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he/him - a blog for my trinkets

[ambientwitch]

In the face of extermination say fuck you again but this time it’s up close

[bookie-the-reading-junkie]

– Directors' Commentary, Project Hail Mary (edited slightly)

[analligatorr]

The Torch, The Star

[fiafey]

this is not enough

[coldeveryseason]

"the great laws" of the vampires that are used as the formal legal justification the paris coven uses for their lynching literally have a clause about not turning disabled people or people who need care into vampires. the trial script literally calls claudia a "cripple" and the entire alleged justification for why a 14-year-old black child should've been left to die from her injuries in a race riot, why her entire existence past the age of 14 is supposed to be a "mistake" that needs correcting, is bc saving her life would mean she'd have a stunted child's body and her body would cause her anguish, which can be read as an allegory for people who survive serious physical trauma having permanent disabilities. and despite all that it's still underlined that claudia was a greater vampire than either louis or lestat or any member of the paris kkkoven, that she wasn't a mistake and she wasn't inherently doomed or fated to kill herself. she's literally kidnapped in s2ep6 when she's on the precipice of true freedom and happiness and self-actualization, finally living a life separate from her adopted parents, ready to travel the world with her chosen partner. but bc she's a black woman in a black child's body and seen as unfit to live by vampire society for being a "cripple", bc she stepped ~out of line~ and transgressed normative racist hierarchies and hierarchies of vampiric power by (almost) killing her white maker, bc she broke every cycle of abuse she was born or adopted into and freed herself, she's tortured, publicly humiliated and murdered before she reaches age 50. i know claudia is based on anne's daughter who died of cancer and narratively speaking she was always "meant to die"- but from an in-universe pov, from the logic of the story she inhabits and how her character is written on the show, there's nothing destined or doomed or inevitable about claudia's death. the fact that she dared to survive past age 14 despite the limits of her body isn't an inherent tragedy, and the fact that she didn't survive past age 46 wasn't mercy. claudia's murdered, brutally and unjustly, and her life is cut short bc of the intersection of violent misogynoir and ableism that's taken the lives of so many other black women before their time

[zombiegirldean]

the thing about Faith is they literally heal Dean to humiliate him. his determined skepticism and disdain is a pronounced FEAR RESPONSE to the concept of God because of course concepts like 'hope' and 'faith' are fucking scary! faith makes you vulnerable. It makes you naked. It’s inherently the practice of taking down your shield, doing a trust fall, showing your underbelly, risking absolute humiliation. That’s like, the whole point. and dean is s1 is all exoskeleton, he's Tough, nobody's allowed under his skin, and he gets soooo horribly twitchy around priests. he can't resist snarking at Roy bc this culty southern gothic bullshit is FREAKING HIM OUT. which is exactly why Roy picks him, because a skeptic is a satisfying convert, they want to forcibly tear his armor away in front of everybody, haha bet you believe in God now. it's a violation. he doesn't react with wonder, he reacts with HORROR, of COURSE, bc why do I deserve to live, why was the natural order disrupted for me, you did something to my body that I don't understand, you got under my skin, everyone was looking, this is humiliating. and then s4 happens.

[jasmineintheforest]

Btw it's blatant racism for spn to not even name or cast Gordon's sister even though Gordon is meant to be a dean and sam parallel.

EYE think Gordon's sister should be smth like claudia from iwtv. She's been turned by force but she's groomed to enjoy it. Regardless of her confusions, she is Good at being a vampire. She's got a knack for hunting, just like her brother. They're smart. But she was just too vulnerable. We know the alpha vamp is canonically a pedophile. Most human-drinking vamps in spn are predators in many ways. Gordon was like 18. His sister must have been in her preteens probably. She didn't actually stand a chance. (And I think their parents must have disbelieved or disowned them in some way, given how gordon talks about the event). Imagine you're like 12, you're newly turned by creeps, your brother is out there searching for you but he's so scared of you too. There's noone else left to lean on. What do you do??? You maybe lean into being a vampire even more. And then your brother kills you. And he can never sleep again and you're now in Purgatory. A little while later, your brother shows up there too.

[valtsv]

there's something to be said about how grace ended up "enjoying it". as in, he was forced into the position on the ship, but ended up making rocky as a friend and actually did end up saving earth. i wonder a lot about what that did to him psychologically. he must have hoped on some level that he would have failed, because then his protests would have meant something, and he would have been right, and they would have been wrong. but because that isn't the case, he has to live with the fact that he actually did complete what they sent him out to do, and they were right, and he even enjoyed it a little.

yeah. i think we get a pretty clear idea of the psychological impact it had in the final scene, when rocky informs grace that the hail mary is equipped to return to earth, and all he has to do is say the word. the way grace's body language and expression convey visible relief when he realises that rocky isn't telling him to leave, but asking him to stay. while i don't think the revelation was immediate, i'm certain that grace felt nothing short of saved by the realisation that he wouldn't be able to return to earth. that he had not only the choice but the desire to turn back for rocky. because everyone on earth is, in a way, complicit in grace's violation, through either ignorance or - as carl demonstrates - inaction. stratt made the call to sedate him, but it took multiple people working with her to catch him and pin him down and force him onto that one-way trip. how many other people on earth would have done the same in their shoes, if it meant the best possible chance of saving the world? if it meant that at least it didn't have to be them, or those they love? to return would mean living with the burden of that, either internalising it to avoid tainting the world's pride and joy in the success of the mission and dying with it as a shameful secret, or being subjected to endless relitigation and spectacle. going "home" was never an option from the moment he was recruited.

we also get a pretty clear glimpse into his state of mind when he says to stratt "at least i never have to hear you say i told you so, even though you were right". that "even though" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there (even though you hurt me, even though i should have died - it's a more common backhanded compliment than you might think, as a survivor, to be told "if i were you i'd have killed myself" - even though i was afraid, even though i said no). and that's not to say that i think he blames stratt (or carl, for that matter) at all - that farewell video is his gift of forgiveness, or at least understanding that all the power in the world and the choices she made with it don't make her any less of a martyr than him, for her. even though she was right. even though he enjoyed it.

[ilovadmiralzhao]

What is Stephanie Myers's problem making her background characters more interesting than the mains. How am I supposed to pay attention to the guy who died from the Spanish Influenza when twins who were burned at the stake for witch accusations are there. Or the 1920s queen who killed her rapists one by one. Or the guy whose father was a vampire hunter. Or the

[atomikats]

my personal take on the matter

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

One World of Darkness hill I'm always ready to die on is that Saulot needs to have been a genuine force for good for his role in the story to be effective, and all the attempts to retcon him as secretly evil all along were written by stupid monkeys and need to be ignored. He needs to have been the one Antediluvian who had a moment of honest-to-God realization that he's on the wrong path, and he needs to have done his goddamn best to make up for all his past sins, and to make a lasting legacy of using his vampiric powers for the common good of both Kindred and mortals, and he needs to have gotten rewarded for all that by getting diablerized by Lord Tremere, the grossest, pettiest piece of shit in the entire universe, who even all the other vampire Elders feel dirty after talking to, and who then proceeded to genocide the entire Clan Salubri to near extinction. That story beat just doesn't hit at all if it was just one evil vampire killing another, the history of Clan Tremere absolutely needs to start with their founder cannibalizing the (un)living embodiment of all the vampirekind's hope for an actually better future, and then just keep getting worse.

[hhershlag]

Derangement

[nobelowz]

heavy metal masterrrr

[nikoisme]

scrapped painting,, thought i might as well post it

[nikoisme]

i want to put my thoughts behind this: this was supposed to be a piece for pride month, titled "you were loved". the sky is the color of the aroace flag (just upside down)!

basically, i wanted to show an aroace person — an old aroace person, to be precise. being aroace myself, i am always told that i will forever be lonely and miserable if i don't get a partner. so showing grace, who is aroace to me, as old and happy and fulfilled and oh so loved by his best friend, was really important to me <3

[tlirsgender]

I fear a lot of christians' takeaway from the story of the garden of eden etc etc was that knowledge is bad. And that's why they're like this. Like genuinely that's just part of the ideology ohhhh nooooo

[tlirsgender]

[ID: a reply from @birdman-general that reads, "oh is there another intended takeaway (genuinely curious) (this is the only implication ive heard besides obedience to god) (lifelong atheist but have mormon family) (shits depressing genuinely)" /end ID]

Yes, actually!

I can't necessarily speak for *intended* takeaway (authorial intent on Thee Bible is kind of. Uh) but in Judaism -- which generally encourages questioning and critical thinking, and places a good deal of cultural emphasis on intellectual pursuits in general -- I've seen a number of different interpretations from different people. The moral of the story doesn't have to be "knowledge bad" and/or "women are the root of all evil"

Like, you can interpret it as humanity becoming something "more" than other animals by this act of independent thought (good thing). You could say that God did this intentionally, you could point out that the first thing Eve did with it was share, that Adam took it in trusting his wife. You can take being cast out of Eden as more allegorical of leaving a sort of womb, something necessary. So on and so forth. But yeah the main thing is Being Capable Of Thought isn't, uh, BAD? A popular belief in Judaism is that our understanding of right and wrong is what makes us human and makes our choice to do good meaningful, where animals can only act on instinct

There's kind of a whole thing in christianity of Children's Innocence and Blissful Ignorance and etc etc etc that's like. A lot to unpack. And helps us understand the ideology behind their political interests 👍 but all of that is FAR far far far from the only reading of the text itself

*leaving a big fat fuck asterisk on this that Jewish people famously love disagreeing with each other I'm just speaking from, like, my personal studies & the takes I've seen most often

[nikoisme]

book sillies

[zzoupz]

Petrova Miku