#I never left the propaganda era!!

[cl4ssyjazzy]

In The Disabled tyrant beloved pet fish queer (Yes, in both ways) sh*t happens all the time and characters basically brush it away and pretend it's totally normal, and carry on with their lives: (warning, spoilers)

Fish does things no normal fish should be able to do? well, have you considered... it's a SPECIAL fish???

Guy comes out of nowhere, steals the fish, turns to dust? Well, he was a very good thief what can we say. Guy returns, nobody knows who he is, but the lord immediately falls in love with him?? Well, he is a cute guy! we didn't know the lord swings that way but everything is better than him f*cking his fish so count your blessings and understand that It was simply love at first sight, and they will marry in the spring.

A normal ass carp turns into a Koi out of nowhere? Guys we have already talked about it, the fish is cool and special and brings good fortune it obviously had koi fish in it's DNI and this is just part of the circle of life. Actually, to even question it, kinda goes against the God's wishes so kindly, f*ck off.

The CIS guy gets PREGNANT?? B*tch weirder sh*t has happened this year, add it to the list and MOVE ON.

And honestly that's beautiful.

[mangled-by-disuse]

when over ten million soldiers (mostly teenagers and men in their early 20s) and at least as many civilians were being blown to pieces and their twitching, bloody bodies were being carried off the battlefield over a muddy morass made up mostly of dead men and horses

how many of them d'you think thought "hey, this sucks, but it's going to make a SICK lawn ornament"?

Don't think for a second, I'd forgotten about Poppy Watch.

Displays like these are outright disrespectful, and there's a whole new industry around producing these appalling silhouette cutouts that didn't exist when I was growing up.

[tanadrin]

The supposed efficiency and effectiveness of fascism was always propaganda: in reality, fascist regimes were deeply inefficient, hobbled by interpersonal rivalry, had institutions weakened or totally subverted by the personalist nature of leadership, and were deeply corrupt and lawless.

So it really, really bugs me how so much speculative fiction and even casual discourse since has taken WW2 era propaganda about fascism at face value, and depicted authoritarianism generally and fascism in particular as an intrinsic tradeoff between the chaos and disorder of liberty and the order of repression. Fascism is not orderly! That was always a lie. There is a reason right-wing authoritarian regimes have mid performance at best and at worst collapse due to infighting and military defeat—they suck at running states!

Democracy is the ideology of order and stability. Democracy provides for stable succession and can sustain rule of law in ways personalist rule cannot. Democracy can create avenues of accountability to reduce corruption that authoritarian (or even one-party rule) could never contemplate. “Democracy is chaos” is a lie invented by fascists to try to discredit liberal principles, and the apparent “chaos” of interwar democracies was often caused by the fascists themselves because they did not believe in liberalism.

I think of this most often in the context of video games about politics where it is assumed that authoritarian governance gives you efficiency bonuses at some cost to happiness or freedom—but I think these mechanics are backward. Fascism and authoritarianism are good for the narrow ruling clique at the top, the people they personally enrich, but they make for brittle and weak states, and they often fuck over even the narrow ethnic group or core citizenry whose will they are supposed to be channeling. Starting World War II was very bad for almost all Germans and Italians!

By contrast political scientists debate if a consolidated liberal democracy has ever deconsolidated, and the biggest challenges to democratic systems of government have tended to come when those systems are illiberal (as before the American Civil War), or being sabotaged by most participants (as Weimar Germany, where neither the left nor the right were really interested in democracy).

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Mabel Normand (Mabel at the Wheel, Mabel's Blunder)—One of the best slapstick comedians of the silent era (who you've probably never heard of)! She wrote! She directed, in fact, she was Charlie Chaplin's first director! And of course she acted!

Theda Bara (Cleopatra)—One of cinema's first female sex symbols. Nicknamed "The Vamp" due to her looks. The OG Goth Girl. She would be HUGE on Tumblr if she were around today!

This is round 1 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Mabel Normand:

can never let mabel normand go by without mentioning mack & mabel, a deeply flawed musical with a beautiful score about her and mack sennett. (find a good cover of 'i won't send roses' and cry a little.) also, according to wikipedia mabel was the first film star to receive a pie thrown in the face!

Theda Bara:

She was simply nicknamed "The Vamp". Her sex appeal and typecasting was so intense that people actually thought that she lounged around half-nacked and seduced men left and right in her free time.

She is one of the most famous and enduring faces in silent film and yet only 6 of her 43 films survived the 1937 Fox Vault Fire! 6! Think about what we could have had!

She's the original Vamp and first film sex symbol! She said: “The vampire that I play is the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see, I have the face of a vampire, but the heart of a feministe.” Many of her films were banned or severely cut by state and city censorship boards due to her revealing costumes and suggestive acting. She even sued the Chicago Funkhouser censorship board to let her film Cleopatra be shown in theaters. Riots broke out in theaters during showings of her film Kathleen Mavourneen. In contrast to her film persona, her private life was pretty quiet. She grew up in Cincinnati as Theodosia "Theda" Goodman, the Jewish daughter of immigrants, and had one happy marriage that lasted 30+ years until she died at age 69.

*Theeee* celluloid blueprint for both goth chicks and sexually-manipulative women--her persona was that of a "vampire", in the sense that would eventually be shortened into "vamp", although in truth she blended both definitions beautifully. Alas, the prints of most of her back-catalogue were lost to a studio fire in 1937, but enough survives to clearly demonstrate the fantasy of enticing danger that she was so kind as to serve us.

my favorite goth icon i want her gender

[read-marx-and-lenin]

heyo- a friend is trying to get me to read 1984 because 'it'll totally change your worldview on government and anarchism', but i've heard some bad things about the book itself/george orwell. should i read it? is there anything similar/more theorylike i could read instead?

thank you! your blog rocks <3 <3

Go ahead and read it if you want. It's a classic entry into the genre of dystopian science fiction and it has spawned many imitators since its publication. However, if you're looking for actual theory or history, you won't find it there. I would recommend Pat Sloan's "Soviet Democracy" or Anna Louise Strong's "The Soviets Expected It" and "The Stalin Era" if you want real accounts of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Orwell never actually visited the Soviet Union, and 1984 is based not on his own personal experience with the country but instead on Western propagandistic views of the country and his own displeasure towards the fact that during World War II, when the UK and the USSR were allies, the British press was much less keen to publish anti-Soviet works right at the same time he was trying to get Animal Farm published. You must also understand that his wife worked for the UK's Ministry of Information as a censor and Orwell himself worked at the BBC producing wartime propaganda. It is not a coincidence then that the main character of 1984, Winston Smith, is a censor and propaganda official working with the fictional "Ministry of Truth" and eventually finding himself battling against state control of information.

Ironically, after stylizing himself so much as a defender of liberty and freedom against the "totalitarianism" of the time, Orwell would write up a list of alleged subversive writers for the British Information Research Department, a secret department tasked with publishing anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War. Some of this propaganda would end up being a comic strip version of Orwell's Animal Farm. There is a significant throughline in both Animal Farm and 1984 that clearly betrays Orwell's political views. In both works, the proletariat are depicted as nothing more than idiots and sheep who follow the orders of anyone willing to give them work and are easily duped by intellectuals. In 1984, he phrases it as the proletariat being more "free" simply because they're so insignificant as to warrant no government surveillance.

In 1984, the fictional society of "Oceania" is a far cry from a dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat have no political power, they all live in slums and are mollified by bread and circuses. How is the building of the slums organized? Where does the money go when one buys their bread? We are not told anything about this except that the process is slow and inefficient. The story isn't interested in material concerns. The "proles" do their work, we are told, but we are never shown much more than informal labor. We don't know who is telling them to work or how they are getting paid. The "Outer Party" is supposedly the white collar "middle" class of Oceanic society, but despite the amount of focus the story has on this class, we are never shown a single Party member managing a workplace or poring over receipts. We are to believe that the proletariat are simultaneously left to their own devices and unmolested by the state, while also completely under the control of the state through invisible mechanisms that are never elaborated upon. While Winston will complain endlessly about his own quality of life, not once does a single prole gripe about their job. The cost and quality of goods come up sporadically and only to illustrate the deterioration of English society under Party rule, never to illustrate any material basis of said rule.

Even more at the periphery are the colonized peoples (although never described as such) within the war-torn areas never under the permanent control of any world power. All three of the global superpowers are said to be in a constant struggle over the control and enslavement of these super-exploited workers and the resources of their nations, which are said to make up a significant proportion of the material resources of each superpower, however at the same time they are not considered to be part of the proletariat and are dismissed as entirely disposable and unnecessary for the maintenance of any of these superpowers. To Orwell, it seems, colonialism is simply a thing the colonizers do out of habit and not a phenomenon with an actual material basis or actual material effects. In turn, the colonized are not actual people who might take umbrage with the constant conflict imposed upon them, but rather chattel that is perfectly content to be traded back and forth among the colonizers.

The importance of the middle class in society is a recurring theme in 1984. For example, the Trotsky-esque political treatise Winston reads within the story, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", begins with a twist on Marxist historical materialism - while it recognizes the role of class conflict in human history, it asserts a transhistorical narrative of the eternal existence of three separate classes within society since "Neolithic times": the upper, middle, and lower classes. It is then asserted that it is the middle and only the middle class that is ever revolutionary, and that when it appeals to the lower classes it does so only to use them as a cudgel against the upper classes and never out of a genuine concern for their wellbeing. The treatise, idealistic as it is, provides little definition of these classes. The lower classes are described as "crushed by drudgery" and in a constant state of servitude that places them incapable of achieving political consciousness, something reserved solely for the upper and middle classes. The upper class is defined simply as the "directing" class, and the middle as the "executive" class. The identity of the middle class within Oceania is made clear: they are the "Outer Party", the white collar intelligentsia and managerial class which Winston and Julia belong to. One must assume Orwell viewed himself as a member of the middle class as well. If this section of the book is at all reflective of Orwell's own views (and to be clear no part of the book refutes this outlook,) then Orwell's rejection of Marxism-Leninism is rooted in his view of the vanguard party as simply a mechanism for the intelligentsia and bureaucrats to trick the stupid proles into overthrowing the bourgeoisie, rather than as a genuine means of proletarian liberation.

The politics of the Party are entirely idealistic in nature. "Big Brother" dominates through control of ideology and speech. The goal of Ingsoc, the ruling ideology of Oceania, is to make dissent impossible through the thorough alteration of language and the removal of words which could represent ideas that are not in line with Ingsoc, a process called "Newspeak". It is explicitly stated, however, that none of this ideological control is directed towards the proletariat, which is said to make up 85% of Oceania's population. The proles are not expected to learn Newspeak, they are not monitored by the telescreens, because as is stated quite frankly in the book, "the masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed." That this line is given by the villain of the story is unimportant, because the story never refutes it.

While Winston routinely repeats his belief that "hope lies in the proles", he is consistently met with scenes that challenge his faith whenever he winds up interacting with the proletariat. His conversations with proles reveal their total lack of concern with politics or history. He hears a crowd erupt into chaos and briefly hopes it's the proletarian uprising he is waiting for, only to find it's simply a riot over consumer goods. They are more than once compared to animals. While it is said in exposition that intelligent members of the proletariat who might end up fomenting dissent are eliminated, this is never actually depicted. We don't see Winston meeting with a single intelligent and politically conscious prole. The most intelligent prole he meets turns out to be a secret member of the "Thought Police". And so, the concept remains theoretical.

Winston is depicted as an ardent materialist, desperately defending the notion of external reality against deranged idealists who believe that through control of thought, control of reality becomes possible. But the world he lives in is not material. It is fictional, of course, but more than that, the fictional world described operates on idealistic principles even from Winston's own perspective. Winston's worldview is a faith based one, appealing not to any material basis for liberation but purely to emotion. It is love and the spirit of humanity that is the basis of freedom, and material freedom springs forth from it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is merely a trickster trying to control the masses.

Orwell rejected the material basis of history because he rejected the idea of a revolution on a material basis. To him, the revolution must be an ideological one, and the problem lie not in how society and the economy are organized but in the existence of hateful "authoritarian" ideologies governing the world. He believed the material basis was already here, that industry alone was the solution to material inequality, and so we must concern ourselves now only with the idea of equality and freedom, and from an abstract and universal viewpoint to boot. It is intolerable to him that a revolution be fought against an actual enemy in the real world. The problem is not that the capitalists are in control of the means of production, the problem is that the workers are too stupid to disobey them. A real revolutionary class would spontaneously throw off its own shackles through thought alone. It doesn't matter that Orwell was a lackey and a snitch, because in his mind he was freer and smarter than everyone else.

The bravery of Winston Smith was in recognizing the existence of a material reality that lies and propaganda could never destroy even while being tortured into believing such absurd notions as "two plus two equals five". But Orwell was never tortured into any of his incorrect beliefs. His incorrect beliefs stem purely from accepting the official narrative that he was fed and refusing to investigate its veracity for himself. Orwell's writing was used as propaganda against the designated enemy of the UK throughout the Cold War, adapted countless times in the forms of radio plays, TV shows, movies, and comic books. He never made an effort to actually travel to the Soviet Union to find out if what he was told about the country was true. All the other upper middle class "left-wing" intellectuals he hung out with seemed to be just as concerned as he was with the rising tide of "totalitarianism" and the supposed excesses of the Soviet Union, so why shouldn't he agree? He was in this regard no different than the Western "socialists" of the modern day who have no shortage of vitriol towards China or North Korea. Yes, he might performatively rail against chauvinism and nationalism, but only enough to ensure that he wouldn't be seen as a conservative. He still knew in his heart that his country was surely better than those barbarous communists in the East.

Yes Orwell was sexist and homophobic, and despite his best efforts he remained plagued by racist and antisemitic attitudes, but in addition to all that his books promulgated a view of the world entirely in line with British bourgeois values, which is why they were so eagerly used as propaganda by the British government. The Nazis were bad and the Soviets were bad because they were both authoritarian, and the differences between them were negligible and unworthy of mention. The references 1984 makes to the shifting alliances in Oceania, "we are at war with Eurasia" becoming "we are at war with Eastasia" and vice-versa, are most likely allegories for the shifting alliances of Britain at the time, how they viewed the Soviets as an enemy before the war, as an ally during the war, and as an enemy again once the war was over. Orwell viewed himself as above all of this simply because his view of the Soviets never changed at any point throughout this.

[stxrvel]

i don't wanna live forever (1)

summary: reader couldn't stop having deaths in her life ever since the Supersoldier serum came into her life. no matter how hard she tried to stay sane, it seemed that life didn't want to give her a break. until, one afternoon, she learned that one of her old friends was alive… (you guys know im bad at summaries, but please give this one a chance)

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

words: +4.5k

warnings: angst, major character deaths, canon deaths¿?, bad words, english is not my first language! thoughts of revenge and death, this is like an introductory chapter, so the buckyxreader interaction is low, but it'll get better, i promise!

note: holy fuck guys. i just spent like five hours writing and editing this and i fucking love it. its been a while since ive been this proud of a work, im actually scare the emotion will disappear, but i really want to rejoice in this one. i wanted to write something a little different from my usuals, maybe a little common in the fanfiction world, but i started and i simply could not stop (or maybe just approach this bucky fic from another perspective). so this is the first part and i'll try with all my heart to keep this going because it was fucking insane, at least for me. i really hope you all like this as much as i do! feel free to leave any comment! thanks always for all the support!! see you next time <3

part 2 ; part 3 ; part 4

When you went into the Supersoldier serum project with Steve, you thought you were going to change the world. Of course, at that time when technology was relatively new any invention felt like the beginning of a new era. That's how it was all sold to you and it was how you expected everything to turn out… Until you realized that it was all really a waste of effort and time.

They were just propaganda for war. Not to stop it, to promote it. To motivate it.

You tried, on several occasions, not to think too much about it. You tried to stay out of it as Steve sometimes asked you to, even though even he didn't want to, as Bucky asked you to when you lay on his shoulder to cry in the little time you had free between trips. It was a great burden of guilt and helplessness.

Until you and Steve, with the almost imposed help of Peggy and Howard, rescued Bucky from the evil hands of Johann Schmidt and his nefarious organization, HYDRA, that, unbeknownst to you, would haunt you for a long time to come. It was only after that, after spending several sleepless days on edge thinking about what might be happening to Bucky, that you and Steve were finally able to go out and contribute something. Destroy HYDRA and the Red Skull's plans.

Of course, you realized that not everything could go right when, the one mission you couldn't attend, Bucky didn't return. And then Steve didn't come back either.

“Do you think this will ever end?” you had asked Bucky the day before his last mission.

“Of course it will,” he had answered without hesitation, moonlight illuminating his clear eyes, squeezing your hand as if it was all he wanted to do for the rest of his life. “And after that we can begin to live as it should be.”

But there was no after that, because you never recovered from losing him. From losing them both.

“Are you okay?” Peggy approached, in the middle of the afternoon when the sun was streaming through the stained glass windows of the church, illuminating the spot where Steve's empty coffin had been, because they didn't even find his body. They didn't even think there was any of it left.

You barely moved your head to acknowledge her presence, moving the prayer slip they had recited throughout the mass between your hands. Your eyes were crystallized, in tears that no longer even made the effort to flow, because you had already spent too many days and nights crying. Peggy had been on the other side of the church, sitting next to Howard while the priest spoke, because you had refused to be near them in those moments. You didn't want to be near them.

“As well as one can be,” you slurred, finding that it had been a long time since you'd last used your voice for anything other than cursing and crying disconsolately.

The people had already left, probably an hour or more ago. The empty coffin had already been brought out, all the flower arrangements had been picked up, and the priest was preparing for the evening mass. You knew you had to leave, you knew Peggy and Howard were there waiting for you, but you felt stuck at that moment. You didn't want to leave, you didn't want to get ahead, you didn't want that life if it had to be this cruel.

You heard Peggy's sigh, before she took a seat next to you, a short distance away, averting her gaze to look at Christ on the cross.

You didn't know if you were selfish to be so closed off to your friends at this moments, because they must be grieving as much as you were, but you didn't know how to deal with the future possibilities. Bucky and Steve, great men and soldiers, one even with enhanced abilities, had not been able to make it through the punishment of war. What if Peggy and Howard were the same? What if they too had the cruel fate of dying at the hands of injustice? Could you deal with that? With everyone gone?

Maybe you could open up to them a little more because if not, who else? Turning away from them was not going to ensure their survival in this hate-filled society. Maybe you could protect them, like you couldn't protect Steve and Bucky. Maybe you could make a difference, because you had the chance to.

“You know,” Peggy spoke again, rearranging herself on the bench and crossing her legs, “Steve always knew this was how it would end.”

Her wistful, mournful, fragile voice sent a shiver through your body. Peggy didn't consider herself someone to show herself vulnerable in front of others no matter how close they were, even in those things that hurt her the most, in those things that affected her personally and made her eyes water instantly, she always tended to shut down. And at that moment you didn't dare interrupt her because you knew it would probably be the only time she would talk about Steve in a long time.

“Sometimes we'd talk, between tour trips, and he would tell me that wasn't what he wanted to do, even when he had to convince you otherwise,” her clasped hands would occasionally squeeze between words, blinking rapidly to fight back the tears. “He didn't know if he'd made the right decision.”

You could almost picture him, backstage at the foot of the stairs with that notebook he carried everywhere and wouldn't let go, Peggy at his side nostalgic, as helpless as the others. It reminded you of the times you'd had similar conversations with Bucky, desperate to find a purpose, a way through so much fog.

“The first time I saw him so sure of himself was when he asked us to help them look for Bucky,” she mumbled his name, as if trying not to scare you away by saying it too loudly. “Ever since then it seemed like he'd found that spark…”

“Until Bucky died,” you whispered, the words cutting through the cold and silence, Peggy shifting on the bench contritely.

“He lost something of himself from that day on, it wasn't hard to tell. The next time I heard him so sure after spending days lost, it was on that call from the plane.”

Peggy paused, raising her hand to cover her mouth as her voice faltered. You turned to look at her, wishing you could rip the pain from her soul and leave it in yours. She was trying to contain her emotions, breathing deeply, and in that moment you wondered what life might be like from now on, with the specter of grief following you around, waiting for the next time the dead knocked on your doors, unexpectedly, without allowing you to say goodbye.

“He had told me he wouldn't die in peace until he could get it all over with. And he took it all with him. And I hated him so much for it…” Peggy sobbed, her labored breathing standing out between words. She kept looking straight ahead at the stained glass windows, the expression on her face hard and scowling despite having tears rolling down her cheeks, as if she were trying to blame something for what had happened. Her reproachful eyes fixed on the Christ.

Her wails echoed through the walls of the church, the father on the dais sending them a look of sorrow. He had offered you water, thirty minutes after everyone at Steve's wake had left, when they kept walking, and you stood there.

Another empty casket.

“Ladies,” Howard's voice reached your ears amidst all the physical and emotional numbness. You could barely notice Peggy wiping under her eyes with the pocket square that was surely part of Howard's suit, as she took breaths to get up. “We should go now.”

You heard him walk, his slow, careful steps stopping just behind you. There, on his feet with his chest tight, he rested a hand on your shoulder and gave it a squeeze in support. He knew it was the most you would allow him at a time like this, deciding not to pass up the opportunity to let you know he was there. You sighed, feeling a heaviness take over your body as you stood up.

“Yeah, let's go.”

The next few months passed in a blur. Maybe too fast, maybe too slow, you weren't sure anymore.

Peggy continued to work at the Strategic Science Reserve for a couple of years, calling you from time to time to help her with some jobs. You kept a low profile, practically a fugitive from the state, while trying to live a halfway normal life in Europe. A lot of it thanks to Howard really.

Life had become a rather monotonous routine when you stopped getting so many calls from Peggy and Howard several years later. You knew they were fine, but not being able to return to the country filled you with anguish every day. And trying to lead a normal life became too complicated when you looked in the mirror and it seemed like not a single day had passed since you were in that capsule of Dr. Erskine's with Steve.

Until Peggy called one day asking you to come back. She told you that it was safe, that there would be no state officials waiting for you at the airport, but even if that had been the situation, you wouldn't have hesitated for a second to buy the first plane ticket and fly to see them again. To Howard and Peggy, to melt into an embrace, longing for the lost years.

You had thought that contributing to the fight in World War II had earned you a ticket to at least be recognized in the military, but all you gained was the government with their mad scientists looking for you to try to recreate the Supersoldier serum. Peggy didn't want to risk you and Howard gave you no choice by giving you a plane ticket to Finland with your bags packed.

You wasted many years not being by their side, unable to keep the promise you had made them in your head to be close by to protect them, to watch over their safety.

But when you left the airport there was only Peggy, and maybe that should've told you everything.

Her hair already looked gray, the effects of gravity and time present on her face. You hated to think that you shouldn't have looked any different from the way she saw you last time when she waved you off at that same airport. Her warm gaze was the same, raising her arms with held back tears to encircle you in a big hug. She tried hard not to sob against your shoulder, you felt the choppy movement of her breath against your chest.

She looked so different and the same at the same time.

You walked to her car a moment later, her trying to carry your suitcase and you telling her you were perfectly fine carrying it on your own. Amidst a smile, she walked into the driver's door and you frowned as you saw the empty passenger seat.

“Where's Howard?” you spoke as you sat down, after stowing the huge suitcase in the trunk of the car. The way you moved to buckle up, you didn't notice the way Peggy froze in place, her hands clenching the steering wheel so tightly that her breath hitched from the effort.

“We're going to see him,” was all she said, but she was very good at hiding that something was wrong. Only for a little while.

During the trip, even though you tried to ask things about them, about what they had been doing during this time, you didn't miss the way her shoulders were tense or her eyes very alert. Something bad had happened and Peggy was trying to hide it from you.

When she pulled up in front of a church, you already knew what had happened without her answering a single one of your questions.

Howard had died.

You two had sat next to Howard's son Tony, his spitting image, in complete silence as the prayers went on. At that moment you didn't know what had happened, hoping it had been a quiet and peaceful death, because you didn't know if you would be able to endure another violent death.

Peggy gave you all the details when the mass was over, after the coffin was taken away, and you hadn't felt such fury in so many years. Not since the deaths of Bucky and Steve had that adrenaline rush of anger returned to run through your body as violently as it did at that moment, when Peggy told you that he had been murdered along with his wife. All to steal some prototypes of Dr. Erskine's serum. The damned serums with which everything had started.

This time there was a body in the coffin, but there was also a culprit. Someone to point the finger at and take it out on for years of anguish and pain.

You were at Peggy's house, staying for a few days, when she told you that wasn't all.

Peggy had a suspicion that HYDRA hadn't disappeared when Steve crashed that plane into the ice. Her suspicions generated panic in you, because Bucky and Steve had died for that, now apparently Howard, only for it all to have been for nothing. The feeling of carnage that ran through your whole head made you nauseous, years of helplessness and pain pent up in such a small body had to find its way out somehow.

“It was a man, according to the information I've been able to gather,” Peggy spoke, taking a seat across from you in the dining room of her living room, after pouring you a glass of lemonade. “He didn't die from the crash. He had a concussion. He was hit in the head. His wife died from asphyxiation.”

“Does Tony know?”

“No,” Peggy shook her head quickly, one hand over her heart as if the mere thought caused her physical pain. “It didn't even occur to me to tell him something like that.”

“And he was looking for the serum,” you recalled, a bitter feeling planted in the back of your throat, the memories of the disastrous times during the war coming back into your head like a blinding flash.

“He took them. We don't know who he is or who he works for, but whoever they are, they must have been following us for a long time to know about them.”

“You mean years,” you arched an eyebrow, your fingers touching the cool exterior of the glass seeking some reassurance.

“Possibly. That project isn't recent,” Peggy nodded, drinking her lemonade with a grimace. You stared at the liquid almost finished from her glass, a wrinkle forming between your brows with each passing second and you kept wondering why.

“But what the fuck was going through that asshole's head?” you spat angrily. Rage at already the amount of lives that serum had taken with it and at Howard's recklessness. Rage at the reaper who seemed to be following in their footsteps for some reason, rage at that damn man and whoever his damn boss was.

“It was the only option, Y/N,” Peggy turned her gaze, meeting your eyes with a strange glint.

“What do you mean?” you were almost afraid to ask, your friend's gaze suddenly turning evasive. You watched her run her fingernails over the glass of the tumbler, lost for a moment in thought. The way her shoulders slumped forward in defeat caused a pressure in your chest that made it hard to breathe. Peggy shouldn't be going through these things at this point in life.

“Howard was working with the Pentagon, as a contractor or something. They had found you. Howard felt cornered and they made him sign an agreement.”

With your incredulous look on her face, Peggy didn't dare look back at you for a few seconds. So much had happened since you had left and it seemed that you had only been told about the things you weren't going to care about so much. But if you had known that you wouldn't have cared much about giving some of the state officials their comeuppance. You would've liked Howard to trust you enough to tell you, not live in as much fear behind his back as the last few years must've been. You didn't like the way Peggy's lips curved downward, as if she, too, would've preferred to make another decision had she known this was how it was going to end.

“Howard assured them that he could recreate the serum, and told them he would as long as they left you alone.”

“Fucking asshole…” you closed your eyes, scrubbing your face with your hands. The rough skin of your hands rubbed against the delicate skin of your face, years of combat and mistreatment foreseeing a harshness that reminded you every day of what you'd had to go through to get to that moment.

“I only found out about it after it happened. I didn't see it for like a whole week,” Peggy shook her head slightly, her eyes glistening in the pain of the memories. You shook your head hard, a more violent reaction than you could have anticipated.

“That stupid… stupid asshole! What the fuck made him think I couldn't defend myself?”

“He was trying to do the right thing,” Peggy finally searched your eyes, meeting the red rims that told her you were holding back too hard breaking in front of her, only using that pain mixed with rage to keep you sane.

“And look how that turned out!”

Peggy stretched her hand across the table, with a pleading look asking you to lower your voice, averting her gaze to the hallway. You followed her gaze, for a second forgetting where you were, forgetting that her family was with you behind the doors where you were plunged into darkness. It was past midnight.

You took a second to calm yourself, trying to drown out the uncontrolled emotions and taking deep breaths to calm your fluttering heart.

“And if what you theorize is true…” you regretted the moment those words left your mouth; you didn't even want to finish the sentence.

“Do you think it is?”

“I don't want to,” you shook your head instantly, closing your eyes, the thought sounding illogical inside your head. Your hands on your chest trying to contain the storm of feelings that was making chaos inside your head. “That would mean that everything we did, everything Bucky, Steve and Howard did and sacrificed, was in vain. It will all have been in vain.”

You spent several weeks with that thought in your head, working hand in hand with Peggy, and the organization you barely knew as SHIELD, to track down the whereabouts of the killer of Tony's parents and the one responsible because the Supersoldier's serums were, surely, in the wrong hands.

And yes, it was many years of fruitless missions and dead ends, with you running every field mission and Peggy calling the shots from the New York facility. Every time you felt close to discovering something, it seemed that the enemy rejoiced in your failures and still couldn't understand how they were always three steps ahead.

However, you had to leave the missions when Peggy became ill.

The silent, lethal Alzheimer's.

During the first months in the hospital, she still recognized you. She also recognized her husband and children. But after the first year, she frowned every time her children walked through the door. After a year and a half, her husband had to remind her that they had been married for about forty years.

After two years, she was still only remembering you, Howard, Steve and Bucky. Her whole life during her time in the army was all you talked about, sometimes you would tell her how much more time had passed than she remembered and always, without fail, she would ask you how much you had done in Europe for so long by yourself.

She cried every time she remembered Howard's death. She cried every time she remembered her children. Out of her mouth came a thousand apologies that no one would accept, because there was nothing anyone could do to prevent what had to happen. You wished she had been a serum test subject instead of you.

For several years, missions to find Tony's parents killer were sporadic because you spent more time around Peggy than at the SHIELD facility. She was the only thing you had left of everything you'd ever had, of when you held the world in your hands. She was the last thing keeping you tethered to that reality, keeping madness from flooding your reason. How could you have so many years ahead of you when that was all you had to live for? A life full of the dead, full of pain and suffering. What kind of karma were you paying for?

You were leaving the SHIELD facility, after another failed mission, when Nick Fury stopped you in front of the exit. You almost rolled your eyes right under his watchful gaze, tired of having to meet him anywhere, and exhausted from his comments about this vengeance project or whatever he wanted you to be a part of.

You still didn't know how, being such an exemplary agent, Coulson had fallen into his nets.

“Miss L/N,” the man stopped you with his words, his hands behind his back and a tense stance that caught your attention.

“Fury,” you nodded in his direction, hoping he'd be quick because you were running late for your weekly visit with Peggy. “Do you need anything?”

“I'd like you to come with me somewhere,” Fury approached tentatively, his one eye fixed on your wary expression, which shifted to boredom the moment you thought you knew what he wanted.

“If this is about that project, I've told you a thousand times-”

“No,” he interrupted you, moving forward and removing his hands from behind his back. “It's not related to that. I really want you to come with me.”

“You look agitated, but I need-”

“I'll take you to see Peggy myself after this.”

You didn't like that he knew your routine, even though you weren't doing enough to hide it from the other agents. But Fury looked nervous, even though he was hiding it very well, trying to keep his cool as he looked for ways to convince you.

You figured it wouldn't be a big deal for you to go off the deep end for once. After all, Peggy never remembered you were going to see her.

You set off in Fury's armored vans, not quite sure where you were going, but sure that it was urgent, because he had taken it upon himself to let his driver know that you had to get there as soon as possible.

You took that time on the trip to come up with a new strategy for the next mission because what you were doing up to that point wasn't working and you felt too close to throwing in the towel, figuratively speaking. You could spend years following a ghost, but you wouldn't give up on finding Howard and Maria's killer.

Before the car pulled up to one of SHIELD's secret sections, they passed the giant, imposing Stark Tower. You never saw Tony again after that time at his parents' funeral, not even during his visits to Peggy because you always made it a point not to cross him. You didn't think you'd be able to look him in the eye while you knew his parents had been killed without being able to tell him. You had promised Peggy in her lucid moments that you wouldn't tell him anything until you could find the culprit. You didn't want to initiate that pain if it had to be kept repressed, as yours once was, and probably still is. You had learned, some time after the funeral, that he was living with Edwin Jarvis, and you were glad to know that he would have good companionship to keep him company in such hard times.

Fury, a handful of agents and you entered the vans through the entrance to what appeared to be the parking lot of an old warehouse. Upon entering, the first thing you noticed was the number of armed agents that seemed to be guarding the place, not at all discreet to how SHIELD used to do things. You weren't sure if Peggy would authorize something like that, but you couldn't question the Director's decisions. It wasn't your place.

“What's going on here?” you frowned, watching as every meter there was another agent and another agent. You got out of the car without waiting for an answer from Fury, moving directly toward the entrance where most of the agents were concentrated. You barely noticed their looks in contradiction, running their eyes over you and then over the man trying to catch up to you, dubious as to whether or not they should move. “Move.”

“Wait,” Fury's voice stopped the command in the agents, who turned back to look at you as you sent Fury a confused look.

“What's all this mystery, Nicholas?” the man startled almost discreetly at your tone of voice, the agents stirring uncomfortably, but kept the serene expression that was getting on your nerves. “What the fuck did you do?”

“We got a call from the Arctic.”

“From the Arctic?”

You tried to ignore the way the hairs on your neck instantly stood up, your body alerting you to something your mind still couldn't comprehend. You felt like a deer face to face with a predator, expecting the worst.

“The Colonel informed us of something that might interest us,” Fury's cryptic voice echoed in your ears, drowning out the flicker of uncertainty vibrating from your head to your toes. “They found a plane.”

You didn't even answer him. Your heart began to pound wildly, cornered, ready to have your head bitten off. The tension in your shoulders intensified, with the involuntary movement of your hands as you broke into a cold sweat. The mere implication of his words caused an emptiness in your stomach, a sense of longing and fear you hadn't felt before.

You looked at Fury, trying to find in his gaze the gleam of a lie, but there was nothing there but assurance. There was nothing but recognition and understanding in his gaze, but that didn't make the emptiness in your stomach and the tight chest go away. It didn't make the feeling of being outside your body go away.

You barely remembered to move in the direction of the door, the agents instantly moving out of your way, pushing it so hard that one of them flew out. You moved your eyes around every corner of the room, the cream-colored walls generating a great repulsion in you. And there, in the midst of all the confusion and the storm, a confused and disgruntled face looked back at you. A face you never thought you would see again.

Steve Rogers was standing a few feet away from you, barely comprehending what was happening around him and instantly recognizing you. Your chest compressed once again, the tears you held back for so many years even in your loneliness making their own way into your eyes, endangering to end that mask you wore everywhere you went.

Steve was actually there, looking back at you with his eyes shining in recognition. You didn't know if he was as surprised as you were to react or you looked so bad that he didn't know if he should approach you or not. You just knew it was him, it really was him right there in front of you. He wasn't dead. Steve wasn't dead. He was alive. Ah, he was so alive.

The broken sob that suddenly left you was loud enough to make your friend shed his stupefaction and stride over to where you were. You barely managed to cover your face, between sobs, wails and disbelief, feeling your knees give out, surrendering to the weight of the pain, when his strong arms grabbed your shoulders before you hit the floor. Preventing your fall, as you had wished so many times before.

You cried against his shoulder, when feeling him against your body you knew there was no doubt it was true. You moved your hands away from your face, wrapping them around his waist as tightly and lovingly as you hadn't hugged anyone in so long. Surely the last time you hugged someone like that was when you saw Peggy on your way back from Europe.

Steve wasn't far behind, his arms around your shoulders just as tightly, his chin against the crown of your head, moving from side to side trying to hold back the loud sobs that shook your body.

You couldn't believe it, but it was true, he was right in front of you.

Steve was alive. He had come back to your side. You didn't even want to ask why.

And there was nothing else you could think about for the rest of your life.

[sapphicseasapphire]

Remember when I said I’d make some informational posts about the Cryptid au? Well, here’s some lore! I originally wanted to talk more about Wind. But I can’t talk about Wind without also talking about Legend! So buckle up while I tell you about an old, old war.

Legend is Mer. Wind is an original species that I call Aquili. On my character sheets, before I came up with the name, I called him a Sea Monster. But then I thought about it for two more seconds and realized that in a world where monsters are in fact real, tangible things that are always evil and are constantly being fought, doesn’t calling someone a monster sound a little derogatory? And then that SPIRALED.

So throughout Hyrule’s history, there have been many creatures that make their homes in the sea. Among these are the Zora, an amphibious group that make their homes on land but close to water; the Aquili, an amphibious group that make their homes underwater but close to the surface; and the Mer, an entirely aquatic group that live 100% underwater. They rarely interacted with each other, peacefully keeping to themselves until an influx of monsters started driving them out of their homes.

The spike in monster population took place just before the events Ocarina of Time. The Zora were least affected affected because their homes were on land, but the Mer and Aquili struggled. They fought back the monsters as they invaded their territories, and eventually, the threat of the monsters led them to cross each others borders. And suddenly, they had a turf war on their hands. They simply didn’t have enough space to coexist while the monsters lurked. And so they fought.

The timeline splits. Legend and Wind both know different conflicts, but neither end well. In Legend’s era, the war is won. The Mer were victorious, they drove the Aquili away and lowered their numbers enough that they aren’t a threat anymore. The term “Sea Monster” is Mer propaganda, meant to villainize the Aquili and turn any sympathizers away. The war might have been won centuries ago, but the Aquili are still out there, still scraping by, weakened but never defeated. Legend has been taught all his life to fear them. He’s been taught to call them monsters and to fight them on sight. He’s been taught that there’s a reason that the Mer were able to win, and he must live up to that standard.

Legend was attacked when he was young. He was chased out of his territory by an Aquili scavenger, forced above the surface to escape. Except it’s law in Mer controlled areas that so much as breaking the surface tension of the water is grounds for banishment. Since Mer are completely aquatic, it’s dangerous for them to go on land. Plus, Aquili, being amphibious, go above the surface on occasion. Anyone following them is seen as a traitor. Unfortunately, even though Legend was only a child and only trying to escape a very dangerous situation, the law was strict. He had no loophole. He was banished, forced to take refuge in the surface kingdom of Hyrule. And that experience did not help him see Aquili in a kinder light.

Wind, on the other hand, had an entirely different perspective on the war. In his era, the war never really ended. There were no victors, no losers. When Hyrule flooded, the war just sort of… fizzled out. Of course, with the extra ocean comes even more, even bigger monsters for the Mer and Aquili to try to manage. There are still skirmishes between the groups. A lot of fighting around borders. Occasional battles and invasions. The conflict, while it might not be as intense as the war in Legend’s era, is still very much ongoing.

Except… there’s this little place in Wind’s era. A little island where Aquili and Mer alike seek refuge. A common ground, an area of peace. Outset Island is populated entirely by both Mer and Aquili who wanted an escape from the war. The ones who gave up on holding any territory underwater and settled on land. There, everyone’s welcome. Wind’s parents left him there with his little sister and his grandmother to save them from the constant fighting. But they believed in their cause, and so they left to reclaim their territory- their home. They never returned.

Wind sees the war as something that’s far away. He lives in a bubble of peace. He’s friends with Mer. He doesn’t have these prejudices. He knows not to venture too far into the ocean (hence why he sails on a ship instead of swimming everywhere), but other than that, he doesn’t have to worry about it.

When Legend and Wind meet, immediately their cultural differences are made very, very clear. Legend is cold to the young boy (colder than usual, that is) and no one can figure out why. Wind’s such a little bundle of energy! His laughter is infectious and his enthusiasm is contagious. Why does Legend avoid him so much?

I had this idea in my head that Wind’s so far separated from his culture, he doesn’t even know that he’s called ‘Aquili.’ All he’s heard from everyone in his life is ‘Sea Monster.’ On Outset, the Aquili called themselves that with pride as if they were never anything else, so Wind never saw any issue with that.

So one day, when talking to the rest of the Chain, Wind calls himself a Sea Monster. And Legend LOOSES IT.

Suddenly, Legend rushes over and pulls Wind into his arms and just hugs him as tightly as he can. Because this child should not be saying such things about himself. Legend’s been dealing with his own prejudice this whole time, but hearing it come from Wind’s own mouth actually breaks him. He cannot pretend anymore. He cannot separate himself from the conflict, he cannot use the blanket description of ‘Monster’ for all of the Aquili, he cannot blame the child in his arms for the desperate soul that chased him from his home.

“You’re not a monster,” he’d whisper into Wind’s shoulder. “Don’t ever say that. You’re not a monster.”

Wind’s just confused because he didn’t say he was a monster. “I called myself a Sea Monster. There’s a differen… oh”

And Legend has to watch the light leave his eyes as Wind realizes what he’s been calling himself… what everyone he knows has been calling themselves… is so fundamentally wrong.

It’s Legend who tells Wind about his heritage. As much as he can think of that isn’t propaganda. (Which… isn’t much). Legend tells Wind that he’s called Aquili, he tells Wind about the Aquili that he knew in his era. He hates that he knows so little.

And then they start to bond. Wind is definitely in shock about the whole thing, maybe a bit of denial. Legend just feels so sorry for being so harsh towards him in the past. But they go swimming together, they catch and eat seafood together. Each of them are learning from each other. They heal.

Okay that was long. I have many more thoughts about this! Like what the war looked like in Lorule, what it means for Legend and Ravio. But I’ve rambled long enough haha! I’ll make a post about that later if you’re interested, but for now, thank you for reading haha!

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character — Eye Bracket — Round 2

Propaganda

Jonathan Sims/The Archivist (The Magnus Archives):

I just think it'd be funny if an asexual character won

(im ripping this from the wiki btw) John has prematurely greying hair and looks older than he is. He often looks very tired and is physically unfit, as other characters refer to him as scrawny and he tires easily from physical tasks that others perform with little exertion. he also has lots of scars.

(propaganda, spoilers for The Magnus Archives) He's a wet cat and at one point dated Georgie Barker and does date Martin Blackwood. there is also a whole tag/movement for "hot Jon rights". he may not be like, 10/10 on the attractive scale but his far off gaze has captivated me

Mari Datuin (Hi Nay):

Short, curvy, adorable

Mari is Filipino, which means despite her warm exterior, she's got the deep, unrelenting trauma of a Pinay who left the Philippines during the Duterte era.

She loves milk tea and casually knows how to exorcise ghosts, she gets to sing in a musical episode, she's still close with her ex-girlfriend while pining over a clueless detective, there's at least two incredibly beautiful women she's ready to fist fight at a moment's notice, and there's something deeply wrong with her that isn't immediately apparent.

Also she loves her Nanay (mom) very much and calls her all the time.

If you believe she isn't 5 feet of incandescent rage in a cute and friendly package, then I absolutely recommend checking out Hi Nay to see where she goes 💖

(I think it's very important to note that Mari is 5 feet tall and all her friends are in the 6 foot range and that will never not be funny to me as a Filipina)

VOTE MARI! And if you're not sure why... Perhaps listen to Hi Nay 😉

[bambamramfan]

What If They Win

Too much has been written about the horse race of this election, but not nearly enough analysis about how either administration will govern. There's some fearmongering about Project 2025 or courtpacking, but that's propaganda not actual predictions.

(FWIW, I think Trump has this race in the bag, but can understand people who still hope think this is a coin flip.)

If Harris Wins...

Harris has held together a remarkable coalition of people against Trump. Mainstream Democratic politicians, YIMBY pundit technocrats, far lefters holding their nose, and Republican neoconservatives. This is no criticism, it's pretty impressive how they are coming together to defeat a common enemy, and I really really would like them to win.

But what happens to a coalition defined by a common enemy, after they win? Let's assume the best case scenario and she gets a Democratic Senate who confirms her cabinet and some SCOTUS judges.

Who supports Harris in the press, or is vote-corraling for her in Congress? Not those Republicans who hope to turn a page on the Trump era. Not a far left who has decided to hate her as a centrist sell out. Not moderate dems who will run away from any hint of weakness. Maybe a few of those YIMBY pundits who hope she's actually committed to more houses and nuclear power. But that's no political hyperpower.

What would her first major bill be? Who would support it? It will be just one scandal plagued administration with little support from any quarter that makes its ground breaking "first" for subaltern identities a disappointing token. The David Dinkens of the White House.

I predict that President Harris would have the lowest approval rating in her first year of any President we have polling for. It's gonna be brutal, and an easy 2028 win for Republicans (who hopefully won't be running 82 year old Trump.)

If Trump Wins...

This is the interesting one. I've heard a lot of people say that a second Trump term will be even worse than the first because he's fully unleased now and no one can stop him from doing what he really wants. And I think this is partly true.

I just don't think what he wants is "Republican authoritarian rule." Sure, he will probably let the Fed Society still pick the judges (which he never cared about besides thinking they should be loyal to him) and there will almost certainly be a tax cut/extension. But besides that?

In the first Trump term, he had VP Pence, Jeff Sessions as AG, governors like Chris Christie, and three establishment figures at State, Defense, and Treasury making a pact that if Trump fires one they all resign. It was an actual coalition of Republicans and Trumpists who need each other. Even Jared Kushner was pretty establishment friendly (he's the one who approved Pence.)

Jared and Ivanka are gone now, replaced by Eric and Donjr. The VP is a Thiel-acolyte who isn't anti-Republican but sure is "from the blogs." And the endorsers Trump touts are RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk (while more and more mod Republicans endorse Harris.)

This isn't a Trump face over a body of Republicans - this is a Trump leader over all the fringe outsiders of American weirdo culture. I think Trump *actually does* want to appoint RFK to Secretary of Health, and indulge in every conspiracy, organic hippie, crunchy nonsense - which actually has a lot of believers across the country, but extremely little following in DC itself.

I think this will be hilarious beyond our wildest dreams of entertainment. It will not be a functional fascism - it will be closer to Jill Stein and Richard Branson and Andrew Tate. He'll try to pass laws that every kid in America needs to eat healthy and also work in a McDonalds.

[bestanimal]

Round 1 - Phylum Brachiopoda

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Brachiopoda is a phylum of animals that are superficially similar but entirely unrelated to bivalve molluscs, in that they have hard valves (shells) protecting their bodies. However, unlike bivalves, who have a left and right shell arrangement, brachiopods have upper and lower shells (trust me, it makes sense anatomically). Their shells are hinged at the rear, while the front end can be opened for feeding or closed for protection. Most brachiopods have a stalk-like pedicle which projects from an opening near their hinge and anchors the animal to the sea floor (see 3rd image). Some brachiopods use their pedicle to emerge and retract into a burrow. They are filter feeders, using a lophophore to feed. However, unlike bryozoans and entoprocts, their lophophore is U-shaped. Some species do not have an anus, instead combining solid waste with mucus and periodically "sneezing” it out. Brachiopod lifespans can range from 3 to 30+ years. They only live in the ocean, in areas with cold water and low light, and without strong currents or waves, Some are commonly known as “lamp shells.”

There are two major categories of brachiopod; articulate and inarticulate. Articulate refers to the tooth-and-groove structure at the hinge of the shell, which inarticulate brachiopods lack. Inarticulate brachiopods have larvae that look like miniature adults with extended lophophores (seen in gif below), which live as plankton for months before growing too heavy and sinking to the sea floor. Articulate brachiopods have larvae which look like blobs with a yolk sack and live as plankton for a few days before metamorphosing.

Brachiopods have existed since the early Cambrian, but lost about 2/3 of their once great diversity during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Today there are about 100 living genera, though there are 5,000 fossil genera.

Propaganda under the cut:

Brachiopods hit their peak in the Paleozoic era, occupying many ecological niches and being the most abundant filter-feeders and reef-builders. After losing most of their diversity in the Triassic, they’ve lost this position to bivalves. But we must never forget the Old Kings of Shell.

The smallest living brachiopod, Gwynia, is only about 1 mm long and lives between grains of gravel.

The largest brachiopods known lived in the Carboniferous: Gigantoproductus and Titanaria could be 30 to 38 cm (12 to 15 in) wide. Today, most brachiopods range from 1 to 100 mm (0.04 to 3.9 in) long, with the largest being Magellania venosa.

Brachiopod flesh is apparently Not That Great, and not much preys on them. Even fossil brachiopods are rarely found with evidence of predation in the same way fossil bivalves are. Humans, however, do fish for one genera commercially, though on a small scale. Because of course we do.

Brachiopods are apparently very sensitive to pollution, and are good indicators of water quality.

Brachiopods are the state fossil of Kentucky. No specific species. Just all of them, I guess.

[possumcollege]

Tumblr just fed me a repost thread where someone responded to a meme that said "The Right gave us the Klan and the Left gave us weekends" with this extremely broken nugget of US history. 👇

🌈 This is horseshit.

1: In the 1860s, under what US historians call the Third Party System Republicans were what we would call "progressive" and Democrats were the "conservative" party.

Lincoln was a Republican, as were many Americans who called for the abolition of slavery. Lincoln stated that he was not personally in favor of total abolition and emancipation but he did believe regulation of slavery was a power of the federal government as opposed to state governments. Democrats of the Reconstruction Era favored strict moral legislation against race mixing, opposed citizenship and voting rights for African Americans, and largely opposed the expansion of Federal powers over the individual states.

It's honest-to-god not that hard to understand that American political parties haven't always been the exact same parties they are today. I can't help it if no one ever taught them this but it isn't an obscure or contested piece of information. Anybody trotting this shit out as a dunk on contemporary Democrats is either wrong or lying.

2: The Klan was never a "Leftist Anarchist alternative to law enforcement"

The concept of organized State law enforcement was barely a thing in the South at that time. Most southern law enforcemement consisted of slave patrols mustered from state militias, tasked with finding and capturing runaways, and preventing large-scale slave rebellions like the French experienced in the Caribbean. Slave patrols were abolished after the Civil War and officers were instead charged with enforcing "Jim Crow" laws under Reconstruction. Many of the Klan's tactics were literally the unofficial, vigilante continuation of practices that were legal for slave patrols. At no point were organized "law enforcement" and the Klan working at cross purposes. They both sought to maintain the social order through violent enforcement of white supremacy, the klan just wasn't an official agent of the state.

Anarchists may seek to operate without centralized state authority, but vigilantes are not inherently "Anarchists" because they're ungoverned. By that reasoning, children fighting on the playground are Anarchists.

White Supremacy is itself antithetical to central Anarchist principles, which call for a society based on voluntary participation, free of social heirarchy, or rule-by-force.

3: Whether they know it or not, when someone says that the Klan formed as any kind of peacekeeping force, they are parroting Pro-Klan propaganda.

There are 3 distinct, widely accepted eras of organizations calling themselves the KKK. The first is the most relevant as it formed during Reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War. It began when a number of young Southern men and Confederate veterans took it upon themselves to terrorize and intimidate newly-free African Americans by raiding homes and businesses, destroying property, harassing black communities, and murdering black leaders, organizers, and their allies.

The first iterations of the Klan were heavily influenced by a growing fascination with fraternal orders and secret societies in America during that era. They cribbed heavily from another secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, (the Klan's name came from the Greek word for "circle") who hoped to establish a new county around the legality of slavery. This country would've included the states of the CSA, Mexico, Cuba, the islands of the Caribbean, and parts of Central/ South America.

Claims that the Klan existed to oust Scalawags, Carpetbaggers and other Northern opportunists (often said to be Jews and Catholics) who rushed in to fill the vacuum of deposed Southern leadership doesn't emerge until 1868-69 when Nathan Bedford Forrest was formally elected as their first (holy fucking shit 🤦‍♂️) "Grand Wizard."

(this absolute dipshit)

These retroactive narratives were further amplified in the 1880s-90s as Lost Cause rhetoric began to gain momentum among those sympathetic to the confederacy, white supremacists, and those seeking to profit off the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans as cheap prison labor.

These tales of masked men protecting downtrodden southern whites from the grasping, predatory Yankee Carpetbaggers were further enshrined as founding myths of the second Klan, in Georgia in 1915. It remains a popular Whitewashing narrative to this day.

I do not give half a proud southern shit what the guys who were scamming their buddies into buying official Klan dishes in the 20s said the Klan was about. Those actually existed btw. I don't have to give Forrest's claims any more weight than I give Spencer's claims on the motivation of neo-nazis.

Spencer got exactly what both of them deserved when he got socked in the head on TV.

[everything-is-crab]

My favorite thing (/s) about Pro Israel folks and the people focusing so much on the recent Hamas attack is how great they're at spreading blatant lies.

You see them post something about what Hamas or Palestinians did to Israelis and through fact checking it's revealed it's the other way round 😂

People linking wikipedia, bbc....and other Western media links.....as their "sources"

Like wow, I didn't know you guys were this dense. Even some of the people I respected on here seem to be affected immensely by propaganda. US and other Western countries have not only supported but also funded Israel's apartheid regime and even now it's doing the same.

I was brainwashed by radfems too with their "rape is never okay". Many radfems sure do know how to manipulate you using your class consciousness as women to be blind to other oppressive systems or distort facts.

There's no proof any of the kidnapped women being raped. And yet most radfems are speaking about nothing but that. They aren't even speaking about the constant suffering and rape of Palestinian women by IDF (including many Israeli women as perpetrators).

I remember that I started reading more about this issue in 2021 when some IDF attack killed many Palestinians in a mosque. Don't remember the details well. It's been a while. And I wasn't on Tumblr then but I do remember that mainstream media did not give a shit about it. And now suddenly the anti terrorism sentiment of Pro Israel countries and even people who supposedly support Palestinians has chosen to rise again.

Very convenient timing for you.

One thing I will tell you is to remember that the conditions colonizers force on the colonized make it hard for the colonized to rely on any ideal form of resistance. Hamas is not the only group for Palestinian resistance. There are others but this is the large one today. Before there used to be better secular ones but they were all squashed cause Israel created Hamas. And there have been peaceful protests and everything. Israel killed the people who protested and the soldiers laughed when they were done. Where was this global outrage then?

Sm of relying for information on media leaning towards Israel and yet so many of you are missing this fact out. This is what colonizers always do. Read history of as many colonized countries you can. And you will find out that colonizers, while they were generally against opposition of the colonized's liberation, funded the anti-leftist, anti-communist/nationalist or religious extremists or/and the ruling class of the colonized society in their national liberation movement.

They help in squashing other more dangerous (from a colonizer's pov) national liberation movements. Nothing better than reducing your enemies to extremists. The British did that in my country too. Talked a lot about how horrible our society is but politically and economically supported the ruling class that created and perpetrated those issues. And some European women and children died in some isolated protests or riots as well during colonial era. But obviously it was nothing compared to the number of people that died on my side than the colonizers'.

So don't be surprised when people see Hamas as a necessary means or don't entirely oppose as part of Palestinian liberation. No sane person actually "supports" Hamas. But it is what is. It's Israel's own creation. Palestinians are left with no options. You're linking ngos supported or created by Israelis and other dumb shit as "an alternative". But colonization can't be won over through ngos lmao. Heck, ngos can't even actually make a lot of changes in human rights in areas that aren't war torn cause of corruption. You expect it to work for Gaza? Please

If Israel or anyone wants Hamas to stop then they should simply give up their brutal settler colonialism and not oppose any leftist org or movement formed by the Palestinians even after ending apartheid and everything. There's no other alternative except this. And if you haven't learnt your lesson yet, then don't support any "intervention" by USA or some other genocidal country.

Ik for a fact you people wouldn't support my country's decolonization if you lived back then. Cause the national liberation movement in my country was dominated by religious, anti communist and ruling class as well. And I, as a female bisexual from an oppressed caste will never ideologically support the people who led national liberation in my country. And yet ik they were necessary in the path to independence cause the British let only them have any power in the country. The two opinions can co exist.

You guys are so focused on opposing the ideology of Hamas and how they're bad for Palestinians themselves, you are forgetting Hamas is legally recognized as terrorists by many powerful Western/west-allied countries around the world and are actively funding and supporting Israel's genocide against Palestinians.

It's funny how the same people unconditionally support Ukraine in the war, including Ukraine itself. Even though US, UK, France and other countries are supporting Nazis in the Ukrainian military to fight against Russia.....

And I am not "supporting" Hamas or killing of cilivians....but I am just analyzing the history and politics behind this issue that is hugely ignored.

Radfems are reblogging that dumb addition by female-malice about an unbacked conspiracy theory about Iran,completely removing any accountability or responsibility of the states of "Israel". There's a conspiracy theory that Israel planned this attack as well. And yet I haven't see any pro Palestine leftist spread that theory presenting it as a fact rather than a speculation. Genuinely you guys are just racist and don't want to hold Israel actually accountable apart from a little side remark.

Everytime I see such false claims, misinformation, unproven conspiracy theories I check what sources the person has to provide or which sources are reporting that. And it's some damn Western news outlet every time. Every fricking time.

Ignoring what Israel PM is doing to the civilians in Gaza right now.....in favor of getting into online discourse about "so it's okay to kill/rape innocent people?" Plain evil

You do realize most of the world is revolting against that now? That powerful international forces are incentivizing this attack to commit further atrocities against civilians in Gaza? It's not a time to debate whether the attack was okay or not, it's time to speak about how the Israeli PM and rest of the world is choosing to respond to it.

I was going to write a respectfully worded post about this. But I won't. Cause I am not some extraordinary independent journalist or anything. I am not even in majoring in any social science or history subject. But it wasn't that hard for me to get around the misinformation from msm. And I am from a country that is and has been pro Israel and very great at spreading propaganda through msm.

I saw one radfem say in response to question of Palestinian women's suffering that "how are we supposed to know what's happening to them? I am not seeing any posts on my dash about it". Good to know your dumbass relies on Tumblr posts for misinformation.

I have been incredibly busy so not made any posts about this issue. But I think that's what I am going to keep reblogging and posting about for a while now. So don't hesitate to filter tags or click the unfollow button if this irritated you. Cause there's more to come.

[confused-alienated]

Voiceless

Summary: "Josh would fight"

Tw: abuse, Dema

Notes: Set during the SAI era but Josh is real. I wrote this a while ago as a part of my prompts series. This is the first fix I've posted on here to don't mind any mistakes.

Word count: 756

Link to the og fic here

---

Being in Dema revealed a whole new side to Josh. Back in Trench, Josh was a stoic leader and he wasn't a man of many words either.

Dema seemed to have lit a fire in Josh. Whilst Tyler grew quieter and more withdrawn with each passing day, Josh only got louder. On their first day as prisoners, Tyler swore he'd heard Josh talk more than he had in their whole time knowing each other.

Back in Trench, Josh was quiet and sugar sweet, Tyler would have never thought that Josh was one to hate. Oh, how he was wrong. Every insult, every word, every syllable that Josh spat at one of the Bishops or their goons was laced with more venom than Tyler had ever heard.

Josh would fight.

Obviously the lack of filter led to, usually physical, punishments. Those deterred Tyler from following Josh and fighting aswell.

At the start, Tyler had begged Josh over and over again to, "Please stop fighting them!"

"I can't, Tyler," Josh had said plainly.

Tyler was so sick of arguing, that all he could do was sob into Josh's chest.

Tyler had stopped asking Josh to stop months ago.

The two never lost hope that the Banditos would come for them. They just didn't know when. They'd been there for six months.

The Bishops had decided that since both Tyler and Josh were 'very influential both inside and outside of Dema' that they should produce propaganda together.

They had been forced to form a band. It was a long term dream of the two. They both didn't want it to be like this.

Some days they would chain Tyler to his desk, he would only be allowed out once he'd written enough.

This only made Josh fight more aggressively and more often.

Tyler loved Josh but hated that he would fight. He hated how often Josh was getting punished.

As well as getting beaten, Josh would be starved and isolated. Tyler had lost count of how many times Josh had been smeared. Tyler hated it when Josh was isolated, it got lonely for him aswell.

Despite the cuts and bruises, Josh would always be there at the end of the day with some story or memory to lighten the mood.

---

Tyler remembered the day too well.

Josh had been dragged off for another punishment that morning. It had been hours, Tyler hoped he wasn't being isolated again.

The Bishops had given Tyler a day off, they'd told him it was for all his 'Good behaviour', whatever that meant.

Tyler had been laying on Josh's 'bed' since he'd been gone. He was half asleep when the door suddenly heavily swung open.

Nico entered the room and threw Josh on the floor.

Tyler waited for Josh's snide remark. It never came.

Nico mimiced a smile, "Hope you enjoyed your little break today. Back to work tomorrow, rabbit," he sneered then left, slamming the door shut. Tyler heard the lock and deadbolts click into place. They were in for the night.

Josh slowly got up and silently sat down next to Tyler.

Tyler waited for his usual 'How was your day?'. It never came.

Instead Josh took a shuddering breath and tears began streaming down his face. Tyler placed a careful hand around Josh's shoulders, trying to avoid any bruises.

"What happned?" Tyler whispered. Josh had never been this upset after a punishment.

Josh continued to cry. Tyler noticed that he wasn't making much sound. Josh was a loud crier. Tyler's stomach dropped. Even when he did cry he would always explain. Even if his cries were quiet, he would talk to Tyler.

Tyler slightly tightened his grip, "Joshie? Are you okay?"

Josh looked at Tyler helplessly.

"Can't talk?" Tyler got like that sometimes, distress and anxiety stealing his voice.

Josh slowly nodded before getting up and waking to Tyler's desk. Tyler watched curiously and stood to join him.

Josh's hands shook as he flipped through the notebook to a new page. He began writing something that Tyler couldn't quite see.

Josh's handwriting was nice. Maybe a little scratchy, a bit wobbly but nice.

Tyler heart lept to his throat when he read it.

'They took my voice.'

"What do you mean?" Tyler voice shook.

Josh pointed to the paper again.

'They took my voice.'

"Oh," Tyler breathed then brought Josh into his chest.

Josh cried harder. Tyler's jumper grew wetter and wetter with tears.

Tyler felt completely helpless. They had taken his voice.

Josh would fight. Well he used to anyway.

[greatqueenanna]

Previous Versions of Frozen (Rewrite)

The development of Frozen is famously known to be messy and obscure. Messy, because of the many last-minute changes made even months before the film released. Obscure, because the many versions there were before the final film are kept secret, with only slight tidbits being released and shown, leaving the previous stories being up to one's own imagination.

In my previous attempt to uncover the previous versions of Frozen, there was a lot of information left out or unknown to me at the time, and even some things I got wrong. Thus, I wanted to do a more in depth look at the possible previous Frozen stories, and update any misinformation.

Feel free to comment sources if there is something I missed.

Part 1 - Before Frozen

As everyone knows, Frozen was first considered to be an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. However, over the development of the film, the creative team had decided that it would no longer be an adaptation, as at this point, they were just inspired by the fairy-tale and some of its themes – a Snow Queen, an Evil Mirror, an Act of True Love, and a Frozen Heart. Everything else was left alone, with only fan interpretations of what else could’ve been used, but never officially stated.

Before Frozen was even considered, there were couple attempts at adapting The Snow Queen. A common mistake made by many fans is incorrectly assigning concept art, songs, and story ideas from earlier adaptions of The Snow Queen. However, these versions are not actually Frozen, but completely different stories and attempts to adapt the fairy-tale.

The Biography Attempt -- 1937 – 1942

The first attempt at adapting the Snow Queen was to include the story in a bio-pic of Hans Christian Anderson. The Snow Queen was one of the stories that were going to be told in this bio-pic, alongside his other famous works. The rocky development for this bio-pic began in 1937, and ended in 1942 when the USA entered World War II, as Disney shifted into time on War Propaganda, officially halting the production of this project.

The first completed concept of the Snow Queen segment specifically was coined by Mary Goodrich in 1938, a researcher, who wanted to explore the theme of regeneration through faith. It was very faithful to the original tale, and was actually fully complete. However, Norwegian-born researcher Karl Berggrav dismissed the story. He said that while it was a technically good film, with the story being well-written and had no loose ends, it was boring and uninspired.

"This story rounds off everything nicely and ties up loose ends, but it is very uninteresting and just fades out into nothing, or worse than nothing, banality. It is hard to make good animation out of it.” - Karl Berggrav, The Art of Frozen, pg. 10

Walt Disney himself attempted to adapt the story in 1940, but as a live action and animated film. Hans Christian Anderson everyday life would be filmed in live action, while his stories were to be animated. This was going to be a co-production with Samuel Goldwyn and his new studio Samuel Goldwyn Productions, where they would film the live-action sequences.  

The Snow Queen -- 1990 – 2006

There were multiple attempts at adapting The Snow Queen during the renaissance era and after. Harvey Fierstein took a chance to pitch an idea for The Snow Queen, but it was shot down. Even Glen Keane attempted to try his hand at an adaption, but just couldn’t find a way to turn the Snow Queen into the sort of fully realized character.

Then, a new team took on the adaptation in 2000. The main idea that the creative team wanted to have was to omit the Trolls and the mirror, trying to explore different ways for Kai to be abducted by the Snow Queen. There was one version of Kai wanting to impress Erica (Gerda's first name change) by joining a whaling ship. The Snow Queen was often shown in artwork riding an orca all over the sea.

There were other versions that followed this initial premise with more comical side characters, ranging from penguins to walruses to, of course, Snowmen. The strangest outline for this version was how Greta (another name change for Gerda) was a devious gold digger, leading Kai to marry the Snow Queen instead.

The Snow Queen was described as a 'Taming of the Shrew" type character, who had a frozen heart that needed to be melted away by the warm and loving Kai.

I love The Taming of the Shrew idea. Take Martha Stewart. She’s tough, smart — a worthy adversary. If she were a doormat of a woman, no one would go after her. -Michael Eisner, Disney War

The artwork for this version was considered to be beautiful and inspiring, but the narrative was simply not compelling enough. Thus, the story was ultimately scrapped and shelved.

The below concepts are often mistaken for early ideas for Frozen, often named early designs for Anna, Kristoff, and Elsa - however, they are actually from the 2000-2003 version of The Snow Queen, while others are from even earlier versions, and are featuring completely different characters.

The project was later brought back in 2006, but not for animation - but instead as a stage musical for Tokyo DisneySea at thier Broadway Music Theater. It was going to be directed by Amon Miyamoto, written by John Weidman and Glenn Slater and Alan Menken writing the music. However, it was also scrapped.

The reason I bring this version up, is because a song penned by Slater and Menken is often pushed as early love song that Kristoff was supposed to sing. However, it was not a Kristoff song at all. Love Can't be Denied was a song that was written for this stage musical, with no real details about who it was written for or its purpose in the plot.

There are many reasons claimed why, but it is often contributed to Disney wanting the Snow Queen Adaptation to be a film, not a stage show. Menken was even reported to try his hand at making it an animated musical, but it never went through.

For years, (Disney had been) working on “The Snow Queen,” first as a stage piece, and then as an animated film, but that got shelved. Clearly, animated films are big commitments and it takes a lot for Disney to greenlight one. - Alan Meken, Jim Hill Media

Part 2 - Previous Versions of Frozen

After John Lasseter was given the reigns of Disney Animation Studios after the Disney merger with Pixar, he wanted to try and adapt this story again. Lasseter convinced his old friend Chris Buck to come back to the studio, and try his hands at another Snow Queen Musical film. Thus, the development of Frozen officially began.

"I pitched several ideas to John, and ‘The Snow Queen’ was one that he'd been interested in for a while. I pitched a musical version of it that he seemed excited by. So we started developing that project. This was back in 2008, around September.” - Chris Buck, The Art of Frozen, pg. 11

Starting 2008, Frozen went through a few versions before Jennifer Lee, Robert Lopez, and Kristen Anderson-Lopez entered the production in 2012. While Jennifer Lee was aware of the project while she was working on Wreck-it-Ralph, as the company typically has round-tables for their animated featured where all of their writers can give notes, she was not officially brought on as writer and then later as director, until 2012.

Both of these versions featured the introduction of Anna and Kristoff as replacements for Gerda and Kai, as adults instead of children. However, there were a few different ideas for The Snow Queen character that would prove to be the biggest obstacle.

Anna and the Snow Queen 2008-2010

The first version of Frozen was called Anna and the Snow Queen. There seems to have been a couple attempts at perfecting this story, none of which really made it to the final cut, due to the difficulty of making the Snow Queen character compelling. This version was meant to have hand-drawn animation at first.

Anna and the Snow Queen is very obscure, and not much exists for its early story ideas other than a few ideas sources from interviews and concept art by Claire Keane.

The Snow Queen Character (she was given the name Elsa at this stage) was based off of Bette Midler (some sources say that she was also meant to be her voice actress) She would take on a very Diva persona, and was of course a villain. Anna at this time was depicted as 'up-tight', and often was shown as some sort of secretary or assistant to the Snow Queen.

Kristen Bell was cast as Anna before anyone else had joined the team, after she had initially auditioned for the role of Rapunzel for Tangled. Josh Gad was cast a little after, however the Olaf he was voicing was a very different character, much like Anna.

"I was originally involved in the project when it was a 2D effort and it was called Anna and the Snow Queen, and it was completely different. Completely different. Megan Mullally was playing Elsa and it wasn’t really about sisterhood at all. I think it had more to do with the source material of Hans Christian Andersen’s story. When I did that version, Olaf was a different character entirely." - Josh Gad, MSN Entertainment

What the story for this version is often conflicting. Anna goes to the Snow Queen to have her heart frozen after she is dumped at the alter, releasing Elsa from an ice prison. The below concept art by Claire Keane shows Anna as a bride looking for the Snow Queen, supporting this interpretation.

However, other artwork by Keane suggests that Anna is possibly working for the Snow Queen as an assistant of some kind, as shown in the concepts below, and is also supported by the 'up-tight' secretary Anna concepts. It is possible, however, that after going to the Snow Queen to freeze her heart, she ends up working for her. You can also see the Bette Midler inspirations in some of Elsa's character designs.

After this period, Anna and The Snow Queen was actually shelved for around one year in 2010, before being brought back in 2011 and renamed to Frozen. It was also around this time that the idea for it to be hand drawn was scrapped, with the film shifting to 3D animation.

It was seemingly brought back with a story about a prophecy that says that Arendelle would be destroyed by a "Ruler with a Frozen Heart." The characters in the story would assume that this was Elsa, the self-proclaimed Snow Queen (Anna and Elsa were not royalty at this time, nor were they sisters) only for it to be revealed that it was Hans (possibly named Admiral Westergaard).

Frozen was to open with a prophecy that "a ruler with a frozen heart will bring destruction to the kingdom of Arendelle." We're then introduced to Anna, our pure-hearted heroine, and Elsa, an unrelated evil Snow Queen. We learn Elsa is a scorned woman; she was stood up at the altar on her wedding day and froze her own heart so she would never love again. Both Elsa and the audience assume she's the villain from the prophecy. Fast-forward to the final act: Elsa creates an army of snow monsters to attack our heroes while Kristoff has "a Han Solo moment" and comes to help Anna. To halt Elsa's attacking army, the two-faced Prince Hans (Admiral Westergaard) triggers a massive avalanche—not caring that the avalanche also puts Anna, Elsa, and all of Arendelle in jeopardy. Anna realizes Elsa is their only hope, so she convinces her to use her powers to save the kingdom. The twist is that the prophecy from the beginning is actually not about Elsa, but about Hans—he's the one with a metaphorical frozen heart because he's an unfeeling sociopath. Elsa's heart is then unfrozen allowing her to love again. - Peter Del Vecho, Entertainment Weekly

This is also supported with what Santino Fontana says in his interview with Paul Wontorek. He claims that he was hired and paid for his lines in 2011, way before Jennifer Lee was officially involved with the project in 2012, and just after Frozen was brought back from its year hold.

This puts into perspective any claims about Jennifer Lee basing Hans' character after her ex-husband, or that Hans was originally meant to be a good guy until they needed a new villain to replace Elsa. Hans was always meant to be the real villain of Frozen and was seemingly created as soon as Anna and the Snow Queen became Frozen.

The Story of Sisters -- 2011-2012

During one of the round-table sessions, in which Jennifer Lee was involved in but was still not working on Frozen, someone within the session suggested that Anna and Elsa should be sisters. This was the first major breakthrough that helped shape the story.

This famous version of Elsa (onionElsa!) is meant to be based off of Amy Winehouse. It is unclear when Elsa's backstory transitioned from being that of a woman who was dumped at the altar, and being the more tragic villain that was forced to hide her magic.

Regardless, it was explained that this Elsa had ran away from her kingdom, and later on kidnapped Anna away from her wedding with Admiral Westergaard, trying to freeze her heart so that Anna would understand how she felt. It ended in the same way, however, with Hans being revealed as the true villain and Elsa getting a redemption.

It was also around this time that Anna's character was also getting a much needed re-working. Anna's 'up-tight' personality was removed with the help of Kristen Bell, who always had issues with Anna’s characterization. She pushed for Anna to be more quirky and awkward, with a strong desire for love and companionship. Idina Menzel was also brought on at this time, where the two actresses prepared a song (Wind Beneath my Wings) to see how their voices would match up.

This deleted scene below showcases this version of Elsa, voiced by Idina Menzel.

"We did a version where the Snow Queen was the villain, but we wanted to end with them reunited, and it was very hard to redeem her at the end. We decided on an adventure about two people who initially misunderstand each other; it allows for the bonding at the end.” - Peter Del Vecho, The Art of Frozen pg. 12

Jennifer Lee started on the project after all of this was already established, and tried to work out quite a few things with the story. Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez also came onto the project, and tried to write a few songs for this version - although, they didn't really like the story all too much.

One of the songs we know from this version was We Know Better. Interestingly, this is actually not the full song. It is supposed to end with Elsa's turn to becoming ‘evil’, and Anna becoming her 'up-tight' persona. This was omitted with a lot of earlier scenes of Elsa's evil nature (with the exception of the above clip) because the creative team wanted to try and distance Elsa away from this persona.

Another deleted song was called Cool With Me. @stitchkingdom saw a concert where Kristen and Bobby Lopez performed some deleted songs, some of which were never performed anywhere. Cool with Me was a song that came before Life's Too Short, and has details about Elsa kidnapping Anna and wanting her to feel her own pain.

The next breakthrough for the story was when the Lopezes wrote Let it Go. John Lasseter had often made notes about delving deeper with Elsa's character asking why she is a villain. Jennifer Lee also pushed for more depth when she was writing Elsa. However, Let it Go was the trigger that helped se things in motion for a new version of Frozen.

“The minute we heard the song for the first time, I knew that I had to rewrite the whole movie.” - Jennifer Lee

Now, Elsa was being completely re-written as a sympathetic character - no more villainous tendencies, no more intentionally cruel stunts. Elsa was made into a tragic character who was forced to hide who she was, and only wanted to protect Anna and her kingdom from her powers.

Olaf was also re-written at around this time, going from an obnoxious side-kick of Elsa's to a more innocent companion that would represent the love between the sisters.

The newest version of the story was a mash-up of the original prophesy version talked about above, but with new elements. This included a story about Anna feeling less than Elsa, and feeling like nothing more than a spare. Elsa was of course changed to her new sympathetic character, and runs away from Arendelle from fear rather than being angry at anyone.

The Duke of Weselton was also theoretically introduced at this stage, but not as a red herring to Hans, but instead as a care taker to the sisters after their parents passed away. Hans was also supposed to gift Anna a special snow globe that had some kind of thematic importance.

The following songs and scenes are some of the ideas from this version of Frozen.

At this point, the creative team was pretty confident that they had the story planned it out and it was ready to go. However, the team had decided that they were still having issues with the plot.

The Final Months - 2013

From February to June of 2013, there were extensive rewrites done to the film before having a test screening with both a family audience and adult audience.

One of the elements that were changed was the prophecy. After so many years, this story element was finally dropped. Then, Hans' sociopathy was explored more extensively by Jennifer Lee, and a character twist was pushed by John Lasseter to make his villainy more iconic.

Anna's feelings about being a spare was removed, as the creative team wanted to focus more on Anna wanting to find love rather than trying to prove herself (she was sounding a bit too much like Hans). The Duke was changed to being his current self.

Kristoff was actually changed as well, making him a bit more kind. However, when his character was changed is not clear, but we do know that Johnathan Groff pushed for him to be a bit more kind as well.

Some of the songs were also removed and replaced with the current versions we know and love today.

Conclusion

Frozen’s 10th Anniversary is coming up (here or passed depending on when this is read) making it a perfect time to talk about the journey Frozen went on throughout the years. It’s amazing to look back at all the attempts and stories, and see where Frozen ended up. It’s because of all these attempts, successes, failures, and hard-working people that we were able to get the Frozen that we have today.

Happy Frozen 10!

Sources:

The Art of Frozen by Charles Solomon

Disney War by James B. Stewart

Disney's 'Frozen,' Formerly 'The Snow Queen,' Will Be CG Rather Than Hand-Drawn by Russ Fischer for Slash Film

Countdown to Disney's Frozen by Jill Hill for Jill Hill Media

Lost Media Wiki - Frozen

Frozen Original Ending Revealed - James Hibberd, Entertainment Weekly

Show People With Paul Wontorek Interview: Santino Fontana on "Act One," "Frozen" & More

Interview: Frozen's Josh Gad MSN Entertainment

Scriptnotes, Ep 128: Frozen with Jennifer Lee

Exploring the Songs of "Frozen" with Kristen Anderson-Lopez '94

Kristen Bell Explains How She Became Anna in 'Frozen' | The Watch | The Ringer

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Cyd Charisse (The Bandwagon, Brigadoon, Singin’ in the Rain)—LEGS LEGS LEGS I would sell my soul for the legs of Cyd Charisse - she oozed style and glamour and sex appeal!! And she could DANCE! She was dancing next to the greats - Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire but they are never who you're looking at because why would you when you can look at her. I will only sit through too long ballet breaks for her. If there was any woman who you could call sex on legs it was her. These dances are everything to meeee (she comes in at the minute mark) and this dance too of course is iconic. In the words of Fred Astaire 'When you've danced with Cyd Charisse you stay danced with'

Rosaura Revueltas (Salt of the Earth)—She was a Mexican actress who is best known for starring in salt of the earth, an amazing pro-labor movie made by blacklisted filmmakers. She also starred in the Mexican remake of madchen in uniform, one of the first representations of lesbian romance onscreen. She was really dedicated to making progressive films and was also such an incredible actress and artist I truly believe more people should know about her and her work.

This is round 3 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Cyd Charisse:

Arguably the Best female dancer of her time, she supposedly insured her legs for $5 million dollars. Stole the show whenever she had a dance number, even if she went uncredited. Musicals started to go out of fashion so unfortunately she didn't have as many big roles as she should have, but those she did are unforgettable. The Broadway Melody number in Singin' in the Rain - the green dress!

Incredibly, Cyd Charisse only started learning to dance as a rehab exercise to strengthen her body after a childhood bout of polio. She was in high demand as a dance partner, Fred Astaire called her beautiful dynamite and said "When you've danced with her, you stayed danced with". She was one of a few leading ladies to dance with both Astaire and Kelly, declaring them both delicious. Kelly apparently was stronger, while Astaire was more coordinated. She also said her husband would always know who she had been dancing with because Kelly left her bruised, while Astaire didn't leave a mark. She's better known for her dance numbers today, but she was a leading lady in her time! Her Scottish accent in Brigadoon leaves a lot to be desired, but compared to the other actors in the movie, it's almost good. She appeared in The Harvey Girls alongside Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury in her first speaking role, but she really burst onto the scene with Singin' in the Rain and her infamous Broadway Melody Ballet number with Gene Kelly (no one could handle a length of fabric like Cyd Charisse). She was brought in because Debbie Reynolds wasn't really a dancer and Kelly was notoriously a stickler about his Vision. After that she starred opposite Astaire in The Band Wagon, which was a bit of a flop but created some enduringly incredible dance numbers. She went on to star in a number of MGM movies, and was one of the last of the Studio era stars to remain on contract. Since we've got up to 1970, I'm including her opening routine in The Silencers (1966) to show just how long she was making a splash - she's into her 40s here and still a siren:

and of course, the iconic Broadway Melody Ballet -

Photos do not do Cyd Charisse justice, unfortunately, because she is at her hottest while dancing, which she was exquisitely good at. Just go watch her first number in Singin' in the Rain, in that green dress; nothing I could say here will be more convincing that that.

She had amazing legs, and she knew how to use them! You probably know her best from the dream sequence in Singin' In The Rain. She was such a stunning dancer, and all her dance scenes are hard to look away from.

Dancing in the Dark clip:

She's an amazing dancer and my favorite from the period. Here's her and Fred Astaire in the Band Wagon:

I just like a woman who's there to be really incredibly good at dancing.

One of the most talented female dancers in Hollywood history, but what sets her apart from other competitors for that title is that she...umm...well let's be blunt, she was the dancer who put sex into it. The one who said "Hey, you know that A+ leg tone that naturally develops from doing this for a living? Why don't I let people see that? Like at every opportunity?" She reportedly insured her legs for five million dollars after hitting it big, which just goes to show that fame makes you crazy. It should have been ten million.

She could pirouette in pointes or tear it up in taps. Fred Astaire called her "beautiful dynamite" and wrote, "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with." Gene Kelly partnered with her three times. Her legs were (reportedly) insured for $5 million in 1952 ($57.8 million in 2024 dollars)! Everyone in this poll will be iconic, but for raw physical grace, Cyd is up there with the best.

Legs for days, beautiful dancer in the most iconic scenes of Singin in the Rain. She's glorious. As some guys sung to her in It's Always fair weather, 'baby you knock me out!'

No additional propaganda was submitted for Rosaura Revueltas. Please send me some.

[hmsharmony]

Hi all! This shouldn’t come as a surprise given how infrequently I’ve been on this year, but I’m officially going on hiatus from tumblr (and probably fandom as well). I honestly thought I had processed October 7th and the antisemitic fallout with my therapist, until she left the practice just last month. I was anxious about who I might end up with, so I asked if she could recommend any Jewish therapists in her practice, which she did. Of course there’s only so much you can tell from a therapist’s bio, but I chose one hoping I wouldn’t end up with someone who had not internalized antisemitism.

I did not.

I ended up with someone who has had a similar experience. And when she revealed this, a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying suddenly disappeared.

We had our first meeting last week and discussed what I had worked on with my last therapist. Of course that included work we did re October 7, and when I started going into specific, I started crying. My new therapist then gently asked me if I had processed the trauma. I responded that I thought I had, but maybe not (very obviously not). She then added “living as a Jewish person” to the list of things we would be working on (a first for her, she said).

“Okay, but how does this relate to tumblr?” Good question! The answer to which I’m putting behind a read more because no one should be forced to see my more detailed account of trauma I’m still processing.

Twitter and tumblr were the two social media platforms where I encountered the most antisemitism starting on October 7. It’s where I saw friends and acquaintances justify the massacre of Jews because they happened to be Israeli (or just in Israel!). It’s where former friends admonished me for how I reacted, insisting that it didn’t matter WHAT I was reacting to, as if it was unthinkable to have heated reactions to antisemitism following the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. I had my trauma dismissed or ignored. A mutual revealed for the first time that they were Jewish and, in the same breath, used that newly revealed identity to dismiss my experience. I was told by person a, b, or c that x, y, or z mutual couldn’t possibly be antisemitic because THEY had never experienced that when interacting with them—an argument person a/b/c rightfully called out in other contexts. And, of course, seeing non-Jewish mutuals refusing to allow Jews to define Zionism, aka the Jewish movement of self-determination, and defining it in a way that vilifies 80-90% of all Jews worldwide. The blood libel. The conspiracy theories. The spreading of Soviet era antisemitic propaganda. And on and on and on.

I closed my Twitter account only a month or so after October 7, and I haven’t returned. I didn’t think that was necessary with tumblr because it’s easier to cultivate one’s experience. Yet even though I KNOW I’ve taken the steps to limit my exposure to antisemitism, every time I think about opening the app, I am filled with dread. And I think it’s because I still haven’t processed not only the antisemitism I experienced in those first few months on here affect October 7, but also the sense of betrayal (see: how the previous paragraph is filled to the brim with bitterness). Also, unlike with the other social media sites I’m still using regularly, I don’t have close friends here, particularly ones who are calling out antisemitism. There are plenty of people I follow on tumblr who have been calling out antisemitism (although most of them were people I found after October 7). I am so grateful to those people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, but they’re not close friends. My close tumblr friends, most of whom remain close friends, left tumblr a long time ago. Having joined a new fandom, I was building new tumblr relationships in 2022/2023, but then October 7 happened, and with it everything I said above. Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve since closed myself off from new relationships, even with people I had already started to get to know. That makes for a very lonely experience, which is never a great feeling but is a particularly awful feeling when antisemitism remains so high.

All of this to say: until I process everything, I think tumblr, and fandom by extension, will continue to feel hostile and isolating, regardless of whether it actually is. I really, truly hope to return to tumblr and fandom in the future. I’m hopeful having a therapist who has personal knowledge of antisemitism in the wake of October 7 will mean much more effective therapy.

Fandom has been part of my life since I was nine years old, when I waited impatiently for my AOL dial up to connect to the internet so I could find out why Sailor Moon was no longer playing on Cartoon Network—and discovered fan fiction in the process. Since I was nine!! That’s more than 2/3 of my life. I want to feel comfortable again in a world that has informed so much of who I am. Which is why I’m very hopeful I will return, even if I don’t know how long it will take.

So until then, 👋🏻.

(If we are mutuals and/or have interacted a fair bit before and you would like to stay in touch, I will be checking my messages for a bit and, depending on our history, can point you in the direction of the other social media I’m still using.)