now that she sort of reconcile with him)

(the League all smiled)

It's not a certain thing - iirc, the Todoroki Save didn't have smiles either, and neither did the heteromorphs - but for Shigaraki and Deku, who had connections to All Might and Nana, it would be weird for them not to smile?

Perhaps the saving isn't actually done?

*

(below is cope fantasy)

It would be nice for Deku to realize he didn't actually save Shigaraki/Tenko, and has to go do so. Plus like. He started out the series asking if a Quirkless person can be a Hero. When he saved Tenko's heart, he had to do so via OFAFO-vestige-landscape-whatever. When he gave a final blow to AFO and that technically help brought Shigaraki/Tenko back, he was using the last embers of OFA. He's a hero, he saved everyone, yeah, yeah. But has he done so entirely without a quirk?

Idk how that would work. How do you bring back someone who had been disintegrated without some magic power? How would he even know to go save Shigaraki/Tenko one last time if he thinks Shigaraki/Tenko is dead???

but i'm seeing these images in my head that maybe. maybe. Deku goes to visit Spinner to give him Shigaraki/Tenko's last words, and Spinner explodes on him. He basically let Shigaraki die. How could he call himself a hero when he didn't save someone. Heroes won and it really didn't change anything.

And maybe, Deku is shaken by that. Thinks long and hard about the lessons of the war. Maybe he goes on a walk. Comes across the Nana Hand in the wreckage. It has that microdevice that AFO put in it that let Kurogiri know where to warp to - meaning location data. Strangely, there's information there that Shigaraki/Tenko is... somewhere?

We get the Nine (movie character) ending, where it turned out Shigaraki/Tenko survived, ending up on an island somewhere. How??? idk. regeneration kicked in again. Kurogiri actually managed to warp Shigaraki/Tenko away. Tenko's original quirk came back and it's Revival. Whatever. Point is, Shigaraki/Tenko's alive, but sees no point in going back. Like he told Spinner, Shigaraki Tomura fought till the end but he failed, so he's not Shigaraki Tomura anymore. He failed his friends. He throws Deku's words back at him - if he comes back, the sadness will only continue, so he can't go back. Who is he even, anymore? His entire life was being a puppet. He's a hollow shell.

And Deku has to save him from this. Tell him he's actually not. His friends are waiting for him. Deku's been thinking, the League has points, so he'll work to change Hero Society. He's going to college and getting a degree in social work or whatever. Hero his own way. And Shigaraki/Tenko... didn't he say he wanted to be a Hero for the Villains? He should do that. Deku tells Tenko that he can be a Hero too, smiles as he says this.

And that gives Tenko hope. And Deku has finally saved someone with a smile, using no quirk.

(And it would also be nice for Shigaraki/Tenko to get to be a Hero for the Villains and save his League. somehow. idk. Still want them to go Karma Houdini and become vigilantes.)

[kazz-brekker]

one of my favorite underrated character dynamics is when character a is like "character b is my enemy, they don't like me, whenever we interact they must have some secret nefarious agenda" and character b is like "we're friends :)"

[gwensy]

the "christ you are extremely fucking selfish, die" meme but for evil internship ... is this anything

OH MY GOOODDDDDDDDDD. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD hold on let me find the original i need to redraw this so badly

[carefulfears]

thinking about how the ammunition that phoebe uses against mulder in fire is a childhood nightmare that he had shared with her, and how the world only has so much held over him because he shares so generously with it

[serialreblogger]

the thing about the joker

is that - well, even canonically, he’s not actually “insane.” in the most canonical version of his backstory (bc there are many conflicting incarnations, but this one is the touchstone for a lot of later canon), he was part of a street gang before falling into a vat of Nondescript Toxic Waste that damaged his melanin production and That’s It. he supposedly “lost his mind” after seeing his reflection, which is absurd on many levels. no. he’s not “insane.” what he is, is an angry white boy.

the thing about the joker is that he exults in his own uncontainability. He laughs, because all of gotham - all the world - is built to be his playground. the only lunatic thing about him is the lunacy of ~Society~, to borrow from the joker’s own playbook; the lunacy of the joker lies in the world that grants him power: in the inheritance of loss: in white privilege, and what it means for everyone else.

“to prove a point.” those were the joker’s exact words, when he shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon. she asked why: he laughed. “to prove a point.”

because that’s all he ever does. he hurts people because he can. and because all the power in the world can’t save him from getting hurt - and isn’t that just peachy?

because the thing about the joker is that he can get hurt. he has been hurt. but he has so much more capacity to harm than to be harmed. he is immortal. he and he alone will never have to face the consequences of the hurt that he inflicts on other people.

so then: why not hurt them? misery loves company, after all.

the joker is the embodiment and end result of our own social system: the madness of the exception: the laughter of the white man: the imprecation to smile, as he kills you.

(no one ever says it, i find, but it’s still true: barbara deserves to kill him.)

and who, then, is the batman? if the joker is the yin to his yang? if they’re two sides of one irredeemable coin, if they represent the “balance” of an unjustifiable system - who is he if not another white man?

because he is. Bruce Wayne is a white boy born into unspeakable privilege and forced to endure suffering anyway; who copes with his suffering by taking it out on others; who copes with his suffering, not by taking advantage of the world as it is, but by attempting to reshape it. to make it in his own image - as if it isn’t already his, as if claiming it further will crush out the pain.

the batman is the benevolent oppressor to the joker’s malevolent one. he changes nothing, in the end. two privileged white boys with their own respective navel-gazing grudges - where, after all, lies the difference between benevolence and malevolence?

because they are not “chaos” and “order.” not really. They are laissez-faire laughter and law. Joker exults in the disease of the system, Batman seeks to treat its symptoms, but neither of them will ever change anything about the root cause. because they may have suffered the faults of this system, but they still benefit so much more from it as it exists. Uphold it or break it, neither of them wants to change the law.

but the law is only as good as the people it’s made to protect. and who does that law protect, really?

waylon jones is, in one issue, explicitly depicted as Black. between that and his skin disorder, there has never once been room for his character to be any more than a monster: king croc is, always, a character to be violated and brutalized, over and over and over and still - always - written as the villain. (he tried so hard to scrape out a place for himself, so many times, in so many incarnations, and each and every time he finds himself relegated once more to the sewers. he will never be anyone’s king. there is no place under the sun for people like him.)

victor fries only ever wanted to save his wife, and a capitalist mogul decided a few extra numbers on his eight-digit paycheck were more important than the people whose lives depended on that money. fries’ body was damaged to disability by that choice, left without the resources to find a cure for his wife, and he robbed banks because there was no other option available to him. we seem to have forgotten, or maybe never really understood, why that matters. why a desperate man trying to save his life and that of his loved ones under the crushing gears of capitalism is a villain, and the one who stops him is our hero. why, under the law batman upholds, a bank vault and a CEO’s hoard is worth more than a life.

poison ivy just wants to live, too. wants a life not defined by the devastation of her body, of the beings that exist as extensions of her, a life where green and growing things are not commodities to be plowed up and poisoned and destroyed for the sake of another man’s profit. these are villains; they are written as such. these are their motives.

who does batman fight for, really? who is our hero, this emblem of our law?

is he our hero? ours, the broken and bleeding members of the world he claims to protect?

who does the law protect, except him - him, and the joker?

[boyswanna-be-her]

Yesterday I:

1. Found out some cosmic shit that will make me feel happy EVERY time i remember it, possibly for the rest of my life

2. Had food poisoning

1 made me so mentally satisfied while simultaneously feeling physically ill and puking from 2 that it gave me whiplash. I've never been so elated while sick.

[distort-opia]

I know you ship batjokes, but what do you think about jarley?

Well, I can't say I ship it, but I do find it interesting-- much like I find Bruce's other relationships interesting. It'd be tough not to, since in Punchline's own words:

-- Batman (2016) #93

Harley is the person to get closest to Joker emotionally other than Batman. And with the big disclaimer that this is all my personal opinion which I got specifically asked about, I'll put a slightly longer discussion of the subject under the cut.

To be honest, I dislike how Jarley has been reduced solely to the label of "abusive relationship", with Harley's own darker traits being swept under the rug or fully attributed to Joker's influence. Doctor Harleen Quinzell had her own demons and psychopathic tendencies, before ever meeting Joker; and it was a sense of deep loneliness that drove her to him, and which he exploited. At the end of the day, that does seem like what it amounted to, especially in the beginning... Harley feeling horribly alone, and latching onto Joker to fill that void, with Joker manipulating it and taking control. However, Joker would not have been able to take advantage of any kind of attachment if Harleen's own darkness didn't relate to Joker's own somehow.

And well, thing is... Joker, in his own way, cared about Harley. Put bluntly, he wouldn't have bothered to keep her around otherwise. It's a Black Label comic, but my mind always goes to this phrasing when thinking of Jarley:

-- Birds of Prey (2020)

"Crawled in each other's void." And Joker's void was Batman-shaped, just like she says. At this point it's been canonized again and again that Joker is in love with Batman, with Harley herself being the one to confirm it more than once... and it is fascinating how Batjokes and Jarley interact, most tragically when it comes to Harley. Because she was jealous of Batman and the hold he had over Joker's attention. Part of what kept her next to Joker, trying harder and harder to please him (like in Mad Love) was the hope that eventually, she could become as special to him as he was to her. She saw how human Joker could be about Batman, and wanted to nurture and help him turn it into something more, but in the end it probably became the most hurtful thing-- Joker being incapable of caring about anyone else but Batman, no matter how hard she tried or the things she endured.

...Anyway, Anon, to summarize, I do think Jarley is interesting :)) That being said, it's also annoying how it's being used to turn Joker into a one-dimensional cartoonishly evil abuser, ever since Harley's redemption arc began. Better writers could find ways to turn Harley into an anti-hero without bulldozing over previous characterization for her or Joker, but alas.

[im-smart-i-swear]

guy trapped in a hell of his own creation: haha ive never done anything wrong in my entire life. and im always right:] anyway. why did my little brother move out:(

its so funny to me that at first glance tashi seems like hed be the most 'normal' out of all the clones but at least all the others are slowly healing n shit while hes just getting more and more insane each day and one day hell snap and explode and maim someone

[mxwhore]

working on the daunting task of having an earlier bedtime and rising time

[guardian-instincts-bad]

and the finished version of my moroleth art!

decided to keep this one fairly simple, but enjoy some pensive art of my queer punk former nightmare former aetherblade eventual sylvari commander (he/they, kid has such a history), post a rotsap attack that left him chronically (and visibly) ill for several years

[stillfruit]

i love not knowing if i'll ever be healthy again i love all of the time i've used to move my body become nothing i love spending my adulthood wasting away year after year for various reasons baby!