kalevalas:

getting back into lotr is like. i believe in the power of choosing to do good even when you don’t feel like you’re good. the power of healing instead of hurting even if healing hurts more than hurting. the power of being unable to heal and of finding relief in the unknown. i want to be kinder. i want to be better. i want to be gentle and unburdened again but i have to walk on and on. does any of this have meaning? why of course even if you can’t remember or find the meaning of it in this very instance. it’s okay. you can cry. it’s okay. you did your best. what does it mean to be a good person? i want to believe that i can change and change the course of things even if i’m insignificant in the grand scheme of things. no one is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. i would walk with you to the end of the world and beyond to the next world too and the one after that. don’t leave me behind. i love you. i love you and i must leave you but i will always remember you. i love you. until our roads converge once more, be happy and eat well. thank you for following me to the end, i’ll see you again after the last star falls.

(via thearkenstoneandtheacorn)

hellolovelyscientist:

everetterice:

ALT

“In one of the most notable moments in sports history, Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was just a few feet from the finish line, but became confused with the signage and stopped thinking he had completed the race.

 A Spanish athlete, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him, and after realizing what was happening, he started shouting at the Kenyan for him to continue running; but Mutai didn’t understand his Spanish. Fernandez eventually caught up to him and instead of passing him, he pushed him to victory.

A journalist asked Ivan, “Why did you do that?”

Ivan replied, “My dream is that someday we can have a kind of community life where we push and help each other to win.”

The journalist insisted “But why did you let the Kenyan win?“ Ivan replied, "I didn’t let him win, he was going to win.” The journalist insisted again, “But you could have won!”

Ivan looked at him & replied, “But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honor of that medal? What would my Mom think of that?” Values are transmitted from generation to generation. What values are we teaching our children? Let us not teach our kids the wrong ways to WIN.”

(via incomingalbatross)

gffa:

Anyway, I’m gonna cry about feelings how it’s not just Dick pointing out what Bruce has built for his kids, how he’s saved them, but that Dick is barging in on Bruce’s feelings about his parents.

The sacred, hallowed ground of Bruce’s feelings about what his parents think of him–freshly thrown in his face, due to them actually being there via Time Shenanigans–and Dick stomps right over it, because that’s how Bruce absolutely should be written: he’s gutted by his parents’ disapproval, but his kids’ lives are just as important.

Batman is driven by what happened to that eight year old little boy in Crime Alley, that’s what started it, that’s why he does this, to save others from what he lost–and that’s why this conversation has such weight and meaning. Dick, the child who most mirrors Bruce’s lost, forced to watch his parents die in front of him and forever wonder if they would be proud of who he grew up to be, the first one who barged his way into Bruce’s life and brought new connection and new meaning, is the one who is barging right in on Bruce’s feelings about his parents again.

Dick is the one standing up to tell Bruce, yes, your kids matter to you just as much as your parents do. What you did for us is just as important as what your parents think of you, they’ll come around and see that about you.

And Bruce responds to that, because, yeah. His kids are just as important as his parents. The death of Martha and Thomas Wayne define so much of Batman’s life, but equally as important to him are the sons that he saved, that he brought light back to, that brought light back to him.

Batman’s kids absolutely are just as important as his parents, they’re just as essential to the core of who he has become as the one that created the Bat in the first place, and of course it’s the first one who refuses to cede that importance, the one who stomped all over Bruce’s isolation and grief in the first place, who shared it and understood it and still does, but also knows that what they have now is just as important.

ANYWAY, BRUCE LOVES HIS KIDS JUST AS MUCH AS HE LOVED HIS PARENTS AND I’M NOT OKAY ABOUT IT.

poorquentyn:

It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

(via is-it-mungojerry-or-rumpelteazer)

gffa:

“Truthfully, I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed working side by side with Dick. We have a shorthand I don’t share with any of the others, save for maybe Alfred. He’s always been the one keeping me centered. Grounded.”

I genuinely don’t think Bruce has a favorite among his sons, I don’t think that’s what this is about. He has a unique relationship with each of them and each of them are narratively a reflection of a different aspect of Bruce, each of them occupies their own space that’s not about the others.

But, and admittedly I may well be biased because of who my favorite is, I do think Dick was the first and that means something. Because he was the one that broke down the wall first and because it had to be him that broke down that wall, the way his tragic loss mirrors Bruce’s and the way Dick is a narrative counterweight to Bruce, that Dick amongst all of them, is the overall superhero that Bruce wants to see in the world. He’s the light that Bruce wants to see, even while he works in the dark. He’s the one who refuses to not be loved, time and again. Respected, yes. But also Dick demands to be loved.

That this is what keeps Bruce centered. That being poked and prodded to keep acknowledging that he loves people and that his presence in their lives helps them, that’s what grounds him. That’s reflected in Dick’s big speech in this issue, that Thomas and Martha disapprove of Batman because they haven’t yet seen what Bruce did for these kids he loves, what he did for Dick’s life.

And, too, I think Dick was the youngest when he came to Bruce and the one Bruce raised the most, that Dick will always be his boy in a way the others were already halfway to adulthood, that Bruce loves all of them just as much as each other, but Dick will always be his kid. It’s why he struggles over and over with respecting Dick’s independence and autonomy, because that right there is his baby even more than the others, who came to him later and more independent.

Bruce has unique, complicated, and fascinating relationships with each of his sons, so much depends on who needs him the most, that’s who gets the priority and the interaction and narrative weight at the moment. But when you ask which one of them does Bruce need the most–it’s the one who understands him and centers him, the one who still looks at him, this complicated and flawed and often broken man of a father, and says, no, you’re going to love me.

Because that’s what Bruce needs more than anything, that’s when Bruce is at his most interesting as a character, when he’s interacting with those he loves and being forced to reckon with all his issues because he needs to be better for them.

(via bigskydreaming)

goodqueenaly:

It’s like poetry something whatever but also comparing and contrasting Ned and Illyrio in their approaches to Jon and Aegon, respectively.

(Obviously, this post is based on the ideas that both Jon is the biological son of Rhaegar and Lyanna and Aegon is the biological son of Illyrio and Serra, as well as the notion that Serra was herself a descendant of the Blackfyres.)

Ned’s outlook for Jon centered on embracing Jon as his son, to the absolute exclusion of his birth identity. Whatever Lyanna’s exact dying words had been to her brother, Ned certainly seems to have interpreted the promise as one to keep Jon safe, without the revelation of his biological parentage. From the first, Jon would know himself only as Jon Snow, with all the implications the name carried; with Jon’s surname designating his (ostensible) bastard status and his first name reflecting his (ostensible) father’s own personal history, Jon’s identity would be wholly defined by and linked to Eddard Stark. Yet Ned would not merely craft a surface-level identity for his sister’s son; he himself would actively, indeed fiercely embrace his own role as Jon’s “father” in more than just assumed genetic paternity. Far from fostering Jon with a pliable aristocratic family elsewhere, Ned installed Jon in Winterfell even before the arrival of Catelyn and their own son and sternly defended that position to his new wife. Jon would grow up as an undisputed (at least to Ned and the Stark children) member of the family, educated by the same maester, trained by the same master at arms, present for the same hunting trips and political responsibilities. Never would Ned hint that Jon belonged, at least by ancestry, to the royal dynasty which had ruled Westeros for three centuries (and dominated in Valyria for millennia prior); Ned would treat Jon only as his son, relying on the firmness of his decision and Jon’s own Stark appearance (inherited from Lyanna, but easily attributable to Ned himself) to maintain the assertion.

For Illyrio, however, his son Aegon has represented not the chance to accept a paternal role but the opportunity to invent a grandiose dynastic destiny for him. We cannot know, at least for now, if Serra sought a promise from Illyrio regarding Aegon’s future, or if Illyrio himself believes that he is acting as Serra would have wanted, but it seems highly improbable that Serra asked that her son be raised to believe that he was in fact the child of the last Targaryen crown prince, and take the Iron Throne as such. Illyrio’s decision to do exactly that may therefore represent a sort of betrayal, perhaps spiritual if not actual, to Serra’s (again, I think probable) Blackfyre origins, and a distinct contrast to Ned’s choice with Jon: aware that Aegon’s female-line Blackfyre credentials would earn him little if any political support in modern Westeros, Illyrio has instead appropriated a false identity for his son that Ned saw in truth for Jon but rejected - that is, the boy as the son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, a would-be heir to this father’s legacy. If Illyrio raised (or, perhaps more accurately, oversaw the raising of) Aegon as a young child in his own Pentoshi manse (evidenced by those musty children’s clothes and Illyrio’s old knowledge of Aegon’s favorite candy), such (relatively) hands-on rearing I think ended rather early: Varys brags to the dying Kevan that “Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk”, and (politically charged boasting aside) Aegon’s extensive education certainly suggests Varys may not be exaggerating too greatly here. Illyrio, unlike Ned, not only found (alongside or thanks to Varys, of course) a willing, indeed eager Westerosi aristocrat to act as the hidden Aegon’s foster father (with that figure even giving Aegon a name derived from his own, likewise fabricated, alias), but clearly specified that the disguise was to remain a surface-level illusion: Aegon is well aware that he is (so he believes) a Targaryen prince, and that his life on the Rhoyne is no more than a secret training ground for his eventual Westerosi royal inheritance. Where Ned remains the central figure of Jon’s life - not only as his (again, assumed) father, but the only parent he knows - Illyrio functions little if at all in the thoughts of Aegon: he is the faraway benefactor whose chests contain the gold to fund his expedition, the unseen planner whose schemes are derided by Tristan Rivers. Each boy may have inherited his mother’s looks, but where Jon’s Stark features only underline the connection between himself and Ned, Aegon’s Valyrian appearance only serves to enhance Illyrio’s argument that he is, in fact, Rhaegar’s son.

dduane:

izhunny:

izhunny:

probablynothumanish:

clarasimone:

kitten-kin:

alltheusernameiwantistaken:

owlinautumn:

atlinmerrick:

kitten-kin:

valkyrien:

kitten-kin:

skyholdherbalist:

sarahthecoat:

kitten-kin:

<3

Is the “fluffy one shot” pig doing whip its with those cans?  Cause that feels accurate.

@skyholdherbalist Yup! XD

@frozensnares

Then… where do I go? I’m just at home muttering

into the void of an open word document.

@valkyrien Oh but there’s more to this party than sugar and sweets~ ♥︎

Fluff Fest on RedBubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/kitten-kin/works/36582633

Dark Side on RedBubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/kitten-kin/works/36634358

THE PIG IS EATING PINE TREES IN THE PINING I CAN NOT DEAL.

IT GOT BETTER

Where’s the lemon buffet

Third Comic, featuring the citrus-themed juice bar~ @alltheusernameiwantistaken

Available on RedBubble at https://www.redbubble.com/people/kitten-kin/works/37192337.

This has me in stitches !!!!! LOL ah mon dieu, woo, I needed that :-) Thanks @lodessa

@ashensanity

Literal FANFIC art. Art of FANFIC. I love this so much!

This could use another go round.

(laughter) “MESS ME UP.” :)))))

(via porphyriosao3)

jackdaw-kraai:

husborth:

husborth:

i need less “happy, fluffy cinnamon roll” luke skywalker and more “raised in the ass-end of nowhere with spiders 4ft across who used to shoot rats the size of saint bernards for fun, who at 19 killed one million people in a single shot and just happens to be really optimistic for a guy who is a guerilla fighter and a space revolutionary”

let me take you on a little journey:

luke skywalker is public enemy number one, with a bounty on his head that’s astronomical, who took down the deadliest weapon the galaxy’s ever seen in a single shot he fired on gut instinct listening to the advice of a ghost with his eyes closed. in one shot he took the rebellion from a sprawling network of small resistances to engaging in all-out war with the empire. he wears the lightsaber and the last name of a murdered jedi traitor, uses a banned weapon and believes in a banned religion and accompanying psychic powers that children are either slaughtered or indoctrinated into a cult for having. yesterday he’d never flown in space before and a day later he’s the commander of a squadron, and he flies like a natural.

in the span of a few days after the death star is blown to smithereens, taking out a massive portion of the empire’s top brass, the scariest guy in the empire - seven feet of murder and death where if he steps on a battlefield the only advice anyone can give you is run and pray he doesn’t find you - calls on a moratorium of Hunting The Pilot Who Destroyed The Death Star. the scariest motherfucker in town decides that he wants luke skywalker’s head on a pike, and bans anyone else from getting it. in the span of a week it looks like luke skywalker made a mortal enemy in the cyborg that hell spat out because he was too evil to contain.

and it’s THAT guy who earnestly thinks this scrappy little rebellion’s got a shot. it’s that, this immensely weird motherfucker from seemingly nowhere, that tells you, genuinely, with his own mouth, “we can do it if we help each other and never give up :)” and he sounds like an inspirational poster on the wall of the guidance counselor’s office. but you watch him wave the antique weapon the empire wants to pack him off to a firing squad for having, and you’re like, well, if this guy can believe it, maybe anyone can.

Luke Skywalker is inherently a madman who somehow gained the ability to make the universe reconsider its choices whenever he seems to be about to face consequences for attempting the impossible. An absolutely insane motherfucker who decided that hope and love would be enough to save the day, and you know what?

He was vindicated.

And honestly? That’s the best part of his character.

(via sith-shame-shack)