#we have history together

[fairestmusesofthemall]

@diamondcitydarlin SNELSA OTP

[babacontainsmultitudes]

He's a used car salesman. He has a heart of gold. He can't parallel park. He has two gay witch italian dads. He chops the wood. He has a magical talking cat mom. He's an assassin. He isn't an assassin. He's actually the cat from earlier. He's trans (female cat to male human). He's been shot through the heart. He was in Dewar. He was not in the war. He was in Dewar. He's on his last of nine lives. He just had a marble shoved down his throat. He's even bisexual. I didn't say his name, but he popped into your head, didn't he?

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

[kazz-brekker]

the book ice court heist has big group project involving people who don’t like each other vibes but the tv version is just going to be forced couples counseling via trying not to die together

[lady-raziel]

i can't do this anymore. i can't. i can;t.

[marlynnofmany]

An interesting journey of discovery

So first I stumbled upon this from Ultrafacts:

Well THAT’S interesting. Some googling confirmed it: John Cleese talked in an interview about when he learned of this in school -- his English teacher seemed to have come away with the impression that “If you didn't give up, you couldn't lose.” And that led to “It’s just a flesh wound!!!” years later.

Then I checked Wikipedia for the wrestler they were talking about, and was brought up short by this image:

I know that statue, I thought. I’ve seen it with wings.

And I wasn’t wrong.

  Yup, it’s the same one! Different angle, but same pose.

  So that’s amazing. Monty Python, ineffable stubbornness, and naked wrestling.

I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from this, but I’m sure there are several.

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[introspectivememories]

tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.

(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)

and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.

tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.

(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)

and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.

(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)

and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly

and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves

(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)

but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.

[agentark]

trying to enjoy my silly little time traveling sci-fi show while clara and the doctor say the most devastating things to and about each other every other episode like my god

If the Doctor is still the Doctor, he will have my back.

Clara, I'm not your boyfriend. // I never thought you were. // I never said it was your mistake.

Please, just...Just see me.

Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?

Clara, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm exactly what you deserve.

There was one other man. But it would've never worked out. He was impossible.

When do I not see you?

Die with whoever comes after me, you do not leave me.

I don't care about your rules, or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back.

Immortality isn't living forever, that's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying. She might meet someone she can't bear to lose. That happens, I believe.

I let Clara Oswald get inside my head, trust me, she doesn't leave.

Longest month of my life. // It could only have been five minutes. // I'll be the judge of time.

I will die, and no one else here or anywhere will suffer. // What about me?

Everything you're about to say, I already know. don't do it now, we've already had enough bad timing.

Don't run. Stay with me.

I was lost a long time ago, she was saving you.

If you think because she is dead I'm weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her and you're not afraid, then you understand nothing at all.

The day you lose someone isn't the worst...it's all the days they stay dead.

I'd know you anywhere.

What were you bargaining for? // What do you think? You.

If she says so.

I had a duty of care.

People like me and you, we should say things to one another.

Look how far I went, for fear of losing you.

You said "memories become stories when we forget them." Maybe some of them become songs.

hand in unlovable hand

[collieii]

one line in trimax that's always stuck with me is from chapter 65, right after wolfwood's death. when vash is sticking the punisher by his grave and he says "it was part of his life". that phrasing is so interesting to me. the neutrality of it is one thing that gets me, i think. it was part of his life. for better or worse, whatever it was, the punisher was wolfwood's.

It's pretty easy to think that the punisher might represent violence, the eye of michael, the role of assassin that was forced onto wolfwood, the loss of childhood. but it's not really presented that way, not overtly anyways. we never see wolfwood shun the punisher, he's not conflicted by his use of it. he never considers abandoning it for some other weapon. it's his weapon. he doesn't discard it when he eventually decides to take a more vash-like approach and actually let people live. he pretty easily accepts it as his own, a tool he can use. (to be fair, at least part of that is probably because the punisher is a very good gun.)

the punisher can still represent the harsher aspects of wolfwood's character, the violence he's committed, that he's capable of. that's an important part of his life! and the idea of it as representative of his violent adolescence, childhood that was stripped away, goes along with this - it's literally a cross to bear. but besides showing his past as a burden, i think of the punisher as being a cross of responsibility. when you have a gun you have power, agency - you have a responsibility to make a choice. that's what wolfwood tells vash in chapter 4.

the ability to take a life, the burden of it, is literally his cross to bear. that ability - and that responsibility - was given to him by the eom, literally in terms of the gun, and in terms of his skills. but the eye doesn't think twice about killing people. for them it's not really a choice, a responsibility, it's just a given. but wolfwood can't accept that. he's constantly considering the choices he makes.

so the punisher isn't only a symbol of the eye of michael, of the path that he was forced onto. it's also a way of expressing autonomy. the eye gave wolfwood the gun, but he decides how to use it and what it means. for much of the story wolfwood struggles to decide what to do, he's a very conflicted character. but eventually he resolves to use it against chapel, against knives, to help vash, and protect the orphanage. the gun gives him agency.

so the punisher was part of his life. it was the tool that he used to commit acts of violence, acts that he was forced into, but also the tool he used to break free.

it's heavy for vash, too. he's not exempt from that idea, the idea of responsibility. as wolfwood said much earlier in the story, vash has always been able to sidestep the question of "what do i choose?", because he's only ever given himself one option - everybody lives. and he's always succeeded. but as wolfwood says, "the day will come when you'll have to choose". one day, it's not going to work.

and of course the story progresses, the stakes ramp up, and vash learns more, goes through more, and is pushed to his limits. i think by this point, by wolfwood's death, and maybe because of it, vash has realized that he might have to make that difficult choice in the near future. that's one reason why he wants to "do him proud". he has a lot of reasons to say this of course - to not let wolfwood's sacrifice go to waste, for example. but if we're thinking of the cross as responsibility, then vash is saying he doesn't want to forget the lessons he learned because of wolfwood. wolfwood has always grappled with responsibility, with what the right thing to do is. and the right thing is often not easy. vash hopes that when the times comes for him to make a choice, he'll make a good one, one that does right by wolfwood's memory.

[tonyfinale]

love love love those vague and romantic ass ds2 flavor texts

[olivegardenhunter]

one thing that I find really really interesting is that in practically every scene where it's just jiraiya and tsunade alone, kishimoto very deliberately draws at least a panel of the two of them being completely silent in each other's companies, even refusing to look at each other.

when jiraiya got drinks with tsunade in og

when he got drinks with her before he left. notice that neither of them are making any eye contact, refusing to look at each other.

the iconic bench scene ofc

why this is important to me is cause I think it's an excellent way on kishi's part to show the dynamic and history between the two of them (and the sannin as a whole too). ((note this isn't a jiratsu post))

the few scenes we get of the two of them talking alone, you always get the impression that there's a secondary, entirely silent conversation going on in the background that only the two of them even know about. a conversation about all the things they cannot say. and he conveys that so well in these deliberate panels. you can SEE in their expressions, in the things that they do say when they choose to break the silence. there's so much between them, so much they yearn to say. and the weight of all of that, the depth of those feelings and emotions, is ultimately what makes them not say anything at all.

because you've known each other since you were SIX years old, you fought WARS together, this is a person you'd put your life on the line for without a second of hesitation. yet. there is a 20 year gap. you haven't spoken with each other for as long as you grew up together too. they've lived an entire lifetime together, but then an entire equally as long lifetime apart. they're the same person they've always been but yet... you can't really recognise the person in front of you. they both can see that they've become shells of the people they used to be. you both have gone through so much, and you know the the other person knows this. you know it so intimately, what things you can say, what things you can't. youre being so careful yet you both know there's this pretense going on.

there's so much left, yet so little. after all of that, what is there even left to be said? what CAN be said? they're already so intimately aware of what the other is thinking, there's nothing new, yet somehow, there's this gap. there's this emptiness that both know they can't really do anything about.

in the end, the sannin are a tragic trio. and kishi does an excellent job of showing this through their stories and histories, sure. but he does an even better job at showing it through their small interactions together. the way they always end up talking about the past, the attempt to bring up happier times (like tsunade trying to reminisce about their genin days as team hiruzen), yet how they ALWAYS come back to ultimately how they fell apart, and the world kept spinning, and all they can do is try to make sure the future doesn't make the same mistakes they did.

what can you even say to someone like that? it must've been so freeing, to have someone that understands them to such an extent. that would know them more than anyone else in the world ever could imagine. and yet. so suffocating. because they're a reminder. a reminder of what you used to be, a reminder of what could've been, a reminder of how everything went wrong, every single mistake you ever made. and so despite the person in front of you being the only person in the world that likely knows exactly how you're feeling, what you're going through, all your experiences, they're also somehow the last person you can ever speak to about any of it. because it becomes like a trap almost. they're constantly reminded of their pasts when they look at each other. how can you ever begin to move on with someone like that right in front of you?

once upon a time, they were the hope of konoha. they were the young shinobi, meant to bring in a new era of peace, meant to be the change. and they wholeheartedly believed this too. and then, to make it to 50, after everything they went through, and realising they were no better off than the generation before them. that everything they ever stood for, ever fought for, were all practically in vain. and how suddenly the people meant to be the change for the future can only hope to make sure there is still even a chance for change for the next generation.

really, what else are they meant to do around each other than continue their little dance or chess game and let the unspoken remain unspoken?

[thereadingmoon]

he’s asking if you’re a communist, Robin.

[cthoniccompanion]

who wants to play in the melinoe/icarus/eris shipping space with me?

[5bi5]

Wish we could have seen a Kendra-Faith discussion on their philosophies toward slaying because like yes they're opposites in some ways but they've also both fully accepted their slayerhood as a core part of their identities in a way that takes Buffy a long time

[larrythefloridaman]

fankids are funny. anyway her name is Present