#ESPECIALLY WITH A BOOK THAT CLEARLY IS AGAINST GENOCIDE | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

darklinaforever · 10 months ago

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Daemyra = I support pedophilia, grooming and physical abuse.

Zutara = I support colonizer x colonized relations.

Sylki = I support incest with oneself.

Charlastor / Radiobelle = I erase the canonical sexuality of the characters.

Reylo = I support the Nazis !

Darklina / Alarkling = I support a pedophile, a groomer, a pro-genocide and child killer in his spare time.

Sareth = I support pedophilia !

Sessrin / Sesshrin = I support pedophilia, and grooming.

Persades = I support kidnapping, rape and forced marriages.

Wyler / Weyler = I support psychopathic serial killers ! And grooming too ! (Because apparently for some Tyler is an adult and not a teenager as he is canonically in the series...)

This is usually what I get insulted about for loving these relationships... and it's just bullshit.

Daemyra is not grooming and pedophilia, book and show, I have already explained countless times why and I won't do it again here. And Daemon do not abuse physically Rhaenyra in Fire and Blood.

Zutara is not a relationship of a colonizer with a colonized person. Zuko himself is not a colonizer and the people of Katara were never colonized by the Fire Nation.

Sylki is not a true incestuous relationship, especially not with yourself. Sylki is not shown and characterized as truly the same person but as different people with the same role in the universe.

I'm not erasing the canonical sexuality of Charlastor / Radiobelle by shipping them into the context of fanon.

Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is not a Nazi, I also already explained why. Essentially he has no ideology of his own and has been manipulated since his fetus by hearing voices in his head 24/7 again today, and above all the defenders against grooming keep quiet this time ironically, since Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is actually a victim of grooming by Snoke / Palpatine.

The Darkling has not committed any genocide, he is not a pedophile or a groomer either and is even less a killer of childs specifically...

For Sareth basically... Everything that happens in the movie is essentially a representation of the desires / fantasies of teenage Sarah. Jareth is the reflection of her dreams, he literally acts according to her. He is the product of his fantasy. Please note, I'm not saying that what Sarah experiences in the film is literally a dream. No, I'm saying that the film, through its story and especially the character of Sarah, is in a way a representation of the adolescent's desire / dreams, and also a bit of hormones / sexual awakening. Without forgetting the fact of accepting to grow. That's why everything in the maze is in Sarah's room. That's why Jareth's universe is in this book, and also why the way to defeat Jareth there is. This is why Jareth is “in love” with Sarah. That's why he looks like a walking sexual fantasy with his tights on. Why there is a snake, a cane. Why does everyone at the ball wear masks with horns and long noses (= just falic / sexual symbols) Brief. There's nothing wrong with shipping Jareth with Sarah, since he's literally her personal fantasy and he's acting on that. (in the sense that he takes the role she gives him in the story)

Sessrin / Sesshrin is also not a relationship based on pedophilia. Sesshomaru clearly didn't feel anything romantic or sexual about Rin when she was a child. As for the accusations of grooming, they are unfounded because there is no proof. The fact that Rin gave birth to twins at 18 is not proof of this. Inuyasha takes place in the feudal era where a girl under 18 is seen as an adult. Essentially, Sesshomaru simply fell in love with Rin as she grew up. And he came to see her from time to time from the moment he left it with Kaede as a child. He was not responsible for her education. That was Kaede. He wasn't her father figure either, that was Jaken.

And Hades and Persephone must be read in the context of the time when the myth was written, otherwise you lose its true meaning. I have already reblogged excellent analyzes on the subject, I invite you to go and see them. Hades, essentially, is not the true villain in this myth.

No. I don't support psychopathic serial killers. The proof, I hate Laurel. The real psychopathic serial killer. Tyler is a teenager who she manipulated and enslaved for her cause. Literally, Tyler is a hyde, implying a personality disorder, but more than that, canonically, he must obey and approve of what his master does. Tyler is a victim. Not a bad guy. Moreover, once again, a real case of grooming under the arms. Yes, Laurel groomed Tyler, I've written lots of articles on this subject, you can go and see them. But once again, ironically, no one talks about it, and what's more, the antis will try to say that Tyler groomed Wednesday by inventing a new age for him...

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ultra-creepy-fucker-things · 6 months ago

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In terms of my choice to view Toffee and his predecessor, Seth, as more reasonable people, I want to make it clear that I am not judging them based on what's implied about them in canon and then coming to the conclusion that they are reasonable from that, I am judging what's implied about them in canon as writing choices made by real human beings, and I am judging those writing choices as bad ones.

For example, based on what's said about Seth, I believe it is reasonable to assume that he is meant to be hateful or even genocidal against mewmens, and furthermore, I believe that the book implies that Toffee agrees with him on this point, and was inspired by his ideals when he assassinated Comet. I acknowledge that the show implies that Toffee is only a spiteful prick acting out of a need for revenge over his finger. So, why do I reject these almost certainly intended interpretations of these characters?

Because it's messed up. Septarians are monsters, which, in Mewni, means that their subjugated by mewmens, and especially the Butterfly family. And the timing of some of these revelations makes the decision to depict Seth as potentially genocidal even worse- when we get our first glimpse at who the septarians and, implicitly, Seth are and what they want, (e.g, that they believe themselves superior to mewmens and wish to subjugate them, that they hold the grudges of their forefathers as if they were their own), it is in the aftermath of Solaria's death, which could be reasonably attributed to the Septarian faction, given they are the only monster faction from that era that's really mentioned.

Solaria was actively committing genocide at the time of her death, and had been for her entire reign. Killing her was the right thing to do, and implying that her victims are in any way as bad as her is tone deaf at best.

And then, there's Batwin, and the fact that he was the one Comet was signing the treaty with, as opposed to another monster leader. Batwin being the successor of an Avarius, and implicitly, the inheritor of the position that Cresenta cooked up as a ploy to control monsters. Considering the existence of Globgor, Seth, and arguably even Toffee(depending on how literally you take "prince") monsters clearly have other leadership, and given this, I find the fact that the show just accepts Batwin as legitimate very odd. (as for the choice to make organic monster leaders evil or violent... Well, that just speaks for itself now, doesn't it?)

So yeah, I am not denying that Toffee and Seth are supposed to be cruel and violent and evil in canon, I am simply rejecting it as a bad writing decision ridden with, frankly, horrific implications.

#svtfoe #toffee svtfoe #seth of septarsis #toffee of septarsis #star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe critical

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wingsdippedingold · 4 months ago

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just discovered Leigh bardugo is Israeli-American and even if she isn’t pro-Zionism, with the entire storyline of the darkling being wrong (for his incredibly justified actions might i add as someone coming from a marginalised group who gained freedom through violent means) and not speaking up on the Palestinian genocide does not leave me with high hopes that certain internal *biases* did not slip through while write sab

Like oh my god, the minority group this guy is a part of has been persecuted for hundreds of years so he starts a violent uprising that wasn’t even that violent and the only people he killed were people actively trying to kill his community and novokibirsk (bear with me if that is wrong, I have not read the books in quite some time) but yeah. What the fuck Leigh? So people standing up against their oppressors to stop a genocide against the people is now a bad thing? I - can’t even with her bullshit

Anyway, if it wasn’t clear yet, this Tumblr User stands with The Darkling

I’ve already heard about some of the tone-deaf content in her series so I’ve never been interested in reading it, but this brings me back to the point that all books are political in some fashion, wether it’s actual policies or not. They all reflect the author’s views on something.

I’ve always found it obvious to tell an authors stance especially in modern romantasy literature and… they’re usually not good😭😭 people who say that it’s fiction clearly don’t understand how fiction is created, it doesn’t come from nothing

Not to mentioned she’s friends with SJM

I have noticed tho that a lot of authors actually *do* like rebellion and the oppressed standing up to their oppressors- of course that’s under the caveat that the oppressed fit their standard of who actually deserve freedom.

They’ll often write their characters who would be privileged in the real world (typically young, white, cis, straight, etc. aka a reflection of them) having that kind of oppression and struggle. But when it comes to people who are actual minorities it doesn’t really matter, I’m too lazy to actually write a post on how they treat white vs poc insurrection but I’ll find one post that does it really well

Also send me an ask or something so I can follow you because I think we’d have similar views!!

#I don’t particularly care for Leigh so I have no qualms putting this under her anti #anti leigh bardugo #anti sjm #anti sarah j maas #the darkling

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sonik-kun · 1 year ago

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Friendly reminder that canonically Jiang Cheng DID vouch for the Wen siblings at first, but was ultimately shut down after doing so

Most of the CW were against the Wens. Vouching for them was political suicide and yet he still attempted to defend them. He received backlash for it.

Lan Xichen, a more respected leader than JC at the time, was also shouted down too. Clearly, there was no room for arguments where the Wens were involved.. You were either with them or against them. The sect leaders had to take that into consideration during the deliberation. Nobody wants a target on their backs, especially when they are responsible for an entire sect.

Not saying the Massacre was right, neither the discrimination but be fr here.

Plus, Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue had trauma from all the shit the Wen clan did. They're hardly going to be so forgiving or trusting for that matter.

Furthermore, Jiang Cheng wasn't conscious when the Wen siblings saved him. He never fostered the same bond WWX would have. Remember, this is a genocide survivor we're talking about here. Forgiving and thanking members from a sect responsible for his family's demise isn't going to be easy. And yet there he was at the sect meeting, making an attempt to stand up for the Wen siblings in front of all these powerful leaders. So much so that it baffled Nie Mingjue.

Jiang Cheng (although afraid and begrudging to let WWX go in fear of might happen to him), initially allowed WWX to be with the Wens. He grew to accept that that was his path. He was happy to let him live in peace with them so long as WWX was safe and happy. But it didn't work out for them like they had hoped. And it all came to an end when his sister died, his brother in law too, and that all resulted in the Siege.

But I ask, can we really blame him for it? If he was anything like he was after his parents' deaths, the destruction of LP, and the core loss, he most definitely wouldn't have been of sound mind (he most likely wasn't for some time after either, if you remember the scene where both JGY and XY laugh, calling him a mad dog. Which makes me question the other sect leaders, if anything. It seems they were the ones more willing to jump in at any chance to finish off the Wens if they were willing to follow a "mad dog" into battle? But eh, that's speculation. We're not given the full story regarding the siege. So ig it's unfair to pin sole responsibility on one person..). He may have led the Siege, but he ultimately wasn't the one who orchestrated it with some huge, wicked end game in mind.

The persons responsible for it are all spelt out for you in the book. And yet I find it interesting that it's Jiang Cheng who is blamed and hated for everything when the real villain is right there *looks at the Jins*

#canon jiang cheng #mxtx mdzs #the untamed #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #wen siblings #you know.. just a reminder since some misinformation has been spread around :)

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sherylhooper · 11 months ago

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There's a reason that even tho my country and my people push very hard to have us included in Europe, and discard everything that make us similar to Asia, I don't count myself as just European but more Asian, because our country is moatly located in Asia and also because the Silk Road and other Asian coutries' culture is very similar to us. That's the conversation for another time tho but when someone reads this, I want them to know that foreigners may call us white because of our skin color (even tho my ethnicity is very diverse 😒) but they still always count us as Asians because we aren't white and European enough for them.

What I want to say with that is that as much as I like that damnei, and especially MXTX books became popular, western people with their idiotic ideas make my skin crawl.

Unpopular opinion here but Wen remnants weren't innocent just because they haven't done what Wen Ruohan did. If someone doesn't something horrible, doesn't make them innocent and good. This is why I can't stand western people. Someone made a tiktok about how horrible Jiang Cheng was for leading the siege against Wei Wuxian and how horrible he was and how heroic WWX is and I wanted to make something very very clear.

MXTX herself very clearly wrote during Sunshot campaign that "no Wen took Sunshot Campaign seriously". Here it doesn't say that every Wen, besides Wen Qing and Wen Ning and Wen Qing's branch, took Sunshot Campaign seriously. No, she very clearly wrote what she wrote. People assume way too much that Wen Qing couldn't leave Wen Ruohan's side. I'm sorry but yes, yes, she could, She could've taken Wen Ning with her, gone to Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjiu and given up as a prisoner, but she didn't.

The fact very much remains: neither she, nor Wen Ning or others gave up on Wen Rouhan. They clearly expected him to win (and he was very much winning before WWX turned up with undead army and turned the tides.).

Now I want to address another thing and it's called POW, i.e. what Wen Remnants were.

The phrase, Prisoner of War for the first time, has been used in 1610 but the idea of losing side of war being "either slaughtered of enslaved" has been there since ancient times: Romans, Greeks, Turk Sejuks, Turk Ottomans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, etc. They all have taken people from losing side of war as prisoners.

Now I want to adress what these POW were used as - "Typically, victors made little distinction between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although they were more likely to spare women and children. Sometimes the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a practixe known as raptio."

My people were part of raptio many times, as our enemies captured women from my country because they were beautiful and they wanted to "verbessern" (improve) their blood and bred them for that purpose as disgusting as it sounds, this is a very reason why many foreign leaders in history, especially in Asia, had my people as grandmas or mothers, most of the time unwillingly and my people also took their own life before that kind of fate would befall on them too.

That was what happened to women prisoners after war most of the time, as for men, they were used to work manually almost every time for their captors.

Now, as much as Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun make me very very angry, (not because how they acted against Wens but because they were simply disgusting people) they weren't wrong to take Wen Remnants in and make them work manually till they died (what could be argued that Jin Zixun was wrong in following that bat and capturing and impriaoning WN and his group during nighthunt). If everything WWX acting the way he acted was abnormal. He literally stole and freed them and went to the enemy's side.

Here is where I want people reading this to forget their western opinions and Geneva Convention (which was created in 1949 AFTER two world wars.). I know that most of them and their countries have never been to war in near history (USA involvement in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in iran, in many other countries doesn't count and neither does WW1 and WW2), have never had their people expeciance genoc!de so I want them to shut their mouth and listen to us, who have had wars at the hands oppressors and colonizators for more than 2000 years, yes two thousand years, who have experienced genoc!de multiple times. Even nowdays 20% of my country is occupied by our oppressors and we had 2 wars in last 32 years also at the hands of them. In 1992-1993 and in 1998 my people experienced ethnic cleansing alongside with our allies at the hands of Russians. And last war we had was in 2008, which I remember very well and it was hardly a war and more likely bombing the civilians!

Keep that in mind that I actually was in Jiang Cheng's shoes and understand that I also have a sibling. If, God above forbid, my sibling after what happened to us, got up, defected and went to Russians side, I'd kill that traitor with my own two fucking hands!!

Does people even understand what kind of bullshit they are speaking when they say that WWX was actually not wrong to take "innocent" Wens' side? There was no such thing as innocent people there!! They were elders, sure, but you can't make me believe that if they were younger they wouldn't fight in that war or that WRH wouldn't force them to fight. Did anyone from Wen Remnants say "oh, Wen Ruohan was such a bad person, we weren't actually on his side even tho we never defected during the war but just because we have done nothing against others, we are innocent". That doesn't work like that. They couldn't have been innocent when they stayed by WRH's side in the war!! At best, they simply were indifferent in it! They alao profited from war. Funding, medicine, etc have to come from somewhere, right?

Now I want to adress Wen Ning and Wen Qing and why I don't particulary care about them. Wen Qing was a healer, we have to understand that today's medical ethics that was created by Thomas Percival, is different from what physicians thought was correct in antient times, especially in ancient China.

"The traditional Chinese medical ethics emphasized heavily on physician's morality and set high standarts for medical practice. To summarie the ideas in these historical works, the phyaicians nuat rescue every like without any preconditions."

At that time there was no such thing as patient's automony. For that reason we can't fault WQ when she performed the golden core transplatation. She just did what WWX asked her.

There'a one thing that I'm gonna argue tho. When WQ and WN saved Jiang Cheng from other Wens, WQ told WWX that their debt from now on was null and void.

So when people say that Jiang Cheng should've always be in debt with her, is actually not correct. I also want to argue that she trully only cared for her brother. When she fell on her knees in front of WWX, she only wanted him to save Wen Ning. Nowhere did she say "oh, Jin clan is treating my branch so horrible, we all want to save ourselves. Help me save them."

Now about Wen Ning. He is a guy who has no other personality than just being m nice. He helped JC and WWX after Jiang Sect annihilation and that was also because he was nice. He is just a nice guy, nothing more, nothing less. He just exists to be "just nice guy".

I can't seem to force myself to care about him.

Someone on above mentioned tiktok commented and I quote:

"there is nothing jc went through that was significantly worse than what others went through yet people baby him so much 🙄 sry i don’t like mr genocide everyone"

The tiktok author replied:

"NO FR like “he lost his family” hate to break it to u bud but so did like. Everyone else … it was kind of a war,,,"

Did I read it correctly or did they simply compared Jiang Sect Genocide to people losing one or two relatives in the war??

The author in their bio had "free Palestine". Unfortunatelly that comment here clearly speaks that they don't actually care about anyone's genocide and they probably only do it for the trend.

Apparently these people also think that Jiang Cheng hunted down that tortured "pure innocent Demonic Cultivators for fun".

Are they dumb or do they trully think that these Demonic Cultivators all were like WWX and not blood-hungry like Xue Yang?? The only remotelly normal Demonic Cultivator was WWX!! Nowhere did MXTX say, even in interviews that JC hunted Demonic Cultivators for fun! Some people have never read a book in their life and it shows!

Especially when they act as if WWX was second coming of Jesus and has never done anything wrong.

First of all, WWX did, in fact, have an army in Burial Mounds, the army of undead, fierce corpses and ghosts. That army may not have Wen Remnants, but it was still an army! Also wasn't WWX the one who wrote death threats with his own blood and sent them different sects? He, obviously, wasn't in right mind at that time but he really was the threat to the Jianghu. He was arrogant and, what we know is that Jiang Cheng led the siege (please, remember that we also hear that from other people - who love rumors and speculation and etc. We don't know for sure if JC led the siege or not.).

WWX did betray him. He left him alone when he took Wen Remnants. They were brothers!! What kind of older brother abandons their little sibling? Wei Ying also indirectly caused Jiang YanLi's death. Mind you, Wei Ying didn't die on the same day as JYL, but three months later.

That alone left Jiang Cheng trully alone with a newborn nephew!!

It's a wonder he didn't go out of his mind.

Just because WWX suffered doesn't mean other people, especially Jiang Cheng didn't lose everything in the world. He had to revive a dead sect with his two very hands in his early twenties.

Some people also don't understand what kind of power vacuum Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan's deaths created! Take cultivation out of the novel and you are left with 5 big sect with Sect Leaders who are like the kings in their own land! People pay taxes here canonically. Do some people trully believe that Yumeng Jiang would remain untouched when there was no Jiang Sect left to rule it? Jin Guangshan and other sects, big or small, would start fighting over the land. Jiang Cheng had more problems at his hands than caring about leftover Wens and the problems that Wei Wuxian created because at that time, when he stole Wens from Jin Sect, he was still a part of AND the Head Disciple of Jiang Sect 🤌🏻

Wen Ruohan wiped out one of the 5 big sects and he may have done the same if Wei Wuxian didn't insult Wen Chao, but he indirectly gave Wen Chao the reason to hate Jiang Sect even more than his father's brainwashing and people think it's not that important.

People also genuinely hate Lan Xichen because he never cared about Wen Remnants enough to take them in or save them 🤦‍♀️

Wei Wuxian should also have cared enough for his sect to at least help JC revive it or something as his Head Disciple. Him giving JC his golden core meant nothing at that time, I said what I said! Especially because he didn't know! 🤷‍♀️ I blame Jiang Fengmian for raising him all highty and mighty and lone wolf or smt, but that's the discussion of another time.

I trully believe that some people read the novel with their eyes closed! This here is exactly why I hate westerns so much when they seriously think that JC is the worst character and hate him more than Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangyao/Meng Yao and Jin Guangshan 🤌🏻

MDZS fandom is clearly very toxic and I'm very glad I'm not a part of it. I'll stay in my SVSSS bubble for eternity.

P.S. just so I can make something very clear. The Siege didn't happen because of Wen Remnants as Jin Zixun allowed WWX to take them away, but because WWX killed Jin Zixuan, who was a sect heir and also husband of his Shijie. Wen Ning killed him indirectly, WWX had no control over his abilities, he was powerfull but with no control and his mind was deteriorating at that time. He was a danger to the cultivation world. Siege happened because of him, against him, and Wen Remnants died as a colletal demage. Morally right or wrong, what he created was a political disaster and it ended with every Wen, excluding WN and Wen Yuan, and with himself dead!

UPDATE. someone from China reblogged this post and called me quite horrible things, but that's okay. They also questioned if my people have even gove thro genocide at all. Okay, denial of my people's genocide is not new either. What they said next was that Siege of Burrial Mounds was a genocide of Wen Remnants. No, actually it wasn't. They died as an collateral demage because Wei Wuxian was there, that's the tragedy. I'm gonna repeat once again, Siege happened because of WWX, not because of Wens.

Another thing what they said is that people have empathy that I lack and I'm a horrible person for that, and I should be ashamed for even thinking that or that I'm Chinese literature to spread my hate, etc, etc.

My empathy died when things such these happened to my people.

Mind you, this is only one, one single city and it's not even the whole list of crimes they have done. I'm gonna find and update this post once again, cuz it's clear that I need to spread awereness, I won't let their names be forgotten...

Today the remains of 12 people, who were considered as "lost during war", were found and transferred to my country for burial and it was very emotional as many remains still haven't been found after 30+ years yet and people still hope that there could be even a single bone found and returned so they can bury it.

So, yeah, I bury whatever empathy I have left with the remains of people everytime something like this happens. Every time people deny the genocide of my people, every time these people call US colonizers and many degrading things, saying that we oppressed them when in reality it was other way around, when we couldn't speak our language, when they called it the "dog's language" and and laughed at it, couldn't get any service if we spoke it and they mockingly told us to speak "human language", which to them was Russian, WE were oppressed in our own country and land and they took everything from us and made the world believe that we were oppressors and colonizers, they even stole the name of our region for themselves....

And no one in the world did anything about this because they didn't care. So no, everytime I'll always imagine myself in JC's shoes that I'm asked to care about ethnic Russians and Apsuas, I simply can't care, don't care and won't even care unless justice is served, unless all the land they have stolen is returned, unless they all apologize for what they have done and stop spreading lies about us....

So, good for you, if you have empathy and are a better person, unfortunately, I am not...

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theoreticallysensible · 11 months ago

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I cannot help but compare Aaron Bushnell’s poignant protest of the genocide in Gaza to the ideas presented in the book Catch-22, especially given the mainstream media’s craven instinct to frame his self immolation as insane, rather than a sane protest against an insane society, and especially given his role as a US airman, the same as the characters in the novel - a role he chose to highlight in his protest.

(This is not to say that we should all self immolate - sane reason can demand many different things of us depending on our position, skills, and character. Such self destructive tactics are never categorically necessary, and in a major sense Bushnell’s death is inescapably tragic and horrifying, but the conviction and symbolic power of his soberly deliberate death can be respected, even revered, nevertheless.)

Catch-22 contains several references to sanity and “craziness”. Its central concept, which entered into popular consciousness, is the eponymous Catch-22 described in the following passage.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Catch-22 is a study of how one can become overwhelmed by one’s own sanity when faced with a world and other people who have all seemingly gone mad. This is the experience of seeing so many of our authority figures, in particular the supposed reporters of truth in the media, deny the fact that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, a genocide that is - and has always clearly been - a direct and necessary consequence of the process of Zionism as conceived as the establishment of a Jewish state through colonisation.

Throughout the novel, the main character, Yossarian, is appalled and disoriented by the fact that his valuing of his own life and freedom is considered insane by his comrades, but when he tries to claim that since he is insane he is unfit for combat, he is told (rightly) that this is fear of dying is actually sane, and so he is perfectly fit for combat.

Life in the military is one where you are expected to be willing to lay down your life for a cause, usually “the good of your country”. This is never, in the mainstream, considered to be insane, but rather noble - except, as Shaun pointed out in the video he released today on the Palestinian crisis, in retrospect, such as when Wilfred Owen’s poems lamenting the brutality and pointlessness of WW1 are taught and venerated in schools.

But what about when someone decides to lay down their life for a cause not endorsed by US hegemony? Is that, like that of the military hero, considered “sweet and fitting”? No. As we have seen, the voice of hegemonic values, the mainstream media, cannot conceive of a logic outside of its own framework. Anything that is outside of it, especially that opposes it, is “insane”, “disturbed”, probably dangerous.

Throughout most of Catch-22, Yossarian’s rebellions against the military machine threatening his life are ineffective. He never changes his circumstances or anyone else’s. Aaron Bushnell, unlike Yossarian, did not spend most of his time fearing for how his military career could endanger his own life; instead, he was outraged that his career made him complicit in the killing of others. His abnegation of that, his total rejection of it to the point of ending his life, was supremely selfless. As we now know, it was a result of serious deliberation borne out of a selfless commitment to emancipatory politics also reflected in his engagement with mutual aid and other anarchist actions in his local community.

It is notable that at the end of Catch-22, when Yossarian finally decides to desert and at last we have a glimpse of hope as he is able to convince others of the rationality and nobility of his rejection of the military, it is because he is now acting for the benefit of others. He turns his reasoned analysis outwards. He refuses to be complicit, in this case with the US military forcing Italian citizens out of their homes.

It is only through selflessness and solidarity that we can turn our private analyses of personal injustices into social analyses that people can rally behind and collectively act on.

The last scene of the novel contains this exchange between Yossarian and another character:

'I can't do a thing to stop them but embarrass them by running away. I've got responsibilities of my own now, Danby. I've got to get to Sweden.'

'You'll never make it. It's impossible. It's almost a geographical impossibility to get there from here.'

'Hell, Danby, I know that. But at least I'll be trying. There's a young kid in Rome whose life I'd like to save if I can find her. I'll take her to Sweden with me if I can find her, so it isn't all selfish, is it?'

'It's absolutely insane. Your conscience will never let you rest.'

'God bless it.' Yossarian laughed. 'I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.’

Yossarian is still called insane, but Danby supports him both morally and financially, finally recognising the sanity of his insanity. But rather than linger on this book too much I’ll end on the words of the present, of the final statement made by Aaron Bushnell:

"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 am 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."

He died shouting “Free Palestine!” until his body was no longer capable.

#aaron bushnell #palestine #genocide #gaza #free gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #israel #catch 22

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disco-elysium-via-polls · 8 months ago

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🎵 Bookstore

Looks like Guillaume le Million... that hair poster.

PLAISANCE - "Hello again, esteemed officer," she keeps reciting like a robot. "And welcome to Crime, Romance, and Biographies of Famous People."

3. "Plaisance, I have something to tell you... I've found the actual source of doom."

PLAISANCE - "What do you mean the *actual* source?" She clutches her pendant anxiously. "Are you talking about the... *Third Presence*?"

INLAND EMPIRE [Medium: Success] - She remembers. Good.

"Yes, the Presence, the Entity, the malicious Energy -- however you may want to call it…"

"My investigation has led me to discover a two-millimetre entroponetic hole in reality. That's the source of doom -- both in the commercial area *and* in Martinaise."

PLAISANCE - "She Who Has Many Names..." she nods solemnly. "I imagine things must be rather bleak for you to return to me. Tell me, what have you found?"

"My investigation has led me to discover a two-millimetre entroponetic hole in reality. That's the source of doom -- both in the commercial area *and* in Martinaise."

PLAISANCE - "A... a what?"

"A tiny hole... in reality. It may be connected with pale, an origin point of sorts. It would explain why historically so many things have ended in failure here in Martinaise."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Ma'am -- what he's saying is true. We found an entroponetic anomaly in the Small Pinewood Church down the coast. I don't mean to be an alarmist -- and more research *is* needed -- but... it's not looking good."

PLAISANCE - "But... but... *that's* not in any of the ancient texts! How am I supposed to protect my bookstore from *that*?!"

"You can't protect it -- not against *pale*. Close up the shop and try to get as far away from this thing as possible."

"You can protect it with hope, by refusing to give up. That's what people have done in the past -- by building a church, a place of worship around this thing."

"You'll have to find your own answer. I've spent too long on this quest as it is."

PLAISANCE - "You're *right*, officer. I mustn't lose faith -- especially now that Annette is finally settling in at school and making friends." She looks at her daughter, quietly studying in the corner of the shop. "No, we can't just leave!"

"Besides, didn't I have some Seolite hope catchers around here somewhere...? I must find them; everything will be alright if I can just find them."

"Thank you for your help, in any case. You're welcome back here anytime."

Task complete: Inform Plaisance about the Source of Doom

+10 XP

3. "Farewell for now, book peddler!" [Leave.]

You know, since we're here, and we already have more money than we can possibly spend...

MOUNTAIN OF BOARD GAMES - A small mountain of colourful board game boxes. There are numerous types of games for all ages. A lot of shelf space seems to be taken up by Wirrâl-related merchandise.

4. "I want to buy the *Suzerainty* game."

PLAISANCE - "Wonderful choice, sir." She smiles at you. "A wholesome *family* game."

4. "I want to buy the *Wirrâl* game."

PLAISANCE - "If you say so." She gives you a curious glance. "But you better stay away from those immoral occult rituals."

4. [Leave.]

BOARD GAME "SUZERAINTY"

A civilization-building board game where you get to choose a nation and set off to colonise and exploit other cultures. A star-shaped note on the box proclaims the game now includes a completely new "Genocide" option.

>INTERACT

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - In your hands you hold a brand new copy of the game 'Suzerainty'. It's snugly wrapped in a skin of plastic...

The cover features a charming illustration depicting a mass of grinning labourers loading goods onto a ship while a richly dressed administrator oversees their work.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - The exact location and time period are left deliberately vague, but it's clearly meant to represent the economic relationship between the Revacholian Suzerainty and its many vassals.

Shake the box.

Remove the plastic wrap.

[Leave it perfect and undisturbed.]

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - The box has a nice heft to it. You hear the rattle of individual wooden tokens and feel their weight shifting back and forth...

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] - What treasures wait in store for you?

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - Even before you open it, you can tell that this will be a meaty game of grand strategy and complex player interactions.

2. Remove the plastic wrap.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - The plastic wrap rips off as easily as a bodice in a tawdry historical romance.

Open the box.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - There's a hiss as the lid slides off. Inside you find a thick, full-colour rulebook and more than a dozen pouches of various wooden components.

PERCEPTION (SMELL) [Medium: Success] - Ahhh! Savour that new board game smell! A mix of wood, paper, and ink, all wrapped in the sweet must of cardboard.

Read the rulebook.

Examine the components.

"Hey, Kim, wanna play?"

[Put the game away.]

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - 'Welcome to Suzerainty: A game of economic strategy for the whole family!' The rulebook is sumptuously illustrated and thick as a Graadian novel.

'Economic strategy'? More like rapacious plunder and exploitation.

Keep reading.

+1 Communism

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - The colourful illustrations depict cheerful workers picking apricots, hauling marble sculptures out of crumbling temples, and harvesting a strange, magenta-leafed plant. Everyone is smiling.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - You begin to suspect there may be a *political* agenda to this so-called 'family game'. Only one way to find out...

Keep reading.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - The instructions are opaque at first, and introduce many concepts you're not familiar with. Fortunately, there are many diagrams and examples throughout...

You soon figure out the basic conceit: Each player represents an administrator for the *Suzerain of Revachol*. Your objective is to increase the suzerain's wealth and renown by accumulating *victory points*.

How do you accumulate victory points?

Fuck the suzerain, what about *my* wealth and renown?

I've read enough. (Put the rulebook away.)

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - There is no path to wealth and renown but through the suzerain. As one of the suzerain's trusted administrators, your very function is the glorification of Revachol...

That's where the suzerain's vassals come in. The game features four vassal nations, each one home to an economically important resource...

Each turn the player collects resources from vassals where they've placed workers. They may then rearrange their workers, fulfil contracts for coin and bonuses, or build structures back in Revachol...

REACTION SPEED [Easy: Success] - As you leaf through the pages, your eye catches on a sidebar labelled 'ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS'.

Read the advice.

Ignore it. Just tell me how the winner is determined.

REACTION SPEED - "Remember, there are many paths to victory in *Suzerainty*, but successful players will find *one* strategy and commit to it wholeheartedly."

HALF LIGHT [Medium: Success]- Boring, boring, BORING. Tear up this rulebook and commit some old-school atrocities!

How is the winner determined?

Isn't there any way to invade or commit atrocities or anything fun like that?

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - Suzerainty is a family game. The only 'atrocities' you'll be committing are against the social standing of your rival administrators, as you bring in ever more resources and power for the suzerain. Speaking of...

The actual scoring system appears infinitely complex, with a series of tables and appendices required to compute each player's final victory point total. You skip that part for now.

2. Examine the components.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - You open up a number of pouches containing wooden tokens. There are also several punchboards with other cardboard components that will need to be punched out before you can play.

Punch out the cardboard pieces, one by one.

Check out the wooden tokens.

Put the components away.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - Each cardboard token makes a satisfying *chhhk* as you pop it out. Soon a neat pile of cardboard coins and counters has accumulated before you.

KIM KITSURAGI - "What, you're not going to offer to let *me* punch any of them out?"

2. Check out the wooden tokens.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - In addition to the worker and building tokens used by each player, there are also several piles of colourful resource tokens, each representing one of the game's four principal resources...

From the Empire of Safre: orange apricot tokens. From Ile Marat (the ancestral name of Iilmaraa): gray marble block tokens. From the Semenine Islands: white sacks of sugar tokens. And from Supramundi and Saramiriza: magenta tokens for unprocessed cocaine leaves.

KIM KITSURAGI - "Oh, those are nice." The lieutenant picks up a sugar token and admires it.

3. Put the components away.

SUZERAINTY: THE BOARD GAME - You hold the open game box before you.

3. "Hey, Kim, wanna play?"

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant looks over the rulebook before he sees something that makes his eyes go wide...

"Holy shit, the average playing time for this game is one to six hours…"

"I'm not sure we can afford to set aside *that* kind of time for a *game*."

EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - So he says, but his gaze lingers a moment longer on the rulebook than is strictly necessary. He could *make* time, if he really wanted to.

This unlocks a Suggestion check to convince Kim to play the game, but let's not get stuck into that now.

4. [Put the game away.]

BOARD GAME "WIRRÂL"

A high-pasternal *fantastique populaire* board game, illustrated with bucolic vistas and featuring odd-looking humanoid creatures. It's the 3rd edition mega-setting supplements module and can't be played without the main game.

>INTERACT

WIRRÂL - Large letters on the front form a title: "Wirrâl." The colourful box is illustrated with bucolic vistas. The cover art also features odd-looking humanoids, some short, some taller, some with pointy ears, others with ephemeral wings.

Examine the box.

Open the box.

Put it away.

WIRRÂL - Text underneath the title, in smaller typeface, reads: "Third Edition, Mega-Setting Supplements Module." The side panel adds: "A sword and sorcery adventure board game. With new maps and miniatures."

Shake the box.

Look at the back.

Enough inspecting.

WIRRÂL - Mysterious things rattle inside. What could they be? Dice? Plastic miniatures? A fantastical alternate world full of magic and wonder?

None of that witless Man from Hjelmdall fascist dross hidden behind faux-realistic allegory. Wirrâl is no cliché-ridden apologia for colonial violence. Wirrâl is pure *imagination*.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - Yes, the Wirrâl setting is known for its complicated system of political alignments. But if you're not into that you can just hack your way through dungeons in search of loot. That's what most people do.

2. Look at the back.

WIRRÂL - A blurb on the back reads: "Tired of the tedium and toil of modern life? Escape to Wirrâl! Leave behind isolas and nations with their petty squabbles. Discard electricity, magnets, and boring technological widgets..."

"Succumb to a world of high-Pasternal fantastique, unleash your imagination and create an adventure of endless possibilities. Discover the terrible secret threatening Wirrâl -- can your band of adventurers save the world?"

Yes, we're ready to take on this challenge.

I'm not sure I can handle all this responsibility.

Definitely not, it sounds too dangerous.

WIRRÂL - Man up, this is about having structured fun! All you have to do is read an intricate rulebook, study an assortment of maps, unfold the illustrated gameboard, and start rolling dice.

In no time you could be romping through grasslands with low-level characters, hunted by iyskel riders… or battling unspeakable monsters in endless dungeons fraught with danger and despair, conjuring up forceful maegics to aid your quest.

DRAMA [Medium: Success] - Don't forget heated arguments escalating to physical confrontation with your friends.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Success] - And beer. Lots of beer.

DRAMA - And most importantly, never forget to rage-quit if the dice don't go your way!

2. Open the box.

WIRRÂL - You pry open the box. Inside you find a folded-up map, a small booklet, a 24-sided die, and a little plastic figurine.

Look at the map.

Look at the booklet.

Look at the die.

Look at the figurine.

Close the box.

WIRRÂL - A reprint of a crude hand-drawn map. The top left corner reads: 'Lands of Wirrâl.' The map features both small villages and mid-sized towns (with odd names), in addition to meadows, forests, hills, lakes and seas (also with odd names).

It doesn't seem to correspond with anything you've seen thus far. It's not a very helpful map.

2. Look at the booklet.

WIRRÂL - A quick guide to the maegical races of Wirrâl. Create your own hero choosing from any of these completely unique and fantastical backgrounds.

The options are, in order of importance: the welkin, the dweorgr, the humans, the faerie folk, and the pygmies.

Read about the welkin.

Put the booklet away.

WIRRÂL - The welkin -- tall, lithe and graceful, with long flowing hair and pointy ears. They're known for being powerful maegic users, but can also hold their own in a brawn-driven fight.

The welkin come with a variety of exciting sub-races: high welkin, forest welkin, lake welkin, and snow welkin. But if you're not feeling experimental -- a basic welkin will always do.

Read about the dweorgr.

Put the booklet away.

WIRRÂL - A grand race of industrious mountain people. They're short, stout and muscular, and enjoy digging for gold and other precious minerals. They're also well-versed in the art of combat, where they prefer to use axes and hammers.

The dweorgr also come in a few different sub-races: hill dweorgr, shield dweorgr, and dark dweorgr.

Read about the humans.

Put the booklet away.

WIRRÂL - They're just humans... what else is there to tell? They're average in all stats and jacks-of-all-trades.

Read about the faerie folk.

Put the booklet away.

WIRRÂL - A very small race of flying people, known for being mischievous, full of trickery. They often lure people into their maegical traps. There are no sub-races for the faeries.

Read about the pygmies.

Put the booklet away.

WIRRÂL - The least popular of the Wirrâl races, the pygmies are short, rotund and dim-witted. Pygmies live in small villages made of shoddy wooden dwellings. They spend most their days tilling the earth and smoking their pipes. There are no sub-races for the pygmies.

3. Look at the die.

WIRRÂL - It's made from some sort of wood and has been decorated with peculiar plant motifs.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - You don't know much about dice, but this one looks pretty damn fancy.

Level up!

4. Take the die.

Item gained: Standard Wirrâl Die

WIRRÂL - You place the die into your pocket. It's always good to have luck on your side.

3. Look at the figurine.

WIRRÂL - You see a man in ragged clothes wearing a lopsided hat and wielding some sort of a firearm.

KIM KITSURAGI - "Huh, interesting. A communard."

"A what?"

"What's so interesting about that?"

"That doesn't sound very Wirrâl-like."

KIM KITSURAGI - "A communard. One of the leftist revolutionaries in the Antecentennial Revolution."

2. "That doesn't sound very Wirrâl-like."

KIM KITSURAGI - "It is not. The communards are not a part of the game setting... I guess someone misplaced it during the packaging process."

"Does this mean we can't play?"

"Maybe someone should make a role-playing game set during the Revolution."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Hmm. Good luck finding people who'd want to play as communards."

4. Take the figurine.

WIRRÂL - You pick the figurine up by the base to meet your gaze. The little plastic man stares back at you, his face contorted into a disturbing shout. Then you pocket it.

Item gained: Figurine Set "Revolutionary"

3. Close the box.

STANDARD WIRRÂL DIE

This basic 24-sided role-playing die can be used to get results for several dice. It's made of East-Semenese Snakewood and embellished with plant motives. It reminds you of plain- and hill-welkins. NOTE! Look at the MAP tab in Journal to see which White Checks have opened.

This die is not actually useful to us at this point in the game.

FIGURINE SET "REVOLUTIONARY"

What a nice little figurine! A turn-of-the-century leftist revolutionary in ragged clothes. On his head lies a lopsided hat, seemingly an ushanka. In his hand he carries a little musket.

I guess we could also give this to Dolores Dei... if we ever figure out what that actually means.

#disco elysium #kim kitsuragi #harrier du bois #plaisance

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lil-oreo-crumbles · 11 months ago

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Hey, got any thoughts about Seth?

Oh, do I ever!!

Seth is an incredibly fascinating, dominant, and looming presence in the Magic Book of Spells with the potential to be one of the most intriguing characters in the entirely of SVTFOE… that was tragically underutilized, slapped in the face, and is who I believe to be the source of the biggest missed potential in the entirety of canon.

But I do not trust the writers at all to have handled him in the show proper.

The Septarians are notoriously treated like absolute dirt. Any and all of the Septarians we meet have either been humiliated, turned into a joke, villainized beyond any humanity, and overall treated awfully. They’re portrayed as this unfeeling, violent, monster species with no (biological? cultural?) ability to forgive or forget the countless atrocities the Mewmans committed against innocent people. GEEZ, It’s not like the Septarians have enhanced longevity and experience time differently than almost EVERY OTHER SPECIES ON MEWNI with most of them FIRST HAND experiencing the atrocities other species of monsters and ESPECIALLY Mewmans see as “bygone eras of the past!!”

And even with the book alone, Seth is also lumped into this stereotype, and may be one of the worst offenders. Globgor can’t stand him and has intense bias against him (I know he talked about “Septarians” but my god we all know he means Seth to some degree. Seth is very clearly a prominent figure if not the leader of the Septarians and he’s pictured/alluded to twice in Eclipsa’s chapter), bitch Crescenta smeared his name into the DIRT in a rigged election campaign and destroyed his reputation, and Comet refused to take him seriously whatsoever (but then again it’s Comet so what are we really expecting??). He was even on the Magic High Commission’s radar, labeled as an “extremist” (which just about anything is labeled “extreme” in the MHC’s eyes so they’re not reliable narrators). He’s spat upon and repeatedly villainized. He gets no breaks or even a glimpse of humanity and everyone in the fandom after the book came out was hyping him up as this huge villain.

So, yeah, I don’t think the show would have bothered to give him any humanity or depth if he was introduced in the show proper and would have made egregiously worse the show’s already bad problem of making monsters, the historically marginalized and colonized group of people, the bad guys. (Seriously, Meteora wasn’t a “real” threat until she was revealed to be half monster. That makes me frustrated.)

I love Seth. I think he would’ve had amazing potential if put in the right hands. There’s so much to do with him and I’m mostly glad he’s been left alone so fans can interpret him in any way they want.

Now… what are my opinions and headcanons about him? What’s the story I’ve concocted?

Thankfully Seth is a character I can talk about without worrying about AU spoilers… mostly (thank god).

In my mind, Seth is someone who actually didn’t see the Great Monster Massacre first hand, hatching about 200 years afterwards (due to my timeline and how I’ve designed Septarian aging). But that doesn’t mean whatsoever that he hasn’t seen the atrocities of Mewmans. In fact, he’s been put in several situations where— while not Moe levels of genocide— he has seen the cruelest and most inhumane levels of Mewman aggression against monsters. He’s a victim of it first hand and spent 80+ years through torture after being ripped away from his homeland before finally uprising against it with his sister (oh yeah he has a sister in my AU)

He is someone who wholeheartedly earned the respect and adoration of his people. He was a leader that they wanted, not because of blood or any ties to the throne he had. (He’s by blood the Prince of Septarsis, but by the time he came back to Septarsis not many people remembered him since he had changed so much). He completely changed the governmental system and put Septarsis into its golden age.

Now this is what may get me in trouble, but stick with me… I don’t think the reputation he’s acquired is completely unfounded. YES the Mewmans and MHC are incredibly biased and we can’t take what they say at face value, but some stereotypes have some truth to them. It’s way overexaggerated, but Seth is someone who I see as extremely trigger happy in his youth.

While a great leader and delegate, he can be incredibly rash and actively seeks violence against Mewmankind. Never Solaria or Moe levels of genocide… but if Mewmans happened to disappear one day he’d be over the moon. This makes him a fun foil for Toffee’s mother in my AU, Mylanie, who’s someone who strives to end the conflict and seek lasting peace.

In the early days he was active in battle and loved fighting against his adversaries. In fact, I find the idea of Seth being the one to kill Solaria— specifically beheading her with his own hands— fascinating and I LOVE IT. He’s not afraid to get messy when protecting monsters or his homeland, and the stories about his violence is NOT unfounded. If anyone is perpetuating ideas about Septarian stereotypes, it’s our buddy Seth.

But here’s the important distinction, he is not going out of his way hurting innocent people. He’s not this bloodthirsty monster who’s trying to commit genocide, he’s not Solaria, he’s just someone who sees violence as the answer and thinks peace is a waste of time.

It wasn’t until the election that his priorities changed and he actually calmed down.

The smear campaign was a huge blow. It really got him to think and consider how his actions were affecting monsters as a whole but especially his own people. He knows how much influence he has over how his people are perceived… and that’s when he pulled back. He was still active, don’t get me wrong, and got along diplomatically with the few surviving monster civilizations, but he took a lot less of a role than he used to. He started thinking critically and cleverly instead of resorting to violence first and foremost. Peace with Mewmans was still firmly off the table though and is still that way to this day.

When Comet sent the invitation, he genuinely planned to ignore it. He had no intention of going to the banquet— as last time he played along with Mewman rules he got screwed— but did allow Toffee to be a representative after Toffee offered to go in his place.

Under one condition: No harm was to come to the Queen

And we see how that went…

I’d gladly go into his relationship/dynamic with Toffee but this post is long enough :). Maybe in another post!!

His “death” was a stunt to fully get him out of any Mewman drama, and he was especially glad he perpetuated that lie because of how pissed he was at Toffee after Comet’s death. He’s alive and well and still in charge of Septarsis, he’s just out of the public eye because everyone thinks he’s dead (except close allies).

Overall I see him as someone who was essentially what his reputation said he was until he got a huge ego blow and actually matured enough to stop being so trigger happy. He was always a great leader over Septarsis and did whatever it took to protect his people, but he had some growing up to do as well.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. My AU goes into him a lot deeper and really fleshes him out. He’s a four dimensional character with layers and depth to him. While he seems like a Mewman hating “radical” on the surface, he’s humanized and he has layers and reasonings for his beliefs and actions.

I just love Seth. A lot. He’s so silly. He’s so fascinating and I love that everyone has a different perspective of him.

Also he is Rasticore’s dad you can’t change my mind !!

Dude I could literally make a whole other post on him I love this character so much—

Anyways here’s Seth and his little sister Zarina I love them to bits <3

#svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #seth of septarsis #septarsis #ask #seth kardona of septarsis #septarsis dragonfly au #yes I’m tagging my AU because it has AU plot points #Seth is very fun to write #he absolutely hates Mewmans 100%#He wouldn’t mind if Mewmans were all dead but he isn’t out causing genocide yk #Seth sees Mewmans as the problem #not magic #unlike Toffee #Anyways I can save this for another post I need to wrap this up

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manuscripts-dontburn · 2 months ago

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The Silence Factory

Author: Bridget Collins

First published: 2024

Rating: ★★★☆☆

What a stunning cover! While The Silence Factory is not AS good and enchanting as Collins´ previous two books, it is still a pretty solid Gothic historical fiction. It is not, though, a magical realism book, which I imagine lets some people down, because it was advertised as one. I also admit I expected the story to be a little more twisty and bendy because it is quite straightforward and the atmosphere and the plot had strength to hold...well...more.

Franklin's Flying Bookshop

Author: Jen Campbell

First published: 2017

Rating: ★★★★☆

I was happy to find this book at a school fair and immediately snatched it for a baby girl in our family. Of course, first, I had to read it myself! It is a sweet, short story about the love of stories and books and how that love can bring people closer. I read the Czech translation and I imagine some of the verses were smoother in English. The illustrations are extremely cute, generously large and colourful.

Company of Liars

Author: Karen Maitland

First published: 2008

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Not great, not terrible. Or rather: it kept me entertained well enough throughout the whole thing and sometimes that is all you need from a book.

The Lights of Prague

Author: Nicole Jarvis

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I reached for this book mostly because I am always curious about how foreigners present my country. As a debut, this is not bad. You can really tell there is talent in the use of language, creating the atmosphere. Where it limps quite badly is the depth of the characters, their gradual development and especially the relationships. Some of the names and words chosen (never ever have I heard anyone call a vampire "pijavice" - literally a leech) sounded strange to a Czech, but I have seen and read so much worse before that I waved this away. The plot was very straightforward and the ending bored me, unfortunately.

My Salty Mary

Author: Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows

First published: 2024

Rating: ★★★★☆

After the last instalment that was really just "mid", My Salty Mary returns with the easy wit, fluffy characters and some really funny (really well-timed) jokes. Perfect if you want to clear your head.

Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom

Author: Norman Finkelstein

First published: 2018

Rating: ★★★★★

An extremely important book, now more than ever. Norman Finkelstein simply slaps you in the face with fact after fact, there is nothing sentimental or pleading here, just bare and naked reality, meticulously backed by sources. Finkelstein focuses on the Israeli violence against the people of Gaza between the years 2002 and 2014, and you can see that everything that is being used by Israeli (And US) propaganda has already been used multiple times and, just like today, with no evidence to back it up. Most importantly it is clear now that every operation undertaken in the past twenty years has only been a dress rehearsal for the currently ongoing genocide of the Palestinians AND the attacks against Lebanon. Every page of this book made me feel sheer fury. Mostly because when you read it now you already know that the worst is yet to come for the Palestinian people.

The Lady and the Unicorn

Author: Tracy Chevalier

First published: 2004

Rating: ★★★★☆

Though at first I disliked pretty much all of the characters and did not understand the point of the story, it eventually grew on me to the point where I was looking forward to spending time within the pages of this book. You get to see the souls of the characters and love at least one (Ailienor, though I may have spelled that wrong), you learn something about the making of tapestries (which was surprisingly interesting) and see how our lives resemble tapestries with many threads that get pulled, with parts that need to be re-done and the fact that when we are gone, our meanings and intentions may not be clearly interpreted by the future. If the future should ever notice us at all. That all probably sounds terribly complicated, but that is the feeling I am leaving with.

The Shape of Darkness

Author: Laura Purcell

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★★

The book has a slow start but when it grabs you, it is really difficult to put it down. Laura Purcell is brilliant in walking the tight rope between the supernatural and the real. Just when you think you have it all figured out, she is able to throw something at you that again makes you doubt your conclusions. She is also very skilful in creating a dark, Gothic atmosphere. Last but not least I appreciate her ability to tell the background story in pieces and insinuations rather than laying it all out for you at once. So yeah, this was good.

Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives

Author: Alice Loxton

First published: 2024

Rating: ★★★★☆

A wonderful non-fiction book for a young reader. By creating short and very readable cameos of actual historical figures, Alice Loxton had offered an entertaining yet educational and even inspirational album of fascinating live stories. And thought focused on the young, it can be enjoyed by the old as well :D

Songbirds

Author: Christy Lefteri

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★☆

I really, really like Christy Lefteri´s writing style. Much like her previous book, Songbirds is more of an exploration of souls and relationships than a thrilling adventure. Indeed the plot is very simple: a domestic worker goes missing and those around her are left to both try to look for her as well as to realize who exactly the woman was and what are their own lives without her presence in it. There are also musings on motherhood and what we are willing to do to better our existence, as well as commentary on social hierarchy and prevalent racism many migrants keep experiencing. I wished for a little more mystery when it came to Nisha´s disappearance, but perhaps the sad banality of it was necessary as a reminder of reality.

Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain

Author: Amy Jeffs

First published: 2022

Rating: ★★★★★

This was such a curious book. Part mythology/legend retelling, part memoir and non-fiction to explain context and details, and if you listen to it on audio, also quite a banging folk music album. Gorgeously written, no matter which kind of genre it chooses to be at a given moment, I was surprised by how rich it felt, considering this is quite a thin volume.

A Dowry of Blood

Author: S.T. Gibson

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

I´m not mad about this book, just kind of... disappointed. Great idea with some pretty good writing, but I felt that the characters never evolved, staying the same no matter how many centuries they have gone through. They also never seemed to be doing anything interesting besides a bisexual woohoo a few times. And I felt that the possibility of showing the immortals reacting to the ever-changing world around them was not explored at all, though that is one of my favourite things about vampires. Furthermore, these vampires felt altogether too human.

Garlic and the Vampire

Author: Bree Paulsen

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★★

I needed something soft and sweet and uncomplicated to close off October. This was a perfect pick for me. Also, I always knew celery was the lesser vegetable.

#booklr #wrap up #October 2024

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atla-confessions · 3 months ago

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"You are kinda coming across as a Zuko disliker who blames his stans for the bad takes even when they are clearly influenced by another sub fandom."

This is fair and i'm well aware of the zutara/zuko fan overlap and I should have probably included a disclaimer in hindsight but my statement still stands. Most zuko stans tend to be zk fans as well. While most katara fans tend to either be multishippers (generally ship both ka and zk/less popular pairings) or kataang fans. If you're a fan of a popular character you're most likely to find yourself in spaces with the most popular preferred pairing and adopt talking points most rampant in that community. I mean look at your response for example, i didn't even attack zuko as a character or imply any distate for him personally yet you assume that my critique of his stans solely is an attack on his character. Zuko is one of my favourite characters. He's quite literally a fandom favourite for a reason.

Acknoweldging your point tho I hardly included the genocide denial that took place mid summer this year because zuko stans refused to acknowledge cultural/ethnic genocide in the swt as a legitimate subset of colonial practice, so affected sokka and katara approoriately. I didn't mention the insistence that zuko's aggression against the gaang especially in season 1 is no different than their aggression against the fire nation (both are framed contextually and innately different on purpose) right below this exchange. I also didn't mention, like someone pointed previously in this blog, the fandom's decision in painting zuko's absence of his mother and katara's death of her mother as having the same narrative weight. Or the weird ways they choose to interpret Katara's valid aggression towards Zuko in book 3. Again most of my issues with the zuko community in this fandom stems from how they talk about katara, and if there's an overlap there with fans who prefer her as a partner for him then that's just a predictable statistical coincidence.

#anti zuko stans #anti zutara shippers #anti zutara #Zuko #Aang #katara

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sorcerous-caress · 1 year ago

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Just a lil check in to say hi and see how you’re doing. So how are you doing? I hope you’re doing well! Are you itching to write anything in particular lately?

-ex lurker

I'm doing alright, I'm learning how to manage myself and emotions better.

I have been more leaning towards sfw works recently, I still like smut as the next guy, but there are so many other ideas I want to explore first.

Angst, fluff, drama, character studies especially. I want to show more attention to Laezel, Minthara and Karlach. I feel like I've been focusing on Gale, Shadowheart and Astarion too much recently.

Oh but also dragons, and alternative universes! I've been storming a couple prince Wyll ideas but haven't came up with anything yet.

Thank you for checking in anon, I saw your message too and it made me feel better. How are you doing? I hope you're doing well and all, i hope you're staying safe and healthy.

Real Life events and vent below.

I've been preparing for my niece's birthday, i got he the most beautiful cinderella dress I could afford. Which isn't much but It's something that I hope she likes. Also I never realised how hard it is to get your hands on bts merch until 5 of my nieces suddenly became hard-core fans of them.

My dude it is a major struggle, each time I want to order something then look away for a second, it's suddenly sold out.

But it's eating me up, how my niece gets a safe and happy birthday while newborn children are being taken off life support and forced out of hospitals in Gaza. That video of the kids playiny and sliding on the gaint hole in the street previously made a rocket. I don't think I have the right to call myself human anymore, it's beyond horrific what's been happening to them.

Funny thing is, I have always known about the Palestine conflict, we literally read about it in our history books in schools. I remember being in middle school and going home to ask my parents about it, i remember the teachers tearing up when bringing it up. I remember the clear discussions of the horrors happening right now there.

And all of that was softened up and watered down as much as possible for a kid to comprehend. Much like I had to learn about the major world wars, the Palestine history and the many many treaties that were broken by their colonisers took a whole chapter or more out of the school book.

I can't even begin to describe how important and how aware the middle east is of Palestine even before the current genocide intensified. It's straight up embarrassing and shameful how little the current middle east cares or sends aids for Palestine. After all that history, after all those talks and promises.

The rich ones are pandering to the west for a speck of dust of acceptance, ereasing their own culture just to become nothing more than a vacation spot for foreigners.

If you're wondering why the Palestine people have no-where safe to go to, is because all their arab neighbouring countries closed off their borders to them. So they can deep throat the coloniser's dick more I assume.

As much as my own country is corrupted and fucked up, the one right thing we did is that we never recognised Palestine's colonisers as an actual country and never will.

I learned english as a kid on my own to be able to read uncensored books, Agatha Christie ones. The arabic translations clearly had a lot of plot holes and cut content and it frustrated kid me endlessly.

But I didnt realise it would come at the cost of my own culture. I feel like It made me no better than the arabs who suck up to westerns and put english on a pedestal. The same goes for the rest of my generations, we are all young adults and we couldn't have been more disconnected from our roots.

That's why the westernisation of the middle east was barely met with any resistance from us, the young adults who were supposed to be the front line of defence against corrupt governments. The second I saw them fully celebrating Christmas and using fake snow to pander to the west is the second I realised just how doomed we are. They don't even actually celebrate anything, they're playing dress up with someone else's religion and history.

We have our own celebrations, even our own calander with our own new year yet it's forgotten just for us to act out what we saw in Hollywood and Disney movies.

Our own princess, fairytales and folklore. Yet I still bought that Cindrella dress for my niece.

To add insult to injury, the closet thing to a traditional arab princess dress in that store was akin to a caricature of a bellydancer dress.

I'm not better than them. Indirectly or not, all of our combined actions had a hand in dooming Palestine, in dooming our brothers and sisters.

And Christmas will come, and the same arab countries who didn't allow women the legal right to drive a car until 2017-2018, would celebrate it alongside the world. Pretending it's one of them, pretending it's not like its "terrorist" sister countries so please please pick me up foreigners!!

#♡ex lurker anon

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mackerelphones · 1 year ago

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Video games I've played lately

Hey, hardcore gamers. This is WD of the Mackerel Phones News Network reporting from the front lines of "video games I played recently and still remember"

Metroid Fusion: Definitely an interesting spin on the Super Metroid design. The controls are less floaty, though Fusion doesn't feel as flawless to play as Zero Mission. The structure is much more linear, with the player locked into certain levels before being able to access others. Internally, each level has a bit of the nonlinear, exploratory design, with typical Metroid-style hidden paths, but the levels are almost always self-contained, with clearly telegraphed A to B to C progression until later on (probably around the point you're hunting for Nightmare). Despite what people will say online, though, it is possible to 100% it your first time through. This just involves knowing about the unintuitive hidden secret paths between every area and going through them in the right order with the Screw Attack. I admire that the story changes the status quo of the series, instead of trapping Samus in eternal stasis, even if the greater narrative focus would eventually spawn Metroid: Other M. For how much I saw people online talking it up as super scary, Fusion is more like a Saturday morning cartoon children's comic book version of horror. Hilariously, Samus says her surgery "damatically [alters her] physical appearance," but instead of being covered in scars, she's still a sexy supermodel at the end (not to say being covered in scars would necessarily mean she isn't sexy)

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: I had a blast returning to Metroid Prime, so I decided to beat Metroid Prime 2 after all these years. Some people online seem to disagree, but I consider this a downgrade in almost every way. I've never before played a video game that caused me to gasp "What were they thinking?" this often. The vapid dark/light theming is obnoxious, especially when the opening setup seems to promise a more complex narrative. The Light World seems designed organically to make sense and look good, but the Dark World is just an ugly, more barren palette swap instead of feeling like its own place. Okay, we're in the Ing Hive! Sounds interesting. But this sinister headquarters is just the Sanctuary Fortress painted black and much emptier. The Space Pirates have become more boring, brainless enemies, just marching forward shooting instead of dodging and jumping around like in the previous game. Dark Samus fails to have anything to do with anything--like, shouldn't she instead be clearly working for the Ing? It continues to have that really disturbing Metroid staple of murdering random wildlife, even when it's barely dangerous (I don't want to hurt some cool bug that isn't even attacking me!), but even more fucked up here because Samus does not give a shit if the animal is only attacking her because an Ing stole its body. The bosses also drag on to an almost hilarious extent. With some, I was pummelling an unflinching bullet sponge for like twenty minutes. In Prime, I could always understand what I had to do against a boss, not least because scans explained the weakness, whereas in Prime 2 I had to check an online guide for almost every new bizarrely unintuitive fight (and there are a lot more than in the first one). And that HORRIBLE Spider Guardian almost made me want to drop the game. I hear those of you who played the Wii port could jump in Morph Ball form, so you have no idea how much easier you had this waste of time. Also the ending is literally genocide. I appreciate how dark and bleak Prime 2 feels, however, and some of the music is still good

Dead Estate: This is a really fun horror-themed roguelike action game. Monsters chase Jeff and Jules into an isolated mansion one stormy night, but once locked inside, they discover it's a shifting, unnatural space full of even more monsters. They suddenly have guns now (the trailer shows Cordelia tossing them the guns), so time to kick ass. Since I can play Dead Estate, I know it must be on the easier end of the spectrum, but the variable difficulty options can probably assure a tough challenge. On opening, Dead Estate advises you to play it with a mouse and keyboard. Don't let that fool you! When I tried that setup, I thought the game was simply much too difficult to control. Before refunding it, though, I decided to try using a controller just once. Then I put over 40 hours into it before finally getting every true ending (except an A or S ending for Anya). Despite the horror theme, Dead Estate is 99% silly comedy. Many large, bouncy breasts. In addition to the wacky roguelike, there is also a straight-up horror adventure game in which you play as the aforementioned Anya. (I would strongly recommend playing the normal game mode first, at least until you unlock Axel, whose cutscene shows how Anya ended up in the mansion to begin with.) Anya also has large breasts. My biggest disappointment is simply the genre: with so many colorful, wacky characters, it's a shame I can't see them really interact. I want to enjoy the chemistry Jeff and Jules have, and also let's see Fuji be gay

Enjoy the Diner: This is a charming Japanese adventure game/visual novel where you go to a diner. There are two endings. The characters all have extremely strange names, such as "Railroad Spike." I much preferred the first half, when it's a sad, psychological low-key absurdist story, when the nightmare seems to represent people suffering aimlessness and ennui, than the second half, when it instead veers into sci-fi romance stuff with lore. Pretty much all my criticisms are for that back half. The script does not quite grapple with how horrifying what happens to the main characters is, though that might be the intention. Still has great "vibes" throughout, and the art is fantastic, pixelated and in only three colors yet feeling as if drawn in pen. This isn't one of those reading text looking at PNGs and occasionally make a choice-type video games. Rather, you navigate the diner at will, interacting with the other characters through a dialogue menu that expands with new topics to discuss as you learn more. The only issue is that you can't skip through text, at least not as far as I could tell, which I found annoying when I would accidentally re-select a topic I had already discussed with the character. Also I hoped the main character would get some gay romance, but no such luck

Slay the Princess: It's a fun adventure game/visual novel thing. Not really all that deep, though, imo. I think it's a great example of something complex in structure (an impressive number of branching paths) but thematically not as rich as many of its fans seem to think. There's something going on about codependency. But the drama does not quite work, starting promising but becoming too abstract, focused on symbolic embodiments of cosmological concepts instead of characters (and also, at the end, veering into rambling about that "wanting to live forever instead of dying means you are scared of change" or even "dying is basically good" trope I hate so much). However, moment to moment, it's surprisingly fun to play! I had a blast. Got a few real laughs out of me. I'm satisfied I got the best ending just by being stubborn and disinterested in the finale, though I also went back to various points to poke around and see some of the other weird situations that could arise. Gore. Also, I had so much fun annoying a narrator here that I decided to bite the bullet and buy…

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: I finally got the remake of The Stanley Parable with 5+ hours of new adventures glued on. While the quantity of new content is admirable, and I was amazed to see, even if in silhouette, actual people in the speech ending, I'm overall not all that thrilled with what that new content is. See, the odd thing about The Stanley Parable is that it is often very funny but also frequently scary and sad, enough so that I wouldn't call it primarily funny. But people remember it, I think, as primarily funny. (Choice. It's the best part of being a real person.) With at least one major exception, the new material leans so heavily into the zany lol haha comedy that the more existential and unsettling writing seems lost. Then again, this might be deliberate, since to some extent the central joke is that the idea of a sequel to The Stanley Parable is ludicrous and misses the point, so (a lot of) the new paths parody a cashgrab sequel/lazy new content. Ultra Deluxe dares to ask: What if The Stanley Parable was the same, except there's a bucket?

#metroid fusion #dead estate #the stanley parable #slay the princess #metroid prime 2 #video games

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percontaion-points · 2 years ago

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Court (Crave #4) chapters 0-3

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions

Prologue

0 Fake It Till It Breaks You —Hudson—

I’ll allow it for the prologue, but you’re on thin ice.

I’m going to lose it if this book introduces alternating first person POV.

And when I finally surrender to my fate, I’m afraid it will destroy us all.

Prologue summary: Grace and Hudson sit around Hudson’s room at the school. Flint is being taken care of in the nearest hospital, but sent everybody non-essential away. Now Hudson watches his mate endlessly checking for messages about Flint’s condition that haven’t come in yet. We aren’t exactly off to a good start, especially when you realise that there’s close to 1k pages and 178 chapters.

Chapter 1

Which is just another way of saying we are completely screwed. Again.

Chapter 1 summary: An unknown amount of time later, everybody sits around in the infirmary and kind of goes “Well shit.” And I get that now’s a good of a time as any to sit around and sulk about a sucky situation, but at the same time… Literally the first two and a half pages of chapter one are nothing but this sulking. It got old before the end of the first page, and by the time that somebody finally bothered to speak, I wanted to chuck something at one of them.

Somebody mentions that they have to tell Luca’s parents that he’s dead. That there’s literally a 48 hour window before a dead vampire’s body turns into dust. That his family deserves to bury their son. Somebody else points out that since Luca’s family are obviously vampires, they don’t know whose side they would be on. Calling them, even to give a notification of death, would be playing Russian roulette with word getting back to Cyrus. This divides everybody into groups of those who agree that no contact is the way to go, vs those who would tell the grieving parents that their son is dead.

Chapter 2

With those dark emotions flashing over their expressions, the Order shifts so that they’re all standing at Jaxon’s back as he faces off against Hudson.

I literally can’t even. How the fuck do they expect to take down Cyrus when literally one thing set them off?

“Now we wait,” Hudson answers, his eyes on the door Jaxon just disappeared through. “And hope we’re not making a huge mistake.”

Chapter 2 summary: The group is so divided about this that it literally almost comes to blows. I’m not kidding; they all get up and choose their side. Grace stands in between them and reminds them of how unsafe that it is. But if things were ready to come to a literal fist-fight, then I don’t think that her reminder convinced anybody.

Marise tells them that she can stay at the school, while the group goes somewhere safer. But they all agree that they’re not going to leave Marise behind, no matter what.

Eventually, it’s decided that if they don’t notify Luca’s family, that they’d be no better than Cyrus. Hudson sits back, clearly waiting for his “I told you so” moment.

Chapter 3

“But our magic is tied to our soul. If Cyrus is trying to siphon it, he’ll end up killing them!”

Cyrus literally led a genocide against the gargoyles. You think he gives a shit if children die?

But now, realizing he might only want them for their magic, that he has no need to keep them alive after he’s taken what he wants from them, I can’t believe I took the time for a shower. Or—oh my God—actually made out with Hudson while students might be dying.

…Okay. And? You don’t have a plan. You have like a dozen exhausted and injured SCHOOL CHILDREN on your side. And the school nurse, who is also injured.

What exactly are you planning to do?

“Luca’s parents are leaving now.” His face is grim, his eyes infinite pools of grief. “They’ll be here by morning.”

Chapter 3 summary: As Marise fusses over Flint, they try to ask what happened. She doesn’t have a lot to say. Except that she’s pretty sure that Cyrus took the kids not as hostages or for leverage, but to drain them of their magic and toss them aside. The thought makes Grace full of guilt that she took some time to take care of her own needs.

Eventually, there’s literally nothing for them to do except to stand around and listen as Marise gives care instructions for Flint’s broken leg. They all stand and act like Flint’s care is the single most important thing in the entire world.

Jaxon eventually tells them that he contacted Luca’s parents; they’ll be there in the morning.

#Crave series #Court (Crave 4)#prologue #Chapter 01 #chapter 02 #chapter 03 #Hudson Vega #can we not #Grace (Crave)#Flint (Crave)#I would ask where the editor was but I think we all know there was none #jaxon vega #HEADDESKING #i'm done goodbye #Cyrus Vega

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nabilla3 · 2 years ago

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Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

The extract that I chose to read was from Animal Liberation by philosopher, Peter Singer. Animal Liberation is a book originally published in 1975 and explores the humans' relationship with animals, particularly the ethics surrounding how we treat them and their rights.

Singer starts off by talking about the history of the phrase “animal liberation.” Explaining about how the term was first used in A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792), written by Thomas Taylor. Which was a satirical piece in response to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft. Singer Quotes Taylor asking “Why should [equal rights] not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses?” (1792). I think that this is quite a striking way to start the book especially the first time I had read it, at first it can be interpreted that comparing animals to women is degrading however Singer goes on to explain why Taylor’s argument does not make sense as it does not investigate the issue further.

To summarise here are two important quotes that I think explain Singers thoughts well are: One of them is “equality does not require equal or identical treatment, it requires equal consideration” Which is also known as equity. A basic example applied to humans is you could give everybody the same pair of shoes or you could give everybody a pair of shoes that fit. The other quote is “Can they reason? Nor can they talk? but, can they suffer?” This directly responds to Taylor’s question at the beginning by delving into the moral justification of suffering. It is obvious animals cannot vote so they do not need the rights in order to be able to. However, they do have an interest in not suffering therefore should be given the right to be protected against harm. Thus, this is why it does not make sense to compare women and animals in relation to voting rights.

I found the extract to be somewhat repetitive, although I believe this is because this is a difficult theory to understand so it was a writing technique to make it easier to read. Ultimately I think that this work is to do with empathy. Animals are seen as “other” so people can find it difficult to comprehend that animals can experience the same type of pain as humans can. He uses examples of race and gender to explain how you cannot cast out living creatures purely based off of the fact they are different from us. He attempts to teach the reader to empathise to with animals by saying what if humans with an IQ less than 100 is inferior to others, which is clearly unfair.

Reading the extract reminded me of a Black Mirror Episode “Men Against Fire”. The episode follows a soldier who is sent out to exterminate a type of mutated human nicknamed “roaches”, with the help of a augmented reality chip implanted in him. After the chip is disrupted, he realises that the so called “roaches” were actually an ethnic group that is being genocided. I found this episode to be extremely powerful and think that Singer tries to create the same effect, although I personally do not find it to be as effective as it is harder to relate with animals.

This links to Hannah Arendt’s ideas about how banality produces evil. Being passive, and not caring about issues allows for individuals to pursue evil actions without reason against it. Docility and being unquestioning are values engrained by capitalism in order to create a perfect workforce and shows how modernity has influenced mans relationship with animals. Singer tries to inspire empathy with animals, waking them up from being ignorant of the issue.

I think that the way that Animall Liberation is interpreted is based off of the readers current relationship with animals. For example, I have never had a close relationship with any pets although, empathy is a topic that I do like to explore in art so using this analogy made sense. I think that this extract has become more influential on me as I have started to research beavers and their relationship with man. I look forward to investigating further into the relationship between man and animals and looking for other parallels that i can infer.

References:

Arendt, H, 1963, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Viking Press

“Men Against Fire”, 2016, Black Mirror Season 3, Episode 5

Singer, P, 1975, Animal Liberation 2nd Edition, HarperCollins

Taylor, T, 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, Edward Jeffrey Pall-Mall

Wollstonecraft, M, 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, Simon and Schuster

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