I know we’re all tired of the “man proudly holding fish he caught” genre of profile picture on dating apps & sites, but I think we’re just going to have to accept that fishbros aren’t going to stop because they’ve been doing it for millennia
Yes, but whatever happened to the ‘holding fish he just caught, while heroically nude? You’d think that dating sites would be all about heroic nudity, but noooooo….
I feel like there’s an argument that shirtless pics are the modern version of heroic nudity, adjusted for our stronger nudity taboo.
Considering Elrond was born half-elven and was eventually made full elven by choice, while his twin chose to be human (and thus started Numenor) it makes sense, as Elrond didn’t grow up fully elven.
Elrond probably knows what it’s like to grow up as not-elven, around full blooded elves and knows what humans need. He’s probably the one elf remaining on Middle Earth that COULD comprehend what Aragorn needed growing up, as a human.
Okay but what this potentially says about Elrond and the rest of the elves he was raised by is absolutely heartwarming. Because IRL humans need a certain amount of touch and affection and hugs and stuff. It’s particularly important for things like brain development and while it varies from person to person it’s still more than what elf kids need
And it honestly looks like Aragorn is not only comfortable with this kind of physical affection, he’s used to it.
Which makes me think that instead of looking at young Aragorn, and asking him to be more like an elf to fit in with those around them. Elrond looked at this kid and and thought to himself “how can I be more like what this child needs to thrive”
Aragorn has been raised by Elves since he was only 2 years old. So if we’re going by Piaget’s theories of child development, that puts Aragorn, (who would have been called Estel at the time) in the pre-operational stage. Or somewhere thereabouts. So Elrond is raising this kid when he’s learning to talk. When he’s constantly asking “why?” about everything.
Young Estel would have grown up surrounded by elves and elf children and just by virtue of not being an elf, he probably would have had to deal with feeling less capable than those around him. He wouldn’t have been able to do things like run across snow, and didn’t have the ability to see as far as they did with their “elf eyes” and I am imagining all manner of bruises and skinned knees as he tries to keep up anyway.
And it would take some getting used to his new surrounding, but I can’t stop picturing the first time tiny little Estel runs full tilt across the room and hugs Elrond’s leg.
And instead of scolding him or asking him to be more like an elf to fit in, Elrond consciously sets aside his own discomfort in the face of what this child needs to thrive. And if what Estel needs is hugs, then hugs he shall have.
Elrond picking up itty bitty Aragorn in a great big hug, and being just as uncomfortable about it, but hiding it well because this child was entrusted to his care and he will not let the boy grow up feeling unwanted or unloved.
And so Aragorn grew up surrounded by elves, but he grew up to be someone who naturally and unselfconsciously displays affection.
I think that speaks volumes about Elrond.
He raised this kid from age 2 to age 20 (so the majority of his formative years and well through his teens) and it was around then that Elrond’s own daughter gets back form visiting her grandmother Galadriel and meets this boy for the first time.
So I have NO IDEA what the various stages of child development would be for an elf, but I doubt their exactly the same.
Sure, Elrond might seem distant now, but there is no way Aragorn became the guy who is constantly overstepping elves personal boundaries to display affection without Elrond choosing to sacrifice his personal boundaries for the sake of a child’s well being.
The funniest thing about LOTR is Aragorn constantly overstepping the Elves’ personal boundaries. They come from a race where touching your heart is one of the highest signs of affection and he’s over here pulling them into bear hugs and slapping shoulders like a brawny middle-aged dad
Aren’t children like, very deeply treasured by Elves?
What if Elves are incredibly affectionate with Elven children? And with Aragorn they’re like “well he’s only 150, we can’t stop cuddling him just because he got tall!”
In the movie The Santa Clause, one becomes Santa by putting on the red coat after the death of the previous Santa. Even ignoring how morbid this premise is on its own, it’s possible that there’s another even darker level to the story. When Scott Calvin shows up at the North Pole as the new Santa, not only do the elves not appear surprised, they seem happy to see him and not at all upset about the Santa he replaced. And furthermore, at the very beginning of the movie, we see an elf standing with a crowd of children outside a toy store near Scott’s house. Why would she already be there if she didn’t have some sort of prior knowledge of what was going to occur? This leaves me no choice but to conclude that the elves not only hated the previous Santa but actually orchestrated his demise.
tl;dr: In The Santa Clause, the elves totally murdered the previous Santa.
Update:In The Santa Clause 2, the Easter Bunny says kids are 86% happier since Scott became Santa. 86%. Clearly, the last Santa was so terrible, the elves had to off him.
Also, according to The Santa Clause 2, Santa has to be married in order to remain Santa, which means that the previous Santa must have been married - but there’s no Mrs. Clause around when Scott gets to the North Pole. What happened to her?
And finally, I think this raises some pretty serious questions about Bernard’s sudden disappearance in between The Santa Clause 2 and 3. Just how badly did Curtis want to be Head Elf?
Just how many people have the elves murdered? Clearly those rosy cheeks and innocent, childlike faces are hiding some pretty dark secrets.
Afterthis post and all its truth continues to make me despair over how Lan XiChen really had no emotional support after Guanyin Temple, I need to talk about the sheer insensitivity Lan WangJi shows Lan XiChen when he even thinksthe story about Sisi might somehow help:
[Wei WuXian,] “Lan Zhan, did you know? The one named SiSi seemed to have been a friend of Jin GuangYao’s mother’s.”
Lan WangJi, “I did not.”
Wei WuXian didn’t know if he should laugh, “I was only making a comment, not that I was really asking you. I saw it back at the Guanyin Temple, in Empathy with the ghoul woman. She looked after Jin GuangYao and his mother quite well.”
With a moment of silence, Lan WangJi replied, “Thus, Jin GuangYao let the woman go.”
Wei WuXian, “It should be the case. I was afraid ZeWu-Jun would go soft on him again, so I didn’t say everything. Even now I still don’t we should tell him.”
Lan WangJi, “If he should ask in the future, I will let him know.”
Wei WuXian, “Might as well.”
[Ch. 111, Exiled Rebels Scanlations]
This is in part an ethical consideration because if Lan XiChen asks about Sisi then it is arguably within his right to know. Nonetheless, I can’t help finding Wangxian’s understanding of Sisi’s story as completely oblivious to Lan XiChen’s own plight, because Lan XiChen and Sisi both showed kindness toward Jin GuangYao and were both traumatically punished for it.
Even worse, Lan WangJi’s memory is really bad because Jin GuangYao didn’t let Sisi go. Just like Jin GuangYao wasn’t willing to let Lan XiChen go. Because that’s when Nie HuaiSang had to step in.
katara calling sokka out for being sexist, to his face, loudly, no beating around the bush, in the first five minutes of the first episode
katara literally fighting the patriarchy, and winning
suki telling sokka that she’s both a girl and a warrior, and being one doesn’t cancel out the other
sokka’s character development
the sheer diversity and quality of the female characters (of whom there are a lot compared to most cartoons)
aang didn’t have to compromise his beliefs by killing ozai, and he wasn’t seen as weak for finding a way around it
toph
everything about toph
zuko’s character development
azula’s portrayal as someone sad, rather than as someone to mock, especially in light of her obvious mental illness (at least, that’s how i saw it, if others saw differently i won’t argue, i haven’t got the ‘bad’ mental illnesses)
uncle iroh
uncle iroh’s relationship with zuko and it’s development through the show
the clear message that power is nothing if you have no compassion
the message about it being okay to dislike your family if they’re abusive (zuko, toph to a point), and that found families are just as good, if not better
the characters respecting aang’s philosophies about nonviolence and compassion
aang keeping his cheerfulness and sense of joy, even through rough situations
the message that you can’t do everything alone, and needing help isn’t weakness
Ronan walked through the crowd with a beer in his hand, unsure of where he was really going. Why was he even here? He didn’t know. He did know who he was looking for. Kavinsky. When he asked, people pointed to his car.
And there he was, sitting on top of the car like a king on a throne, and a queen lounging between his legs. Sitting propped up on K’s chest was Ilya Prokopenko, head lolled onto K’s shoulder and his forehead touching the side of his neck. The two looked like they fit together so perfectly, and they did. It was a beautiful and tragic sight.
K’s head was tilted back, eyes closed with a joint between his lips as he held them up with one hand, the other traced Proko’s leg lazily. Neither seemed to have a care in the world. Neither noticed Ronan or even seemed to be aware of the party around them, only lost in hazy eyes and lazy touches with whispers of promises neither could true keep.
Joseph Kavinsky was a king, but Ilya Prokopenko was his queen, and god save anyone that hurt him.
((It’s short and not the best but I wanted to get it down because I liked the concept and aesthetic.))
In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short.
A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace.
The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut-off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: to receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.
Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.
A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.
A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people.
A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor’s hair themselves.
Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy’s face at her son’s soccer scrimmage.
SAGAL: Why did you move from England, reputedly cold and dreary, to the upper Midwest? Was England not cold and dreary enough?
GAIMAN: Nobody had really explained the whole cold thing to me.
SAGAL: Really?
GAIMAN: Yeah.
SAGAL: It was a surprise?
GAIMAN: Well, no. I was arrogant. I was foolish. The English thing where you think you know it all, I thought I understood cold. I thought, okay.
SAGAL: Oh yes.
GAIMAN: Water gets white and fluffy and it falls from the sky. Puddles go hard and slippery. That’s cold.
SAGAL: No problem.
GAIMAN: I did not understand the acres, the depth.
SAGAL: Right.
GAIMAN: How much colder it can be. I didn’t understand what it means to walk out of doors and take a deep breath, the hairs in your nose freeze and you go, “Oh, it’s a little below zero.”
SAGAL: Right.
GAIMAN: And then that thing that you do when you walk out and you take a deep breath and you cough because it hurt and you go, “Oh, 25 below.”
yeah as a lifelong wisconsinite, i had never really seen my state truly represented in media until that scene the first night in wisconsin when shadow tries to walk somewhere at night and nearly freezes to death
there is a not insubstantial scene in the book where shadow winterizes his windows and i absolutely loved it
neil was definitely traumatized by moving to minnesota
So I’m noticing some misconceptions when it comes to Edward’s automail and I just wanted to clear things up for how the world works at the least for my individual take on Edward.
So the thing I need you to remember when dealing with my Edward is that he is disabled.
I know Edward can run and jump and flip and kick and do all of these amazing things.
That doesn’t stop him from being disabled.
Please also remember that Edward feels everything lopsided, as on the right side he can feel next to nothing from the entire length of his arm - shoulder to the tip of his fingers, and on the left side of his lower body he can feel next to nothing from the mid thigh all the way down to the tips of his toes.
I said next to because at the base or ports of his automail Edward can feel the connection of his nerves to the machine. That’s why he’s able to tell Winry that “his shoulder feels numb” in Star of Milos or one of the reasons during lab 5 he could identify that something was wrong with his shoulder.
However when it comes to Edward’s armhis sense of “feeling” relies heavily on weight. His right side has become dependent on knowing how much something weighs. Edward can’t feel what’s in his hand despite how it may appear. He really just has to trust the object is in his grip whether that be by sight. the sound of the metal gripping or by the weight of it that it adds to his shoulder.
Edward’s right shoulder and port are the running engine of his automail. If you’ll look at how it’s connected to his body, you’ll see that the port of his shoulder actually takes up a decent portion of his chest. It covers almost his entire right pectoral and moves into his right shoulder blade.
|| Please get used to these pictures I’m going to use them a lot. ||
Ed’s automail doesn’t just effect his arm - like series constantly pushes. He only lost his arm but in order to even be able to have an arm again he had to sacrifice even more of his body so it had a place to connect.
If you really look at him you’ll see all the scarring that occurred because of the surgery - surgery that is said to make a grown man scream out or cry in pain over.
Ed was 11 when they did this to his body. Look at his shoulder before the surgery.
It’s there. It’s all there. His chest was unharmedby Truth and so was his shoulder. He ONLYlost his arm, and the series like’s to push that fact but what it doesn’t push is the amount of alterations he had to have done to his growing pre-teenbody in order to have that famous automail arm.
He hasboltsgrafted into his body - anchored right into his bones to keep that port on his body.
Three on his chest - two into his side and one into his collar bone
and three into his back - two into his side again and one into his shoulder blade.
I want you to right now - as you’re reading this - roll your shoulder slowly. Feel your shoulder blade? Edward’s got a bolt there. Do you feel your collarbone as you slowly drop your shoulder forward? Edward’s got a bolt there. Bolts drilled right into his bones.
His Automailhurts. Al says in the beginning of the series, that he wants to get Ed’s body fixed first because Edward’s automail is hard on his body.
The dub line is actually “No Brother, you first - that automail is so tough on you.”
It’s like this because as I said it’s been grafted into his skeletal structure.
So when Ed moves, it moves, but don’t forget that automail has no outside power source. it’s connected straight into his nervous system - each nerve, each and every nerve is anchored right into this machine that’s powered through the electrical pulses that come from those nerves. It regulates the power to the pneumatic actuators and electrical motors inside of it. Ed is it’s power source.
^ It looks like this under all that pretty plating after all ^
Basically, Edward’s brain is still firing the signals to move his right arm / hand - the lost limb(s) and left leg)) So his arm still moves as fluid as it would if it was still flesh and blood because his automail receives the signals sent out by his brain and when his nerves react, his arm amplifies the signals and does the motion his body was trying to tell the lost limb to do.
But it took rehabilitation to do this. Rehabilitation to be able to use his limbs in the first place - that was supposed to take a whole three years to complete and Edward cut down to one. I have no doubt that he pushed himself. He had to push himself. He had to push himself so ridiculously hard to get himself up to running condition - enough to be fighting his brother - in a year. I bet he tried to fight his brother in shorter than a year and I bet he was spitting blood just like Pinako said he would be.
So when I say Edward is in pain constantly, this is why. It’s not a hard pain. It’s nothing that drops him. No it’s like this constant ache that rests between his shoulder blades from his small frame trying to carry enough weight that it’s stopping him from growing.
Edward’s arm literally puts so much stress on his body it hasn’t been able to grow. His now teenage maturing bodygot stuck in a time loop basically because there was too much weight bringing it down. He carries that weight on his shoulder every day.
Personally, I believe his arm has to weight something close to 20 - 25 lbs with his leg weighing about the same. But then like I said, this is for my own personal take on him. I personally believe that his automail adds about another 50lbs to his body weight - making him a firm 160 - 170 lbs.
(His own body has to be a decent weight considering all the flips and jumps and kicks and stuff he can do because he has to have a lot of muscle on his body to be able to jump high enough to kick his 7′3″ armored brother in the face. Ed alone probably weighs 110 /120 lbs even at 4′11″. )
__
Now when we you look at thisleg, you can see that it’s still partly there.
His automail only comes up to mid-thigh / just above the knee. So he didn’t even lose the whole thing, but he did lose enough that it puts pressure on his hip / pelvis to move it. This port however is different from the shoulder port in the fact it houses the main support rod of the leg in a different way but it’s still bolted into his body.
The thing you see in the top picture is the outer plating that protects the port, where as this is the actual place of connection and it is attached into Edward’s leg with one large bolt driven into each side. They have to be large in this case, and heavily reinforced because these bolts don’t just keep the port in place and the leg attached to his body but they also have to be weight bearing. If the bolts in this port snap - not only does it break the port’s connection and Edward loses his leg taking him down with it - but he’ll feel those bolts snapinsideof his leg and they could cause more internal damage that might prevent him from having an automail leg in the first place.
Also as I said in the sections about his arm, I personally believe that each piece of his automail weighs around 25lbs - so that means his exceptionally small frame is trying to move something with that kind of weight. It strains his pelvis leaving him with sore hips and he has to readjust himself a lot to find the most comfortable position for him to set for long periods (or if he’s been on it a lot - for him to set at all.)
But that weight is also where the lopsided feeling I mentioned comes into play. Edward naturally ( at this point) has more strength in his right shoulder and left hip due to having to move these solid pieces of steel around for years and years.
But all and all, it’s set up much like his arm in the way that it turns the firing of messages to his lost leg into energy and instructions for his automail. He just has to train his body constantly to keep himself in proper shape in order to be able to move it.
-
On that subject. I have mentioned in other headcanons / things about Edward that the boy suffers from mass pain during rain or thunderstorms.
Now this is mentioned in the manga / brotherhood, when he goes out with Pinako to dig up the grave of the thing he transmuted - and he ends up on his knees, throwing up he’s in so much pain. And that’sjust a heavy rain storm.
Now while I think this has something to do with the fact that he just has old injuries and old injuries hurt in weather changes, whether they’re broken bones or what not, I also think this has something to do with the fact that he rushed his rehabilitation by two years. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of it didn’t heal correctly so it lead to him having extremely painful reactions during poor weather or extreme cold. So when thunderstorms roll around the the barometric pressure in the air changes he wants to throw up from the pressure it puts on the ports in his body - the bolts in his body.
Automail does not change that Edward is a double amputee. When poor weather hits, he would have adverse reactions regardless - but with so much metal in his body and his nerves literally connected to a machine that picks up the smallest reactions out of them - thunderstorms and heavy weather just destroyshim.
Edward has also woken from a nightmare during a storm and the first thing he did was hug his leg and declare “It hurts.”
In no way, shape or form does Ed’s automail give him a magical pain free cure to fix all of his problems. Honestly, it made it so he was a complete person again and he could function mostly independently. It gave him him hands-free alchemy but it also gave him a ton of new problems.
I know people rag on Al for ‘mothering’ him throughout the series, but honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a lot more than just “You’re sleeping with your tummy out.” It’s probably holding his hair back when he can stop puking, and making sure he stays in bed when he’s so dizzy from pain he falls over. Al has probably carried him countless times - conscious or unconscious. I wouldn’t be surprised if Al has also had to go in Ed’s place or call in Ed’s place to refuse summons from Mustang - lightly explaining things like ‘He’s not feeling well’ or coming up with every other reason he can so no one else knows how bad it is. Because Al knows that would destroy him.He knows his brother is trying to be as strong as he possibly can for this - for them - for him so he’d never let anyone know just exactly what that automail does to Edward.
Because it doesa lot more than just give him an arm and a leg.
“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”
“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”
“The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny.”
He has, like, three charitable organizations he funds, named after his father, his mother, and Alfred.
Between both Bruce and Batman’s contributions, Gotham should be a better city than it is, and the only reason it isn’t is DC Editorial Mandate that basically says Gotham has to get worse and worse and worse or there’s no Batman stories they can tell (and, obviously, they have no other characters besides Batman).
There’s a reason Batman thinks the city is literally cursed.
I want to see Bruce Wayne go off
“Oh, oh, just charity my way out of dealing with the Penguin, a living, breathing 19th century Marxist’s cartoon of the bourgeoisie? Just fund anti-Clayface measures? Crack down on corporations who put out shapeshifting cosmetics? What socio-economic pressures turn botonists into actual fucking dryads?! What inspires anti-animal terrorism? THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL KIND OF ECO-FASCISM!”
For the record, Gotham is canonically curse, because it sits on some sort of evil swamp. I think.
There are like, half a dozen curses. The Lazarus Pits are leaching into the water, Slaughter Swamp is an unconnected body of water a few miles outside of the city that also ressurects people (see Solomon Grundy), the Bat-demon Barbatos and his followers (the Court of Owls) have been fucking up the city psychically and financially, the malevolent influence of the warlock Doctor Gotham’s tomb in the center of the city, the madness hypersigil of Amadeus Arkham (in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), there were several outposts of subterraneans and aliens beneath the city during the Silver Age, constant chemical warfare that makes it the equivalent of a WWI trench managed by MK-ULTRA, it’s in New Jersey, and I think God just hates it
tired: Batman could do more good by running charities than by fighting criminals
wired: Batman could save literally every other city on the planet simultaneously with the amount of effort and resources he’s pumped into Gotham, which is a lost cause, but this is his city damnit.
