Always Dreaming

[salantami]

Les Étoiles (“The Stars”) in Ivry-sur-Seine, France, is one of the most iconic examples of post-war experimental housing. Designed by architect Jean Renaudie in the 1970s, the complex rejects the monotony of uniform blocks — instead, it bursts into angular terraces, sharp geometries, and lush rooftop gardens.

Photograph: Robert Doisneau

[official-sonic-team]

i liked this picture I took on my trip

[notcordeliachases-blog]

fangirl challenge: female characters ↳ cordelia chase (1/12)

[thornfield13713]

Lex. Lex, please. Lex, stop. Seriously, sweetheart, he isn't worth this.

Ahem. So, Lex just bought the whole football team new jerseys and is giving them a little pep talk about fresh starts and not giving up on things that mean a lot to you that could not more obviously be directly aimed at Clark. Apparently he's going back to the season 1 strategy of trying to get Clark to like him by giving him things, which- isn't working too well, as Clark bluntly says Lex can't buy back his friendship.

Which- I would say 'mate' at this juncture, but this version of Clark Kent is not my friend. I do not understand why he fucking wants your friendship back. Like- over the course of this alleged friendship, you have accused him of murders he did not commit, questioned his sanity, caused him head trauma on multiple occasions, compared him repeatedly to his abusive father, refused to rescue him from unjust imprisonment even when literally begged to, concealed information directly relevant to his own safety which ended up getting him poisoned, and betrayed him directly to his abusive father. Lex, in exchange- has investigated local weirdness and had some photos up in his investigation room to show that he knew Clark was connected to that local weirdness, even if he didn't know exactly how. I rewatched the scene where Clark finds the room in preparation for this episode, and - there isn't any surveillance photos, no indication any of those pictures were taken without Clark's knowledge, he's posed for all of them...this is roughly equivalent to Chloe having a picture of Lana up on the Wall of Weird.

Like- the kindest interpretation of Clark's insistence that Lex was only pretending to be his friend to investigate him is that Clark knows how unacceptable all of that shit was, and can only believe that Lex put up with it because he had some secret hidden agenda (which makes Clark the victim and means he doesn't have to reckon with all the shit he did), and even that is not terribly sympathetic.

Seriously, darling, build yourself a kryptonite laser and go after him, he deserves it, and it might well make you feel better.

[thornfield13713]

Lex. Lex, please. Lex, stop. Seriously, sweetheart, he isn't worth this.

Ahem. So, Lex just bought the whole football team new jerseys and is giving them a little pep talk about fresh starts and not giving up on things that mean a lot to you that could not more obviously be directly aimed at Clark. Apparently he's going back to the season 1 strategy of trying to get Clark to like him by giving him things, which- isn't working too well, as Clark bluntly says Lex can't buy back his friendship.

Which- I would say 'mate' at this juncture, but this version of Clark Kent is not my friend. I do not understand why he fucking wants your friendship back. Like- over the course of this alleged friendship, you have accused him of murders he did not commit, questioned his sanity, caused him head trauma on multiple occasions, compared him repeatedly to his abusive father, refused to rescue him from unjust imprisonment even when literally begged to, concealed information directly relevant to his own safety which ended up getting him poisoned, and betrayed him directly to his abusive father. Lex, in exchange- has investigated local weirdness and had some photos up in his investigation room to show that he knew Clark was connected to that local weirdness, even if he didn't know exactly how. I rewatched the scene where Clark finds the room in preparation for this episode, and - there isn't any surveillance photos, no indication any of those pictures were taken without Clark's knowledge, he's posed for all of them...this is roughly equivalent to Chloe having a picture of Lana up on the Wall of Weird.

Like- the kindest interpretation of Clark's insistence that Lex was only pretending to be his friend to investigate him is that Clark knows how unacceptable all of that shit was, and can only believe that Lex put up with it because he had some secret hidden agenda (which makes Clark the victim and means he doesn't have to reckon with all the shit he did), and even that is not terribly sympathetic.

Seriously, darling, build yourself a kryptonite laser and go after him, he deserves it, and it might well make you feel better.

[ciricearts]

small bat 🦇

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

.........

Good lord I really do hate what DC has done to Professor Martin Stein in current continuity -_-

Remember when he was a nice, fatherly dude who just wanted to look out for Ronnie and give him advice and help him do cool science tricks while fighting weird ass villains?

I miss that

[vo-kopen]

Yeah this feels bad. Also, given the Stein last name and that he’s Jewish at least in the cw Flash tv show, a part of me is like “is this antisemitic?” Like either by route of him being a part of a secret conspiracy, or given Raymond’s youth, via something akin to the old blood libel. I don’t know if there is an exact match in history, but I am not Jewish, and this still makes me concerned.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

I gotta say, I really really DON'T love the fact that Geoff Johns decided to take a Jewish character and make him part of a "shadowy secret conspiracy" who was manipulating a teenager

But you know, Geoff Johns would never do anything BIGOTED....it's not like he's a massive fucking racist, homophobe, misogynist, transphobe and all around piece of shit or anything...oh wait....

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

#*sigh* apparently im also taking custody of Martin and Ronnie in the DC Divorce.#join the batgirls and Wonderfam. ill treat u right#what the fuck is this even

PLEASE DO ;-;

"You can have them back when I feel like you can be trusted with them"

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Firestorm, specifically Ronnie and Doctor Stein, are some of my favorite DC characters.

I had really hoped DC would wise up and retcon the conspiracy/Superman Project away as Doctor Manhattan’s machinations with the timeline. Instead, they’ve doubled down.

This colors everything previously written and makes it all actively worse. It hurts.

On top of everything else, it’s also the worst kind of retcon, because it requires us to take moments where we were privy to a character’s private thoughts in older works, where no one else was around, as disingenuous.

Not unlike Max Lord. Another terrible Johns retcon.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

DC really haven't seemed to know what to do with Firestorm for a while now even before this terrible retcon, like they also did two terrible attempts to relaunch the character following Flashpoint as well and I am really bamboozled as to why they keep doing this because like

Firestorm, as originally written, is basically DC's Peter Parker, he's a character who really just kind of clicks just as much now as he did when he was created

Down on his luck teenager who gets powers and has to learn to use them responsibly, has a wacky rogues gallery made up of weirdoes with various mad science powers, he's got Martin Stein as an Uncle Ben-Meets Obi-Wan type figure who can offer him advice and experience

You don't have to re-invent the wheel here DC

Like, there's a lot of stuff from older comics that DOES need to be changed/updated a lot of the time because sadly a lot of older comics are kind of full of sexism and racism and general fuckery that has aged like a fine milk

But honestly in the case of Firestorm all you really need to do is update some of the pop culture references and slang to modern times and you've essentially got an episode of Invincible so I don't see why DC is like "No we have to UTTERLY CHANGE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS CHARACTER TO MAKE IT WORK"

Like

NO

We don't need this

[vo-kopen]

Dc: we could use our pre established Firestorm as our Spidey pastiche in our line of shameless marvel knockoffs, as is his vibe, ooooooor we could make an oc who looks more like Spidey and after his book gets canceled will never show up again

Dc: …

Dc: Sideways it is then!

(No offense to Sideways fans, I know some folks liked him, but if you already had a named guy in Spidey’s niche, why not just use him like how the Terrifics mostly used established dc heroes and the exception used classic dc lore. Again, why re-invent the wheel?)

[cbros5]

"(No offense to Sideways fans, I know some folks liked him, but if you already had a named guy in Spidey’s niche, why not just use him like how the Terrifics mostly used established dc heroes and the exception used classic dc lore. Again, why re-invent the wheel?"

In fairness, Firestorm is not DC's only Spider-Man pastiche. There's Kyle Rayner, Wally West, Jaime Reyes, arguably Dick Grayson, Virgil Hawkins, Tim Drake, Terry McGinnis. DC loves making Spider-Man copies the same way Marvel loves making Superman copies.

[pilot-of-eva-00]

“I criticize the writing in this piece of media and think some parts were poorly executed or tone deaf” can coexist with “I still love and appreciate this piece of media and how it helped me and it still brightens my day when I see it”.

[corsairesix]

Cape comics fans will always bring up how canonically difficult it is to make a character trans (especially transfem ime) as opposed to making them gay, citing young childhood flashbacks, pregnancies or pregnancy scares, strict families, etc.

But like, none of that applies to closeted transfems, right? Let's crack some eggs

[corsairesix]

You're right, random person with "concerns" about the logistics of making Emma Frost a trans woman. I'm sure, then, you are completely onboard with giving Gambit estradiol

[failure-to-adult]

Emma Frost being a trans woman would honestly make more sense than her current origin story. She has also canonically had a full body sculpt.

[corsairesix]

I mean the reason I used Emma Frost was that she was, if not intended to be trans originally, at least heavily inspired by trans women that Chris Claremont and Ann Nocenti knew

[cbros5]

"I mean the reason I used Emma Frost was that she was, if not intended to be trans originally, at least heavily inspired by trans women that Chris Claremont and Ann Nocenti knew "

Learn something new everyday.

[brw]

We're giving Cable erectile dysfunction.

[brw]

People have been tagging this with "Well he's old" and like I get that but also even if he wasn't old I would be a Cable erectile dysfunction believer. To me it's less to do with his age and more to do with the fact that he's so fucking huge just an absolute unit of a man that I don't think he has enough like blood circulation going on to get it up like I think if his circulatory system tried to reroute blood to get his dick hard his heart would give out from the lack of blood and he'd die. Also I like to imagine time travelling all the time has broken his dick somehow I don't know why or how this would be the case it just feels right.

[cbros5]

Being part machine probably doesn't help either.

[perennial-princess]

The Gardener’s House at the Palace of Versailles, France

[coraniaid]

@ethanrayne said something in the tags of this reblog a few days ago which I've been thinking about a bit since. Because I think it sort of gets to the heart of why I find the issue of how this site talks about Giles (especially as opposed to Joyce) so frustrating.

I was complaining in that post -- as I often do -- about the double standards by which Joyce and Giles are often judged as Buffy's parental figures. He made the reasonable point that, and I quote [any typos below are mine, of course, as is some of the punctuation, which I've added to make the text more readable in this format but hopefully doesn't change the intended meaning]

"Joyce is in fact Buffy's actual mother. Giles is not Buffy's father and the ways in which he ends up as a parental figure are nuanced and not entirely in his control. But while he has obligations as a mentor he doesn't have obligations to act as a father. So there is nuance to why the ways Joyce fucked up are treated worse: because she very much does have an obligation to be better in the specific role of a parent."

And on the one hand ... right, this is obviously true. Giles is not Buffy's father and he does not have a directly comparable role in her life to Joyce. But ...

Look: I agree that Joyce is Buffy's mother and Giles is not actually any sort of parent. As a Watcher he has a specific kind of mentor relationship with Buffy, one that involves parts of Buffy's life her parents aren't aware of (and perhaps don't want to be aware of). More generally, as (in the first seasons of the show) a member of her school faculty and as (often) the only adult in the group he has a more general duty of care towards her and the other members of the Scooby Gang. But -- although the show will toy with the idea that Buffy thinks of him as a kind of parental substitute a few times (most notably in Season 3's Helpless and in early Season 6) -- he is not her father. That's not how either of them would characterize their relationship.

Buffy's relationship with Joyce (who is her mother, and post-divorce the only parent actively involved in her life) is qualitatively different to (and, I'd argue, clearly more important to her than) her relationship with Giles (who is a man she met for the first time aged 16 and who isn't even her first Watcher). Joyce has obligations that Giles doesn't have, she's known Buffy for a lot longer, she relates to Buffy as her daughter first of all and as a Slayer (if at all) a distant second (whereas Giles, however fond he grows of Buffy over time, only knows her at all because he has an obligation to train her as a Slayer and so probably watch her die young: she's not his daughter, she's his Slayer). It would be ludicrous, on the face of it, to complain that Giles doesn't take an equal share in making sure Buffy has somewhere safe to sleep and study or that he doesn't pay his "fair share" towards her food or clothes or education. He is not her father, biologically or legally or really in any other sense. It is not reasonable to judge him as if he were.

And, honestly, if everybody in the fandom could agree on this point, I wouldn't make so many posts complaining about the different ways Giles and Joyce are talked about. I would probably be a lot less critical of Giles on here than I'm sure I come across as being.

I agree with this point myself! I don't think (for example) that Joyce somehow deserves credit for offering to take Buffy ice skating for her birthday when both Hank (and Giles) refused to do, or for paying for Buffy's textbooks in college, or for looking after Dawn instead of deciding to leave her to the care of two twenty-year olds and fly back to England. She has an obligation to do all that, as Buffy's actual parent, an obligation that Giles does not.

However ...

... the truth is, the fandom doesn't agree on this. At all. You don't need to exert yourself even a little bit to find posts in which people talk about Giles as "Buffy's father" (or even as Buffy and Xander and Willow's father, or even as a father figure to the wider Scooby Gang), or talk about him "raising" the three of them (despite the fact he, you know, met them all for the first time when they were sixteen and he very much Did Not Do That) or explicitly describe him as a better parent than Joyce (or as Willow's parents). I certainly see these posts, very regularly, and believe me when I say I do not seek them out. I've seen a dozen this week alone, either on my dash or just casually browsing the Buffy tags.

And it often feels like there's a kind of motte-and-bailey situation going on. Quite possibly not consciously on any one person's part, but certainly collectively.

On the one hand, yes, Giles isn't obliged to give Buffy a regular allowance or make sure she has somewhere to live or to fight for her right to stay in Sunnydale High or whatever else. That's not what he's paid to do (... or, well, presumably not? I think the implication is that Kendra's Watcher is responsible for Kendra having somewhere to live, a duty which Giles is very happy to offload onto somebody else while presumably still getting paid the usual Watcher salary, but that's getting into fanon and speculation so best saved for a different post). I mean, officially, he's only even her Watcher for about half the show (less than half, if your read is that he only becomes a Watcher again after Checkpoint; just over half if you assume he becomes Buffy's Watcher again when she asks him to step back into that role at the end of Buffy vs Dracula).

So, sure, Giles is (probably) going beyond his minimum responsibilities when he does do those things (threatening Snyder into letting Buffy back in in Dead Man's Party; offering Buffy a large check to help with her financial problems in Flooded). I think it's important to note that Joyce also does these things, and in fact does them rather more, but: yes, as she's Buffy's mother such acts are more expected of her and don't count in the plus column in the same way.

But then it feels like -- and again, I'm not saying any one person is doing this, only that the considering the fandom in aggregate it can feel like it -- there's a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand that happens around this point. Somehow we start by noting, accurately enough, that Gilles does nice things for Buffy sometimes, even though he isn't necessarily obliged to, which is to his credit, while the nice things Joyce does for Buffy don't count for as much (or at all) as, because she's Buffy's mother, she's already obliged to do them. And then -- or so the argument seems to go -- this pretty uncontroversial observation gets presented as evidence of the claim that Giles is, in fact, a better parental figure than Joyce is. Because he does nice things for Buffy (which he doesn't have to do because everyone knows he's not her dad), and she doesn't (if you exclude the things she's obliged to do because she's Buffy's mom). And that's what I find so aggravating.

Yes, there are reasonable reasons to judge Giles and Joyce by different standards. They really aren't trying to fill the same sort of role in her life. But if you're going to justify their different fandom treatment on these grounds, I don't think you [general you; again I'm not suggesting anybody specifically does this] can fairly then start comparing the two of them and have Giles emerge as the "better" parental figure. Not if Giles wasn't being judged as a parent to begin with. Of course Giles is going to emerge as the more positive figure if you start from the premise that everything good Giles does for Buffy goes in his plus column while the majority of things Joyce does for Buffy aren't relevant. But that's only a relevant comparison if you take it as read that Giles isn't any sort of parental figure and shouldn't be judged as such. If you actually are going to argue that maybe he is a better parent, you have to be willing to judge them by the same metric after all.

And conversely, if anybody points out that, actually, Giles treats Buffy appalling at times (drugging her and lying to her about it in Helpless, say, or leaving her alone and flying out of the country when she's going through the worst months of her life and begging him to stay and help) or that a lot of the ways in which Joyce mistreats Buffy stem from her not knowing anything about Buffy being the Slayer (something that, because she's her mother and not a Watcher, she can't be expected to know and indeed something Giles fights very hard to stop her from learning), it's as if we retreat back to the first position. Of course Giles has to be distant sometimes. He's Buffy's Watcher, after all, not her dad. Why would you judge him as if he was?

The answer to which is: well, people in the fandom keep talking about what a great parental figure he is! If they stop doing that, I'll stop pointing out that he isn't one.

(And, honestly, asides from what I think is the fairly obvious fandom misogyny at work here, this discourse just makes me kind of depressed because the implicit logic of the "Giles is Buffy's dad!" argument is that any adult man who regularly interacts positively with a group of teenagers and seems to (mostly) like them must be some kind of de facto parent. And not only is that not true in general - there are plenty of ways adults and teenagers can positively interact outside of the bounds of the nuclear family -- we're specifically talking about a work of fiction set in a high school.

Giles is, even aside from being a Watcher, quite literally paid a (second) salary to have a positive relationship with teenagers! That doesn't make him Willow or Xander's parent; it makes him part of the high school faculty! Like ... did none of you have a positive relationship with any of your high school teachers?? Am I really the outlier here?)

[dmbakura]

i still think the devil may cry fandom's vast oversimplification of the themes in devil may cry (regarding human "good" vs demon "evil") are amplifying some very bad faith criticisms of the netflix adaptation. as well as some weird moral essentialism i just really don't vibe with. this is long and kinda messy but whatever.

i see people mostly take issue with this scene in which lady and white rabbit have their confrontation and lady says this:

this, to me, does not go against the themes of the game at all. it's not some cynical attack on "humanity". contextually, this is a sorely needed moment of reflection on lady's part, where she's able to connect with white rabbit and realizes that their ruthlessness is a shared trait. she's speaking about herself here. lady considers herself the antithesis of a demon, yet she realizes how terrible she's been acting and that they're Not So Different. she's a flawed human being and this is an explicit, textual acknowledgment of that.

i really take issue with the idea that devil may cry has ever been about coddling and portraying humans as innately good. most major villains in the dmc games are human, statistically. every single dmc game except the first 1 has an over-arcing human villain at the center of the conflict. sanctus is a religious cult leader. agnus is an unethical mad scientist. arius is a CEO. arkham is a wife killer. these are all very human evils. demon villains like mundus and argosax tend to embody more stereotypically villainous evils, but the human villains are much more nuanced and varied in their approach, which in some respects makes them a lot more dangerous.

but you might say "well they're evil because they throw away their humanity, as dante even calls out. these tears are a gift only humans have" and to which i say, so? these are conscious choices these villains made to get where they are. yes, thematically their decision to throw away good traits like compassion and empathy led them on the path to evil, and dante himself equates these traits with humanity, but dante is also biased against his demon half and has an entire arc about being wary of that part of himself until he's finally able to accept it, which is how he awakens his sin devil trigger in 5 (mirroring vergil's rejection/ultimate acceptance of his human half.)

idk man. just feels yucky seeing all of this "well demons have always been an Evil Race in devil may cry" when no, it's always been more complex than that and pretending otherwise is a massive disservice to this series. there is no hard moral dichotomy in dmc. sparda disproves this from the very opening scene from the very first game. he was one of the most powerful demons in hell, who fell in love with humanity and decided to turn against his own kind. even if demons in a general sense tend to be "evil" (mundus seems to be a particular outlier in how evil they are honestly, hating humanity to an almost comical extent), they're shown to be completely capable of good, just as on the flip side, humans are capable of being evil. again, it's about choice, what you do with the power given to you, choosing to protect what's important or throwing away everything. these are not immutable traits of humans or demons, as that would mean characters like sparda, trish, arkham, sanctus, lucia, bradley, baul, modeus, etc would not exist.

there's maybe an argument to be made about dmc netflix's explicit use of politics and whether this is appropriate or not, but i don't think it's a bad thing it decided to really dig in on the nuances of humanity. i think the choice to make white rabbit a human villain who in a sense "throws away his heart" makes him thematically consistent with devil may cry's ethos, as ive mentioned in my other post about him. i view him akin to a character like vergil, who straddles the line between human and demon, and doesn't really fit into either "demon overlord" or "overambitious human sociopath" like the other series villains. more variety is good actually.

[nmrosario]

X-Men #8 “1964 Wrestling Promotional Poster” variant cover (not a real variant cover, just a fan-made pipe dream).

[avyc02]

Quick(ish) sketch of Rumi in Ejae’s recent music video fit. 💅✨

[to-orrr]

summer sketches 🌾

[walerihq]

[sag-dab-sar-follows]