#From structural violence

[rotzaprachim]

The thing about writing a post apocalyptic sw au (station eleven and TLOU) is that it helps anúnciate the reality that the sequel trilogy is a post apocalyptic narrative. Like, the sequel trilogy is really, really bad, and one of the places it’s so bad it becomes fascinating is in the gap between the Light Action Adventure corporatized media Pew Pew Pew series it Thinks it is with all its product tie ins and Lego sets and the knock em out balls to the walls Hopeless post apocalyptic narrative it actually is. Never is it convinced that anything in the galaxy improved or rebuilt after the return of the Jedi. Because it is not a Series Smart enough to come up with it’s own plot lines it simply regurgitates the original trilogy plot lines without the intelligence to make a nuanced commentary about intergenerational trauma or way survivors of fascism must continue to fight new forms. The sequel trilogy is a hamster wheel. The war never ended. Everything is the same. The Death Star is the same. The rebellion is now the resistance, a far more splintered, shatter shell that can fit into and out the back of a single hangars. The weapon that killed a planet now destroys a planetary system. And what gets me is the individual stories. These are the children of an apocalypse. Finn was taken from his family as a child to become the next round of stormtrooper canon fodder. Rey scrabbled for survival by physically tearing sustenance from the carcasses of a war. Poe was born during the last war and lives to see his adult live suited up into the same conflict his parents fought. Rose is a refugee of a planet destroyed like alderaan and kenari. Every one of them is born on this hamster wheel without a way off. It’s why I have a hard time reconciling rogue one and andor as existing in the same universe as the sequel trilogy, because I think RO and Andor are both so much more cuttingly brutal and so much more hopeful that what the ST provides. Finn and Rey and Rose and Poe are way some substantiation of Andor’s worst nightmares. They’re literally each living the lives Cassian and so many others died to prevent from happening.

[kenobihater]

reblog for a bigger sample size of former angry, creative, and/or highly dramatic children

[coquelicoq]

we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:

chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”

2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”

2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”

4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”

5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”

it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)

bonus:

I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)

seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me." Yeah.

twinsies ��

[divorceblogger]

The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice // Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

[communistkenobi]

It reminds me of why the stop the steal people lost their legal challenges to Biden’s election. It’s not that it’s impossible for right wing people to use legal architecture to halt democratic processes (cf Bush v Gore), it’s that they did it in an openly stupid and nonsensical way. In terms of American fascism I think the lessons they’re learning re: interacting with institutional power is that they can’t use twitter posting tactics in the courtroom

[astragatwo]

In contrast to my last two Rain World OC posts, these guys aren't one offs and are part of my current core OC group. More info about them under the cut since it's lengthy.

First starting with The Serpent —

The Serpent is one of AV's many bio-engineered slugcats - if you can even call him a slugcat at this point - as part of a simple passion of experimenting with flexible slugcat biology

They share several traits in common with red lizards, those being constant hyper-aggression, tremendous strength, projectile spit and size

As for similarities with slugcats, well, a general elongated shape? Oh, mobility, unlike red lizards, the Serpent is very adept with vertical movement

AV didn't really have a clear goal in mind with the Serpent unlike the rest of their tube babies, they just sort of... happened.

The spontaneity of their creation though has been very interesting as despite initially being created with the solitary lifestyle of a red lizard, the Serpent still keeps his slugcat instinct of adopting random children they find

Though the Serpent seems at first, displeased with this development but rest assured that if you ever LOOK at his pup wrong they will kill everyone in the room and then himself

Though not pictured in his reference since he was my first Rain World OC, created with very little knowledge of the lore and started as a one-off, he has a citizen ID drone which AV uses to keep track of him

He was also simply created out of my desire to have a long slugcat and my obsession with red lizards combined so there's that, too

Speaking of AV, moving on to Administrative Violence —

Named after the song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield, you'd expect them to be - well - violent. They're not, at least not with those they commonly interact with

They are actually quite sweet with Blown Blooms, their partner, and Peach the slugcat

Weather conditions, all things considered, are pretty mild where they are but far, far off into the distance their partner Blown Blooms isn't so fortunate and natural erosion as well as other random unfortunate events unrelated to weather, has taken quite the toll on them

As a result and fearing for Blooms in every way possible but especially for their communication's inevitable severing and also Blooms being lonely all on their own, AV created a slugcat who resembles a strawberry lizard - a species of lizard Blooms is especially fond of

Peach was designed for protection and companionship first and foremost and an emergency messenger/relay secondly.

Outside of worrying for Blooms' condition and yearning & longing for close physical proximity to them the way creatures who aren't supermassive structures have the luxury of, AV spends most of their time studying their bio-engineered slugcats.

Each and every one of them is given a citizen ID drone for ease of tracking as well as general classifications

They couldn't give a shit about whatever problem the other iterators are working on - just these funny little slugcats

They take the occasional interest in other animals too but it's mainly slugcats

And finally, Blown Blooms and Peach —

Blooms, like AV, is named after a song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield. Peach is just named after her colors.

Blooms, like their partner AV, has a complete disinterest in the great problem and a very big interest in bio-engineering

This time with plants rather than animals though they have a soft spot for small critters but they're usually never the subject of any experiments - just study and admiration

However, due to a deteriorating state, Blooms isn't quite able to use their equipment to manipulate genetic information like they used to - which is upsetting

So instead, they help AV with their current studies as well as keeping tabs on their own prior experiments

They have Peach now, though, which brings a much appreciated break from constant studying and nice close companionship

Peach will often catch prey outside and come back to eat it with Blooms and occasionally Blooms will play around with Peach and levitate the prey around for Peach to chase in anti-grav

The event that pushed AV to create Peach was when a creature entered Blooms' chamber and attacked them, partially damaging their puppet before being killed and then expelled from the chamber

Blooms is absolutely still capable of themselves and ultimately damaging the puppet a bit is nothing when taking account the sheer scale of an iterator - but AV will be AV

Plus, Blooms isn't complaining about getting a cute little companion from AV

And general trivia/info —

Everyone here is aroace. All of them. AV & Blooms' relationship is non-romantic in a sapphic way

The Serpent's pup's name is Pipsqueak

I know rudder tails shouldn't curve like that but I decided that after I finished drawing the Serpent and I wasn't about to redraw anything at that point

The other Iterators in AV and Bloom's local group are Illuminated Crown of Fire, Projections of Watchful Eyes, and an unnamed lunar-eclipse inspired iterator.

I have little information on them right now, but they are each based off of solar eclipses, stars and lunar eclipses respectively

In all, this local group is just a bunch of experiment freaks to varying degrees except for ICoF whose presence is often forgotten because of how little they speak but is also ever looming

And that's all! Thank you for reading this far in <3

[scribefindegil]

Been finding it helpful to make little cheat-sheets for all my pov characters with, among other things, a list of a few topics they're interested in/knowledgeable about so I can think about what details they'll notice in a scene and what sorts of metaphors they're likely to use. It's a good hack for differentiating narration between characters. Also the lists are very funny.

[no-pasaran-99]

oop. crazy how many people i have unfollowed/blocked today for the cyclical and asinine sentiment along the lines of "well leftists are you HAPPY now????"

girl we've done this 3 elections in a row. definition of insanity to still be blaming this on us especially when the numbers do not support your accusations. like we voted for the fucking war criminals and you STILL lost.

[musical-chick-13]

"This show is SO good, you should watch it!!"

I gotta be honest. If I look at a character list on Wikipedia and get five characters down without seeing a single woman, it's probably not for me.

[rotzaprachim]

you’re thinking about how easily massive numbers of the wildly antisemitic tankies would have been pulled into the actual political tenets of (esp early to mid 20th century) armed Zionism and you’re laughing?????

[lwcina]

part of the reason so many people are able to morally justify being in the military is specifically because we only critique when military directly kills people instead of focusing on making more systemic critiques of the military widespread. the people who join the military to shoot people know what theyre doing and dont care but the military is trying to rebrand. people mistakenly think "oh well im not holding a gun or piloting a drone or setting up explosives" = "i'm not doing anything harmful" like the military has been figuring out how to get past the criticism of "i dont want to kill people" for a while. to do any truly effective anti-enlistment propaganda we need more people to be aware of the negative impacts of the us military beyond the obvious direct violence

[trans-elrond]

regret to inform you Witcher s3 is so good it makes the near-slog of seasons 1-2 worth it

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

trying to find diplomatic but firm ways to articulate 'hey man this is really fucked up, please reconsider' about wan/derhome--or whether to make a post about it at all--because its creators seem like the types to approach it in good faith, but i have no idea how it would go over or if they'd even see it at all. but i finally decided to take a look at it after getting it in a charity bundle last year, and as a disabled mentally ill trauma survivor god that was incredibly hurtful and upsetting, holy shit. days later i'm still not super okay over it, let alone that it won awards and is considered a masterpiece in the medium

[woundedearth]

[vaguely gesturing to discourse buzzing on the horizon] there is no pure pristine culture to return to, we have to interrogate the ones we have and make our own

[terriblelizbians]

i think it's "interesting" when people pull out the "isr*el has a right to self defense" line right now. i mean in general but specifically right now when it's used to justify killing civilians in response to civilians killed. like huh what makes it "self defense" when one side does it but not for the other. hmmmm. like i'm of the controversial opinion that actually it's bad to kill civilians (and also that "inevitable" "necessary" or even "justified" does not actually mean "good"! these things can overlap with bad!) BUT there sure are lots of people pretending to share that opinion while blatantly ignoring the fact that "killing civilians" is sort of isr*el's whole modus operandi. like not in the broad structural way that also obviously exists. i mean in the explicit policy historically and currently being enacted of targeting civilian/residential buildings in air strikes because hamas could also meet there or whatever. like you made that rule. that's your rule. you're literally the ones doing it.