elysionsprincess:

vanehsensei:

slenderlock:

singarequiem:

techno4tomcats:

People are insane on this product review of a banana slicer

No seriously

oh my fucking god

OH MY GOD I REBLOGGED THIS BEFORE I READ THE COMMENTS AND
HOLY FUCK

I CAN’T BREATHE

…

You know what, Sherlock Holmes? 
I look at you now and I can read you. 
And you repel me.

itsworthknowing:

W. Shakespeare, Macbeth

It only made sense to me recently why Angelus suddenly hated Spike so much. One moment, they were best friends and they were happy to kill people together and the next, Angelus tears Spike down where he knows it will hurt him the most and then it is downhill from there. Why?

Their big fall out happened after a carriage ride after a happy night of slaughter.

The men were talking about Drusilla.

Angelus saw Drusillla has his masterpiece. She is the embodiment of the fall of man. She was pure. She was his opposite and he took her and twisted her. He bent her and broke her and then cursed her with immortality so that all would see his work and marvel at his skill and fear his wrath.

Spike, however, was a poet. He looked at Drusilla and he could still see the woman that she was when she was a human. He saw her childlike qualities as the shadows of her purity and as part of the mark of her insanity. “It’s like she’s still got a bit of a child in her.” One doesn’t get more pure than being a child. 

This is what pisses off Angelus. Spike looked passed her insanity the way no one else did. He looked passed the mark Angelus left on her and told him, point blank. “I still see her, you didn’t destroy her as much as you like to believe.”

I think that’s why Angelus hated Spike. I think that’s why he worked to sabotage Spike and Dru. Not only did Spike understand her and give her companionship but they really loved one another.

Spike made Dru happy. Angelus’s masterpiece was in her suffering.

madeleinebot:

Fanged Four: Quotes before they were sired

annihilation of both

grahamburglar:

andwhentheskywasopened:

aldora89:

fozmeadows:

karnythia:

nickminichino:

karnythia:

nickminichino:

karnythia:

Reporter: So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Joss Whedon: Because you’re still asking me that question.

The question should be “Why do you write seemingly strong women and then punish them for that strength?” I see a lot of characters in this set who got shit on by Joss not to mention at least one actress he fired for the crime of getting pregnant.

A friend of mine likes to challenge “Joss Whedon, Feminist” acolytes to name a female character on Buffy who doesn’t die or go crazy.

I feel like this game could be expanded to find lead female characters who don’t die, go crazy, or lose a loved one in a gruesome way as part of their suffering. Bonus points if they get to the end without anyone threatening to rape them or trying to rape them. There has to be at least one right?

If we include those, we may as well be playing bingo. Joss Whedon’s female characters’ punishments: collect them all!

Who gets mind wiped? Who gets beaten? Who watches everything she ever loved burn? It’s a game for all ages! Bonus points for the ones who die without ever having gotten to live!

I might have feelings about Kendra. A lot of them.

Goddamit, and now I feel compelled to do an actual tally of his original female characters, albeit offhand and from memory. So:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy - two deaths, one rape threat, one attempted rape, two sexual assaults, one dead parent.

Willow - one rape threat, two breaks with sanity, one dead girlfriend.

Cordelia - damselled about a billion times, one attempted forced marriage.

Anya -  one rape threat, dead.

Tara - dead.

Kendra - dead.

Faith - multiple breaks with sanity.

Ms Calender - dead.

Joyce - dead.

Dawn - one attempted forced marriage, one dead parent.

Darla - dead.

Drusilla - multiple breaks with sanity.

[I don’t know enough about angel, I cut this part]

Firefly

Kaylee - one rape threat.

River - multiple breaks with sanity.

Zoe - one dead husband.

Inara - one threat of sexual assault.

[I don’t know enough about doll house, I cut this part]

I should probably leave this hornet’s nest alone.  But I’m pissed off right now, because today I learned people think Joss Whedon is sexist for putting his female characters through the wringer.

As if a fundamental part of the hero’s journey isn’t suffering, having loved ones die, or dying themselves.  As if he doesn’t do that to EVERYONE he writes.  Here are some of his male characters’ trials, in the same form as above (and this is just the stuff I remember off the top of my head):

Giles - one dead lover/dear friend, brutally tortured at least once

Xander - one threat of sexual assault, implied childhood abuse, at least one break with reality (that made him leave Anya at the altar), one dead lover, loses an eye

Spike - sexually assaulted by his mother, attempted forced marriage (the same spell that got Buffy), brutally tortured, at least one break with sanity, one death

Riley - turned into a meat puppet by Frankensoldier Adam

Angel - tortured in hell, at least one death, lots of other stuff I don’t remember because Angel bores me

Wash - brutally tortured, dead

Mal - brutally tortured

Book - dead

And what do I see when I look at the female characters listed above?

Buffy - survives the series with a hopeful heart, comes up with a plan to break an explicitly patriarchal tradition, saves the world a lot, allowed to be flawed and messy and still strong

Willow - survives the series, finds love again after the death of her soulmate, grows from an awkward high school girl to a junkie to the most powerful witch in history

Dawn - survives the series, grows from an annoying little sister to a competent young woman

Faith - survives the series, seemingly a “bad girl” stereotype who actually has depth and a compelling misled-by-evil-(and-love) —> redemption arc

Cordelia - seemingly a “shallow girl” stereotype who actually has depth and comes through when her friends need her despite being out of her element

Anya - a former monster who switches sides, finds and loses love but consciously steps away from deadly coping mechanisms, can run a store better than Giles,  illuminates humanity in compelling ways

Tara - shy and unassuming, wise and compassionate and forgiving. She can’t beat up monsters, but that’s okay, she’s still part of the team.

For fuck’s sake.  It’s supernatural genre television, not tiptoeing through fields of daisies.  People will die.  People will be threatened.  Sometimes it will happen as a plot device.  If you write a lot of female characters (I saw something earlier like the percentage of women in primetime shows is like 17%, which Whedon obviously blows out of the water), a lot of them are going to have horrible things happen to them.

But what Whedon does that’s so different from most is he writes female characters as people.  He doesn’t portray stereotypical femininity and strength as mutually exclusive.  He shows that physical strength isn’t the only “real” strength they can have.  He gives them diverse personalities and shows how they’re all powerful and weak in their own way.  He lets them grow and evolve organically.  He lets them be compelling villains.  He lets them be sympathetic victims.  He lets them be fearless warriors for good.  Sometimes all three.  He lets them make horrible mistakes and successfully atone for them.  He shows them suffering for plot-related reasons, doesn’t shy away from the after-effects (versus, say, Deanna Troi in TNG - so much of the stuff that happened to her was gratuitous) and shows them getting back up.

Also, don’t you dare pretend Joyce’s death can be reduced to part of some anti-feminist pattern (for three separate characters, no less.  And the fact that Buffy even had a parent in the first place is unusual for the hero archetype).  That kind of thing actually happens in the real world, it was handled with incredible sensitivity and realism, and watching Buffy and Dawn go through the grieving process is something many people relate to intensely.  It’s fantastic writing.  It’s good conflict.  It’s good television.

If anyone is writing off Joss’ female characters, it’s you.  It’s the people who act like these characters are little more than a list of tragic and biased casualties, and fuck everything else they accomplish.

^*slow claps it out*

Oh my God.

Thank you. I have been told a million times that Joss is anti-feminist and every time I’ve tried to argue against that but I haven’t been able to do it this magnificently.

What!? You mean Joss treats his female characters just like his male characters? You mean they would all punch him in the face if they came to life?

YOU MEAN WOMEN ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLED INTENSE SITUATIONS JUST LIKE MEN AND NOT CRUMBLE LIKE WET PAPER TOWELS!?

Joss, you brute! How could you treat your characters equally without regard for their sex?

pandabloodseals:

[image: an underwater shot of two sharks that appear to be eyeing a lionfish.]

bradleyjeems:

indifferentchild:

ugggghhhhhhh:

indifferentchild:

To eat, or not to eat, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the stomach to suffer the slings and arrows of hunger, or to take mouths and by digesting end them.

To bloat, to eat, no more, and by eating we say we end the stomach ache and the thousand natural pangs that digestive systems are ere to. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. 

To bloat, to eat, to eat. Perchance to fulfill? Ay, there’s the rub. For in that meal of nourishment what fulfillment may come must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long bulimia.

For who would bear the hunger and malnutrition of time? The food corporation’s wickedness, the proud anorexic’s contumely, the pangs of despis’d hunger, the law’s delay, and the spurns that a good appetite by the unworthy takes when you yourself your acquaintance could make with a perfectly good stingray.

Who would fardels bear to suffer under the veil of famine, but that the dread of something after the meal, the undiscovered course from whose satiation no feeder returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather eat those fish we have, than swim to others that might not taste as good.

Thus conscience doth make dolphins of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution to feed is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. And meals of great pith and moment with this regard, their ocean currents turn awry and lose the name of action.

Thus conscience doth make dolphins of us all

The Napoleon of crime.

What did she look like?