#(technically didn't air in the uk until after but still)

[frogayyyy]

do u ever think about how the original series started airing before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK and the reboot movies were being made during the legalising of same-sex marriage in the UK. and yet tos spock is undisputedly more canonically gay than aos spock. because i think about it a lot.

and even now. spock. is. still. not. gay.

"this simple feeling" he said that in 1979!!!

but 50 years later they still can't say the word love

[bonny-kookoo]

How would Jungkook and Snowball's firt public appearance or weverse live go after their relationship was confirmed to the public?

He's nervous to say the least.

And it's definitely awkward in the beginning because he knows he should talk about it. "Hm, I think you've already read the announcement, right?" He asks the fans in the comments, who all seem to have very different reactions.

There's the flood of purple hearts probably meant to drown out potentially upsetting comments- but he still catches them, here and there. "Please don't be upset with Snowball. She- it really did just happen out of nowhere to be honest." He sighs, rubbing his inked arm a bit nervously. "It's hard to explain. When you fall in love, at least for me, it happens over time. I don't notice it until it's happened." He shrugs, looking away as he attempts to find good words. "And I felt like it might be unfair to you guys if I was to hide it or even lie. I couldn't do that." He shakes his head, earning another wave of emojis.

He can see the angry comments though. The disappointment here and there, the hate towards you, even threats are falling through the cracks here and there.

It scares him. What if someone's crazy enough to truly attempt something like that?

"I hope you can still find it in you to.. maybe continue supporting me. Nothing will really change just because- well, just because I've got Snowball at my side now." He nods to himself. "She's, private? I think that's a good way to put it. She's my privacy, and you guys can respect that, right?" He asks, hopes that it might turn some people around.

The media still attempts to tear you apart over the next few days though. He? He can take the heat. He knows he's not being a creep or using you for anything- he doesn't mind getting hate. But it's different when they write about you.

So much stuff is getting made up. Scandals that never happened. Old footage suddenly searched for any glimpse of a mistake or flaw. You're being picked at as if a corpse surrounded by hungry hyenas.

And he hates it.

But he doesn't back away from it either, knows that it would only make things worse if he shows any form of weakness now. So he still decides to fly out to the UK with you in tow, holding your hand almost as if to provoke- and he honestly didn't mean to, technically.

Still- some delusioned 'fans' break through the barriers, grab after your tail, making you yelp out in pain as security has to harshly pull it from the stranger's grasp, before you're both pretty much pushed towards the gate to the plane, where you both sit down inside, getting ready to fly out.

Jungkook feels awful-

Especially when you smile at him of all things.

"Can I sleep during the flight?" You ask him easily, struggling a little to buckle your seatbelt on the plane with your shaky hands, the only proof of panic right now in your body language.

And he silently reaches out to help you instead, before he holds your cheek, smiling encouragingly as well.

"Of course." He tells you. "It's a long flight after all." He tries to stay casual, and you nod, eyes tearing up as you nod, emotions seemingly catching up slowly.

"..and can we cuddle when we're at the hotel?" You ask, voice cracking and hurting him in the process as he pets your ear encouragingly. He needs to stay strong for you now, no matter how scared he is himself.

You can't have that.

"All night long." He promises towards you, before he watches how you lean into him once the plane is in the air, your head against his shoulder.

He's not sure how he's gonna get through this moving forwards-

But he will.

For you.

[flautistaclara]

The Firelord once said that the only way to the world to be peaceful was conquering the entire world for the Fire Nation. So he and his army proceeded to commit genocide. The slaughtered every airbender and every Air Nomad. All the Nomads were killed. Except one: the Avatar, who was away and lost in the ocean while the genocide hapenned. After 100 years, after being awaken, he fought the Fire Nation and its army, giving hope back to the world: hope of balance, hope to end that neverending oppression.

Unlike the Avatar's world, we don't have an Avatar destined to balance the world to aid us. And various nations were eliminated on the past, just like the Air Nomads.

The biggest genocide here, in real life, was the indigenous genocide. Millions of persons murdered by european colonizers and erased from history, just like the Fire Nation did to the Air Nomads. Those cultures are forgotten in time and there is no survivor to revive those cultures like the Avatar revived his people's culture. And this genocide stills happenning nowadays, sadly.

The most known genocide was the Holocaust. Although most people I've met only remember about the jews persecuted and murdered, the Holocaust didn't only target jews. They targeted also the roma people and the disabled ones. They were not "perfect" to the nazis. The roma, like the jews, were persecuted through history because of their beliefs and their culture. Seems like what the Fire Nation did with the waterbenders from the South Water Tribe. Arrest and murder, because they are the escapegoats. The disabled ones, well... Nazis were ableists. They saw the disabled people as defectuous. They were an error to them. Non-white persons were also hunted, because they were seen as inferior beings, not even were considered human. What about LGBTS? They were seen as deffects. And the people with different political opinions, who dared to keep believing in what is correct and stood against Nazism in Germany? Arrested, because "how dared they question the Nazi supremacy?" Luckly, thanks to the commies, the nazis were defeated. Ok US, UK and the other allies did something to aid during the 2nd World War, but we need to remember: they rathered ignore the nazis until it was too late. Also, some nazis were rescued by US on Operation Paperclip and were kept alive, working for a new country, but keeping the same ideas.

I once heard that history tends to repeat itself. I also heard that art immitates the real life. And that real life also immitates art.

For my sadness, history is repeating itself. There is a new Fire Nation in the world. Unlike Germany or the Europe, that nation is not a big potency. That nation is technically the pet from one potency. And, using religion and the threaten of terrorism as excuses, they're committing genocide. Innocents are losing their homes, their families, their lives. Universities and Hospitals were destroyed. The culture of an entire nation is being erased. And children... Well... They're considered as potential terrorists. Not human beings. Not pure and harmless. Potential terrorists. And those Air Nomads of our time, pacifists and defensive, are being erased. And we're watching this in real time on internet. Fire Soldiers making TikToks mocking the Nomads. The Firelord breaking balance to expand the Fire Nation. Fire Nation inhabitants who dare to keep beliving on what is correct and standing against those war crimes are being repressed by the nation they believed once to be a refuge for them, but in reality, this Fire Nation is as colonizer as Europe was with the rest of the world; and it is also as genocidal as the Nazi Germany was. And what I see? Although some countries like South Africa, Ireland and Brazil have positioned themselves against the genocide, I have the perception most of the world is acting like US and UK did in the 1930's: ignoring that until it becomes too late to react.

The time is ending.

The Fire Nation managed to murder loads of Air Nomads.

Hurry, we need to act before the Air Nation ends in the hands of Fire Nation like various indigenous peoples and cultures ended in the hands of Europe:

Erased and forgotten by time.

[redeyedroid]

CW: War, racism, and racism in war

A lot of words have been written about him, even here, where baseball is the most minor of sports, often derided as being basically rounders, a functionally identical game you play in school when the teacher can't be bothered to think of anything better to do. Or, at best, it's thought of as cricket minus the eccentricity and propensity to carry on for days at a time.

We know of Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in Major League Baseball. Not so much, Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson, among the first black officers in the US Army, court martialled after refusing to move to the back of a desegregated military bus. Referred to as "the n---- lieutenant" by an enlisted man and told he was “uppity and out to make trouble” by the investigating officer, Robinson's commanding officer recognised the malevolence behind the charges and refused to sign the court martial papers. So the army transferred Robinson to a unit where the CO was more amenable to the idea of putting a black man in his place.

Charged with 6 offences, he was tried on two counts and, the racism of the witnesses against him exposed and documented, acquitted on both.

The court martial kept Robinson Stateside. He never made it into combat (you can debate amongst yourselves whether that was a good or bad thing).

The unit he had been moved out of, however, did. His case was neither the first or the last experience of racism the men of the 761st Tank Battalion would suffer. Among many other incidents, they were attacked by MPs and other soldiers in a race riot in Louisiana in 1942 - something not uncommon in the US Army of the Second World War.

There were multiple race riots among US troops stationed in the UK. US Army Air Force General Ira Eaker opined that "90% of the trouble with negro troops was the fault of the whites." White men, enraged by the - still limited - freedom black troops found in a country where discrimination wasn't enshrined in law, or seeing white women dating black men, would provoke fights, or simply abuse and assault black men. The US military responded by importing segregation to the UK. Black servicemen would be given different days for leave and prohibited from going to the same towns and areas as white soldiers. In his history of the USAAF's bombing war, Masters of the Air, Donald Miller describes the practice as "de facto Jim Crow."

(And the British weren't much - if at all - better. The highest rank an Indian could reach in the Indian Army of the time was Subedar Major - roughly equivalent to Major, but one whose authority came from long service and reputation because they were still technically junior to the greenest white officers.)

Hell, they didn't allow African Americans to actually fight in Northwest Europe until the Army started suffering manpower shortages in 1944. Then Eisenhower decided that they could be allowed the privilege of being maimed and killed for a country where they were considered second class citizens. In Stephen Ambrose's summation, "The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”

And in units like the 761st Tank Battalion - among the first armoured units with a complement of black men in the US Army - they went into combat. Before Huey P Newton or Marvel, the unit was nicknamed the Black Panthers. Years later, Chadwick Boseman portrayed Jackie Robinson on screen in the movie 42. One Black Panther played by another.

The 761st fought as an independent unit, attached to divisions and battlegroups where and when needed, in Patton's 3rd Army, whose endlessly complicated mind proclaimed that he didn't care about their race as long as they killed Germans, yet also said that he did not believe black men could think fast and clearly enough to fight in tanks.

And even when they did make it into combat, their country refused to honour them.

472 men were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in the Second World War. Of the seven given to black men, none were conferred until the 1990s, by which time most of the recipients were dead, their inconvenient heroism having been pushed to the side for more than half a century.

The heroism of men like Ruben Rivers, a sergeant in the Black Panthers.

Rivers won the 761st's first of eleven Silver Stars in an action in early November 1944 and was seriously wounded in the leg a week later when his tank hit a mine. Rivers refused evacuation and treatment. He disobeyed orders to leave his unit and led his platoon until he was killed when his tank was destroyed while covering a withdrawal when they were ambushed two days later. His CO - a white man - recommended Rivers for the Medal of Honor, uniquely, as far as I know, as black men were normally nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross in such circumstances, their commanding officers either too racist to recommend them for the highest award, or too realistic in understanding the racism of those in charge of handing out medals. No black man could or would be given such a medal in that era. And so Rivers received nothing, until the Shaw Review 50 years later found that his bravery and death had been overlooked due to structural racism and gave him recognition he deserved in 1944. His sister, Grace, received the medal from Bill Clinton in January 1997.

For the most part, when compared to the USSR, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the US and UK tried to preserve the lives of their men and limit casualties, to use technology and firepower in place of lives, to use steel in place of flesh wherever possible, but it's clear that the lives of their black soldiers mattered far less to them than those of their white ones, and did so for far longer than they'd like to pretend.

Robinson's story is one of the struggle for dignity and equality. "Fair play and justice" in his own words. Rivers' is one of extraordinary bravery and gallanty. Both came in the face of profound and enduring injustice perpetrated by their own side. Rivers' Medal of Honor citation says that he exemplified the highest traditions of military service, yet that military preferred to ignore that service until long after his death, just as it saw Robinson's colour and tried to deny him the status and respect he was due.  And there is a sea of forgotten and undocumented stories just like theirs.

[notasdriedapricots]

Some HCs for young Lucas in Argentina no one needs but here they are

I know it's canon that he "helped build houses in Argentina", and that doesn't mean he necessarily lived there, but it kinda does. And he said he moved a lot in the same chapter, it's implicit, okay I don't care lol. It goes without saying, but if anyone thinks I'm wrong/wants to ask about something specific or that I forgot/wants to add something, you're more than welcome and I'd love that.

Ok, so given that a few days ago was a homeland date, and that the very next day a mate (this 🧉, not this 🧍‍♂️) was thrown at me on the dashboard (which was awesome tbh) I actually sat down and wrote them. And now here they are

- So, while we're still at the subject: mate. For those who don't know, mate is basically shared reversed tea, that's the easiest way to explain it; it's not tea, but it's close enough, and the proportion between leaves and water is inverted, and you pass the thing around until you're out of water. Yeah, you know Lucas was not into the whole "five people sharing a straw" thing, he found it disgusting, but he eventually gave in because of peer pressure. He wouldn't now, but at the time he was a teenager in a foreign country trying to make friends and was already at a disadvantage (more on this below). He liked the taste, though; it's kinda like a strong green tea. Still avoided it whenever he could, but did have it on his own at home sometimes while studying, and he knows all the details about it (dusting the leaves, appropriate water temperature, starting with cold water, not overpouring, not moving the straw...). Hasn't had it since he moved away, though.

- When? From mid 2008 to late 2009. So, because I headcanon him as being born in 92, he moved there soon after turning sixteen and left at about seventeen and a half. I was rambling about the school year but I feelt it got too technical; I'll explain it further if you want, but I swear it makes sense.

- Another basic: Where? Maybe surprisingly, not Buenos Aires. His dad would have business there because of course he would, but he wouldn't take his family to live there. They would live in another big city, likely Córdoba, that's close enough (and has regular, hour-long flights to and from Bs. As.), big enough, but less dangerous. In a private neighborhood, though; the famous one on the south side. The horse related one. Wink.

- It's practically canon that he was in TECHO, come on. Which makes sense, because TECHO has always been full of rich kids.

- Obsessed with the food. A mixture of Spanish and Italian with a twist, plus fantastic meat and fantastic wine. Simple but effective. And his mother picked up some cooking habits and recipes, which he appreciated deeply.

- Appreciates the simplicity of the whole concept of "asado", and his high school friends taught him to light a fire properly. Keep achuras the fuck away from him, though.

- Has a weakness for dulce de leche, of course, and keeps a jar of it in his fridge at all times.

- Love/hate relationship with the slang. So. Much. Slang. And it was hard the first month. Like, you thought "succulent" was bad? He got war flashbacks from that. He spoke Spanish Spanish at first, so he got made fun of for the way he pronounced the "z"s and some "c"s, and how he said "tú" and "vosostros" instead of "vos" and "ustedes" (this explanation is useless if you have no idea about the differences between Spanish and Rioplatense Spanish, but this would have been such a big deal. Think a whole new way to conjugate 2° singular AND plural. Also verb usage. Also, if we do put him in Córdoba, the accent. Also very fast speech. Poor Lucas).

- On the note of language, even though he was kinda shocked at first, he ended up finding the extremely liberal use of curse words hilarious.

- Tried going to a football match. Once, and never again. Not vibing with the "climate"...

- Played football with a group of high school friends every Saturday.

- Still baffled by the politics.

- Went to the coast for a week one summer. It was supposed to be two but his parents were like "Nope" and left early. Still thinks people who go to the beaches are low-key-high-key delusional. ("You know that Brazil is right there, right? It's literally one plane away.")

- So shocked at first when every guy he was introduced to bro hugged him and every girl kissed him on the cheek. He quickly got used to it, though, and lowkey missed the excessive warmness when he left.

- Surprised at how people could have the most offensive nicknames and be completely fine with it. I'll just say he himself got fucking lucky he didn't get one.

- Had a group of friends that he missed like crazy when he left. They threw him a surprise goodbye party and showed up at the airport. He still talks to most of them every once in a while.

- He had to readjust a bit when he returned to the UK.

- During college he went back twice, once in summer and once in winter. In summer he rented a car and went through the "Route of wine" in Mendoza, and then drove through the Patagonia (aka the south of the country). In winter he visited the north: the Iguazú waterfalls, the north-west, and some big cities.

- Oh, and that gif is from what became one of his favourite movies: Nueve Reinas. He was watching The Simpsons on TV when the episode ended and the movie began, so he left it on. If you're curious, DO NOT watch the American version; there's a very strong cultural factor that is completely incompatible and ruins the movie.