#(so it's not weapons designing that's bad - it's INEPT weapons designing? and it's not arms dealing that's bad but being ripped off?)

[amarriageoftrueminds]

TL;DR: It's not true that Tony didn't have any involvement with weapons at the time. The Maximoffs were killed in 1999. By that point, Tony had already been "merchant of death" and CEO of Stark Industries for 8 years.

Long answer:

IM1 specifically said of that period:

"...at age 21, the prodigal son returns and is anointed the new CEO of Stark Industries. With the keys to the kingdom, Tony usher[ed] in a new era for his father's legacy, creating smarter weapons, advanced robotics, satellite targeting. Today, Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry..."

In other words, Tony's presence is framed as the thing which triggered the creation of smarter weapons (among other things, too). There's no indication that he started on the weapons part later on.

(In fact, he is personally credited with having changed the weapons industry. Not his father, not the company generally: Tony. And not the robotics or satellite industries, either.)

As Pepper said in IM3, Stark Industries profited off military contracts.

At the end of 1999, the year the Maximoffs were killed, Tony was in Bern, Switzerland for New Years Eve, famous enough to be delivering a lecture on integrated circuits at Bern 2000, while drunk. And important enough in the weapons industry for A.I.M founder Aldrich Killian and Extremis-inventor Maya Hansen to be trying to give him elevator pitches.

So he's a famous weapons designer, canonically- what, 800 miles away? -from Sokovia, doing science stuff, publicly, in the same year... but he's got nothing to do with his company's missiles being there? 🤨

By the time Tony was 40 in IM1, eleven years after the Maximoffs died, he had already designed the Jericho missile, was making personal pitches to the US Army, had a long-time buddy in the US Air Force, and was beloved of American soldiers (why? what's he done for them? obvious answer: designed weapons). And he was not acting as if any of this was a new or recent development for him.

Tony was building circuit boards when he was 4, engines when he was 6, robots when he was 16, graduated early from MIT at 17, and was CEO at 21. The implication of Tony being a wunderkind is that he was capable of making people-killing designs for a lot longer / from a much earlier age than you'd think.

In both IM1 and IM3 he was shown capable of making weapons from scratch by hand, with limited resources and without a computer's help (and weapons were his first idea; not, say, robots. He describes himself as a mechanic... but he doesn't make a machine. He makes improvised bombs and guns.)

He also had a pocket-sized "very powerful weapon" on him, for his personal use (which he gives to a child). Where'd that come from? It's antithetical to Tony's ego to be carrying something he didn't design himself, given the way he sneers at other weapons designers. So chances are that's a weapon Tony designed... years after claiming to be out of the weapons designing industry.

It's similar to the one Obadiah Stane used on Tony in IM1. And Stane said "you remember this one?" as he deployed it on Tony. So chances are… that thing was Tony's design too. (We don't know for sure. But we do know for sure that it was designed by Tony's company, that he was in charge of). Yet Tony still had something similar by the time of IM3: his weapons producing habits didn't alter outside the timeline of the movies; only his sales habits.

Also relevant: Stane described Tony as the goose that laid the golden eggs (viz. weapons designs) and that killing him would cause a fall off in designs. Because he wanted control over sales of weapons that Tony designed, including the ones government didn't approve. So Tony didn't just design weapons, he designed unethical weapons, and continued to do so even after falling victim to said weapons himself and (therefore) claiming to be out of the weapons designing business.

Sidenote: Unlike his daddy, who only "helped give us the atomic bomb" with US government backing. Howard made weapons with government backing, whereas post-IM1 Tony believes he's doing it outside of government control / believes he's not an arms dealer just because he's only dealing arms to Americans. But... he gives his designs to the USAF free of charge... and to daddy's corrupt American alphabet agency... despite already finding out they were hiding things from him way back in Avengers1... and then he signed the Sokovia Accords. 🤦‍♀️ (And this isn't even including his work on Project Insight and Insight 2.0, aka E.D.I.T.H.)! You can really see where the writing failed to point out the delusion and hypocrisy, here!

Ergo: Tony has always been a weapons designer and truly never stopped, so designing and selling a missile that killed the Maximoffs is totally within his wheelhouse. He didn't for some reason suddenly become inept / unconnected to weapons design, during the period of the Maximoff's death, just because it's icky and he was in his 20s at the time. 🤷‍♀️

(And I don't think it's a coincidence either that Tony's baby Ultron is obsessed with "peace", and tells Wanda "men of peace create engines of war," War Machines if you will, when Tony specifically keeps framing himself as creating a "peacekeeping initiative", having "privatized world peace" etc. right before the scene where Pietro describes how their parents were killed by one. You are meant to see the connection to Tony, not just the Stark company.)

However: what we don't know is whether that specific missile that killed the Maximoffs... was one of Tony's designs, or Howards, and/or when it was bought.

In AOU (2015) Strucker's Hydra base fired missiles on the nearby Sokovian city, and the locals reacted with hostility to the appearance of Iron Legion bots (Tony's proprietary tech). If the same base deployed the Stark missiles that killed the Maximoffs in 1999, then you could interpret that as showing the connection between the Starks and SHIELDra. (Though it makes the idea that the twins would then volunteer to work at that base... completely baffling?? 😵)

The missile that killed their parents could've been one of Howard Stark's designs from the 19?0s, kept in storage for years before it was deployed in 1999. But it's equally possible that it was a brand new design of wunderkind Tony's, recently sold to SHIELDra.

But that is irrelevant.

Because either way Tony did still get the profits from that missile sale. He was an active part of Stark Industries weapons designs already, on the same continent, and made money off the thing that killed the twins' parents. He still should have apologised; or at least paid compensation or something (what did he profit from those missile sales, I wonder? How much does one cost?)

The fact that Tony may or may not have personally designed and sold that specific missile (or if he didn't personally assemble it, with his own bare hands) is immaterial when he was the one who reaped the rewards. It'd be like claiming Elon Musk isn't to blame if someone was killed in the emerald mine he inherited from his father, when he also happens to run a 'making things that kill people in emerald mines' company.

The real problem is the double standard of protagonist-centered morality.

Wanting to kill the person responsible for your family's death is framed as villain/antagonist behaviour when Wanda, Pietro, Vanko, T'Challa, Zemo, various Spidey characters, etc. do it. But Tony is allowed to want to kill someone actually innocent of voluntarily killing his parents (which Tony admits to knowing, mid-fight) and still be regarded as a hero.

Everyone else is made to either nobly give up their desire for revenge (as a sign of their heroic nature), realise they were targeting the wrong person (as a sign of acquired wisdom), or both... or remain a villain. But not Tony. 😕 Tony tries to kill the wrong person and someone extra just out of spite, and he gets apologised to!

And so far from personally apologising to Wanda, they never have scenes together (ditto Bucky), and CACW has Tony shifting the blame off himself and mansplaining to Wanda & the gang how they don't care about civilian casualties like he does... after yet another Stark design murdered her twin brother! And by EG, he's back to claiming that Ultron (indistinguishable from Hydra's Project Insight, and what Baron Strucker was working on) was a great idea anyway!

The one thing that frustrates me about Wanda hating Tony and blaming him for what happened to her parents was that he didn’t have any real involvement with weapons at the time and he didn’t have any change to apologize or clear up anything about it and we can all blame the writers instead of blaming Wanda or Tony

[terry-perry]

Stay with Me pt. 2

Pairing: Levi x Reader

Warnings: Gore and violence well-known to the series, harsh language, death, much angst!

Levi made it to his designated area, his breath hitching at the horrid sight. Dismembered bodies scattered all over the ground, those barely alive groaning in agony. He hurriedly turned his head when a sudden Titan appeared from behind a tree, approaching him at a fast pace.

“Like hell, shitface!” He exclaimed.

He urged his horse to go around and managed to get behind the giant creature, only barely missing its hands as it bent over to try to grab him. He got his ODM gear ready and launched one of the hooks to the Titan’s back. The other hook was released and made it to one of the shoulders. Going into the air, Levi spun out and split open the nape of its neck in a swift motion. It fell down and began to steam along with the blood Levi gathered from it.

Just as he was about to call for his horse, a small herd of Titans came rushing towards him from the nearby trees, having hidden as well. Levi shot off a smoke signal and, once the monsters were close enough, he used his gear to maneuver his way to one and went at it again. He was able to fight them off with hardly any issues, but may have overestimated how much he could handle since he was currently panting heavily and was down to his last pair of blades.

“Damn it!” He cursed. “Well, it’s a good thing I had shot off that flare. Everyone else should be here soon.”

He called for his horse and hopped on when it came, directing it to go to a nearby abandoned shed. He used his gear to go on top of it in order to have a good view of anything heading in his direction. He tried to plan out what to do in case there were more Titans that came. He at least had a fair amount of gas, so maybe he could outmaneuver them. That was the best case scenario.

“Captain?”

Unexpected, Levi turned around with his last pair of blades at the ready. His sight was welcomed by a cadet climbing up to join him on the roof of the shed. He recognized the young man.

“O’Hara,” he greeted him in his usual deadpan manner. “Probably the only time I can say that I’m pleased to see you.”

The socially inept person he was, O’Hara laughed at the Captain’s comment. He had been a thorn in Levi’s side since transferring to the Scouts from the Military Police. He had been one of the members that “helped” in rescuing Eren from Reiner and Bertolt. In other words, running away from the danger as everyone else received the brunt of it. No doubt, it’s what happened again to help keep him alive.

“Was it you who set off the smoke signals?” Levi asked.

“Yes sir. I did so as soon as we were attacked by a swarm of Abnormals. Luckily, I was able to evade any real damage and escaped. But Unfortunately, my tanks had run out of gas trying to get away. I used the last of it to get here and hide.”

Pushing down the eye roll and scoff he very much wanted to release, Levi merely nodded at O’Hara and looked ahead. There didn’t seem to be anything to worry about at the moment.

“I have the opposite problem,” He then stated. “I used up majority of my blades fighting off a bunch of Titans, so I’m down to my last pair. I blasted off a flare not that long ago; my squad should be on their way now. I still have some gas left. If you have your blades, we could possibly make it to them with hardly any issues.”

“You want me to give you my blades sir?” O’Hara asked, head tilted in confusion.

“Yes. I have my horse. It’s best that we ride together. I’ll handle any Titans that cross our path. You just keep riding and don’t stop as you go to meet with everyone.”

Levi got himself ready to jump off the shed until turning to see O’Hara standing where he was unmoved and in deep thought.

“What is it?” Levi asked impatiently. ““It’s dangerous to stay here out in the open. Best if we get moving.”

Biting his lip nervously, O’Hara shifted his eyes to look at his superior.

“Well, sir, with all due respect, wouldn’t it be pretty bad if you were the one appearing to do all the work while I seem like a sort of damsel in distress type?”

“Excuse me?” Levi inquired, not believing that he heard something so stupid. “So what exactly do you suggest?”

“Well, perhaps I can lead us there. I think I can try to fight off any Titans that come our way. Especially given your exhausted state. I’ll wear the gear while you ride us to your squad.”

Mouth slightly agape and a brow quirked up, Levi stared at the cadet with disbelief. His eyes then rapidly narrowed as he glared at him with pure disdain. His hands grabbed the collar of O’Hara’s shirt and stung him with that same hateful expression.

“You know something O’Hara,” he began in a low growl. “I don’t like you. In fact, I can go as far to say that I hate you. Which is something rather new to me. I may lack respect or simply not give a shit about someone, but never hated. Want to know why you’re so special? Because you’re nothing more than a selfish coward who only cares about keeping up a good appearance and making a decent title for yourself no matter how you get it as long as you don’t really have to work for it. You may think you’re above those who actually fight to make an effort, but we’re all the same to the Titans. I can easily leave you for them; I’m sure no one would bat an eye over your death.”

O’Hara gulped loudly upon hearing the Captain’s threat, visibly shaking and eyes bulging out. Levi’s grip on him loosened somewhat, taking note of his reaction.

“But that’s not the kind of person I am,” he went on to say. “So instead, I’m going to give you a choice. You can either wait here with your demise, or come with me.”

O’Hara said nothing, remaining silent, staring at Levi with a baffled expression. Eventually, he bent down to retrieve his blades out of his ODM gear in a sulk. Levi nodded in response before settling his eyes back at the area around them.

“You may not go back looking like a hero, but I’ll let everyone know of your coope- UGH!”

He was cut off by a strangled groan forced out of him as O’Hara pierced one of his blades in Levi’s shoulder blade. Quickly Levi reeled his foot back, knocking O’Hara off his feet. However, the cadet wrapped an arm around his neck, bringing the two of them down. They wrestled for a bit, attempting to get out of the other’s grip. Levi attained the upper hand as he spun around and swiftly took out the blade in his shoulder, cursing of course from the pain resulting from it. Seeing him falter due to the injury, O’Hara saw his chance and grabbed his wrist, putting a stop to any further action.

“Forgive me Captain,” he muttered, eye to eye with Levi who was over him with the bloody blade inches away from his chest. “As much as I respect you, it seems only one of us is meant to make it back.”

“Rather it be neither of us getting back than letting you go, you pathetic worm!” Levi uttered darkly, using all his power to have the weapon stab the man underneath him.

Yet the more blood he loss, coupled with the fighting he had done from their struggle, the weaker he became. O’Hara noticed this when seeing the blade wavering in his hand, not able to properly make aim for his target. Thinking to use this to his advantage, he reached up with his other hand. What he planned to do, though, was put to a stop as Levi forced enough energy to bring the blade down, right into his chest. He held onto it, his eyes glued to O’Hara’s, watching him shudder and the blood beginning  to spurt out of his mouth.

“You were never a true soldier O’Hara,” Levi told him. “But even you deserve some form of mercy.”

Thinking he made him suffer enough for his attempted mutiny, Levi released the blade from his chest and let the blood spew out hurriedly until O’Hara’s body gave out, ending his life. Weakly, Levi crawled over to the edge of the shed and jumped off. He made it to his horse, but abruptly fell to the ground only a couple feet away from it, scaring it off.

It’s probably best. Levi thought to himself, his vision blurring. With all the shit I’ve done, with the lives I’ve taken, this seems like a fitting end for me.

The grass underneath him darkened with his blood. A few tears fell down and flowed across his cheeks. He continued staring up at the sky.

Y/N, I’m sorry for not getting back to you. But please stay strong. If not for me, do it for Eric. Eric…be  there for your mother. Be…better than me…

————

It was awfully quiet when the squad made it, like someone had turned down a switch that shut off everything around them. They searched around the area for anything until Hanji spoke up.

“Y/N…” she called out in a hushed voice, not trusting it to stay stable.

“What’s wrong?” Y/N rose up to from where she was to direct herself to her friend, concerned about her sudden shaken up state.

She walked towards her, apprehension fueling her when seeing her remain silent and crouched down next to a body. Her attention went to the body, a lump forming in her throat at seeing who it was. She dropped down to her knees, her horror-stricken eyes filling with tears as she looked down at the still and bloody body of her husband.

“I-Is there any way…?” She asked in a hoarse murmur, unable to finish her question.

“No,” Hanji answered just as emotional. “He’s lost too much blood. I’m afraid…”

She couldn’t finish her sentence. She stood up with her hand over her mouth, pushing back in the sob that wanted to break free.

The rest of the group came to see what was going on. They all possessed almost identical looks of utter shock, seeing their Captain in such a state. Armin urgently whipped out his flare gun and was about to shoot a smoke signal before being stopped by Hanji whose hand went over the weapon. Wordlessly, she shook her head while her eyes stayed connected to the heartbreaking scene in front of them. Y/N didn’t mind them, appearing to not even notice  they were there as she scooted closer to Levi’s body and scooping him up in her arms.

“Levi,” she croaked out. “Baby Bear, speak to me.”

She knew time was running out, but hearing his shallow labored breathing meant she could get at least one more moment with him no matter how brief. Even if it was just to chastise her for using his private pet name in front of others, or to look at her in disgust for covering herself in his blood…she just wanted something. He stirred weakly, fluttering his eyelids lightly before gazing up at her.

“Y/N…” he managed softly.

“I’m here sweetheart,” she panted, staring down with a faint smile. “I’m right here.”

He didn’t try to grin back, but with what little strength he had left, he reached up to cup the side of her face. She leaned her cheek to his palm, taking into account how warm his touch still was. She watched his lips shake with effort to form words.

“Stay…strong…”

With one more shudder, he rasped out his last breath. The hand holding his beloved’s face slackened until dropping to the ground with an audible thud. His dark eyes lost all depth to them, leaving them to appear empty and blank.

“Please…” she pleaded in a whisper, keeping his bloody form in her arms. “Please don’t leave me.”

Yet she knew that no matter how many times she called for him, he was already gone.

[armigcr]

LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

just a fun little character game. fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. repost & tag away !

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. exasperation. 002. sarcasm. 003. negativity. 004. insecurity. 005. snark.

GREETINGS:

001. hey ( informal ). nonchalant, average greeting. he’s not really bothered about formal greetings. 002. badly timed hand-shake ( formal ). if he’s trying to greet another formally, he might attempt to instigate a hand-shake ; it’s all he really knows to do, save for offering a delayed // forced bow of sorts. 003. grunts // groans. when he’s only recently awoken, noctis might greet another ( particularly if they’re making attempt to wake him ) with the furrow of his brows & some unintelligible grunt of displeasure. 004. impromptu headlocks. it’s very scarce that he’ll ever instigate conversation or contact by physical means, but he’s far more likely to attempt it in his close-knit group of friends. he might sling an arm around the neck of one of his buddies, or tackle them from the side. more commonly prompto – & sometimes gladio, he’s less inclined to chance doing that to ignis, because he might get a little pissy. 005. shifts in facial expression. most of the time, he’ll greet someone just by looking in their general direction and offering shift in expression. he might raise an eyebrow, offer a subtle smirk, or furrow his brows.

COLORS:

001. black. 002. blue. 003. grey. 004. silver. 005. white.

SCENTS:

001. food ( iggy’s cooking ). 002. anything // anyone familiar. 003. the ocean, but in small doses. 004. albeit bittersweetly : chocobos. 005. the smell of coffee – not the taste, so much.

CLOTHING:

001. black boots ; thick & laced. 002. comfortable, loose-fitting slacks. 003. collarless shirts ; shirts that aren’t tight about his neck. 004. clothes with basic // no patterns & simple designs. 005. finger-less gloves – preferably black, too.

OBJECTS:

001. weapons. needless to say, his weapons are vital for protection against daemons & for training to pass time. the royal arms, particularly, are of great importance both sentimentally and conventionally. 002. phone. he doesn’t spend all his time on his phone, but it’s a necessity. noctis needs this to contact people at great distances ( lest they travel back & forth ) and plays some games on it sometimes. 003. bed. blatantly not something that he can haul around with him ( exception of the tent ) but he certainly wishes he could. noctis adores being warm & comfortable under covers. 004. healing items. potions, elixirs, phoenix downs & the like always come in handy. always. 005. ??? he really doesn’t carry much interesting ; it means exerting too much energy.

VICES / BAD HABITS:

001. subconscious arrogance. noctis has a bad habit of retorting to most anything in a way that’ll make him sound egotistical, even if he doesn’t think as highly as himself as he might allow others to believe. it’s sort of his default response to compliments & taunts ; to sound incredibly self-assured. 002. unintentionally self-destructive. incapable of expressing emotions as effectively as he’d like ; especially with how deeply he feels about certain things, noctis accumulates a lot of anger & general distress. he lets it all build up, and will go to drastic lengths to resolve ( or not resolve ) certain affairs. 003. infuriatingly impassive. despite analysing more than he lets on, noctis still remains quite indifferent to many situations. sometimes he goes out of his way to be indifferent – & others he’s really just oblivious. 004. consistently pessimistic. he struggles to see the bright side of a situation, especially when nothing seems like it’ll ever get better. being confronted with the truth generally worsens the situation – & though he does will himself to push onward, he still holds a rather bleak outlook. 005. socially inept. with reference to his being impassive & arrogant, he’s ultimately just not very good with people. noctis hasn’t grown close to many people in his life, and relationships have always been sort of complicated between him & those he does actually care about. he’s not a bad person, though.

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. awkward scratching of his neck. 002. arms folded across his chest. 003. hands settled against his hips. 004. subconscious, curious head tilts. 005. sly smirks & the subtle raise of brow.

AESTHETICS:

001. the softness of animal fur & chocobo feathers. 002. twinkling of stars against the dark of the sky. 003. subtle trembling of hands ; poorly suppressed feeling. 004. the crackling of a campfire against blustering winds. 005. bittersweet acknowledgement of everything’s impermanence.

SONGS:

001. Too Much Is Never Enough // Florence + The Machine 002. Only Way Out // Madeon ft. Vancouver Sleep Clinic 003. Apollo // Think Up Anger ft. Malia J 004. Broken Crown // Mumford & Sons 005. Take // The Rigs

TAGGED BY:   stolen from me. myself TAGGING:  anybody who wants to  ??

[caelitis-blog1]

LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

just a fun little character game. fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. repost & tag away !

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. exasperation. 002. sarcasm. 003. negativity. 004. insecurity. 005. snark.

GREETINGS:

001. hey ( informal ). nonchalant, average greeting. he’s not really bothered about formal greetings. 002. badly timed hand-shake ( formal ). if he’s trying to greet another formally, he might attempt to instigate a hand-shake ; it’s all he really knows to do, save for offering a delayed // forced bow of sorts. 003. grunts // groans. when he’s only recently awoken, noctis might greet another ( particularly if they’re making attempt to wake him ) with the furrow of his brows & some unintelligible grunt of displeasure. 004. impromptu headlocks. it’s very scarce that he’ll ever instigate conversation or contact by physical means, but he’s far more likely to attempt it in his close-knit group of friends. he might sling an arm around the neck of one of his buddies, or tackle them from the side. more commonly prompto -- & sometimes gladio, he’s less inclined to chance doing that to ignis, because he might get a little pissy. 005. shifts in facial expression. most of the time, he'll greet someone just by looking in their general direction and offering shift in expression. he might raise an eyebrow, offer a subtle smirk, or furrow his brows.

COLORS:

001. black. 002. blue. 003. grey. 004. silver. 005. white.

SCENTS:

001. food ( iggy’s cooking ). 002. anything // anyone familiar. 003. the ocean, but in small doses. 004. albeit bittersweetly : chocobos. 005. the smell of coffee -- not the taste, so much.

CLOTHING:

001. black boots ; thick & laced. 002. comfortable, loose-fitting slacks. 003. collarless shirts ; shirts that aren’t tight about his neck. 004. clothes with basic // no patterns & simple designs. 005. finger-less gloves -- preferably black, too.

OBJECTS:

001. weapons. needless to say, his weapons are vital for protection against daemons & for training to pass time. the royal arms, particularly, are of great importance both sentimentally and conventionally. 002. phone. he doesn’t spend all his time on his phone, but it’s a necessity. noctis needs this to contact people at great distances ( lest they travel back & forth ) and plays some games on it sometimes. 003. bed. blatantly not something that he can haul around with him ( exception of the tent ) but he certainly wishes he could. noctis adores being warm & comfortable under covers. 004. healing items. potions, elixirs, phoenix downs & the like always come in handy. always. 005. ???  he really doesn’t carry much interesting ; it means exerting too much energy.

VICES / BAD HABITS:

001. subconscious arrogance. noctis has a bad habit of retorting to most anything in a way that’ll make him sound egotistical, even if he doesn’t think as highly as himself as he might allow others to believe. it’s sort of his default response to compliments & taunts ; to sound incredibly self-assured. 002. unintentionally self-destructive. incapable of expressing emotions as effectively as he’d like ; especially with how deeply he feels about certain things, noctis accumulates a lot of anger & general distress. he lets it all build up, and will go to drastic lengths to resolve ( or not resolve ) certain affairs. 003. infuriatingly impassive. despite analysing more than he lets on, noctis still remains quite indifferent to many situations. sometimes he goes out of his way to be indifferent -- & others he’s really just oblivious. 004. consistently pessimistic. he struggles to see the bright side of a situation, especially when nothing seems like it’ll ever get better. being confronted with the truth generally worsens the situation -- & though he does will himself to push onward, he still holds a rather bleak outlook. 005. socially inept. with reference to his being impassive & arrogant, he’s ultimately just not very good with people. noctis hasn’t grown close to many people in his life, and relationships have always been sort of complicated between him & those he does actually care about. he’s not a bad person, though.

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. awkward scratching of his neck. 002. arms folded across his chest. 003. hands settled against his hips. 004. subconscious, curious head tilts. 005. sly smirks & the subtle raise of brow.

AESTHETICS:

001. the softness of animal fur & chocobo feathers. 002. twinkling of stars against the dark of the sky. 003. subtle trembling of hands ; poorly suppressed feeling. 004. the crackling of a campfire against blustering winds. 005. bittersweet acknowledgement of everything’s impermanence.

SONGS:

001. Too Much Is Never Enough // Florence + The Machine 002. Only Way Out // Madeon ft. Vancouver Sleep Clinic 003. Apollo // Think Up Anger ft. Malia J 004. Broken Crown // Mumford & Sons 005. Take // The Rigs

TAGGED BY: @supershct & @suntek [ ty  ♡ ] TAGGING: @argentlined @coraurix @vaetus @scarredshield @hydraeanesque @daemonizing​ & anyone --

[translationandbetrayals]

See taboo tatoo is a waste of time

When I look at my list of animes to see, I noticed one that caught my attention since I saw the trailer and the opening, starting with the title that looked promising: TABOO TATOO, and the idea that those who put on a tattoo could acquire unimaginable power, which could change the world as it is known. In the first instance it gave me confidence, because the first chapter looked promising, with a fluid animation and intriguing characters, but as the chapters went by, I wanted to wish I had not chosen this anime and leave it immediately, but unfortunately, I have the habit of not stop watching an anime no matter how bad it is, as long as I do not leave anything pending or in case I can improve, but this one did’n do it.

The best

-Among the few positive things I could find are the powers that are original and the design of their representations provoke intrigue in the viewer, but it fail to deepen in this respect or give more prominence to these.

The worst:

-The characters mostly have no real development or evolution, the protagonist for example, from the beginning has the strength of will to defend their loved ones, and while getting the said power of the tattoo, he gained the strength to do so , the reality is that their inept attitude and lack of ability to think about their actions, have gotten into trouble and have not put at risk their loved ones, not to mention the rest of the characters, who take actions and decisions that are not very credible and Forced events that are used to advance the plot occur.

The other protagonist of this series Izzy, is a girl who in the first instance can have things clear, but as time goes by one realizes that it was actually a facade, since it is someone very emotional, who, in the moments of greatest tension, it would seem that she would give up, and if she did not know about the rest of the characters, she would not have real motivation.

-On the other hand, there are the antagonists, who lack a trustworthy motivation, and they take pains to do what they think is right because if, without justifying properly, this may be explained in the manga, but in reality it would not be necessary to resort to manga if what you want to deliver is a complete anime and without leaving doubts. There is also the scale of power, sometimes some characters are clearly superior to others, but out of the blue, whoever loses gets his potential or gets a boost of power and ends up winning the fight.

-Other thing that happens, is that, well the protagonist has the ability to heal their wounds quickly, the damage received by the rest of the characters are arranged in less time than it would take a regular person, being that in the powers that give the tattoos does not include regeneration, for example, they receive a deep cut, or even take out an arm, but they can continue moving and doing complex movements of the best.

-Other mistake that has, is that it goes from the serious or gore to the kawaii or comic in a brusque manner, giving little importance to the deaths of the rest of the characters, which are mostly transcendental and do not affect the protagonists in the long term.

-Your sountrack is not very flashy and simple, and often shines by its absence or is not according to the moment, they also go for the easy putting unnecessary echi scenes, even if it is not an important part of the anime and they are irrelevant, how Kisses between the characters or focus on the sensual parts of the girls.

-One of the things that caught my attention, are the camera movements brucos, little neat, meaningless and disconnected, changes in the animation of the faces of the characters, which can be made to alleviate the supposed moments of seriousness of the series with comic moments, but the only thing they do is make the spectator uncomfortable.

An example of what I want to say with lack of clarity is in chapter 5, which is when the antagonists kidnap a companion of the protagonists, to rescue it they leave tied the main character, who is the one who has one of the best powers and strength of attack, and instead of taking it to him, they prefer to use common and ordinary agent like cannon fodder, knowing how powerful their opponents are, who killed almost all the soldiers that were armed with simple weapons, this type of decisions are inconceivable if what you want is the survival of your companions. What comes next is that Seigi is released and decides to go find his companion kidnapped, fighting head-on with Iltutmish, who have a fight full of sharp cuts, in a part Seigi is above his rival, but a cut and Suddenly it is underneath it, and once it overcomes it, Princess Ariyabahta arrives, who should be synonymous with power and respect, but when she appears she kisses the protagonist, making Iltutmish jealous, who kisses her again and again, transforming the scene into something kawaii, taking away all the seriousness at the moment. To close the chapter, it turns out that once everything has happened, the protagonist meets the villain in the street, and instead of retaking or making him pay for everything he has caused, including deaths and torture, they start playing ping-pong and behave as if they were best friends.

   -This series ends up wanting to cover a lot in a few chapters and with a plot that does not manage to sustain itself, with an open ending that gives rise to a possible second season, but with the death of one of the pillars of the series, hardly It may come to occur. This anime tries to provoke shock by the blood and deaths, tenderness in the cute scenes and kawaiis, alter the young people with some other echi scene and relationships between complex characters that end up being the simplest, this is undoubtedly one of the Worst anime series I've ever seen, and I wish I had not wasted my time with this one, I wish I did not have the eagerness to finish a series as soon as I started it, otherwise I could have stopped seeing it as soon as I felt something was wrong.

  (This happens when Touko lose the ping-pong game

But that's how i feel when I finished watching the series)

Ayleen. A

[throwaway8472]

An American Fairy Tale

Once upon a time,  A village burned.  Ever since Prometheus passed along the idea of making fire to a caveman somewhere at the dawn of civilization, human beings have enjoyed burning things. It started with wood, moved on to your neighbor’s wood, and then the natural progression was to set fire to your neighbor as well. Prometheus would have rolled in his grave if he’d ever been allowed to die. But this fairy tale takes place before the Catholic Church had gotten its world renowned reputation for burning people in all sorts of ingenious and incredibly creative ways, when the concept was still on the cutting edge of brutality and not something that happened on a day to day basis. Burning villages was still an avant-garde art-form that only the most cultured artists of the era had tried their hand at. The most talented among these was a man named Atilla the Hun, who had reached the forefront of his field slowly and methodically. Like most fools, what he lacked in talent he made up for with endless practice and quite admirable tenacity. Through sheer force of will a man who is inept at a task may slowly become a master.  That is also an accurate summary of the human race’s plodding and asinine progress through the last ten thousand years or so.

 But that is not the point of this fairy tale. This fairy tale follows in the same classical tradition as the immortal and universally hallowed morality tales of the great Greek storyteller Aesop. It is a homage, if you will. Which is to say is to say that its message is about as subtle as a brick flying out of the back of the truck in front of you, smashing through your windshield as quickly as it takes a grumpy old man to complain when you change the channel from yet another NCIS rerun, and near instantly pulverizing your skull so completely that when the paramedics finally show up to scrape your lifeless husk out of your 1973 Oldsmobile Omega, the grizzled 20-year veteran paramedic actually gags a little.

 This is one of those kinds of fairy tales.  Once upon a time,  A village burned.  A young man stumbles from the ruins. He is covered in ash, and the softly moaning wind blows his soot stained shawl up against the side of his body, revealing his hollow chest and the bones of his rib-cage. If you’re having a hard time picturing this, imagine him looking a bit like like a character from Loony Toons who’d blown himself up chasing a roadrunner, but admittedly it’s a lot less comedic considering the boy’s circumstances, which are as follows:

 Two days before, he had gone out into the wilds alone on his first hunt. This was the right of passage into manhood for this particular village, in which when a boy reached the age of thirteen, all of the older men in the tribe forced him to go out into the nearby forest alone covered in nothing but what amounted to a tattered sack. Sometimes they gave them a stick, too. He had three days to kill an animal of some sort, preferably a big one that tasted good, then bring it back so the village could throw a big party and eat whatever the boy caught. After this set of arbitrary conditions had been met, the boy was thought to have become a man, and everyone congratulated him for slaughtering the animal and not getting killed after they had all abandoned him in the woods. It was a sort of proto college fraternity hazing ritual, basically. The French anthropologist who first studied this practice, Arnold van Gennep, christened it “rite de passage” and so ever since anthropologists have called this the “The Rites of Passage Tradition”, but everybody else calls it “Fucking Retarded.”  On the second day of his rite de passage, the boy returned with a promising deer only to discover every single person that he had ever known was dead. If you actually took the time to trace the modern Gregorian calendar all the way back to when the boy came back to find that everybody and everything that he’d ever known was on fire, you would find that it in fact occurred on a Monday, which anybody probably could have guessed anyway, since it’s without a doubt the worst day of the entire week.

 He hadn’t stayed in his village long after he had returned to find it burning, only pausing to take a broken sword from what was left of his own home. He didn’t bother gathering any food; he didn’t plan on traveling much. This was because the young man had decided to kill himself. The burning village had been his home his entire life. He was born there, and he had once expected to live a long life, start a family, and eventually die there surrounded by friends and loved ones. That was obviously off the table now. "Up in smoke”, if you will.  Like many suicidal people, the boy also developed a certain inexplicable taste for irony and the macabre. The shattered sword he carried had been passed down from father to son for generations. He supposed now that since his father and brothers were dead that it now belonged to him. His plan was to travel far enough away from his old home so that he could no longer see the flames and billowing smoke rising from what was left of the village, and then take his broken sword from its sheath and slit his throat. There was a cliff outside the village, and for a time he stumbled toward it slowly like a zombie from a bad horror film, but he never got there. He kept looking back on the life that was behind him, and each time the fires in the distance reflected in his eyes. Eventually he stopped and sat on a rock, and sadly watched as his future slowly turned to ash. It would be a disservice, I think, to call what he felt sadness. Nor would it be accurate to call it the mind-numbing torturous emptiness that sucks at a person’s chest like an open wound, which we name despair. It was a kind of peace, maybe, but not the kind which gives us grace in times of trouble. If there were any word to describe it, perhaps it would be resignation. Yet even that is a disservice to the countless millions that have died by their own hand. Who can say what is in the mind of a person who is about to take his own life? They silenced their own voices before they could tell us their stories– their thoughts, whatever they might have been— are gone now forever, hidden from us as though behind the reflective sheen of a darkly tinted two-way mirror: from the outside looking in, impossible to understand, and from the inside looking out, impossible to explain.  But don’t worry. The boy did not die. Well, he did eventually, of course, but not like that. This isn’t some horribly-ending German fairy tale, after all, but an American one. It’s right there in the title.  The sun would soon set in the west. The boy took his sword from its sheath and placed it alongside his throat. The steel was as cold as something that’s really cold, and a drip of blood slowly began to pool at its point.

 “Evenin’, traveler. I think I know you.”    The young man spun wildly towards the source of the voice. He was especially quick to move the blade from his neck. Human beings still have a shred of modesty burned into them, even when they are about to kill themselves. The sword fell to the ground almost instantly in a quick jerking motion of his arm, a thoughtless reflex action, like the legs twitching on a dead cricket, and he assumed a position and posture that insisted wordlessly that “Oh. Hey. I had just been standing around with a sword next to my neck.” and that people doing this particular activity were as common as sneezing or starting inane  conversations about the weather. He’d just been thinking, that’s all. Sword? No, I hadn’t had a sword held to my neck. You must have seen me at a bad angle, and gee, isn’t it nice out today?  “It’s harder to kill yourself with someone watching, y'know. Makes people feel ashamed, because something in them knows it ain’t right.”    The young man stared at the the new arrival in disbelief. Anybody living today would have recognized what was standing before him as quickly as they would recognize the Coca Cola logo. Here is what the boy saw:  The stranger wore a white button up shirt, and a rugged brown leather vest, with a sort of cloak thrown over it to protect him from the elements. He wore blue denim jeans. His boots were of an odd design. They were tall, brown, the tips were pointed, and there were odd circular metal rings hanging off the back of them which were ringed with spikes. He wore a belt that had a sheathe for some kind of weapon on his right and left leg, but they were not swords. Instead of having a straight handle like that of a sword, these had a strange curved handle made out of wood. Behind the man, the sun setting in the west  gleamed off the blue steel of the two weapons he wore on either hip.

 Most importantly, he wore a hat the likes of which the boy had never seen before. It had a wide brim that circled the man’s entire head.

 “Howdy,” the mysterious stranger said. For some reason he was squinting so hard that he looked like somebody who was staring straight into the sun, even though the sun was at his back. It was the sort of weather-worn face you couldn’t ever imagine having smiled.

"Who’re you?“

 The squinting man shrugged casually, and a brown cylindrical object suddenly appeared in his hand.  He put it in the side of his mouth, and casually walked over toward where the boy was sitting alone on the rock. The boy wasn’t frightened by this. He was in a place beyond fear now. He wasn’t even afraid when the mysterious stranger sat down next to him, reached into his pocket for a small box, made a quick flicking motion, and fire appeared in his hand as if by magic. He lit the tip of the thing in his mouth with his magic fire, took a deep breath. After a moment he breathed out a cloud of smoke with a sigh that sounded like it was weary with the weight of a thousand troubles and a long and profoundly annoying 62 year Hollywood career.  "Are you a god?” the boy asked.

 The man sat there for a long while before replying, seeming to ponder this as he stared off into the distance. The sun was getting lower now.  “‘I 'aint no god. I only been here just as long as people have been around to think me.” His voice was as rough and gravelly as asphalt. He took another long drag of his cigar, exhaled. “Kid, y'know, each drag burns different, but in the final moment, they all become wind.”  The boy told him he didn’t understand.

 The stranger nodded toward the broken sword on the ground, which had only so recently been up against the boy’s throat. “That 'aint no way to die.”

 The boy shook his head. “I don’t have anything left. Why not do it?”

 At this, the stranger took the cigar from his mouth and gestured toward the setting sun and the burning village in the distance.

   “Kid, you been lookin’ at the wrong thing out there.”  The boy looked. He saw the life he had thought was his future burning. But then he saw something else, beyond, further in the distance. It was smoke, but not from the burning village. They were campfires, thousands and thousands of them.“  "That’s them,” said the stranger, “the ones that burned your village. They’re out there waiting for you to go fight them.”  The boy looked down at his scrawny body. “But if I do that, I’ll die.”  The stranger took another long drag from his cigar, exhaled, and watched the smoke as it billowed away into nothingness. “Like I said kid, in the final moment, they all become wind.”

 This time the boy understood. He picked up his shattered sword and stood up. Before he could start walking toward the horde amassed on the horizon, the stranger put a hand on his shoulder. “Figure I’ll go out there with ya’, and besides, think you could use a horse.”

 The stranger worked his magic again, and two horses were there so quickly it felt that they’d been there all along, just out of sight. He and the boy mounted up on the horses and turned them toward the fires of the army in the distance.  “Better to go out like this”, said the mysterious stranger to the boy, “and keep on fighting, for the rest of our lives.”

 “For the rest of our lives,” the boy agreed.  And so they rode off into the sunset together, and they kept on fighting, for the rest of their lives.

[lightholme]

An American Fairy Tale

  Once upon a time,   A village burned.   Ever since Prometheus passed along the idea of making fire to a caveman somewhere at the dawn of civilization, human beings have enjoyed burning things. It started with wood, moved on to your neighbor's wood, and then the natural progression was to set fire to your neighbor as well. Prometheus would have rolled in his grave if he'd ever been allowed to die. But this fairy tale takes place before the Catholic Church had gotten its world renowned reputation for burning people in all sorts of ingenious and incredibly creative ways, when the concept was still on the cutting edge of brutality and not something that happened on a day to day basis. Burning villages was still an avant-garde art-form that only the most cultured artists of the era had tried their hand at. The most talented among these was a man named Atilla the Hun, who had reached the forefront of his field slowly and methodically. Like most fools, what he lacked in talent he made up for with endless practice and quite admirable tenacity. Through sheer force of will a man who is inept at a task may slowly become a master.   That is also an accurate summary of the human race's plodding and asinine progress through the last ten thousand years or so.

  But that is not the point of this fairy tale. This fairy tale follows in the same classical tradition as the immortal and universally hallowed morality tales of the great Greek storyteller Aesop. It is a homage, if you will. Which is to say is to say that its message is about as subtle as a brick flying out of the back of the truck in front of you, smashing through your windshield as quickly as it takes a grumpy old man to complain when you change the channel from yet another NCIS rerun, and near instantly pulverizing your skull so completely that when the paramedics finally show up to scrape your lifeless husk out of your 1973 Oldsmobile Omega, the grizzled 20-year veteran paramedic actually gags a little.

  This is one of those kinds of fairy tales.   Once upon a time,   A village burned.   A young man stumbles from the ruins. He is covered in ash, and the softly moaning wind blows his soot stained shawl up against the side of his body, revealing his hollow chest and the bones of his rib-cage. If you're having a hard time picturing this, imagine him looking a bit like like a character from Loony Toons who'd blown himself up chasing a roadrunner, but admittedly it's a lot less comedic considering the boy's circumstances, which are as follows:

  Two days before, he had gone out into the wilds alone on his first hunt. This was the right of passage into manhood for this particular village, in which when a boy reached the age of thirteen, all of the older men in the tribe forced him to go out into the nearby forest alone covered in nothing but what amounted to a tattered sack. Sometimes they gave them a stick, too. He had three days to kill an animal of some sort, preferably a big one that tasted good, then bring it back so the village could throw a big party and eat whatever the boy caught. After this set of arbitrary conditions had been met, the boy was thought to have become a man, and everyone congratulated him for slaughtering the animal and not getting killed after they had all abandoned him in the woods. It was a sort of proto college fraternity hazing ritual, basically. The French anthropologist who first studied this practice, Arnold van Gennep, christened it "rite de passage" and so ever since anthropologists have called this the "The Rites of Passage Tradition", but everybody else calls it "Fucking Retarded.”   On the second day of his rite de passage, the boy returned with a promising deer only to discover every single person that he had ever known was dead. If you actually took the time to trace the modern Gregorian calendar all the way back to when the boy came back to find that everybody and everything that he'd ever known was on fire, you would find that it in fact occurred on a Monday, which anybody probably could have guessed anyway, since it's without a doubt the worst day of the entire week.

  He hadn't stayed in his village long after he had returned to find it burning, only pausing to take a broken sword from what was left of his own home. He didn't bother gathering any food; he didn't plan on traveling much. This was because the young man had decided to kill himself. The burning village had been his home his entire life. He was born there, and he had once expected to live a long life, start a family, and eventually die there surrounded by friends and loved ones. That was obviously off the table now. "Up in smoke", if you will.   Like many suicidal people, the boy also developed a certain inexplicable taste for irony and the macabre. The shattered sword he carried had been passed down from father to son for generations. He supposed now that since his father and brothers were dead that it now belonged to him. His plan was to travel far enough away from his old home so that he could no longer see the flames and billowing smoke rising from what was left of the village, and then take his broken sword from its sheath and slit his throat. There was a cliff outside the village, and for a time he stumbled toward it slowly like a zombie from a bad horror film, but he never got there. He kept looking back on the life that was behind him, and each time the fires in the distance reflected in his eyes. Eventually he stopped and sat on a rock, and sadly watched as his future slowly turned to ash.  It would be a disservice, I think, to call what he felt sadness. Nor would it be accurate to call it the mind-numbing torturous emptiness that sucks at a person's chest like an open wound, which we name despair. It was a kind of peace, maybe, but not the kind which gives us grace in times of trouble. If there were any word to describe it, perhaps it would be resignation. Yet even that is a disservice to the countless millions that have died by their own hand. Who can say what is in the mind of a person who is about to take his own life? They silenced their own voices before they could tell us their stories-- their thoughts, whatever they might have been--- are gone now forever, hidden from us as though behind the reflective sheen of a darkly tinted two-way mirror: from the outside looking in, impossible to understand, and from the inside looking out, impossible to explain.   But don't worry. The boy did not die. Well, he did eventually, of course, but not like that. This isn't some horribly-ending German fairy tale, after all, but an American one. It's right there in the title.   The sun would soon set in the west. The boy took his sword from its sheath and placed it alongside his throat. The steel was as cold as something that's really cold, and a drip of blood slowly began to pool at its point.

    "Evenin', traveler. I think I know you."     The young man spun wildly towards the source of the voice. He was especially quick to move the blade from his neck. Human beings still have a shred of modesty burned into them, even when they are about to kill themselves. The sword fell to the ground almost instantly in a quick jerking motion of his arm, a thoughtless reflex action, like the legs twitching on a dead cricket, and he assumed a position and posture that insisted wordlessly that "Oh. Hey. I had just been standing around with a sword next to my neck." and that people doing this particular activity were as common as sneezing or starting inane  conversations about the weather. He'd just been thinking, that's all. Sword? No, I hadn't had a sword held to my neck. You must have seen me at a bad angle, and gee, isn't it nice out today?   "It's harder to kill yourself with someone watching, y'know. Makes people feel ashamed, because something in them knows it ain't right."       The young man stared at the the new arrival in disbelief. Anybody living today would have recognized what was standing before him as quickly as they would recognize the Coca Cola logo. Here is what the boy saw:   The stranger wore a white button up shirt, and a rugged brown leather vest, with a sort of cloak thrown over it to protect him from the elements. He wore blue denim jeans. His boots were of an odd design. They were tall, brown, the tips were pointed, and there were odd circular metal rings hanging off the back of them which were ringed with spikes. He wore a belt that had a sheathe for some kind of weapon on his right and left leg, but they were not swords. Instead of having a straight handle like that of a sword, these had a strange curved handle made out of wood. Behind the man, the sun setting in the west  gleamed off the blue steel of the two weapons he wore on either hip.

  Most importantly, he wore a hat the likes of which the boy had never seen before. It had a wide brim that circled the man's entire head.

  "Howdy," the mysterious stranger said. For some reason he was squinting so hard that he looked like somebody who was staring straight into the sun, even though the sun was at his back. It was the sort of weather-worn face you couldn't ever imagine having smiled.

 "Who're you?"

  The squinting man shrugged casually, and a brown cylindrical object suddenly appeared in his hand.  He put it in the side of his mouth, and casually walked over toward where the boy was sitting alone on the rock. The boy wasn't frightened by this. He was in a place beyond fear now. He wasn't even afraid when the mysterious stranger sat down next to him, reached into his pocket for a small box, made a quick flicking motion, and fire appeared in his hand as if by magic. He lit the tip of the thing in his mouth with his magic fire, took a deep breath. After a moment he breathed out a cloud of smoke with a sigh that sounded like it was weary with the weight of a thousand troubles and a long and profoundly annoying 62 year Hollywood career.   "Are you a god?" the boy asked.

  The man sat there for a long while before replying, seeming to ponder this as he stared off into the distance. The sun was getting lower now.   "'I 'aint no god. I only been here just as long as people have been around to think me." His voice was as rough and gravelly as asphalt. He took another long drag of his cigar, exhaled. "Kid, y'know, each drag burns different, but in the final moment, they all become wind."   The boy told him he didn't understand.

  The stranger nodded toward the broken sword on the ground, which had only so recently been up against the boy's throat. "That 'aint no way to die."

  The boy shook his head. "I don't have anything left. Why not do it?"

  At this, the stranger took the cigar from his mouth and gestured toward the setting sun and the burning village in the distance.

    "Kid, you been lookin' at the wrong thing out there."   The boy looked. He saw the life he had thought was his future burning. But then he saw something else, beyond, further in the distance. It was smoke, but not from the burning village. They were campfires, thousands and thousands of them."   "That's them," said the stranger, "the ones that burned your village. They're out there waiting for you to go fight them."   The boy looked down at his scrawny body. "But if I do that, I'll die."   The stranger took another long drag from his cigar, exhaled, and watched the smoke as it billowed away into nothingness. "Like I said kid, in the final moment, they all become wind."

  This time the boy understood. He picked up his shattered sword and stood up. Before he could start walking toward the horde amassed on the horizon, the stranger put a hand on his shoulder. "Figure I'll go out there with ya', and besides, think you could use a horse."  

  The stranger worked his magic again, and two horses were there so quickly it felt that they'd been there all along, just out of sight. He and the boy mounted up on the horses and turned them toward the fires of the army in the distance.   "Better to go out like this", said the mysterious stranger to the boy, "and keep on fighting, for the rest of our lives."

  "For the rest of our lives," the boy agreed.   And so they rode off into the sunset together, and they kept on fighting, for the rest of their lives.