Butches Are Awesome!

Stop normalizing the grind and start normalizing whatever this is

kind kissie kind kissie!!!!!!!

redraw of this from? 2018 :)

Oh I can't wait to spam yall with Channon art later

For anyone who doesn't know what's going on in Canada right now (which, let's be real, is probably everyone who's not in Canada):

This week, a mass grave was discovered at a former Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, BC. The grave contained the bodies of 215 Indigenous children.

For people outside of North America, residential schools were places that Indigenous children were sent to, to have their language and culture stripped away from them. They were literally stolen from their families, and scattered across Canada, to ensure that they would be surrounded by children who didn't speak their language. They were given Christian names and forced to speak English. They were horrendously abused, and the survivors have been traumatized.

Hundreds of children never returned. The assumption has always been that they died. This has now been confirmed.

The school in Kamloops closed in 1978. They are now trying to identify bodies to inform family members. The last residential school closed in the 1990s. There is growing demand to search all of them, but the government hasn't responded to that, as of yet. Ottawa JUST gave in to pressure to fly the Canada flag at half mast. They weren't even going to do that.

This is the reality if anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. The residential schools may be closed, but that hasn't stopped the abduction of Indigenous children, let alone the hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

me: this fun and lighthearted movie made me happy, therefore it is a good movie

film critics:

OKAY WOW wizards was so so good, and i can’t wait to see what’s next for our champions of arcadia!!

but the last shot of the whole team (minus douxie, nari, and archie) ending with jim hugging claire and looking up at the sword, which becomes focused in the foreground......i have thoughts

now we know throughout all of trollhunters, we were given a whole lot of sword-and-the-stone imagery with jim. i know there’s a very good deep dive post with explanations on mythology and references in the show by @cookiesaddict, but i’d really like to give my two cents so please hear me out,,

i remember AT LEAST two instances where the sword in the stone imagery and jim jumped out at me:

1) when he first discovered the amulet and is playing around with the sword in his backyard, and the sword gets stuck in a large rock. he pulls the sword out of the rock:

and

2) in the unbecoming episode, when he chooses to fight gunmar without the amulet, knowing he’ll die. there’s a sword in draal’s back, and jim pulls the sword out of the stone of draal’s back before beginning to walk out and face the fight:

at the end of wizards, excalibur is left without a weilder with arthur dead, but claire and douxie both suggest that it needs a new weilder. claire says, “who better than our trollhunter?”

so jim tries:

and he fails.

and you know what he says? he says, “but without the amulet, am i the trollhunter?”

which i think is an interesting thing to hear, considering the fact that one of the places that we see the sword in the stone imagery IS the unbecoming episode, in which jim comes to the realization that he is the trollhunter, amulet or not. even when given the choice to live a normal life, even without his friends by his side, even without the amulet ever having belonged to him - he knew he was the trollhunter.

so what changed?

well. a whole lot did. the unbecoming episode happens in part 2 of trollhunters, and in part 3 jim makes the ultimate decision to become part troll. it’s a huge thing for him to deal with emotionally, even knowing that it’ll help him defeat gunmar and save arcadia. he moves away from home, and in wizards, he’s corrupted by arthur - which, i think, was what snapped the last straw. becoming corrupted - making the choice to become corrupted (even when it was to save his friends) - that is what i think truly destabilized jim.

all of trollhunters, jim faced what it meant to be a hero, what it meant to be the savior of trolls and humans alike. his identity came to revolve around the hero he was; it’s what helped him through the change from human to troll - that knowledge that he was doing it for his friends, for his city. but of all the things jim went through, never did he ever hurt his friends directly because of the mantle he undertook. but arthur and the arcane order changed that.

they took his amulet, they took his body, and they took his soul. and they used it all to hurt his friends. they turned him from a hero to a villain, and it was all so easy for them.

so yeah, jim looks like he’s back to normal as his human self - maybe a bit scratched up, but overall unharmed. but the psychological effects of being used as a weapon against the people you care about most? that doesn’t go away easily. that changes how you look at your relationships, your life, your identity.

and maybe he doesn’t really realize it now, maybe that’s why he said it the way he did - “without the amulet, am i still the trollhunter” - because he was feeling a lot of things and cited the physical manifestation - the destroyed amulet - of his trauma as the reason he may not be worthy.

i can’t pretend to know everything about the original sword in the stone mythology - all i really know was what was in the show - so i don’t know exactly how one may prove themself to be worthy. but i do think that as of the end of wizards, jim doesn’t think that he himself is worthy - of excalibur, of the trollhunter title, of being a hero. he betrayed his friends’ loyalty - against his will, yes, but that’s most definitely how he sees it as. and what kind of friend betrays their friends? what kind of hero betrays their friends?

so jim is in a dark place. (again.) but i have hope.

in the unbecoming episode, we get this shot when jim decides to stand up and fight, amulet or not:

and at the end of wizards, after jim fails to pull out excalibur, we get this shot:

yes the compositions of the two shots are different, but i can’t help but feel the shot in wizards was intended to be a parallel of the shot in unbecoming. and even if it wasn’t, it’s still eerily similar in a way that i can’t ignore.

both shots have jim, and a sword looming in the foreground, almost as if they’re watching jim. i think they could be considered as physical representations of choice and heroics; the sword in draal’s back represents jim’s choice to become the trollhunter and excalibur, i believe, represents to jim what it means to be a true hero, something that toa has established anyone can be as long as they strive to triumph in the face of fear, but it’s something he may feel as though he lost. and yet, he still looks at the sword.

in the unbecoming shot, he has already made his choice. in the shot from wizards, he is only just beginning to consider the choice again.

after wizards, jim will be at a crossroads - there is no amulet, and, at least for a moment, no apocalyptic threat nearby. he’ll need time to go home, find himself, face what it means for him to be a hero.

and i think jim will forgive himself for the actions against his friends that he couldn’t control and, just as he did in unbecoming, make the decision to have courage in the face of his own fears, to be a hero, amulet or not. and only then, i think, will he be worthy to weild excalibur.

stay alert to these tactics and stand firm in your truth (source)

This exact holiday combo post can only happen once every 33 years.

Support all gnc men not just the ones you find attractive or fashionable.

and then I wonder why my art looks weird