#But it was literally a nation in mourning

[clearwingedmaven]

My full analysis of the Empty House isn't coming quite yet, but I wanted to do something that would... bridge the gap, so to speak.

For one, I tend to avoid The Final Problem sometimes, as it will make me cry(I am a sap, truly), but there is always a part of me that will genuinely appreciate the Empty House.

Let me talk a little about Holmes’s return.

For 1893 England, Holmes’s death was... well, basically one of the single biggest moments in fandom culture since the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens came out.

(It is often believed, actually, that the Pickwick Papers, and by extension, all of Charles Dickens works were the first fandom!)

You all know that Victorian England was beside themselves. But there was more than that.

People held actual demonstrations. They frantically wrote to Doyle to change his mind, devastated that Holmes would actually die. They found Joseph Bell, whom Holmes was based off of to try and fill the void. There's accounts that people would dress up as the characters and go on pilgrimages to Reichenbach Falls, as another way to cope.

For Victorian England, with not much to do when they returned home, they were mourning, quite nationally. (And in my research on fandom, Holmes’s death in 1893 was perhaps the first mourning of a fictional character to such a degree.)

And then Holmes returned. While yes, the Hound of the Baskervilles came first, Empty House followed after to explain what had happened, to ease the public.

And as much as Doyle was... bitter about this, Holmes’s return is unusually gentle. He doesn't come in in a blaze of glory, he doesn't loudly declare he's returned, he comes to his oldest and dearest companion(and maybe more?) Watson, to tell him he's back.

And of course, Watson faints. Doyle could have easily had Holmes chastise him, or leave, but instead opts to stay with Watson, to bring him back from fainting, and apologize.

And I think that level of detail is... one not often noticed.

Lastly, I love the different adaptations of the Empty House, because they inject their own gentleness to it.

Granada Holmes goes for a hug, and tenderly brings Watson back to consciousness. Soviet Holmes gently tells Watson(and Mrs. Hudson) that he's back, and hugs them both. And so on.

And it's brilliant.

[dafkakafka]

sending an email saying that i will be absent in observance of Tisha B’av and getting a goyische response ending with “Enjoy the holiday!”

[coffin-flop]

i know my cat knows i love him but does he know how much?

[boringkate]

Here’s a bunch of junk for you trans girls to watch

Update: there used to be a link to a mega folder here, but it got taken down.

///TGIRL FEATURE FILMS (alphabetical order)

Adam (2019) it's about a cis boy who's mistaken for a trans boy and rolls with it. Big cast of trans characters including a tgirl played by a tgirl who everyone wants to fuck. Directed by a trans dude. Highly legit. If you're still hung up on pre release speculation based on the novel then you're the most annoying person alive.

Assassination Nation (2018) The first half is Euphoria and the second half is The Purge. ONE OF THE BEST TGIRL MOVIES OF ALL TIME.

Bit (2019) Lesbian girl power vampire movie where the main character is a tgirl played by a tgirl. It's solid. I find it frustrating that they hint at her being trans without explicitly acknowledging it (and she's passing as fuck, so it's easy to not notice), but I know that's what some of y'all want.

Boy Meets Girl (2014) Cis dude for trans girl love story. Pretty normie, but also you see her fully naked (gock out) at the end.

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) Extremely 60s. Cool as hell.

Lady Daddy (2010) South Korean romcom about a trans girl played by a cis girl who tries unconvincingly to back pass when she finds out she has a kid. Very cute.

Lingua Franca (2019) written directed and starring Isabel Sandoval. An undocumented trans woman immigrant in New York deals with a cis dude partner being a cis dude. Which is also the plot of The Garden Left Behind (2019).

Myra Breckinridge (1970) Raquel Welch is a trans woman and her goal is the destruction of the last vestigial traces of traditional manhood! It's Fight Club! It's Hackers! It's divisive, but it's probably my favorite movie!

So Pretty (2019) Literally the first scripted feature length (non pornographic tho it does have cock) film to feature two trans women played by trans women kissing eachother.

Something Must Break (2014) THE OTHER BEST TGIRL MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Drugs. Crimes. Gock. Slow motion pissing. Slow motion park Fucking. Genuinely the most beautiful sex scene I've seen in any movie. And she makes it to the end still alive and more sure of herself and at peace than ever.

Tangerine (2015) Groundbreaking and also a bunch of the secondary characters are real life pornstars (which I think is neat).

The Garden Left Behind (2019) This and Lingua Franca (2019) really are tgirl twin films, but (like with Antz and A Bug’s Life) the vibes and details make them distinct (I assume tho tbh I’ve never watched Antz).

///TGIRL DOCUMENTARIES

Bambi (2013) about a trans girl showgirl in 50s/60s paris

Paris is Burning (1990) basically it's Pose.

Shinjuku Boys (1995) Trans dudes working in a tokyo club that caters to tboy chasing cis girls. There's at least one trans girl in the mix too.

///FORCED FEMINIZATION

A Reflection of Fear (1972) They raised her as a girl and it made her do murders! It drags in places, but the girl in it is so ethereal and it has ageplay vibes and daddy issues.

Memory Run (1996) A very fun direct to video scifi action flick about fighting fascism by blowing up your pre transition self with a rocket launcher + it's based on a novel written by a trans woman.

She-Man A Story of Fixation (1967) Notable for being such a cliche sissy maid fantasy while also coming out so early + it was Bob Clark's first film lol.

Sleepaway Camp (1983) A more famous version of Reflection of Fear.

Surrender Dorothy (1998) A MUST WATCH. I personally bought a physical DVD and made an ISO of it for you because I was unsatisfied with the quality of the only copy that seemed to exist online. I ALSO PERSONALLY CREATED MY OWN SUBTITLES FOR IT BECAUSE EVEN THE DVD DIDN’T INCLUDE ANY! WHICH TOOK HOURS TO DO!

The Skin I Live In (2011) A rapist is kidnapped and turned into a girl by a mournful vengeful plastic surgeon. Which was also the plot of Victim (2010). I never really vibe with Pedro Almodóvar movies, but I recognize this is the preeminent forced feminization film.

///SHORT FILMS

Gender Troublemakers (1993) Some 90s Toronto trans girls fucking and discoursing. Explicit tgirl on tgirl action. This is the only one on the list that I haven’t actually watched yet. I’m hyped to watch it tho. Seems mindblowingly rad af.

Happy Birthday Marsha (2018) It's about Marsha P. Johnson.

I don't Know (1971) I'm obsessed with the trans girl in this one she just keeps popping up in all kinds of early 70s stuff. Directed by Penelope Spheeris (who is the sister of the cis gf in it).

Mesmeralda (2019) AN ABSOLUTE BANGER HOLY FUCK THE VIBES ARE OFF THE CHARTS! PLS WATCH THIS! I refuse to apologize for it being 15GB. It’s worth every byte.

Pat Rocco's Changes (1970) It's that same girl again!

Queens at Heart (1967) I can't get over that hairdresser girl thinking she's back passing. Most adorably weak boymode ever.

Shangri-La (2021) Another Isabel Sandoval joint.

The Yellow Wallpaper (2021) Freshly post op girl with a supportive boyfriend goes unhinged.

Undress Me (2012) Jana Bringlöv Ekspong did a few short films. Give janabringlove a google after watching this.

///JUST LIKE BTW

Some of these would be tough to find elsewhere, but most of the movies are also watchable on fmovies and/or can be torrented in higher quality.

After you've worked your way through the folder then just start doing Google searches for trans films. Look at IMDB keywords and letterboxd lists. There are so many more out there. These are just like my personal picks.

[roach-works]

i went to temple recently because my mom died and literally every single jew there agreed that the nation of israel is conducting a genocide against Palestine and needs to be stopped. every single one of us. there had to be forty of us there, a chunk of us mourning my mom, and the service was entirely prayers for palestinian safety and justice. do you know how insane it is to have forty jews agree on something? to speak in absolute unison? to shelve our grief for our personal losses in the face of such an inarguable atrocity? to speak of nothing but the need for action?

it's hard to articulate the scope and weight of this horror. it's imperative to communicate, though, the burning intensity of american jews who have turned irrevocably against zionism and the mandate of israel to provide us with a homeland.

[redflagshipwriter]

Fast Car Four (of four)

masterpost

Jason swallowed down hysterical laughter. “No, I don't.” 

Major understatement. Jason did not want Danny to talk to Batman. There were a couple reasons! 

Most crucial to his mission was that he was pretty sure Danny would make him seem a lot less dangerous and intimidating. He needed Batman to think the Red Hood was a coldly calculating threat, not a nice guy who tipped well. Danny was weirdly blithe about hanging out with a man who was over the national news for mass murder and taking over a drug market. Now that he was mostly over the shock of Danny’s attempt to throttle him for endangering his academic ambitions, he kind of desperately wanted Danny to like him. But again, that was not conducive to the impression he needed to make on Gotham..

But also, Jason wasn't made of stone. Danny was wrong about being in danger from Batman. Whatever he was, he clearly wasn't a criminal. He was some kind of persecuted minority. The highest Batman-related-risk he had was adoption.

‘Pretty goddamn terrible risk,’ Jason thought, remembering Dickie's screaming fights with Bruce and his own catastrophic blowout. 

Alright. How to make this work in the context of his plan? 

“Lemme think for a bit,” Jason said aloud, just so that Danny would steam less. “Obviously, he isn't going to forget about you. He knows your name, where you live, alla that. The best way to get him off your ass is to make you irrelevant as a lead.” 

Emotionally compromising him really wouldn't hurt, either. It was really goddamn hard to make Batman sloppy. But Jason knew how to press his buttons. He thought it over and wordlessly led Danny into the safehouse to offer him bottled water from the fridge. 

“He's not going to find you here, by the way,” Jason absently reassured. “Do you have to go to class today?” 

Danny grimaced. “I can miss a day.” He cracked open the water bottle. “One day.” 

Jason suppressed a cackle. He had one day to do something that got Danny off of Batman's sonar. He loved a generous king. “Thanks, honey,” he said. And then he flatlined. 

They looked at each other. 

Neither one of them spoke. The air was very tense with… something.

Jason looked back at his phone and pretended to be very busy. 

‘I wish I wasn't a dumbass,’ he mourned. Jason took a moment to be wistful for a better world. ‘Fuck. I need to solve this. How do I- would dramatically escalating my timeline work? If I skip all the chess moves and just confront Bruce…’

He cleared his throat. “What are, uh, your thoughts on using your powers to commit a major crime for me just once, so that I can get the Batman off your case?” 

Danny's lips thinned. “I'll hear you out.” 

Jason's mind raced. “So, uh, you stay here today, where he definitely can't see you. I have to go out for an errand or two, but you can just camp out here.” He frowned. “Actually, Batman won't go out in the day.” Bruce had work. “You can go to your classes. You probably should. School is important.”

��And Batman isn't going to like, track my car by traffic cameras and see that I came from here?” Danny raised an eyebrow.

‘He is going to do exactly that to see that you came here, and it’ll take him all day.’

He felt a vindictive spark of joy over how Bruce’s old man neck was going to hurt after hours spent squinting at his monitors. He’d used to microwave rice packs and hand them over periodically so the big dope didn’t wind up laid up in bed the next day.

‘Wonder if the new kid does that.’

Jason snorted and hopped up on the kitchen counter. “No, he's definitely going to do that. But it'll take him a while and I'll burn this location anyway…” He trailed off as an idea hit. “D’you know anything about cars?” 

It turned out that Danny knew enough. 

So Jason made them breakfast, sent Danny off to school, and then went out to intimidate the minions he'd had for literally one friggin day.

That turned out to be completely unnecessary. Apparently the Joker got the news channel in Arkham and he was pissy about someone making a major news story under his old alias. 

In another world, Jason would have flipped off the TV and hunkered down, let this chance pass him by because the stars were not aligned. But right here and now, there was a hot boy depending on him. So Jason was just going to make it work. 

Danny came back to the safehouse after classes. “Are you sure Batman is gonna come here?” Jason watched with eagle eyes as Danny absently picked at the pot roast he'd had going all day. Danny liked potatoes. Noted. 

“Yeah, for sure.” He cleared his throat. “And he’ll follow me if he hears word I’m out.”

“Leaving me to actually do this.” Danny looked kind of disgruntled about it.

Jason opened his mouth to point out that drawing Batman away on foot was a lot more demanding than what he wanted from Danny, but then he made eye contact and felt a chill up his spine. Danny’s stare looked positively dangerous. He was gripping his eating utensils with what was obviously way too much force and leaning ever so slightly towards Jason.

‘I think he’ll attack me with his spoon if I say that,’ Jason thought with admiration. ‘This man feels no fucking fear.’

“I’m sure that you can pull it off,” he said instead. “It won’t take too long with density shifting.”

Danny made a sound deep in the back of his throat that conveyed a deep and enduring skepticism. Jason took a big bite of his own food to move the interaction along. 

There was a huge sigh.

Some latent instinct cued Jason in that eye contact was required. He put down his food and focused on Danny. He conveyed his full attention as much as he possibly could while wearing a mask. He momentarily wondered if he should take it off but no, that was nuts. 

“Tell me that you’re sure this will work,” Danny said. He blinked at Jason, looking weary. “Personally, I think that this sounds like it will just piss him off beyond belief and it’ll point to me. I can see the benefit in sabotaging his transportation, don’t get me wrong, it’ll slow him down. But why this? Are you sure that I wouldn’t be better off just going to him and telling him I don’t really know you and I ran because I was afraid of him?”

Jason swallowed. “Danny.” He radiated his sincerity, willing Danny to feel it. “You don’t have to open up to him. Taking three tires off of his car is going to be psychological warfare because I did that to him when I was a kid. It’s going to make him think of me and put him way off balance. When I confront him, he will not be thinking about a gig driver.”

Danny nodded slowly through that bit of personal information. He licked his lips. Jason tried not to imagine that he was doing the licking.

He cleared his throat but his voice still came out hoarse. “I know you don’t know me very well.” Fuck it, it was clearly time for a big swing. Jason unpeeled the domino and did his level best not to let on that it hurt like a fucking BITCH to remove without using the right solution. 

It was the right move. Danny was riveted at the show of trust, gaze darting over his exposed features before blinking and settling into intense eye contact. “I have your back. Okay?” He pulled his hand under the table to hide that it was trembling. “If Batman doesn’t put me in jail tonight, I will do whatever it takes to keep you off the radar. Alright?”

There was a nonzero chance that he was going off to die. Jason fervently hoped that his shitty fucking father pulled through for once in his miserable life and shot the Joker in his evil head. If he tried to find some clever solution, Jason was going to have to kill the fucker himself and then try to avoid getting the shit beaten out of him by his dad.

He felt a moment of painful regret that he was doing this. But he had to. It was his whole reason for being. He had to give Bruce this one last chance to show that he cared Jason had suffered and died.

It was like Danny looked right into his soul. “Alright.” Danny nodded slowly and then his face underwent a whole transformation. He didn’t look like a tired college kid. He looked capable and determined. Jason felt his chest seize. “I believe you. And-” he hesitated before barrelling on. “If Batman tosses you in jail, I guess I’ll get you out. I owe you dinner.” He indicated the table.

Jason felt himself smile. “Yeah,” he echoed. “Yeah, dinner.” 

He probably should have wondered how Danny thought he’d pull that off. But in that moment, he had no doubt. They were going to go out, at least once, and see if they could be something.

He was going to come back and he was going to take Danny out to a real dinner. He felt it in his bones.

They finished eating in silence. Then Danny silently watched Jason get ready for war, putting on his armor and rechecking his equipment. At the door, Danny handed him his gloves. It felt like a benediction. It felt like he was sending Jason off to battle with his favor.

“Four hours,” Danny said. There was no arguing with him. He reached out and wrapped his cool hand around Jason’s wrist. Maybe he was feeling Jason’s pulse. “I’ll find you if you don’t come back.”

Jason reversed the grip. He brought Danny’s hand up slowly enough that there was plenty of time for him to pull away. Instead of a rejection, he saw Danny’s pupils dilate. He pressed a kiss to the back of Danny’s hand. “Four hours,” he agreed. Then he put on his helmet and went out to face the night.

[writersdrug]

Mourning Dove

Chapter 3: Pursuit

Masterlist

Summary: König finds a lost lamb and guides it home, away from the wolves.

Warnings: Obsessive behavior, chasing, anxiety

The forest wasn’t full of surprises – at least, not to König. In fact, it was a comfortably predictable place. Trees grew and shed their leaves, animals frolicked in the early morning and landed in his traps at night. Mushrooms sprouted among the tree stumps behind his cabin, and the sun rose and fell. The only variance was in what he cooked for his meals or how many logs he put in the woodstove, and even then, there wasn’t much of a difference.

When the sickness had broken out across nations, he had hardly noticed it. If it wasn’t for his biweekly trip down the mountain, he wouldn’t have. He had barely made a mile from the forest’s border when he heard the animalistic, yet alien murmurs and howls from the town. After a day’s observation from the sanctuary of the woods, he understood what had become of the majority of the population. Necessities became luxuries, and trips were cut back to a once-a-month basis. He didn’t have the mental energy nor the patience to fight off hundreds of creatures every other week.

The infected stayed away from this neck of the woods – most of the time. There was the occasional straggler that somehow made it up the steep incline, but half the time, they were forced back down once they discovered the lack of fresh human sinew. The ones that pushed closer to his cabin were nothing he couldn’t handle. They were no different than animals in his opinion, just without any usable or edible bits; the bones were too weak and brittle, and the ligaments and fibers of their flesh too mushy. If anything, they provided target practice, even if he didn’t need it.

But, this was all typical. Expected.

What was unexpected, was you.

First, it was the smell of smoke lingering in the air. König certainly hadn’t lit his woodstove for a while now. Burnt, citrusy smoke hung unnaturally in the air at eleven in the morning, nearly burning his nostrils with the unbearably piney scent. Rather than climbing down his usual path, he followed it east, curious to see who was in his neck of the woods. The infected didn’t have the brains to start a fire anymore – literally – and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had come through this area. It wasn’t near any trails or known paths, so whoever was bold enough to venture out this way had him curious and on high alert.

Soon, he stumbled across the pillar of smoke climbing towards the sky. The hunter in him settled down when he realized that this person was rather daft – leaving a fire smoking like that was no different than handing someone a knife and asking them to stab you. It was foolish of someone to think they were alone in the woods, and equally as foolish to think those creatures wouldn’t scale the mountain for a crumb of human flesh.

Finally, nearly an hour away from his cabin (fancy he’d stumble upon you on the way home), there you were. Up against a small boulder, your back to the decline of the mountain; König wondered if you had frozen to death, with nothing but your cardigan draped across your body to fight the autumn chill.

You were curled up on a rather soggy patch of forest floor. There was nothing underneath you but wet leaves and cold dirt. Your cardigan was draped over you as much as it could as a makeshift blanket – hardly one at that. König would have assumed you were dead if it wasn’t for the tremor in your shoulders, and the fact that the fire’s embers were still smoking. You must have gotten cold enough during the night to try and keep the blaze going. A backpack was carelessly and ineffectively hidden beneath a pile of twigs and matted leaves, with a protein bar wrapper shoved into the side pocket. However small the gesture was, he appreciated the awareness of your environment.

There was a plethora of questions swimming in his head. How did you get this high up the mountain? Did you mean to make it this far? How had you survived the virus for so long? He didn’t mean to judge a book by its cover, but you were rather dense and careless with your own self preservation tactics. He doubted that you kept the fire burning to mask your scent from the infected… that was too much effort for someone who slept facing the boulder, instead of keeping their eyes on the open space ahead of them.

He watched you for a while, until the dying fire’s smoke was no more than a few tendrils, curling towards the sky and disappearing before they reached the tops of the trees. Every sound from within the woods had him swiveling his head, making sure nothing was tearing up the mountain to disturb your sleep. He shouldn’t care; in fact, it was very uncharacteristic of him to care about anyone but himself. Maybe it was because he hadn’t seen a real person in the last two months, let alone held a conversation with one. But he found himself watching you like a shepherd watching his lambs – because that’s all you were, wasn’t it? A lost lamb, doing your best to survive in the wild. How could he leave such an untainted, innocent thing to the wolves?

But enough of that. You were starting to stir awake.

You rolled over to stare at the dead embers, your face puffy from an unrestful sleep. Your eyes were full of resignment and uncertainty. König wanted to chide you for waking up so late into the morning – the daylight needed to be used for finding food and making distance, not sleeping. He watched as you sat up with a sigh and put your cardigan on. As you rose to your feet, he noticed the back of your jeans were damp from the wet ground you had spent the night on. He was becoming more and more frustrated with you; you and your poor survival skills, your wet pants, your weak shoes, and the leaves in your hair that you didn’t seem to care to pick out. He would gladly do it to satisfy the perfectionist in him, if it wasn’t such a domestic gesture.

He watched intently, like a good shepherd would, as you threw wet leaves onto the makeshift campfire. Good practice, if it wasn’t completely pointless at this time of day. You sheepishly looked around the clearing, before making your way into the denser thicket of trees. He didn’t realize what you were doing until he saw you fumbling with the waistline of your jeans.

It made him laugh internally. The fact that you were so cautious, as if some woodland creature might spy on you. He was the only one you needed to worry about, but he decided to spare your privacy. He’d be worried about how quickly you were ensnaring his territorial instincts, like you had already belonged to him, if he didn’t have the excuse of your obviously non-existent self-preservation to back his newfound obsession.

He waited until you had disappeared behind the boulder before abandoning his spot among the shrubbery. His footsteps were calculated and quiet as he approached your makeshift campsite. The air was thick with acrid smoke, piney and sharp from the fir needles that had burnt up in the fire. Remnants of you littered the area: your bag, of course, laid open and propped against the rock. You’d swept away most of the leaves and twigs from where you had lay on the ground, and there was a thin line you had drawn around the perimeter of your bed. It made him laugh, a soft huff escaping through his nostrils at the idea of you staking a claim here.

His thick fingers dipped into your bag, rummaging through the contents. Some weird, big straw… protein bars, batteries, and a pretty pathetic medical kit. He’d seen them before in the hunting store he used to frequent in town, placed near the cashier’s desk in an attempt to catch the eye of someone who didn’t know any better. That was you, wasn’t it? You didn’t know any better; you focused on bringing things that would keep you alive in the short run, but nothing to sustain you. Where were your tools? What would you do to hunt, or to gather wood, or to defend yourself? Were you mistaking fortunate circumstances for your own skill? Did you know how to use that little knife, kleines Lamm? Judging by the bandage wrappers stuffed into the side pocket of your backpack, it appeared that you didn’t.

In the outside pocket of the bag, he found a set of car keys. What had you planned to do with a car? He thought. The gas stations were all shut down, most likely out of gas from the hysteria when the infection had started. Foolish girl… didn’t you think of that? He mused. Did you think of anything at all? Or were you so recklessly desperate to survive, that you threw all caution to the wind?

He was back under the cover of the trees by the time you were finished. Cerulean irises watched from the shadows as you knelt by your bag, digging around through the contents until you pulled out a map. He stifled a laugh as you looked at the damn thing with a furrowed brow, then turned it upside-down, then once more to the left, until your face relaxed into a satisfied expression. You held the map loosely in one hand as you shouldered your bag, stomped on the ashes of the fire a bit, and made your way west.

König’s curiosity had him in a chokehold. The only reasonable thing he could think of was to follow you.

He kept a good distance from you, maybe a hundred yards down the mountain from where you walked. Your eyes were glossy and tired as you stared ahead. Occasionally, he observed as you glanced at the map, then the babbling creek, then back ahead. Boredom was clear as day on your face – what were you searching for? Where were you going? There was nothing out here, other than König’s cabin, and miles and miles of woods. Roze and Horangi had made sure he was planted in a safehouse, far beyond where roads and buildings began to smatter across the maps’ pages.

He found himself sizing you up a bit. He didn’t like how sluggishly you moved; it was understandably due to a lack of real food. Protein bars could only sustain you so much, especially if you were rationing yourself to one per day. You had potential to be a warm body, with enough hearty food and pampering – you deserved that. Who else to give it to you, but himself? He was worthy of it; he’d spend enough time alone, toiling over his own survival and keeping the forest decently clean and flourishing, hadn’t he? He earned the right to take care of you, to turn you into an ideal mate. It’s as if the forest had gifted you to him for all his hard work, and he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

His humanity told him to slow down, back off, and reminded him that you didn’t belong to him. His instinct promised to make you his.

It impressed König, how much distance you were able to cover before you stopped for a break. The boredom might have been helping you trudge along, because at least you were moving. Eventually, however, you had come to stop by a sharp bend of the river, sitting yourself at the base of a tree. König allowed himself to linger closer to you, planting himself behind a thicket of barberry bushes.

What am I doing? He forced him self to ask the question that he had neglected over the past several hours. He drank in your exhausted expression and muscles, watching you slump over as you rested your elbows on your knees. Both obsessing and protecting came to mind as he stared, noticing the tremor in your shoulders. The objective of the question slowly faded to the back of his mind as he reeled at the thought of warming you up. Plenty of blankets and furs back at the cabin… and a woodstove, too. There was a number of ways he could warm you up, protect you from the nipping cold and keep you from having to stuff your fingers in your armpits, like you were now.

It was already festering inside of him: his obsession with you. You, a little lost thing, unaware that you had trespassed into his part of the woods. An unfamiliar hunger settled in his muscle fibers, running underneath his skin along his veins. He struggled with the urge to come up behind you and take you by the scruff of your neck, then drag your limp, compliant body back to his home. It was unnatural, but strong. An instinct, perhaps, but why now? Why was this what caused his jaw to ache with a need to bite, mark, claim? Saliva pooled in between his teeth as he watched you tuck your hair behind your ears, checking your fingernails – completely oblivious to the eyes peering at you through thick leaves and shrubbery. It’s ok, kleines Lamm, he can forgive that. You just don’t know any better. That’s what he’s there for; I’ll kill every creature in these woods, so you can be free of anxiety and fear.

Of course, as he was piecing together the perfect picture of your life woven into his, the universe had to take him down a few notches. Life can’t be too easy, can it?

A voice broke through the trees, echoing in between the sturdy trunks until the sound reached König’s ears. He heard the timbre before you did. A name. Yours, perhaps? The voice was angry, bitter – what had you done, kleines Lamm? It had to be your name, considering you were the only other human he’d crossed paths with since the start of the spread. Now, two humans? It was the most interesting thing that to occur in the last five years.

The second time was closer. You heard it, he could tell; the way your body froze, and how your eyes widened, like prey when they realize they’re staring at death’s doors. You sat upright in a heartbeat, scanning the area around you and quickly shouldering your bag. König could practically smell the fear dripping from you, he could hear the adrenaline surging through your veins. It ignited a spark within himself as he saw the coils in your mind tightening, getting ready to sprint away from the danger. He leaned on his haunches, watching as you calculated where you planned to launch off to.

Finally, after the third and closest call of your name, you sprung into action, pushing yourself up onto your feet and tearing away from the river. You went north. Up. König wasn’t expecting that. He had assumed you’d go south, using the decline of the mountain to your advantage. You’re rather smart, he thought, as he began chasing after you. Maybe you thought your hunter would think you’d go south, too. Pride thrummed appreciatively in the back of his mind – you were able to ignore your instinct, in cases where it wouldn’t be helpful, and that was an excellent survival skill that not many possessed.

You were quick when you were desperate. As the mountain’s incline grew, you resorted to clawing your way upwards like an animal fingers digging into whatever tree bark or dirt they could latch onto. Where were you going? Did you plan to hide within the high altitudes and colder temperatures until your hunter had moved on? You were aimless. If you had a plan to begin with, it was now thrown to the wind to make room for your will to survive – or rather, escape.

You threw a glance over your shoulder, but König knew you wouldn’t see him. He was a ways behind you, taking the quiet path and laying low. The last thing he wanted was to spook you and have you cowering in fear, stuck like a deer in headlights - or send you in the wrong direction completely. You were already running rather carelessly; he had to hold back a cautionary shout when you started slipping on the wet leaves and stones. Your shoes were already falling apart, and he was bristling at the thought of you injuring yourself, in which case he wouldn’t hesitate to snatch you up and carry you home.

But, of course, when there’s a will, there’s a way.

Your next step was rather unfortunate, as your perishing shoe slipped on the sodden foliage decorating the forest floor. You hit the ground and punched the breath out of your own lungs, unintentionally wedging your arm between your chest and the forest floor. He didn’t miss the way you squeezed your eyes shut and clenched your teeth together, holding back the wail that threatened to expose your location – ah, did you hurt something? Reckless thing…

You slowly sat back on your heels, cradling your right arm to your chest. König saw the pain in your face as you stared at your arm – he so desperately wanted to know what you were thinking. Poor thing is probably exhausted and sore… you weren’t made for this kind of fear and pain. He wanted to grab you then and there, hold you to his chest, and take off with you back to his home. It was his instinct to protect you.

But that’s just the thing. It was instinct. You wouldn’t understand it. You would call that abduction, despite the fact that you didn’t have a place to be abducted from. You didn’t belong here, nor anywhere. How far were you from home? Did you even have one?

You would. He’d see to it himself.

Another cry of your name, much angrier than the last one (if that was possible). You didn’t hear it – you probably couldn’t over the pain you felt. A lamb, too focused on the sharp-shooting agony in its foot to realize the wolves were closing in on you. He couldn’t wait for you to pick yourself up.

He had to herd you back home.

He didn’t want you to see him – that might frighten you away. But, he would use your own hysteria against you. You’d forgive him, right? It was for your own good.

He let his instinct take over again. He charged up the mountain towards your position, letting the twigs snap under his weight and the leaves kick up around him.

Your head snapped up. Your eyes were glossy with tears, fixed at König’s general direction. Like one of Phidias’s masterpieces, you were chiseled marble, frozen statue-still as you listened for more.

Did you think he was one of the creatures? Kleines Lamm… I am so much better.

He sprung into action once again, and the sound was enough to release you from your fear. You scrambled to your feet and took off back up the mountain, clawing your way through the humus and leaves like prey running from the hunter. Don’t worry… he wasn’t the hunter. He was the watch hound, steering you to safety – even if he was using rather unethical methods. But you didn’t know any better.

He purposefully made a mess of sounds: heavy footfalls against the ground, rustling up leaves as he ran. Slamming his body against tree trunks and causing the wood to crack. He breathed heavily, almost snarling, lips curling into a wicked grin as he heard you whimpering in panic. You wouldn’t turn around to see what or who was chasing you – good girl, just run. Run home.

The voice didn’t call out again. That, or König had chased you far enough away where the sound of your name called in anger wouldn’t be heard. You slowed down a bit, breaths mixing with panicked whines as you swallowed lungfulls of air. When you veered a little too far from where König wanted you to be, he would drag himself to that side and stir up noise, effectively herding you back to the desired path. He could tell you were on the brink of passing out. Just a little further, and you could stumble upon his cabin, break into his home and collapse on his floor for him to find later. Sure, he might be mad at himself – he had always thought he preferred being alone, not having to deal with shit from another human again. His military days were over. But the loneliness was there, lingering in the back of his mind, now taking the reigns and driving this poor, frightened dove into his trap.

No; not a trap, he reminded himself, a shelter. A cave, to hide her from whatever haunts her.

Satisfaction and relief made their homes in his mind when he had herded you where he wanted you. He stopped his pursuit, bracing himself against a tree and panting heavily, watching as you continued your terror-induced scramble up the mountain. The cabin was a mile away, but he trusted you would recognize the signs of life and follow them to safety. Hopefully, the bastard he was protecting you from hadn’t traumatized you beyond socialization.

No, he knew he’d find you there. God knows how many days of protein bars and walking for miles on end would have you drooling at the sight of his cabin, however outdated it might be. It would be a surprise for his future self, seeing you all cozy and safe in his cabin when he returns to it in a day or two – but he knew he was lonely. He had to listen to himself all day, he couldn’t deny it. He would come to appreciate you, and hopefully, you’d realize that you need him: the perfect protector, mate, and provider.

Next ->

Taglist: @nic-stars @teenagellamaangel @zhuyingsworld @crypticme @konigswifeyforlifey @zlunia @gremlinmodetweeker

[mariacallous]

lol philadelphia inquirer bodying nyt

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?

To build himself up, Trump constantly tears the country down. There is no shining city on the hill. It’s just mourning in America.

Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a “failing” country. He called the United States a “third world nation.” He said, “we’re living in hell” and “very close to World War III.”

“People are dying all over the place,” Trump said, later adding “we’re literally an uncivilized country now.”

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

After scheming to overturn the 2020 election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.

Trump attacks the military. He denigrates the Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.

Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.

Trump spent chunks of time watching TV, tweeting, and hanging out at his country clubs. Over his four-year term, Trump played roughly 261 rounds of golf.

As president, Trump didn’t read the daily intelligence briefs. He continued to use his personal cell phone, allowing Chinese spies to listen to his calls. During one Oval Office meeting, Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador.

Trump’s term did plenty of damage and had few accomplishments. The much-hyped wall didn’t get built. Infrastructure week was a recurring joke. Giant tax cuts made the rich richer, while fueling massive deficits for others to pay for years. His support for coal, oil drilling and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement worsened the growing impact of climate change.

Trump stacked the judiciary with extreme judges consisting mainly of white males, including a number who the American Bar Association rated as not qualified. A record number of cabinet officials were fired or left the office. The West Wing was in constant chaos and infighting.

Many Trump appointees exited under a cloud of corruption, grifting and ethical scandals. Trump’s children made millions off the White House. His dilettante son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudi government for his fledgling investment firm even though he never managed money before.

Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths. He boasts about stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right-wingers who are stripping away individual rights, upending legal precedents, and making the country less safe. If elected, Trump may add to the court’s conservative majority.

Of course, there were the unprecedented two impeachments. Now, Trump is a convicted felon who is staring at three more criminal indictments. He is running for president to stay out of prison.

If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?

Trump allegedly stole classified information and tried to overturn an election. His plans for a second term are worse than the last one. We cannot be serious about letting such a crooked clown back in the White House.

Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best.

Biden must show that he is up to the job. This much is clear: He has a substantive record of real accomplishments, fighting the pandemic, combating climate change, investing in infrastructure, and supporting working families and the most vulnerable.

Biden has surrounded himself with experienced people who take public service seriously. He has passed major bipartisan legislation despite a dysfunctional Republican House majority.

Biden believes in the best of America. He has rebuilt relationships with allies around the world and stood up to foes like Russia and China.

There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be.

[hazel2468]

None of what Hamas did was "resisting occupation", and I think it is REALLY handing it to Hamas (which you do not have to do) to even entertain that as a fucking plausible narrative.

First off, if you wanna talk about occupation- WHAT occupation? West Bank? Sure, I'll rail against that all day, But Israel pulled out of Gaza AGES AGO. In 2005. Gaza is not "occupied".

Second, by saying "oh well killing the peace activists is bad" means that... Killing civilians who aren't peace activists is okay? Does that make killing the actual settlers okay? No. It fucking doesn't. NO CIVILIAN SHOULD EVER BE FUCKING MURDERED ANYWHERE. IDGAF if they're a peace activist or not. Sure, it really REALLY drives home how Hamas doesn't give a single solitary shit about peace (especially considering they KNEW what the response to this would be. And they did it anyway. Despite the fact that, as the government in charge of Gaza, it is THEIR job to protect their civilians. it is THEIR job to provide for them. And instead they are hoarding money while their people starve, they are stealing the aid sent to their people, they are digging tunnels to break into Israel and murder Jews instead of building fucking bomb shelter and funding the betterment of Gaza's infrastructure, they are recruiting fucking children).

I also have to ask- what is "Not nearly as bad at this". What is the THIS there? I'm trying not to assume malice here but. What is the THIS? Because there is one party here that broke a ceasefire, invaded a sovereign nation, slaughtered over a THOUSAND civilians, burned down whole towns, and tortured, raped, beat, and kidnapped hundreds more. In cold fucking blood.

There is NO WORLD. In which that is an act of resistance. None. That is not, and never will be, resistance. That is an act of inhumane cruelty that nothing, NOTHING. Would ever justify. Ever.

I find it telling that people say there should be a ceasefire, because the on going war will just make Palestinians hate Israelis more, leading to more groups like Hamas being established, but I saw no one denouncing Hamas' massacre on Oct 7, or the decades of Palestinian terrorism that preceded it, being denounced because of the hatred for Palestinians that would plant in the hearts of Israelis.

Don't get me wrong, I AM against generalized hatred on both sides, and I am against violence from either. I just think it says something, when only one side's hurt is acknowledged, and only one side's feelings of hate are understood as being at least partly derived from the actions of the other side, and only one side's choice to use violence is justified. It's like Palestinians are accepted as victims, and therefore whatever they do, or whatever reaction they have to Israeli actions, is legitimized, while Israelis are not accepted as victims, and that's why even people who admit that on Oct 7, Israelis were victimized, still don't treat Israelis as people who suffer, and who might be driven to hate by the actions of the other side.

In this context, I'd like to share an article, which explores the harsh sentiments of Israeli peace activists, who were slaughtered on Oct 7. The communities in southern Israel that were purposely attacked during Hamas' massacre, were well known for leaning left politically, for being pro-peace, for employing Gazans to help them financially, and for the extensive volunteer work these communities' members did in favor of Palestinians. In fact, that was a part of their downfall. Some survivors talked about how well the terrorists knew who lived in which home, where the security posts were (to take those out first), how the terrorists had hand drawn maps of these communities, making it clear they had first hand intel from the Gazans who had been employed there. I've listened to the voices of these people, whether I agree with them or not, to their sense of hurt, betrayal and disillusionment, to why they no longer distinguish Gazan civilians from terrorists, and I believe that we all should.

(clickable link under the screenshot)

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[the-muppet-joker]

could you elaborate on your choices for the 4 horsemen for the ponies? i’m deeply curious about your wisdom and insight

Very well.

Famine = Luna

Both are black horses

When Nightmare Moon takes over, there is no sun. Crops cannot grow under these conditions. Her reign is a reign of famine and no harvest.

Additionally, in the episode Cutie Re-Mark, it is shown that under Nightmare Moon's domain, Timberwolves roam free. While they are not directly tied to famine, they have symbolism regarding Harvest as they are known to howl at the first zap apple and attack those who try to harvest them if they are nearby, hindering people's ability to gather fruit.

War = Cadance

Naturally, a pony red with the blood of those slain in war is generally not marketable to little girls, who are unfamiliar with bloodlust and afraid of violence. They settled for a close second: pink.

She is the princess of love. Are you familiar with the phrase "all is fair in love and war?" Wars are acts of passion and bloodshed. Passion? Blood? Both symbolically related to the Heart. And what is her cutie mark as well as the sacred object that gives power to her kingdom? The Crystal Heart.

The Crystal Kingdom, Cadance's kingdom, is frequently under threat of was throughout the series. Queen Crysalis and the Changelings. Sombra. Again, in the episode Cutie Re-Mark, we see a timeline im which Sombra had won. And what is the state of Equestria? A mirror fucking image of how other countries in real life are affected by war. We literally have soldiers Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and we see Apple Jack working tirelessly to ship out apple mush to feed soldiers for the war effort. This parallel is so clear and frankly I could go on.

Conquest = Celestia

Yes I know the image says strife. I wanted the pictures to be in a consistant style and they used the word strife but it says conquest in the Bible. Anyways, they are both white horses.

I mean. Do I need to spell it out? Celestia is an imperialist. She spreads her and her nation's influence and ideology as far as she is able. Cadance is installed as the leader of the Crystal Empire under her direction. They have conflict with the changelings, so they promote a leader more sympathetic to their nation. The school of friendship? Teaching other species the way to act and behave? Are non-ponies unfamiliar with friendship? Propoganda. And she is the Princess of the Sun. THE SUN. NEVER. SETS. ON. EQUESTRIA'S. EMPIRE. Sound familiar?

Do not make an enemy of Celestia or you will be punished and then brainwashed into submission. Luna? The moon. Discord? Stone. Sombra? Tirek? The list goes on. Again, I feel this is a clear parallel that needs little explanation.

Death = Twilight Sparkle

Indeed this is the most subtle connection. After all, she is not even close to the right color. She is purple! No relation to death whatsoever........ right? WRONG. In the Catholic faith, the calandar is divided into different seasons with associated colors. Purple is the color of death and mourning; priests will exclusively wear purple robes for mass during Lent to symbolize Christ's suffering and death on the cross.

Twilight has a very important role as she and her friends are the bearers of the elements of harmony, with Twilight in the lead. The power of this clearly escalates throughout the series, as the mane six progress from turning Discord to stone to completely destroying Sombra after he is initially resurrected. We watch them become a force that could take away anyone's life force, Twilight especially. And let's not forget the form the elements later take. The tree of harmony. Reminiscent of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which humanity committed its first sin and thus were kicked out of Eden, gaining the ability to die.

Twilight will outlive all of her friends. As an allicorn, she is immortal. We see in the last episode that she is in her prime while all of her friends are elderly. How can one be a Princess of Friendship if she sees all her friends to the ends of their lives like a benevolent Reaper? After so many years of standing at the deathbeds of loved ones, she will feel detatched from others. A Princess of Death.

And yes Flurryheart is the fifth Princess but she is a clear allagory for the Antichrist so I did not include her

[football-in-tuxedos]

On Wednesday, December 4th 2024, an as-yet unknown man shot and killed CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Now, many people have been celebrating this, for reasons that don't really bear much parsing out. They're obvious; Even in the field of private healthcare, an arena filled with the kind of corporate ghouls who are comfortable withholding healthcare for profit, United Healthcare stand out as particularly vile. No one is mourning the wicked in this case.

But some among us are admonishing the others for their celebration. Sure they don't like United Healthcare, they say, unshed tears shining in their eyes, but they just can't condone this act of violence. Killing, they remind us sagely, is never justified.

Obviously our society doesn't actually think killing is never justified, 27 states still have capital punishment. What people actually mean when they say "Killing is never justified" in response to a murder people are celebrating is "I don't think it's justified in this case."

Context is, perhaps, everything.

Now, maybe you agree that this murder wasn't justified. Maybe you disagree. But let's not pretend retributive violence is beyond the pale in American society. It is, in fact, a huge part of the American social fabric. Well. Until the powerless enact it on the powerful.

Context, as we've established, is everything.

A little under three miles from where Brian Thompson was shot, Daniel Penny held his arm around Jordan Neely's throat until Neely perished, and many of the people admonishing those celebrating the former are the same people who claim the latter was justified.

Context, it seems, is everything.

The actions of Thompson's company, withholding medicine to those who need it, was violence, a point I'm completely unwilling to budge on. Thompson's company hoarded the resources necessary to provide medical care and did everything in their power to prevent vulnerable people, their customers, from accessing that medical help. That's violence. Constant, unceasing violence perpetuated against innocent people in the name of profit. But that sort of violence is normal. Legal.

Context, it seems, is still everything.

The premise that America is a peaceful nation, a nation where this sort of action is unthinkable, is an elaborate fiction. Even outside of the systemic violence Thompson's company was absolutely guilty of, we permit literal violence, action taken with the intent causing immediate bodily harm, to happen en masse every day. Think of the description of the event, if we do indeed discover the shooter acted out of anger at United Healthcare's actions; A man with a gun saw a threat and he shot him in the back. Would this even be news if the shooter was a cop and the victim not a CEO?

Context, it seems, will always be everything.

You'll perhaps note that I haven't endorsed or condemned the shooting of Brian Thompson, and I won't (although I don't imagine my opinion is hard to parse). I simply want to point out that if you condemn it, you aren't actually condemning violence. We, in this country, endure and participate in violence every day.

You just don't like the context.

[jaskierx]

it’s not an issue that izzy didn’t get a sea burial!

historically pirates did get buried on land when they died on land or when they died near land. most historians think this indicates a preference for land burial. it was certainly much closer to what we think of as dignified death rites than a burial at sea, which is literally just chucking the guy overboard

burial at sea wasn’t just a ritualistic thing - it was practical. dead bodies don’t smell good and they attract bugs and let’s be honest they’re not great to look at. so you do not want one clogging up your ship for weeks before you find a port to bury them in, especially when that port might be owned by folks who are not very welcoming of the dead bodies of pirates or people of other nationalities or people who don’t follow their religion. burial at sea was necessary for the health and welfare of the living people on the ship

this doesn’t apply to izzy - not only is there suitable land nearby, it’s land with personal meaning, because it’s next to what is now ed and stede’s house

burying him on land was probably a nice touch rather than a disservice. his grave will be tended. he rests beside the home of people who knew him. he rests in a place which is known and immovable. there’s a physical location people can go to if they want to mourn him there

and ultimately it doesn’t matter because this is the show that has shown time and time again that it could not care less about historical accuracy

[sophie-frm-mars]

I'm not sure how much people are talking about Aaron Bushnell having engaged with online leftist media, but the records show that they were a viewer of a bunch of different twitch streams, including mine, and subscribed to a bunch of patreons, including mine. I'm not going to inflate my importance here, the livestream link was sent directly to Talia Jane and Anark, so those are probably the voices Bushnell felt the most connected to and followed the most directly, like idk if they also subscribed to someone's patreon after watching a video abt Cars 2 or whatever, I'm not trying to examine whether social media drove the self immolation because I think that's disrespectful to the memory of someone who literally died screaming Free Palestine. I don't personally know of any leftist creators who directly advocate political suicide, and I know that we all share in the political understanding that underscored Bushnell's decision.

I've already made a point of telling my patreon server that my politics are about growing into each other and supporting one another and that if anyone asked me if I thought they should do what Bushnell did I would say no absolutely not.

I'm ruminating a bit on the nature and meaning of the protest, because a lot of people are engaging with the image of a man in fatigues on fire, standing proud and declaring "FREE PALESTINE", while I've seen others talking about the fact Bushnell's username on several platforms was LillyAnarKitty, mourning the loss of a potential trans sister, talking in depressive terms about the act of suicide, to which I think the people who are engaging in the more macho interpretation of the protest are saying "no it was cool and masculine, it wasn't suicide in the conventional sense it was about principle!" I think there's room for plenty of both. For the record LillyAnarKitty used he and she pronouns in discord servers.

Andreas Malm's approach to self-sacrifice and self-endangerment is that we as subjects of the imperial core are in a sense, precious. Valuable. We are supposedly what it is all for. The imperialist project must be doing it for the citizens of the imperialist nations because if it isn't, then it has to nakedly admit that it is doing it all for the intense power and wealth consolidation of a tiny tiny number of soulless ghouls. Therefore when we put ourselves in harm's way in a way that says you would have to destroy me to get to the thing I care about, we leverage the implicit value of ourselves for our principles. A planned protest by Palestine Action against the London Stock Exchange was allegedly going to involve locking the actionists' necks onto the mechanism of the door into the LSE making it impossible to enter or leave without probably killing them, for example. I think that Bushnell's self immolation sits on a sort of dissonance, my life is precious and my life is worthless. My life is precious and so you should care about the obvious tragedy that I am enacting and my life is worthless if thousands upon thousands of Palestinians are killed as part of the project that enables the life that I lead.

There is also the way that people have debated the meaning of "complicit in genocide" - Bushnell worked in USAF Intelligence and the US has active troops in Palestine, it's possible that they were already culpable in an unknowable number of deaths without having set foot there.

In one sense it's a little pointless to debate the fine details of the meaning of Bushnell's protest in the same way that it's pointless to pick over any feelings of responsibility that I and I know other people that we know they watched are feeling. When I first saw the video I was struck by the language, by their concise and astute analysis and I knew, without knowing just how closely that they were plugged into the same intellectual and political milieu as us. In that same sense I think that they already described what they did the best that any of us are going to be able to:

“My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide.”

“I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

"Free Palestine."

[firelxdykatara]

I too ship Zutara and think they should have been canon. Although for me it's important to know how such a rewrite would go down. I tried to think, and I'm lost.

After Mai betrayed Azula for him, will he just go "sorry, not interested"? He isn't obligated to date her because of this, but her redemption hinges on Zuko and I don't see it being satisfying if he ends up rejecting her after this.

I thought the solution would be to rewrite her arc in boiling rock to make her have a moral realization, but then the problem with Maiko is practically solved. Their relationship wasn't salvaged by her redemption because last time they talked, Mai still didn't understand what's wrong with the Fire Nation and only changed because she loved Zuko. So how do you make it both satisfying & logical?

With Kataang the problem is the Chakras. The problem with the original (in my opinion) is that after he opened his chakra, letting go of his attachment to Katara, he's still attached (forcing a kiss on eip). Should TCoD get rewritten so that Azula shoots him before he opens it? Then why wouldn't he just open it later? Maybe the chakra would be locked so he feels as though he doesn't need to overcome his attachment just yet. In that situation, how would his chakra even unlock? The stone thing felt like nonsense, so how would I do it?

So yeah I have no idea how to approach this. How would you? (Thanks)

I've been rotating this ask in the back of my head like a rotisserie chicken for a few days--it's interesting because I don't generally stop to think like, how would I write them out of these relationships, I either ignore the relationships completely (which isn't hard, they were barely footnotes in the cartoon) or play a little bit with jealous exes or something. Thinking about like, In A Perfect World where Bryke wasn't in charge of ATLA post-canon (because if zutara had been canon, you can be sure they would've made us regret it) is interesting, and I do have thoughts on how I'd handle their relationships in a rewrite.

(this got long, so the rest is beneath the cut)

Assuming you mostly want to keep canon intact, I think maiko would be the easiest to work around, given how little relevance their relationship has in canon. The problem with maiko as an endgame ship is that it was not set up that way--if it had been, it would not have begun entirely off-screen and their whole relationship would not have been a study in misery and utter inability to connect emotionally. His relationship with Mai was there to showcase just how much he had changed and how little he fit into the life he had been so sure he wanted more than anything since his banishment. It worked very well to highlight Zuko's growth--how that contrasted to Mai's lack of it and why she could not understand him even at his most open and vulnerable--and did not work nearly so well when she was shoved back with him in the epilogue, after he'd quite literally forgotten her existence (he never mentions her again after Boiling Rock, not even to say a word of mourning, considering he'd have every reason to believe she was killed for defying his sister).

I don't think you can fix this by giving Mai some moral realization, because there simply is no room for it. As @araeph says in the essay I linked:

As a character, Mai is very useful to the story during Zuko’s return, because she represents everything that Zuko gains by sticking by his father. A girl who cares about him; the ability to indulge her; the authority he has over others at the palace; we see it all in his interactions with Mai. But this makes Mai a tether to a life he has long outgrown. Her function is not to advance Zuko’s character development, but to obstruct it, which also unfortunately means that Mai gaining a full understanding of Zuko’s trials would be disadvantageous to the story. If she knew everything about him and still wanted him to stay, it would give Zuko more cause than he should have to remain in the Fire Nation, but if she knew and encouraged him to leave and join the Avatar, it would rob Zuko of the triumph of making this decision on his own. In other words, there are good narrative reasons for keeping Mai in the dark; it just doesn’t make their relationship any stronger.

The seeds of a genuine redemption arc (one that includes some sort of moral realization and change to her moral framework) for Mai would have to have been planted far earlier than five episodes from the end of the series, but doing so would have of necessity detracted from Zuko's own character arc and the realizations that he makes despite his attachment to Mai (or more specifically to their relationship, which I feel like he was clinging to more out of a sense of abject loneliness he couldn't shake rather than genuine feelings and emotional connection).

So, in my mind, since we're tackling this with an eye towards getting rid of maiko with the fewest ripples to the overall story anyway, the easiest way to do this would be make one slight change to the end of the Boiling Rock two-parter--have Ty Lee (who had always been the least gung-ho of the trio about bowing to Azula's whims and had to be textually threatened into joining her in the first place) save Zuko's life, and then have Mai (who showed the most genuine affection for Ty Lee anyway) save Ty Lee. I love Zuko more than I fear you always fell flat for me as some epic declaration of love, anyway, since a) Zuko is not around to hear it, and b) unlike Ty Lee, she never showed much fear of Azula to begin with, so it wasn't a very high bar to clear. It was a cool line that was entirely unearned, and I don't think it would be missed, there would be some cute mailee crumbs this way, and a throwaway line of getting them released from the prison after the war ended could wrap up their presence in the story pretty nicely.

Now, kataang is a little trickier, if only because the last leg of Aang's character arc is almost completely derailed by his refusal to let go of his possessive attachment to Katara, to the point where he never naturally reopens his chakras, he has to have the Rock of Destiny hit him in just the right place, and the deus ex lionturtle there to give him a way out of having to make a hard moral choice. (I've maintained for years that if you work the final act of your main character's overall arc in such a way that it could have been solved by one good session with a chiropractor, something got fucked along the way.)

The thing about Aang's chakras is that, narratively, his whole thing with Guru Pathik and leaving his training early to save his friends was basically his version of Luke running away from his training with Yoda on Degobah because of his Force vision, only to find out that his friends were in the process of rescuing themselves and then losing his hand because he hadn't completed the most crucial part of his training. What's missing, therefore, from the last act of Aang's character arc, is the return.

See, in Star Wars, Luke pretty explicitly makes the wrong choice when he chooses to prioritize saving his friends over attaining enlightenment and fully mastering the Force. It was the only choice he could have made, but it was still the wrong one--because, like Aang, his friends did not actually need him to save them, he actually almost makes it harder for them to get away by requiring them to save him because, like Aang, he loses a battle in a very critical way. This was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, and it is clear he has learned it by the time he makes it back to Degobah and witnesses the end of Yoda's life, his own enlightenment having already been reached.

But Aang never goes back to the Guru.

And the text refuses to allow us to sit with the fact that he made the wrong choice in prioritizing his attachment to Katara over his ability to master the Avatar State. He is actually narratively vindicated about it, because the plot bends itself into a pretzel so that he doesn't have to spend any time during the last book trying to reopen his chakras and regain access to the Avatar State, handed both in the final battle with no excess effort on his part, and handed the girl into the bargain. (The girl who never even wanted him, so far as we can tell from all the lack of cues she gave him that she actually returned his feelings.)

And I think this could have been solved with a few scattered scenes. Let Katara actually have some agency in her own romantic relationship (or lack thereof), insofar as noticing Aang's advances and clueing the audience in to how she actually feels. Let Aang struggle with the fact that he can't reach the Avatar State, that his mastery of the elements is in limbo because he can't access his full power, rather than ignoring all of this until the end of the show. If we're trying to keep the shape of the last season roughly the same, let Katara confront Aang about the invasion kiss.

This would have been the perfect time to establish that Katara actually does feel some type of way about Aang prior to the epilogue, and it could have saved us from the exceedingly cringey EIP kiss that Aang never apologized for. How it comes across now, of course, is that Katara basically pretends it never even happened, to the point where she doesn't even know what Aang is talking about during EIP until he reminds her--the death knell for any shot their relationship had at looking requited, because I can tell you, as someone who's been a teenage girl, if someone I had conflicted but burgeoning romantic feelings for had kissed me, I would not have completely forgotten about it only a few weeks later--and we never get any indication as to what she actually felt about the kiss (which was not mutual, despite what Aang's dialogue in the EIP scene implies) except for the fact that she looked away and frowned afterwards. (A change mandated by Bryke, who wanted to leave her feelings completely ambiguous; the original storyboards had her smiling to herself.)

So, with an eye towards wrapping up Aang's puppy love crush and establishing Katara's distinct lack of romantic feelings for him, have her talk to him about the kiss. A good frame of reference for this would be Meng's conversation with Aang in "The Fortuneteller", where she finally realizes that he doesn't like her in the same way she likes him. Katara and Aang's conversation about the invasion kiss could be a callback to this, with Aang having some important realizations--that just because Katara doesn't share his feelings doesn't mean she loves him any less, and just because he can't have her the way he wanted doesn't mean he has to love her any less, that she doesn't belong to him but that's ok, because she's still his family and they'll always have each other's backs. Which could have functioned well in helping him take another step towards unblocking his chakras. Going back to the Guru directly may not have worked, since by this point in the story we're hurtling towards the final confrontation and Sozin's Comet, but let Aang reflect on what the Guru told him with new understanding granted him by his experiences throughout the first half of the season.

To keep the stakes high and up the suspense, obviously, he shouldn't have fully unlocked his chakras and the AS before the final fight, but the seeds could be planted--little moments like a talk with Katara about the invasion kiss, maybe a little more empathy and understanding from him about why Katara needs closure in TSR, etc--and then, during the final fight, rather than hand him all the answers on a silver platter, have him almost lose. He still can't go full Avatar, he's out of time, he still doesn't know exactly what to do about Ozai given his own pacifism and desire to preserve that part of his culture--he tries to fight but he's pretty quickly overpowered. Idk how I would've animated this, and maybe it wouldn't have looked as cool for the final fight, but the true climax of the finale was the Zuko and Azula agni kai anyway, so it hardly matters--I'm picturing him doing the rock-shield thing and going into a brief meditative state, where he finally achieves the enlightenment necessary to unlock the AS on his own, no rock of chiropracty necessary. And at this point, I'd give Ozai a Disney Death, since leaving him alive causes more problems than it solves and it's not necessary for Aang to kill him for him to die--they're fighting on a mountain ffs--but if you don't want to change that part then him figuring out energy bending as part of becoming a fully realized Avatar would at least feel more earned than the lionturtle just handing it to him. (And that could've been foreshadowed better by seeding the idea for it earlier in the season.)

After all of that, particularly if you up the emotions during the agni kai and have Zuko and Katara kiss there (or something less explicitly romantic but still tender, like a brief forehead touch), it'd feel pretty natural to have a just friends ending for Aang and Katara. Maybe a brief, slightly awkward but ultimately amiable conversation if Zuko and Katara had a ~thing at their final fight, and then the final shot of the series could be the gaang all together, maybe zutara holding hands or Katara resting her head on his shoulder or something, but since they already kissed there wouldn't feel like a need to end the whole show on romance, something which I've always felt missed the point of the series.

And then, y'know, after that, the world's your oyster! This is how I'd do it if I were trying to keep the bulk of the final season intact. Of course, breaking it all down to its component pieces and rebuilding from the ground up is also an option, but that'd probably be a longer post lol.

[koheletgirl]

Would love to hear about how you became an anti Zionist!

before i get into this, i'd like to direct you to some of @jewishvitya's posts: [x] [x] [x]. i think their perspective is more relevant to the current situation than mine, and they address issues that i won't get into here because they had no personal relevance to me and you asked about me.

so my family is considered left-wing in israel. my parents voted for ha'avoda (israeli labor) in most elections i can remember, my mom even went "as far" as voting for meretz (as far as jewish parties go, they're the furthest to the left. still zionist though. didnt get enough votes to get into the knesset in the last elections). i grew up mourning rabin, hating bibi before i even knew who he was, believing that the settlements are the source of all israeli wrongdoings. in 2005 people would put ribbons on their cars – green if you support dismantling the settlements in gaza, orange if you're against it. we had a green ribbon. my family talks about the two states solution, about going back to the '67 borders. my grandmother jokingly calls herself a "leftist traitor", because that's how the right labels them.

i grew up with these values. i was taught to value human life, i was taught that all people were equal, i was taught that nationalism and imperialism were wrong. we weren't afraid of talking about the occupation. we weren't afraid of calling israeli fascism what it was. you might have heard about the democracy protests that have been happening in israel in the past year; my parents went every week.

i think this is why it took me so long to break out of my zionist worldview. people talk about zionism as if it's explicitly genocidal and built on racial supremacy, and i understand why (and agree with this to an extent), but you have to understand how absurd this idea sounds to people like my parents. they don't think zionism is the issue, they think the israeli right is. they acknowledge the evils of the settlers in the west bank, but they would never consider themselves settlers. it's very easy to see the wrongness of a person going to someone's house and violently kicking a family out of there because they believe it should belong to them (not a hypothetical, this is happening in the west bank as we speak); it's a lot harder to think that maybe everything you were taught to believe about your own right to be here was a lie from the beginning.

and that's the problem, that it is a lie. we are literally taught there was nothing here. swamps and malaria and sand and sand. the zionists built a civilization out of nothing. that's the story, that's the myth.

another aspect of this that's essential to acknowledge is the dehumanization of palestinians in israel, which is still prevalent in leftist circles, despite taking a different form. the israeli left Loves to make the distinction between palestinians and "israeli arabs" - a term that some people that i have met have used for themselves, and i am not the right person to speak on (i'm sure there's nuance here i'm unaware of). these people don't think of themselves as racists. they don't mind arabs in general, they only mind "the arabs who want to harm us". and it's so easy for them to pat themselves on the back because they have plenty of arab friends and they actively oppose the goverment's racism; but they all draw the line when it comes to palestinians. to them, once a person calls themselves a palestinian, it means they believe jews have no right to exist here. it means their existence is at odds with their own. they don't see palestinians as people, they see them as an agenda.

i was going to add a bit about how the israeli left's aversion to religion (which stems from the influence orthodox jews currently have on israeli law) plays into this, but this is getting really long.

anyway. for me, it wasn't a revelation as much as it was a willingness to open my eyes to the fact that everything i had been taught was a lie. it was always there, this doubt, this uneasiness. i knew that there were a lot of people over the world whose opinions i generally agreed with – except when it came to israel. it just took me a really long time to be able to doubt Everything.

because that required tearing down everything my worldview was based on, everything i had believed in, and it was scary. it's a very, very difficult thing to do. not knowing what to believe is horrifying. realizing you have believed in lies your whole life is horrifying.

but at some point i had to ask myself: how can i hate everything this country stands for, and not doubt what it's taught me? how can i know what i know about the idf, and still believe it's acting humanely? and the thing is, i still don't know what to believe a lot of the time. i still doubt everything, all the time. i'm critical of all of my beliefs, and i think it's good to be. but i listen, and i look, and i feel, and above all i try to be compassionate. and there's only one stance you can take here if you value human life above all else.

here are some israel-based organizations that influenced my political views and i recommend checking out (even though i have my disagreements with them): b'tselem, standing together, breaking the silence, mesarvot

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Some time ago I noticed a row of posts, criticizing writing of Air Nomads in AtLA. Seemingly they had concerns not connected to Zutara in any way, but all were written by big name Zutarians (whom I didn’t have blocked then so they popped up in my general tags). And they all talked about “bad writing” in that we don’t know anything much about Air Nomad that is not from Aang’s memories. And we don’t have any Air Nomad survivors hiding in the mountains. And Fire Nation couldn't possibly kill all the Air Nomads. No way the whole culture could be lost…

And I was like… “but the show is called The Last Airbender!” it is literally the premise! (and yes, it can be subverted, but it doesn't have to be subverted. sometimes the last is the last)” and as for culture… look at this world, and all its lost cultures. The fact that we know so little of air nomads is the feature not a bug, we are suppose to feel and mourn its absence. And no, it doesn’t mean that they all were perfect people, and the show never claimed they were, either.

While I will say it would have been nice to have more episodes going into some cultural aspects of the air-nomads and the water tribes (with the Gaang meeting spirits or figures like the Guru to tell them about it or finding old writings and such), yeah, that kind of criticism of "They're barely in the story/we don't know that much about them" ignores that the whole point of the story is "People and their cultures are being KILLED"

Zutarians loooove ignoring that the show is about war and genocide. That's why they're exasperated that people "demonize" the Fire Nation by acknowledging said genoice, and "idolize" the air-nomads by pointing out that something of value was lost with their death and thus Aang keeping their teachings alive is important.

They don't understand that saying "The air nomads deserved to live and to have their culture respected" is not the same as saying "The air nomads were perfect people from a perfect culture" - which is scary because it comes dangerously close so saying "They weren't perfect, therefore they deserve what they got"