I feel like many people miss out on a crucial aspect of the kenstewy dynamic. and that is the fact that stewy absolutely asked kendall "does puppy want a treat??" before rubbing coke into his gums
Wish we could get to a point where the ST fandom collectively understood that trauma isn’t just something that happened to Billy, but that it was in progress the entire time he was alive. There was no definitive end point. He didn’t have a traumatic childhood. He was having a traumatic childhood. He wasn’t abused in the past, and then just decided to hurt other people because of it. He was being abused, and he had no healthy coping mechanisms to deal with it. Billy’s life is a trauma response. He was always reacting to trauma, because he was always being traumatized. It wasn’t just incidental, and even Billy’s attempts to escape it had negative consequences. You can’t overcome something that’s still happening to you.
he never got to exist past the abuse.
there is no past tense with billy.
because it was constantly happening.
always surviving. never living.
When Billy Falls in Love
–
Max’s hair is twisted into a rough pink towel when she answers the door. She’s got a berry sorbet sunburn peeking through the angry red flush on her cheeks, freckles looking like they could peel off at any moment. It’s the same way Billy gets in the summertime, but he turns gold in seconds.
Max stays angry red.
She wasn’t at the pool today. Steve knows because he was at the pool fifteen minutes ago, and Billy wasn’t there. And if Billy’s gone so is Max, and if Max is here–
“He’s not here. What’s with the flowers?” Max wonders, with her teeth pulling at the wrapper of a Scoops brand popsicle as she eyes the poorly picked and assembled bouquet of daisies and weeds Steve managed to convince the gardener to let him snag.
Steve can tell she doesn’t really want to know what the deal is. Maybe she already knows.
Max is fourteen and a perpetually bored pain in the ass, already moving to shut Steve out of the house when he jams his foot so the door won’t close.
Max tugs on it. Groans. “Steve,” Max says, sounding tired.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know because we don’t keep tabs on each other, you psycho.”
Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.
Anonymous asked:
i may be just gasping at straws here but there is something just. so insane about how the nature of kendall and shiv’s relationship is somewhat cannibalistic. like shiv spitting in his drink and kendall drinking it anyway and the ‘i love you but i cannot fucking stomach you’ and the idea of kendall being the sacrificial lamb in 2x10 + shiv’s ‘can’t eat’ . like the whole consumption aspect of it all.. just wondering if you had any thoughts on it i suppose!!
YES very true. the kitchen scene is a callback to their childhood in more ways than one--it reflects the siblings' relationship with each other and with food and how they're linked (dyou remember the summer of competitive eating disorders:)). its notable that only shiv and kendall say they're hungry despite none of them having eaten dinner, and that kendall is the only one who ends up eating anything. roman licks the cheese as a joke, passes the ingredients to shiv, who actually blends the discordant foods together, and together they feed kendall this drink that is definitely terrible for him. siblings ! no but i do think its an unsubtle metaphor but it works ! kendalls position as the heir has always relied on roman being the weaker dog bolstering his position, on shiv being the baby who will never get it bc shes a girl. and if he wont drink the rest, they'll drench him with it, turn his own promised position against him in jealousy and self interest and a mistaken notion of love
and shiv spitting in it was very much foreshadowing, yeah. i liked how it was a callback to her spitting in kendalls notebook after the "rape me/i'm not the only one," incident during her speech--it was a childish act then, and its one now, and it shows how any attempts at enmity or solidarity come from the same place of shared abuse, of seeing someone better than you see yourself and punishing them for the traits you share. kendall drinking it again reflects how his position will never be untinged by shivs simultaneous understanding as well as animosity. mirror traps real
the way this all relates to the characters' relationships with food is also ofc very interesting. roman doesnt eat at all, he denies his body and sees it as evidence of his failure to be logan's son. he never wanted ceo, it couldn't have been him, dad's death cements the impossibility of the love he craved by which proximity to the ceo position was made valuable at all. shiv admitted she was starving but never ate anything, only asked her mom if there was food. she brings up food only as a move, only as something that can serve her, because to acknowledge it otherwise would be weakness. ofc this is reflective of her relationship with power, and love--she'll bring it up first so she's noted as being aware of the cards at play without showing her hand. but she never actually gets it because when she's said the quiet part out loud, voiced her ambition, there's nothing stopping the quiet parts of her weaknesses in this world from being consumed i.e. her womanhood :) in the end all she can do is acknowledge the fact of her starvation, and spit into the poisonous food bowl while still hungry.
ofc its kendalls bowl she's spitting into. he sees food as fuel, as something that gets him where he needs to go, but never actually enjoys it, and sees such enjoyment as juvenile--we're not at buckley anymore--but his firm belief in rationality and health corresponding to awareness means its another step to the ideal position that doesn't really exist. at the end of the day he will drink the concoction because he considers himself stronger for it. i did a fucking year in shangai, i'm ready, etc
ultimately this is reflected in their choices in the endings. roman says yes first then retracts with shiv. i think hes the one who says shiv has no stomach for admin which is like, him pinning the decision to support kendall as well as the consideration to kill him onto shiv lol. SHIV doesnt have the stomach for admin, and SHIV cannot stomach kendall, and it comes down to the same thing--shiv shutting kendall out bc she's never been able to digest his choices. this DOES relate to pierce ofc and logan throwing up at the breakfast and ultimately waystar being a declining corporation that could never have eaten up pierce. do you see what im saying do you see how it makes sense from this angle that shiv was the only one who ended up still "in," even if only as the ceo's wife. shiv being unable to stomach kendall is the final nail in the coffin--its acceptance of this fact. of the death of waystar, and by extension logan. anyway i keep thinking about how when they all trooped into the kitchen, wet through, kids again, there was never really any real food in the fridge :)
crazy to me that a decent chunk of people hated the finale because it just makes so much sense to me dramaturgically. like especially the later half. kendall inflicting pain and comfort to roman at the same time, pressing romans fresh wound into him as he hugs him. roman falling into place because thats the only form of comfort he can stomach. shiv seeing, once again, roman fold under the command of violent older family member, seeing kendall say "thats fucking right" after roman votes against the gojo deal in the same way logan would when roman complied to his demands. shiv being confronted with seeing her older brother turn into her father, and reconsidering everything. and kendall only digs his hole deeper, turning vile and mean. when you grow up with a mean man in your house there's always one there even if hes gone. shiv confronting kendall about the waiter and he denies it even happened. says it wasnt real. no real person involved. kendall again using violence towarda roman as a motivator but this time its different and he fights back because nothing fucking matters. shiv votes for the deal and kendall is once again too late to do anything. its already been done. tom sucking the biggest dick in every room.
logan's crypt literally having space reserved for the kids to be buried with him shiv joking around with caroline that she's gonna emotionally neglect her child just like her mother did to her "my god I hope it's in me" they are not escaping they are never escaping they don't want to escape!!!!! they dont want to be free!!!!! the cage is open why the fuck are you still in there!!!!!!!!!!!!!
~The Many Legs of Peeta Mellark, or A Weirdly In-Depth Look at Panem Prosthetics~
Concept art for Peeta’s leg because I can (details below the cut)
Destiel. End of season 4 kiss. Born completely out of curiosity, attraction, loneliness, fear. Bodies bumping, fingers digging. Cas keeps dying and coming back over the next few years. He keeps going away at the precise moment where their affair could turn into something more profound. Their touches never, ever linger. The angels know. The angels use it to provoke Dean. Dean keeps it in. Cas comes back wrong every single time. They never, ever talk about it. Cas never initiates it. It's almost like he never knows. They go to purgatory, it happens again. They seek comfort. They come back. Cas is not the same. They fight. Cas breaks Naomi's connection. Remembers. Realizes how heaven has been meddling with his own memories for centuries. He tells Dean about all the other Dean's he had to kill, except one. He tells Dean everything. He realizes what was going on through Dean's mind. How lonely he felt in those feelings. Understands his own feelings. They fall into each other's arms. Do you see the vision.
sam being a cunt about dean’s homemade EMF reader that dean literally made from scratch out of a walkman after earning his GED while being a hunter with john while sam studied poli-sci and went to halloween parties. and you expect me to believe sam is the smart one
me and all my best friends who would hunt sam for sport
but it doesn’t serve my interests. how does it serve my interests?
thinking about connor in prague saying "dad's theory was you got two fighting dogs, you send the weak one away, you punish the weak one." in relation to this episode, and the way the siblings view abuse inside their own family.
shiv and kendall and their belief that connor and roman are the weak dogs that got the brunt of logan's worst behavior, because abuse is reserved for the kids who can't behave - the ones who aren't smart and mature enough to make it in the world. abuse evokes pity, because abuse is what happens when you expect too much from people who obviously aren't capable of more.
and then they go forward in life, believing that they're just naturally more intelligent and more capable than connor and roman, as if being raised seeing what happens to you if you aren't a perfect child wasn't the entire point of the "punish the weak dog" mentality that logan instilled in them. the looming threat implied behind any praise they do receive that tacitly tells them "you're not like roman and connor" because everyone knows what happens to roman and connor.
the absolute height of the rich capitalist mindset. "we're succeeding because of our own merit, and other people fail because they don't have what it takes" when in reality they're succeeding because of arbitrary rules made up by someone who knows that infighting makes meaner dogs.
i've been struggling to articulate What's Going On in the karaoke bar scene but i think you've explained it well here. i don't think shiv and kendall are protecting roman and connor in any meaningful way in that scene. they're not being actively malicious either, but they are demonstrating how they've internalized logan's idea of hierarchy. it's fucked that logan neglected connor and hit roman, but it's his treatment of them that's fucked, not the assessment of connor and roman as deficient, weak dogs. they are still weak dogs in kendall and shiv's eyes, they can't even stand up for themselves against dad!
like, i've seen some people saying kendall and shiv avoid acknowledging their own abuse when fighting with logan. i get the idea, but i think 'avoid' implies a kind of passiveness towards the topic that isn't exactly accurate. connor and roman avoid talking about their abuse. it's frequently the elephant in the room, it constantly informs their behavior, but they rarely if ever bring it up, and when someone else mentions it they deflect and diminish. that's strong. everyone hit me i'm fucking annoying.
for kendall and shiv, their abuse did not happen, or whatever happened was not abuse. connor was neglected and roman was hit because they were subordinate to logan. it's unjust to mistreat the powerless. but kendall and shiv refuse to view themselves as having been subordinate to logan, ever. because if you were kicked you must have been a weak dog unable to defend yourself, and if you were a weak dog once you're a weak dog forever - it's an inborn, inescapable trait. they need so badly to view themselves as equals, who can play against logan and win in his game where he made up the rules. it's the only game they know and the only one that matters to them and it's designed for them to lose
thinking about how orpheus turning to look back at eurydice isn’t a sign of mortal frailness but a sign of love
“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?” ― Ovid, Metamorphoses
This is true no matter the version you're reading.
1. Eurydice trips and Orpheus turns to help her because he loves her.
2. Orpheus cannot hear Eurydice behind him, and fearing that he's been tricked, turns to make sure she's there.
3. Orpheus makes it out of the Underworld, and so full of love and excitement to be with Eurydice, turns to embrace her, forgetting that they both need to be out of the Underworld.
No matter what happens in the story, Orpheus loses Eurydice because his love for her compels him to look.
Orpheus, I can forgive you, then, There’s not a soul alive who wouldn’t have looked back
The Descent, by Tyler King
Don’t forget Gluck’s opera, where Eurydice doesn’t know Orpheus is forbidden to look back, Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her, she assumes he must not love her anymore, and Orpheus finally looks back to reassure her of his love because he can’t bear her anguish.
In that version in particular, but possibly in all retellings, a part of us wants Orpheus to look back, because his failure proves his love.
What gets me is that Orpheus’s love for Eurydice is the reason why he descended after her in the first place... but its also the reason he failed. Had he loved her a little less they would have made it out. Had he loved her a little less and he never would have gone down after her at all.
version of spn where dean is openly bisexual the entire time and definitely fucks a priest during a job and sam is does his judgmental little "dude" and dean is like "i already went to hell once man,, what's the worst that could happen" and everytime there's a new bad guy or apocalypse sam is like "this is bc you fucked a priest" and eventually he says it in front of Cas who does his little squint and head tilt and just
"You what?"
“Well,” Dean, who has been fully and utterly unprepared to have to deal with this in front of Cas, says. “Listen-“
“In a church,” Sam cuts in, resigned as he stares at the gathering clouds in a blood red sky. “This is because you fucked a priest in a church.”
“You what?” Cas repeats, in a tone entirely impossible for Dean to parse.
“He lived in a little building off the church!” Dean snaps. “What was I supposed to do, bring him back to the motel room where Gigantor would judge me when I kicked him out?”
“Listen,” Sam says. “I am not well versed in priest fuckery, but I’m pretty sure there is literally nowhere worse to fuck a priest than in a church.”
“It wasn’t even really in the church, you big baby-“
“And now I have to live my life, saddled to you-“
“Nobody is making you hang out with me-“
“Haunted by your bad, slutty decision-“
“Don’t slut shame me-“
“Don’t slut shame you for getting freaky with a priest? Dean?”
“We actually didn’t get that freaky,” Dean mutters.
“In a church?”
“It was a little building that was attached to the church-“
“The proximity to the church-“
“Okay,” Cas interrupts, with the bearing of a man under the impression that he is displaying an infinite fucking patience. “I fail to see how this is productive-“
“I dunno,” Sam says. “Maybe if we sacrifice Dean to God-“
“You know, your insufferable self righteousness about this should have ended right when you started shacking up with Ruby-“
“We are not sacrificing Dean to God,” Cas says flatly in his I am an Angel of the Lord voice. “We have a problem unrelated to Dean’s blasphemy. I suggest we solve it.”
“It wasn’t blasphemy,” Dean says.
“Was he in the getup, Dean?” Sam asks, in his most long suffering tone.
Dean struggles for a second, uncomfortably aware of Cas’ eyes on him.
“Well, it fit him pretty well-“
Sam turns to Cas. “All we gotta do is take him up a mountain, strap him to a big flat rock, and let nature take its course.”
“No. Not yet.”
Dean draws himself up. “The fuck do you mean, yet?”
Cas ignores him. “Sam, I would advise you call Rowena.”
“Right.”
“Dean.” Cas fixes him with a look he can’t read. “We will discuss this later.”
“I mean, we don’t have to-“
Cas vanishes, leaving Dean disgruntled as Sam walks away to call Rowena. Dean sticks his hands in his pockets out of a lack of something to do.
“Ooh, Dean, let’s dog pile on you for that time you fucked one guy,” he mumbles. “Let’s aaaaaaall gather round and judge Dean for that one time he hooked up with one priest-“
“I’m on the phone!” Sam shouts. “Sulk quieter!”
Dean picks up a pinecone and chunks it at his ginormous head, and it all devolves into chaos from there.
purple pink skies.
–
A flier for Hawkin’s High’s Spring Fever dance goes up almost immediately after Steve considers himself out of the woods.
“Should’ve used my bike pump to inflate your balls,” Robin says.
im working on this enormous fic (gonna be posted in April) but also im starved for validation while i write so pls have this snippet
90% of arguments about media could just be solved by saying “different people like different things in their stories” and leaving it at that
this person probably humanizes cops/racists, rape, child abuse, incest etc as long as its fictional lol
williamfbuckley
this is a good and normal leap in logic to make from this post!
I certainly hope they do, and not just when it’s fictional. Humanizing them is an important step in stopping the actual real-world harm.
If you recognize that they’re human, then you can understand it’s an issue of rationale and perspective, not Inherent Evil - and you can learn to think like an adversary. This is the first step in developing a good security mindset. That mindset, in turn, is the first tool you need to build functional safety measures and protections for your community.
There’s an added bonus, too - if you recognize that they’re people, you’ll notice that not many people are villains in their own narratives. They aren’t choosing to be evil, they’re rationalizing their harmful choices. And you start asking questions.
If you recognize that cops are people, you learn to ask yourself “Am I being reactionary, authoritarian, and needlessly violent?”
If you recognize that racists are people, you learn to recognize and unpack the racist lessons you were taught.
If you learn that rapists are people, you learn to actively verify consent.
By recognizing that terrible people are not Inherently Bad, but choosing to do terrible things for reasons they think justify them, you get better at protecting yourself from them - and protecting everyone around you from your worst tendencies. It’s a difficult and ongoing process, but it’ll protect you far better than any list of specific Bad Things to watch out for.
There’s a flipside to this, of course, and it’s important:
Anyone who tells you that your enemies are inhuman monsters is using you.
Either they’re trying to convince you that they couldn’t possibly be an Enemy because they’re a normal person… or they’re trying to keep you from noticing the little rationalizations. To convince you that atrocity is okay when you do it.
Don’t fall for either lie.
That last point there is really important. How often do people get away with truly atrocious shit, because everyone around them thinks that inhuman monster thing?
Of course my friend can’t be a rapist. They’re my friend, not some inhuman monster!
Of course my sibling doesn’t hit and gaslight their spouse. They’re my sibling, not some inhuman monster!
etc etc etc
So all the little and big things that point to [fill in blank] doing [thing] are rationalized and explained away. Because [fill in blank] is a person and not some inhuman monster, so they’d never!
By dehumanizing people who commit atrocities, we blind ourselves to the ability to do that shit in people we first and foremost see as people already (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) and in ourselves.
when people are talking about those ugly-ass boring-looking corporate-memphis covers they’re putting on romance novels now and they’re like “well at least they aren’t putting half-naked men all over them anymore……..” like wow shut the fuck off. are you even listening to yourself. “ohh i’m so glad novels don’t come with their own lovingly realized oil paintings on the cover anymore” that’s how you sound. good grief. be quiet for 100 years.
“Well at least these novels about erotic love aren’t depicting anything suggestive of erotic love on the cover.” Completely normal reaction. You know what else I hate? When there are *spaceships* on the cover of a sci-fi.