can we talk about percy uncovering luke’s true intentions and luke coming clean about wanting to recruit percy as a powerful ally and percy obviously refusing despite sympathizing with the cause because he’s just better than that leading to them dueling, with luke about to strike percy down when annabeth’s blade, the one luke gifted her, the same cursed blade that’ll reap his soul 3 years from now, sealed with the promise of family and new beginnings, knocking into backbiter in luke’s hands, and luke turning to stare at her with the most heartbroken, torn expression on his face and annabeth staring him down with more venom than any pit scorpion could’ve had.

can we talk about annabeth standing in the clearing watching the only man she loves, someone who made a promise to protect her and always have her back, someone she’s known for 5 years, looming over a boy she met mere weeks ago, someone who, despite a godly rivalry getting in the way of their initial friendship, fought for her and saved her and chose her over himself time and time again…can we talk about how the defiance in her gaze made it very clear to luke that the person he’s closest to would choose percy over him every time

dude twitter is dire as fuck with the way half the response to this is bizarre transmasc rage. like a trans woman will say "cisnormativity says you have to stay as you are and tries so hard to ingrain this in all of us through gender, but our existence spits in this assumption; the brainwashing doesnt work and you prove it since you're not a woman as they want, if at all! there is no absolute authority in gendered socialization!"

and trans men and mascs who will never work on their misogyny crawl out of the woodwork to desperately try and misinterpret this in any possible way so they can feel insulted. why the fuck do so many people cling to this idea that they're indistinguishable from cis women?? why do you WANT to act like theres some inescapably female core of yourself when youre nb or whatever else? what the fuck, man?

feel so fucking insane about pearl devoting her life to making sure her friends win. she has people who care about her again and after knowing what it means to be utterly alone she would rather die a thousand times over than live without them

this is what sets her apart from the other winners, especially grian and martyn: she knows what it is to survive, to be left alone with nothing but smoke in her hair and blood on her hands, and she will never go back there. she'll die before she does.

she builds homes, pets dogs, picks her people. she spends her time in their company— she wears no iron armor. she hovers; do you need anything, how can i help? really, she's saying this: what is there for me to leave you when i die? because all she learned from winning is that the world is deafeningly quiet without pool parties and warden shenanigans, and there is no victory in standing alone

no no you guys don't get it. the x files cancer arc was, excuse the pun, a fucking white whale of a tv plotline that would not have worked nearly as well on literally any other show. it was a complete hail mary. the writers' room nearly didn't make it happen because they were worried it would fall too deeply into soap opera territory. and on any other show, it would! but the x files is about four key things: mistrust in the government, faith in both science and the otherworldly, building a life around trauma, and the fine line between love and codependency. it is the only show where the entirety of this situation- a government experiment on an unwilling young catholic leads to a terminal illness that is counteracted by a literal scientific miracle in the eleventh hour due to her partner's refusal to accept her impending death- could both happen at all and happen well. none of the themes in the cancer arc were new to txf at all. they'd all been lurking, to some extent, in the background since the pilot. the cancer arc wasn't merely milking a left-field catastrophe for the drama, it shoved the overarching themes of the show to the front and said look. look what these people are to each other. look how impossible it is to face the darkness alone. regardless of when the plotline was conceived, it was always going to happen. it was the only way the story could have ever gone. they were always doomed from the beginning

if smeyer wasn't a coward vamp!Bella would have immediately eaten her daughter Rensesmem whole-hog like Saturn Devouring His Son

my favourite moment in the whole show so far

the bit in HtN in the canaan house dream bubble where harrow says something along the lines of, "this is unsustainable, you are all in danger, we need to find a way for you to escape" and abigail responds, "we know how. we already did it for the kids. we all could have left at any time and we all chose to stay, for you". and then harrow is like, "ok but at least ortus should leave. he isn't a fighter, he never was, he deserves to leave" and abigail just shuts her down. she's like, "i already tried, and he can't be convinced. he wants to stay for you". i am unwell about it. harrow can't even really try to convince the remaining souls to leave her because they have already sent away the ones who needed to be protected and they have already tried to convince each other, and failed. there's nothing left for her to use as ammunition against herself. there's nothing left but evidence that she is cared for. forgive me but i just want characters who have spent their life drowning in self loating to be forced to reckon with the fact that they are loved.

just twitch having a little afternoon fun with the uncle

Do you have any headcanons or thoughts about Falin having a crush on Marcille pre-canon? Especially during her later years at the school/the years she was with Laios.

Just full on "awkward and slightly gnc teenage lesbian has a massive crush on the touchy-feely girly girl straight best friend" tropes everywhere. Even better bc it's the "best friend is also the popular girl while lesbian is the slightly ostracized quiet one" dynamic in school. Falin gets so so so good at not having a heart attack every time Marcille gets in her personal space. But she's so resigned to never saying anything bc why would a girl as blinding as Marcille ever like her back. She also doesn't make an effort to get over it either, she's just content to be trapped in that stable dynamic of silently being in love with Marcille while getting to enjoy CLEARLY being Marcille's favourite person. She gets so used to it that it's almost just background noise most of the time-- it would have to be, unless she wanted to be freaking out 24/7 bc Marcille is so goddamn affectionate.

Her feelings also definitely change throughout the time that they're in school together-- at first it was this "whooaaah pretty older girl" puppy crush that you can clearly see developing in the flashbacks we get (I think she doesn't even like... realize her fixation on Marcille is romantic at all until years after it starts, when she's 12-14 ish and all the other girls around her are talking about crushes). But then they get closer, over the years Marcille starts getting really attached and letting down her guard, and Falin gets to see the ridiculous side of her. She gets to calm her down from her tantrums when experiments don't work out, or help her clean up when something explodes in her face. I feel like the progression of her feelings from "schoolgirl infatuation" to "unrequited love" probably almost exactly corresponds to how slowly Marcille goes from trying to keep Falin at a polite but friendly distance (like she does with everyone else) to her facade completely eroding as she becomes her cheerful and ridiculous self again for the first time since her father died.

That's probably the saddest part: Falin knows that she's clearly Marcille's favourite person on the surface level, but she doesn't quite fully grasp the enormity of what that means to Marcille. She doesn't get that she's the person who made the world colorful again for Marcille, that she is the first person outside of Marcille's family to really and truly make her laugh. She just thinks she's the beloved but dinky little short-lived sidekick, one of many that Marcille has had and will have.

Part of it is that, despite Marcille becoming such a clingy and affectionate best friend, I think her initial demeanour already did its damage. You see Falin being super adventurous and weird at first, bringing Marcille berries and other stuff, only to be rebuffed by Marcille exasperatedly saying she's working or looking kind of put off by it. And by the time you see her a little older, shes already quieter and better at masking -- and I'm not saying that that's entirely Marcille's fault (being the weird girl at an all girls academy for almost the entirety of her teenhood must have been brutal, my god) but she definitely learned that she's a potential nuisance to Marcille if she doesn't tone herself down. She learned that Marcille most likely sees her as a weird little kid following her around bc she has no other friends. And for the most part, she was never given any reason to unlearn any of that.

And that all very very smoothly transitions into Marcille being her "first love that was never meant to be anyway" when she leaves the academy. Chapter closed in her mind: she loved and pined from a distance and that was that. Every now and then she'll see another woman with Marcille's build or her shade of hair and be like ":( I miss her..." But then just kinda move on with her day. Same with when she's going through her own spellbook and finds a note that Marcille left her/correction that she made-- she'll smile fondly and reminisce about how much Marcille doted on her, and then move on.

Sometimes she thinks about contacting Marcille but convinces herself that it's too late (she spent too many months focusing on getting Laios healthy again and didn't mean to go no contact, but ah well). It's only when she has a practical reason to be reaching out that would also benefit Marcille ("Marcille is studying dungeons and we need a trustworthy mage to go with us to the dungeons") that she feels like she's allowed/that it wouldn't just be 100% a nuisance.

I almost think she didn't expect Marcille to reply at all, only to get a telegraph (or some in-universe equivalent of express mail, maybe magical pigeon carrier) that's like. EN ROUTE TO ISLAND. LETTER TO FOLLOW. and she freaks out like AAAA LAIOS SHE SAID YES WE HAVE TO CLEAN UP NOW.

I do think getting a response accidentally sparks a little hope in her, judging by the way she acts in the chp 57 flashback-- she's pouty that Marcille sees her as a kid, gets really worked up about being presentable, and then tries to play it cool when she actually meets Marcille (as if she didn't freak out and force Laios to shave while rambling a mile a minute about Marcille). She's an adult now, really and truly, and she's seen and survived things that her 18 yr old self would have never even imagined-- then all of a sudden, the person she was in love with since she was ten years old appears, and she's so desperate to be seen as mature and competent. She's trying soooo hard to impress Marcille with her newfound combat and dungeoneering experience...

Only to fall right back into their old dynamic. RIP. At least she gets the girl eventually, even if it takes dying twice and being the core catalyst behind an almost-apocalypse.

Don't let Alisaie fool you, she is amongst those MOST in need of therapy

a little design idea i had for a swamp/coast hybrid based off colorful fishing lures and the Nomeus gronovii fish. Still unsure on name but i know for sure they love fishing. Some stuff:

has an annoying amount of retractable venomous barbs (see: tail, spine, and fins)

got the trademark bright markings of swamp lurkers, including the iconic false eye in the wing, however she can't "color change" them like full lurkers do

his harpoon tongue is coated in venom that strangely enough seems to attract and lull fish, and resembles a hook more than a spear, as do the sickle index claws

the minis

donna getting her memories back only to immediately be like “you motherfucker. you fucked up my brain. you made me BE NICE and KIND and GIVE UP ALL MY MONEY!!” meanwhile london is burning

You have no idea who he is. You were only there when he was a baby who needed to be protected. I was there when he learned to walk. I was there when he first went out into vacuum. I was there for all the moments his mother should have been there. And I've felt guilty every day since.

THE EXPANSE ◆ Oyedeng (5.07)

in light of capcom getting rid of the entire winters family and making a new protaginist instead of bringing back literally any other  already exsiting character with potential

Thinking about Reverend Daughter Gideon again.

Like Harrow Nova is tragic on a outrageous level, two hundred murders that did nothing, but Harrow knew what her parents done when she was very young and the thought of a tiny baby Gideon learning that she should be dead but isn’t is just…. Her attempted murderers are now acting like her parents while their actual child (the only companion she knows) is treated like trash right in front of her.

Our Harrow tries to be the best because of massive guilt, that even though she knows she can’t ever make up for what her parents did she has to at least try. Reverend Daughter Gideon, however, would be driven by fear. The only thing that kept her above being treated like Nova is being a necromancer, if she’s a bad one she might just lose everything.

The fandom needs more Reverend Daughter Gideon is what I’m saying