"He kept everyone out. But when he let you in.. when the sun shone, it was warm. It was warm in the light."

"World of a father."

"He made life happen."

"He made me and my three siblings."

"He got it on a deal."

"He didn't wanna go in the ground."

"A chance to get to know him?"

"I had trouble finishing a scotch with him."

"He made me breathe funny."

The cruel god, killing his creations from the moment they're born, and condemning them to life and death in his fist.

They are the house. Forever haunted.

idk how to put this more smartly but theres a weird trend among online leftists who have circled right back around to this quasi-religious hatred of all material need and its just. sorry but needing money to stay alive isn't... greed. you're not selling out by doing an ad read esp if it's something you're doing as a job. even if the job is artistic in nature

anticapitalism is the main tenet here for sure but at the same time it helps to.., idk. not act like we spiritually need to start forfeiting all mortal goods bc it's the one path towards nirvana or something. every once in a while i notice people reinventing asceticism in the name of praxis and it's very Sigma Grindset but with a lefty hat

just accidentally stumbled on an egwene hate reddit thread and everyone was bitching about how she tries to act like rand's equal when she's only the second-most powerful authority figure on the continent, and one sane person was like "well, balance was a huge theme of the series, so it's pretty clear that RJ did consider the dragon and the amyrlin two halves of a whole and that rand is meant to be egwene's equal co-authority rather than her superior" and of course they were downvoted to hell. and this one little thread just really epitomizes how the readers who approach WOT as a male power fantasy just fundamentally will never understand the series and its themes and the story it was ACTUALLY telling.

via theoceanblooms

Charlie: "Hey, uh, Dennis, uh, get to Frank as fast as you can. I have Malcolm and his dad."

i think the adult relationship to the childhood dog is something that is so tender and heart-wrenching and important. you are the last vestige of my childhood. you are the sacred keeper of the memories i hold dearest, but you can barely see or hear me anymore. who do i become once you’re gone? where do i turn to remember myself? you’re the last one sitting next to me at the door of a childhood home that no longer exists, waiting patiently for the return of a family that no longer exists. where can i live when you, too, no longer exist? i can’t let go. please don’t make me let go. i know you’ll leave soon. i wish you didn’t have to. but she’s just a dog. her life is short and i will witness her death and i’ve known this from the beginning. i didn’t think it would come so fast. am i ready? have i become someone yet? have i become unrecognizable to her yet? does she still see the child i was? i’m still the child i was. please, don’t forget the child i was. please don’t take her away from me.

Barriss-centric story where the 41st and the 501st get paired together for the duration of the war. Barriss gets close with Ahsoka on her (ahsoka's) breaks back at the Temple early in the war, and then eventually goes out and joins the 41st as the war gets worse. She kinda figures that if she can't keep saving people the right way back at the temple, maybe she can at least keep Ahsoka safe. There's pining, there's a teenage love story, there's some 'teetering on the brink of total self destruction as the war slowly degrades her sense of self,' there's a whole lot of 'trying to tell your mom that you are this close to killing yourself and she's just not getting it'.

Meanwhile Luminara is scrambling to deal with this entire situation and the growing sense of dread it inspires. She and Anakin are pretty successful together but holy shit. There is so much wrong with this kid what the actual fuck. Anakin tries to talk to her about Barriss except he offhandedly mentions the chancellor thing in the process and no no no go back what do you mean the chancellor involved you in private senate matters as a teenager.

This gave me similar vibes to:

Bonus: glowy "cracks" forming on someone's face.... hmmmmmmmmm

whats fun about barry as a protagonist vs other Morally Complicated Guy Shows is that he seriously has no ambition lol, his wildest dreams arent like becoming super rich or relishing in holding power over people, like all he wants is simple happiness, maybe career success, normal life stuff, his wildest dreams are like…. being able to have a wedding. having a kid or two. and theres something reasonable about that, it makes him relatable for a while until the show is very clearly like No dude, that is a fucking serial killer, you should not gaf! and you’re like oh right lol. it’s crazy to make such a simple desire seem so malicious but still human

i don't think i wanna read any more only friends meta for the rest of my life

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?

there are a lot of reasons i'm really, really impressed by how well sdmi portrayed the dynamic of an abusive relationship with pericles and ricky, and one of the big ones is how accurately they show what it looks like when abuse starts to escalate.

the extent of that is yet another thing that'll take a longpost of its own to go into, because it spans like.... the entire arc of their relationship in the show. but one thing that stands out to me in particular is their portrayal of the massive red flag that is a partner trotting out bigoted behavior against a group you're in. especially insults, and especially directed right at you.

this show has a LOT of fatphobia, jesus christ does it ever, and there are certainly some fatphobic tropes going on with ricky; but i've always been surprised and impressed by how many of the nastier ones they avoided, especially considering his role in the story and what his arc is about.

he is a major, nuanced character whose trauma is treated with full weight and sincerity. it's implied that his body type changed the way it did due to the trauma he went through when he was younger, and the ensuing mental illness, which is a pretty realistic experience for a lot of people. the things that happen to him are played for full tragedy and horror, when it would have been so, so easy for them to make light of it because Tee Hee Fat Guy and Tee Hee Male Abuse Victims Funnee. despite how his whole thing involves corporate greed, they don't go the route of portraying him as Gluttonous and Hedonistic; if anything he is very obviously not using all that money for even basic physical self-care, and the only time we ever see him eating anything it's when he's drinking wine grape juice with pericles. which, like, there's issues to be unpacked with that too, but jesus christ it's an improvement over what usually happens with characters like him.

he's a fat queer man who isn't degendered or made feminine in a mocking and/or predatory way. (there's nothing wrong with feminine fat queer men and they need more non-shitty rep, please and thank you god, but there is a lot of nastiness in the tropes they're often used for in mainstream media, and one of those tropes is when people consider 'fat queer man' and 'masc' to be oxymorons.) no one ever once calls him ugly; if anything multiple people in his life think he's attractive and desirable, for better or for worse. no one body-shames him. and no one ever mentions his weight.

except pericles.

'The Horrible Herd' and 'The Devouring' are two halves of a whole here, re: escalation of abuse. 'Devouring' is when the abuser goes full mask off and shit hits the fan; 'Horrible Herd' is the wind-up before the punch. HH is when ricky realizes things are getting Bad and he needs to put a stop to this now, and Devouring shows what happens when he tries, because by the point where it's gotten bad enough to give him a wakeup call it's already too late. it's how abusive relationships tend to go, and it's chillingly accurate.

and what's one of the things pericles says during Horrible Herd when that punch is winding up? something no one's ever said before now, including him? 'you pudding-faced dummkopf.'

he body-shames him. he insults his weight, and that's a major turning point. bigotry is something that's often there to some degree from the start, but not always, because some abusers are good at hiding things like that until they're confident they've got you where they want you. the message with ricky and pericles is loud and clear: when this happens, the walls are dripping blood. get out.

(if you can. and be careful when you try.)

when this show is good, it is really, truly good. god damn.

This Shouldn't Be as Relatable as It Is

"With the bogey of Sunday rates of pay, the LMS Northern Division ran those Sunday services on a veritable shoestring. Only Glasgow Central station was used, and one locomotive depot, Polmadie. Signal boxes were switched out wherever possible. From Paisley to Kilwinning, there was no box open except Glengarnock No 2, which was kept open for the ironworks. Staffs at stations were the minimum.

In June 1927 the LMS took a really daring decision, advertising a Sunday Excursion from Glasgow to Portpatrick on 18 June from Central station. The G&SW men had been complaining that they were getting no share of the Sunday jobs, so authority said to Corkerhill, 'Here you are. Run this excursion to Portpatrick. Put on two of the heaviest engines which are permitted, and give the job to your two senior passenger men.' So Corkerhill chose two big-boilered Manson 4-4-0s, Nos 14374 (ex-346, ex-157) and 14261 (ex-389, ex-259), of the 18 and 240 classes respectively. They gave them to the two oldest drivers, Sanny Rowan and Dick Gaw, who had been leading a quiet life on the 'old men's jobs'. They did not know the road into Central, but they were told to proceed to West Street and they would get a conductor from there. So they set off from Corkerhill tender-first, and with a big of juggling got to West Street. No conductor there. 'Go on. He's at Larkfield,' said the signalman, 'It's not far.' So they got down to Larkfield, and of course landed in Central nose first! They had to come back out to Eglintgon Street to turn. They got back in to find a train of eleven corridors and a Pullman diner, Helen Macgregor, 366 tons tare and filling rapidly.

They got away eight minutes late and sat for 15 minutes at Paisley waiting on the Largs train clearing Glengarnock. By the time the train left Paisley it was estimated that there were 950 passengers aboard. They called at Irvine, Troon and Prestwick, with a draw-up at each to let all the train get to the platforms. At Ayr, both engines took water. By this time the train was packed. There was an extra stop to pick up a party from Kilkerran. At Girvan both locomotives took water again. Webster was guard and he came forward at Girvan grumbling about the delay. Dick Gaw, flourishing his oil can, chased him up the platform, threatening to knock the bluidy heid off him.

Now came the problem. The scheduled top load for each of those engines, Girvan to Pinmore, was 140 tons, and they had 366! No assistance was available. How they got up, I shall never know. I think the regulators must have been twice round. Stop at Pinmore — another party to lift — missed the tablet at New Luce and had to stop and run back for it, arriving 80 minutes late Stranraer. They then took the whole train down to Portpatrick, rounded it (on a loop which held, I think, eight coaches) and hauled the whole lot back up to Stranraer, tender-first. At Stranraer there was no one on duty except a signalman. They had to turn, water and coal both engines; two big fires to clean. Then they had to turn to and fill finer tanks and lavatory tanks, and by buckets, for the hoses were either locked up or could not be found. Then back down to Portpatrick, with a 40-minute late start on the return journey. They had a special stop at Dunragit, parties at Pinmore and Kilkerran, and had double stops at all stations except Ayr, finally arriving 148 minutes late in Glasgow Central. The engine crews booked off at Corkerhill after eighteen hours on duty!

'Splendid!' said Head Office, examining the passenger returns on Monday morning, and it promptly arranged for another similar excursion [next] Sunday."

p. 31-33, Legends of the Glasgow & South Western (David L. Smith)

had talia not been character assassinated do you think she and bruce should have gotten back together?

no. i hate to use the word "phase" bc that would seem to diminish the importance of what's between them, which is something that will always persist esp as their continued dedication to the same causes and their respect for each other remains. but i do think realistically bruce should be a phase in talia's life. at least in terms of consummated romances specifically. i do love the idea of them remaining allies, close friends, and co-parents, but i think allowing talia to walk away from ra's and bruce in the first place has to stand for something in the long term. before talia went her own way i think it was easier to imagine a potential future where she ended up with bruce bc it felt like the desirable option. she was in this very debilitating position where she had little to no freedom to act on her own desires and goals, the embodiment of which was none other than bruce. so when you frame her situation pre-tower of babel, obv wanting to be with bruce was appealing. he was as much the love of her life as he was a means of escape and freedom and talia having the scope to then act on her own desires. i think that's what subsequently makes dc #750 (or is it #570. i never get the numbers straight and i'm too lazy to check) a really clever issue, actually, bc it acknowledges that and the fact that bruce once again setting her free bc of his love for her actually gives her the courage to step out on her own where she never has before. the fact that she has the option to go back to gotham with bruce and presumably have everything she's ever wanted with him, but she leaves it anyway, is a really huge deal. it's a statement. she loves him, but not more than she loves herself. and sure, what talia puts herself through during lex corp era certainly begs the question of whether her version of loving herself is really viable or in any way healthy, and i would love to see bruce help her recognize that she's not alone and that she doesn't have to do it alone to prove that she's capable. all of this i agree with. but i don't think that really means she and bruce have to fall back on their once-imagined dream of playing house. even if talia did find methods of going about her work that were mentally healthier i don't really know what'd be in it for her to play house with bruce in gotham. bc that is what it would have to be, for their relationship to work in any way. bruce will never leave gotham and son of the demon didn't need to explore that issue bc it was never going to get there but trust that corny as the line about naming the baby thomas or martha was it was reflective of a reality: gotham is bruce's entire life. no matter where he goes, no matter what he does, no matter who he works with, in the end he will always belong to gotham. and i simply do not think that would ever work for talia bc there is so much more she is capable of. while her vision is aligned with bruce's her scope of access and ability is entirely distinct of his own and there is so much more that she can do aside from relegate herself to gotham (hence why lex corp as an arc makes so much sense, bc it capitalizes on that scope). and yeah every superhero couple is kinda crazy and they have teleportation and shit but idk i don't think it's really a relationship for each party to go on long missions with ill-defined parameters that give them the worst sleep schedules known to man and occasionally they share a bed. it really isn't. and that's something that bruce and talia have to live with. their duty is always going to come first even though they both have a passion for civilian life. for talia to be in a relationship again she would have to stop having the liberty of being able to go wherever the work carries her and for bruce to be in a relationship again he would have to have the equivalent of a robin-wife. neither of these things is ever going to happen. so

"I'm Doc and this is Nurse Debbie. We were told you need a house call?" The 4-foot flower demon in a lab coat held his medical bag by his side while the Hellhound behind him looked on silently.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Charlie called him a doctor? Over a few broken fingers?

And a few ribs.

And maybe an ankle.

Workplace accidents, as usual - nothing that required this.

Angel rolled his eyes, taking in the sight of his unexpected visitors. He was damn near twice the height of the demon who greeted him, and the Hellhound in tow was hardly a typical specimen for a nurse.

"Goddammit," he cursed under his breath, bringing a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Fuck, alright. Let's get this over with."

He opened the bedroom door wider with a reluctant gesture for the two medics to come inside before limping over to the bed, wincing at the pressure this put on his ankle. He collapsed with a groan, holding out the injured limb for examining.

"Nothin' that won't heal on its own, doc. Don't even hurt," he lied. "So, uh... can we wrap this up? I gotta get some shut-eye."

make me your villain, Miss Holt...

All Jayn knew was that one moment, she was being fired for pretending to be a man (they didn’t exactly let women work at shipyards), and the next, she had a new job. Well, she knew that her father had used his connections to help her. (She’d hate to see the look on her mother’s face when she came home unemployed and failed.) A noble like him, Ravkan instead of Fjerdan, wanted help cataloging his things before he moved. She’d managed the supplies and salaries at the docks, so he considered her qualified. It was better than the other "help" her father had given her, which was an arranged match with a Matthias Helvar. There was no way Jayn was giving up her life to live in a freezing cold country amongst misogynists. She'd find reasons to put the wedding date off until she had enough footing to properly decline.

So she took a ferry from Kerch, a sandskiff through the mysterious Shadow Fold, and a train into Ravka’s mountains. The people in the eastern part of the world were easily the most superstitious. Those on the train had prayed to their Sankts before the journey had begun, and the Suli people who had agreed to take her to Count Morozova's door had unsuccessfully offered her a number of protective charms before they left.

Jayn told herself that there was nothing to worry about. She'd learned how to fight at the shipyards, with her fists or with whatever was on hand (no pun intended). But even in Novyi Zem, they told cautionary tales about the zowa Ilya, a man who dabbled in forbidden mystical arts to create something out of nothing. He had died a tragic death, and one of his descendants had used the same magic to create the Shadow Fold. It was said that enemies of Ravka were targeted by monsters who lurked within. In reality, Fjerda had only dared approach Ravka from the Fold once during the war decades ago, and it had only resulted in deadly failure.

She approached the doors of the Count's ornate, yet intimidating castle, and knocked on them with a shivering hand. Her luggage sat next to her, almost like an obedient puppy waiting to accompany her inside.

@starlsssankt