y’all wanna see the one line of a fic that changed my life and how i wrote and viewed will solace forever

okay Bet

this is genuinely some of the best writing in the world. caught in the river of tears that i cried by @thegoldenappleofdiscord , an exploration of will’s plague powers starting from his early childhood, is genuinely the number one fic of all time that completely took hold of my characterization of will.

i really and truly need you all to look and behold because oh my GOD. two sentences. two sentences and it just immediately tells you everything you need to know about will solace, about the GUILT he has carried since infancy, the guilt of being alive, the guilt of being cursed, the guilt of knowing before he knew the shape of his own hands that they could be used to decimate. to DECIMATE. this boy who loves with his heart who is understanding and kind and stubborn and so so so hopeful, so so so believing the world and the people around him, was cursed with the actual antithesis of himself. the healer cursed with not just the ability but the proclivity to destroy. to destroy in swathes, slowly and painfully, and not only to destroy but to intricately understand the depth of his destruction. not only will he disease the world he will understand every micrometer of pain he has caused and every way he is incapable of saving them.

TWO. SENTENCES.

two sentences and you feel the magnitude of his guilt. he was born guilty. BORN GUILTY!!! the contrast of that is breathtaking. this child, born innocent, born unknowing, born beautiful ignorant, carries the weight of his sin in his evil doing hands. like!!!! how biblical!!! holy shit!!! with one touch he is Death incarnate! with one touch he can drain the illness from your body! he must always be controlled! he must always be aware! he cannot rest, for one touch can destroy!

i don’t even need to read anymore to understand the weight on his shoulders. of course he does not rest. of course his truth is locked behind the ivy-covered barriers of his ribcage. of course he smiles. and smiles and smiles and smiles. of course he prays for death. of course he is bruised. oh my GOD.

i fell into like five different fandom pits and school is putting me through the wringer BUT. i want to continue this fic and im ngl this post motivated me sososo much. idk how much of this i will get done since i'm working on other things, but i got a surge of comments after this was posted and i realized that even if i don't think much of my writing, other people do.

anyway here's a bit of chapter four <3

MAYDAY MAYDAY OH MY GOD WERE SO FUCKING BACK

Prompt 11 - Listening to Music

“my sentient sword came out to me as transmasc, i mean, talk about un-she/they-ing your blade!”

@bambiilooza don’t mind me sketching your epic design with mine again…

circe edition 🩷💜🌸

it's okay, don't cry. run to the beach and back with Basilio, okay? if you can manage that without slowing down, then there's nothing wrong with your foot, remember?

reminded of this quote im gonna lie on the floor for a bit

saying “i want him” about the character but not in a romantic or sexual way . i just Require him i need to Obtain him

thinking about how mike kahale's main virtue was, above all else, loyalty. and how he stuck with octavian through everything. the manipulation, the killing, the lies. i believe he could've honestly left at any point – it's not like he wouldn't take any potential fight (and he knew to be careful around his food and drinks when in tav's presence). but he chose to. he just loved him like a dog loves his owner. and they both knew it. a first cohort soldier probably tried to make fun of them by calling kahale octavian's guard dog, and mike probably held his head up high and octavian said something along the lines of the soldier being jealous

this but it takes Al a while to die so that by the time Claymore realises something is wrong and finds Al's body, he's tortured with the knowledge that if he acted sooner he could have saved Al

“Don’t take it personally” How would you like me to take it then? Professionally? Romantically? Academically?

theoretically? aesthetically? metaphorically? existentially? metaphysically?

i always mean it when i say i love you btw

‘but thats a stranger you dont know’ and i love them. i love that they exist and i love that they passed through my life. and i love u too btw

reblog to tell your mutuals you love them for existing

I'm having a good time :)

i am not, sadly. my tummy hurts :(

I'm going to absolve you of this pain. I will transfer the pain onto myself.

ouuuuuuuughghhggggggggggggg,,,,,,,,,,,,, guuhhhggggh ooouughhhffgg :( oooouuumnhhhhhhhhh......

what if people over a certain height had a special currency called tall coins that short people didn’t know about. And one day you’re walking with your friend (huge) and she drops something and you pick it up and say what is this and she says oh that’s my tall coin don’t worry about it. But you did worry

Guys check this shit out.

Martyn running Decked Out 2!

[ my art for @inthelittlezine ]

I still think Moana deserved an Oscar for this part

To me, the moral of Moana is that only women can help other women heal from male violence. 

The movie starts with the idea that the male god who wronged Te Fiti must be the one to heal her. This seems to make a certain sort of intuitive sense in that I think we all believe that if you do something wrong you should try to make it right. But how does he try to right it? Through more violence. Of course that failed. 

It was only when another woman, Moana, saw past the “demon of earth and fire” that the traumatized Te Fiti had become (what a good metaphor for trauma, right?) and met her with love instead of violence that she was able to heal. Note that they do the forehead press before Moana restores the heart, while Te Fiti is still Te Kā. Moana doesn’t wait for her beautiful island goddess to appear in all her green splendor before greeting and treating her as someone deserving of love.

Moana is only able to restore the heart because Te Kā reveals her vulnerability and allows Moana to touch her there. Maui and his male violence could only ever have resulted in more ruin.

@i-want-cheese

This is a touching anaylisis but it’s extremely racist as not only have you completely ignored the whole point of Maui’s character, but have managed to incriminate a man of color on a tumblr wide scale.

First of all, Maui’s character does not represent male violence—it represent human greed. Maui did not take the heart because he is a man, and Te-Fiti is a woman. He took it because the humans asked him to. The humans asked Maui to do everything for them, not caring how greedy or selfish their requests were and in the end it was Maui who suffered for it. Maui is supposed to show the flaw of humanity.

This has nothing to do with sexism, it has everything to do with the fact that Maui gave and gave to the humans who could never stop being greedy. Moana giving the heart back wasn’t supposed to be her “making up” for the male violence that Maui represents. It was her making up for the greed she and her people represent. It was touching however because yes it was an important moment between two women, but you missed the point and you’ve come off racist and very disrespectful to a culture at that.

Yes, Moana is an empowering movie for women, especially women of color. But the last thing this is about is Maui being an abuser/rapist or whatever. That is not the point of Maui’s character.

And to assume so is racist. You are a white woman completely dehumanizing a man of color and ruining his image because of how you see him. And other white girls here on tumblr have happily picked up that image and interpretation and rolled with it. Maui’s character is now seen as an abuser or as someone who is violently because of white girls here on tumblr—which it doesn’t surprise me. (an in a historical context this is even MORE racist because white women would always make Maui’s people out to be savages and abusers etc., simply because of the color of their skin and their culture so yea, this is bad).

You can see the morality of the movie however you want, but do not be disrespectful toward a character and in this case a culture.

@i-want-cheese Please don’t write this off as another “butthurt comment” or “male guilt”, because this is really messed up. I see how you’re brushing off some other people’s comments and I honestly hope that you don’t see mine the same way because this is an issue I think you need to face/realize. You are being racist and brushing it off isn’t going to change that. the 

@visibilityofcolor THANK YOU FOR THIS. As a Polynesian woman, reading that post and other replies painting Maui and even Tui as aggressive and violent men had me feeling some type of way, especially since White people have always regarded Polynesian men in such a manner.

I’ve thought about replying because I’m tired of seeing these kind of “Moana is a feminist movie” posts collect hundreds of notes despite the fact that these posts always conveniently fail to mention Pasifika people, but it always stressed me out, so thank you.

As an aside, Maui taking Te Fiti’s heart and Moana restoring it was symbolic of environmental preservation. Because the people who inspired Moana–Pasifika people, not just Polynesian–are always affected first when the environment is threatened. Our way of life is greatly influenced by the ocean and we believe that if you take care of the ocean, she will take care of you.

You’re very welcome.

This is insight for me as well (as I wasn’t aware that the movie also came fro the culture of the Pasifika people), and does give a very important perspective. I do agree with you, this movie is about environmental restoration, not some white fem bullshit.

I tried over and over again to explain to I-want-cheese about how she was being racist, but she responded by blocking me and other poc who called her out (even other polynesian people). People to this day are still trying to explain that she is being racist and culturally insensitive but she ignores us.

I’ve made a few posts about this, hoping that people realize how problematic it is to agree with i-want-cheese.  Explaining to her racist white ass that this was problematic was like explaining to a bird. She wouldn’t listen and neither would have of her racist friends.

Sorry you’ve had to see this on your dash every so often, but I’m glad my portion of the post is starting to get around. (reblogged to the wrong blog at first lols)

dang reblogging this as a correction for the very first reblog. this why feminist analysis always needs to be intersectional

My heart just cried

the portrayal of Maui is super important here, the disney crew put a LOT of effort into getting him right because he IS a crucial figure to an entire culture- basically a cross between a central religious figure and superman so handling him poorly would be catastrophically disrespectful there are basically only two parts of Mauis legend that they flub- they only tell half of the story of when he was abandoned as a baby, and they skip over that stealing the heart of Te-Fiti so he could give it to humanity was the legend in which he dies yes, canonically Maui dies in his quest to give gifts to humanity, its an important element of why Maui is such a profound character, not just ‘man who hurt someone’ strawman it gets worse when you discover the OTHER legend they fudged, the story of his birth, reinforces this. Mauis mother had several (Hawaiians only say three, new zealand says five) sons, all named Maui, so when she had ANOTHER son she named him Maui as well, but then cast him into the sea for there was no way she could support another son. the gods did not save Maui, as Moana says, instead they return him to his mother and say she must give him a chance. to which his mother states that for her to take care of him this infant must remove the roof from her house by throwing spears at it. that is the story of Maui the skillful, abandoned as an infant and then immediately told that he must PROVE his worth, after which all he ever does is prove his worth

his brothers mocked him for being a poor fisherman, he crafts a fishook from a jawbone and proceeds to raise new islands from the sea the sky is so low the trees bend, maui raises it for everyone, then fills the new sky with wind

the sun flies so quickly there is not enough time in the day to do the labors for everyone, maui has to lay traps for each of the suns many feet, chase after it as it was slowed, and then threaten to chop its legs off if it would not slow down

he then due to the complaints of the now longer dark night creates the moon and is upset his creation will not please humanity for it does not make sufficient light, then shows it to the sun so that it may learn how to be bright maui was credited with having invented as gifts for humanity the outrigger canoe, stone tools, and seaworthy boats that had no mast or sails. he was credited with inventing tattoos as a gift to dogs, however humanity is still not content so maui descends to the land of the dead to ask the secret of creating fire from the grandmother, who kept it hidden in her fingernails. he dropped the fingernail in the water as he tried to return to the land of the living, came back for another, dropped it as well, and went through all ten fingers and toenails untill he had to then interrogate birds the grandmother had shared the secret with to tell him how

a monstrous eel tried to put the moves on his wife, and again maui had to prove his worth to reclaim her by breaking the monster eel’s spine, shoving him into the ground to create the first coconut tree, the single most useful thing for polynesian life, as a gift to humanity yet again Maui, as a mythological figure, did nothing but give from the day he was born. he gave humans tools, land, fire, boats, light, the wind, everything except life itself and he even tried to give them that- and it killed him, he was bitten in two a crucial part of Maui as a legend is that he failed, its literally part of the point, also that he was driven to prove himself endlessly to the (during his life) ungrateful. do not try and drag Maui, its disrespectful on a level i cant express thank the man, you asshole Moana succeeded where he failed, for she saw that she did not have to prove herself. the whole movie up untill then she was trying to put on a brave face (there was literally a cut song ‘warrior face’ where maui teaches her Haka), shout her courage, announce to the world at large that she WILL do the thing and fix the world and be the hero, just like Maui

its easy to miss, she stopped trying to prove who she was to anyone, there was nobody she needed to prove herself TO she just WAS herself, and that brought her peace

Another thing the initial analysis is missing is that Māui is a trickster god.

The common thread of trickster gods through almost every culture in which they appear is that they’re not evil, or usually even malicious. They’re just chaotic. They do stuff because it sounds like a good idea at the time.

Casting Māui as an abuser because he did a dumb thing isn’t just racist and ridiculous (although it is very much both of those things), it also really shows off OP’s complete lack of understanding of history, multiethnic theology, and critical thinking skills.

Also-also, speaking specifically of Moana’s Maui, I’d like to point out that @brunhiddensmusings’ lovely description of Moana in their last paragraph also applies to Maui. He’s Moana’s foil in this way. What’s he do when he first meets Moana? He brags and tricks her out of her boat instead of just, you know, asking to share. Which you could take as “it’s showing his trickster god status” (it is) or “he’s a dick” (he kinda is, but we’ll get to that), but really I think what it’s meant to underline is that he expects that if he asks for something, anything, just a thing as simple as “please let me use a patch of raft you don’t need and I’ll even help you with your quest as payment,” he will be told no. Maui’s life in Moana up to the point she rescues him is one of abandonment, and it’s reached a point where he’s come to “you can’t leave me if I leave you first.” We see that in his avoidance of retrieving his hook, too.

What’s happening in the scene where Te Kā returns to being Te Fiti is that Maui is seeing the possibility of life with acceptance rather than abandonment–that people (and gods and monsters) can be kind, that you can be welcomed back. And this is indeed Disney anglicizing the story, let’s be clear. That is a part of the story the actual Māui legend never reaches. But even anglicized, I don’t see any indication of “he’s totally an abuser” here. It’s as healing a moment for Maui as it is for Te Fiti.

Like. Basic media literacy. Please learn it and stop blaming brown men for everything.

the braincell fizzles