#I only listed the ships I'm involved in here - but any will fit the narrative

[ask-jiro-kirisaki]

With the holiday fast approaching, Jiro takes a late night to create various confections for the students of Mortkranken. He wouldn't be able to participate in any large gatherings, so he decided to leave these out in the common area to show his appreciation for their hard work. It wasn't as if he'd be alone though. He had friends to visit in the coming days, opting for a more one-on-one approach where he could to avoid potential illness. Following tradition though, Christmas Eve was reserved for a partner. He would spend the evening (and late into the night) spoiling his partner in any way that he was able. On Christmas Day, he allows himself to rest - save from taking care of some necessary daily tasks in the office/lab. And if said partner didn't have any plans, Jiro would welcome their company.

[hecku-luna]

30 Day Danganronpa Challenge but April is pretty far away and I can't slowburn for shit so here we go!!

(Spoilers for the entire Danganronpa series, obviously)

1. HIMIKO!!!

2. Either Teruteru, Kazuichi, or Haiji. Genuinely awful people. (Hifumi is disgusting too, but at least he tries(?) to keep it to 2D only. I guess.)

3. All of them!! Yes, ALL of them!!

4. Definitely gotta go to Gundham. Considering he's one of the only good ones lmao

5. If she didn't get killed off in the first fucking chapter, Kaede would be an absolute lock. But Shuichi's good too, at the very least compared to the other protags. I would say Komaru too, but she called Haiji's creepy ass tendencies "attractive," so...

6. I had to think for a good minute about whether I could reasonably say I like any of the other characters that fit the antagonist mold than the obvious and overplayed. But. Fuck it, it's like they say! It's always Junko!

7. CHIYOMIKO!!!!!

8. Straight ships in general tbh, but ESPECIALLY involving Hifumi, Teruteru, Kazuichi, or Haiji

9. You could not pay me to care about the interactions between two men

10. If I HAD to pick a favorite straight ship, gun pointed to my head and bombs strapped to my family and loved ones... I guess Saimatsu isn't the worst. Can I go now, Jigsaw?

11.

12. See #7 UwU

13. V3. As long as I pretend chapter 6 doesn't exist

14. CHIHIRO!!!! 🏳️‍⚧️

15. HIYOKO!!!! 👘

16. HIMIKO!!!! 🪄

17.

18. It's kind of a tossup between Ultimate Programmer and Ultimate Artist, as those are THE most important things to my goals of creating my own video games

19. Probably Gundham's for the emotional weight of it. There's just... something about seeing the Four Dark Devas of Destruction's reaction to the execution of their master that made me sad the first time I saw it.

20. If this is like favorite OST overall? Probably V3's anyway? But if we're talking favorite song... LET'S START THE KILLING GAME!!!

21. HIYOKO IN A HEARTBEAT

22. Gundham's, for the reasons listed in 19. He's also the only guy in the SDR2 cast that I can confidently say I like, so that also had part in it

23. The DR3 girl with the Pikachu hoodie and homophobia in her eyes

24. ALL OF THE GIRLS HONEST TO GOD. But surprisingly enough, I think I'd go with Hiyoko first and foremost cause I can see us starting so much shit together lmao

25. I'm gonna assume this is weak as in relating to the narrative, so I'm gonna go with Kurokuma. Like, did he even do anything? At all? I mean, it's been a while since I've sat through UDG, but I genuinely do not remember him contributing to anything besides half-baked comic relief

26. Gonna get controversial here. My candidates are Makoto, Ishimaru, Hajime, and Keebo. Whichever one makes people the most upset, that's my pick

27. Oh, y'all are gonna hate me for this one. Himiko. She had some GROWTH, she went through some SHIT, and she still lived to tell the tale. To any of y'all who say she didn't deserve it, I hope your favorite character in Kodaka's next project gets killed immediately.

28. Okay this one was actually easier than i thought it would be. Ibuki for sure! She lives and breaths the 2000s, how could I not wanna dress like her every day if I had the option?

29. Again, HIMIKO!!!

30. I'm starting to think there's a theme here...

-------------

And with that, my Danganronpa opinions are out in the open for the public to scrutinize every last detail of! Here's my faves made in Pony Town as treat for making it this far ^w^

[fluorescentpurplejellyfish]

Let's Talk About the Founding Fathers and Slavery

Let's start off by saying that when I say "Founding Fathers", I'm lumping together everyone who had a hand in creating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I'm going to be focussing on Jefferson a lot because I don't think you understand how much of a PUZZLE this guy is to modern historians. There was a really good display in the Smithsonian called Paradox of liberty that featured the writing desk he used to write the Declaration of Independence, and behind him the list of all the slaves he owned in his lifetime. (Spoiler alert: it's A LOT)

You've probably seen the screencaps from Twitter that point out all of the Founding Fathers who were slave owners. And they're right, a large number of them were slave owners. But I also think it's important to look at the history of those same mens' attempts to abolish or at least outright condemn slavery (something the American government refused to do in later years) right from the word go.

When the Committee of Five (Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman) were brought together to write up a Declaration of Independence, their first draft included a paragraph in the list of grievances that condemned England for introducing slavery to America, and attacked the practice itself (read it here). Adams is well known for being very outspoken in general, but especially about slavery (He was an abolitionist lawyer who worked to help runaway slaves). The rest of the committee with the exception of Livingston were all slave owners, Jefferson was probably the largest slaveholder. He owned over 600 slaves in his lifetime (not all at once, but total).

Yet at the same time he was also outspoken against slavery. He called it a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot". He thought slavery was the biggest threat to the union, and went against the laws of nature which he believed declared that all men had a right to personal liberty. He helped draft a law in 1778 that prohibited the importation of slaves to Virginia. In 1784 he proposed that slavery be banned in the Northwest territories (the Monticello site has a lot to say about all this and has a lot of good references and primary sources).

When the southern delegates and a few of the Northern ones, too who benefited from the slave trade (who's ships do you think they were using, and where do you think all the cotton for their textile mills came from?) read the draft of the declaration, they threatened to walk out and destroy the convention unless the "offending passage" was removed, which according to their rules meant that the subject of independence would never be brought up again. They argued for weeks over this one passage that condemned slavery, until Jefferson and the rest of the Committee of Five agreed to remove it as a compromise. Independence for America first, then slavery. If they didnt get their independence, then the rest of it wouldn't make a difference anyway, and all the work and sacrifices not just them but the people who were fighting and dying against England had made and were currently making wouldn't matter. The musical 1776 does a great job portraying this.

Many of these same men (with the exception of Jefferson and Adams who were away in Europe) met together again this time to write a constitution for their new government. James Madison included a passage that would end slavery. The delegates from North and South Carolina, Georgia and other southern states once again threatened to walk out if they continued to press the issue, resulting in compromises like the infamous Three-fifths Compromise and the agreement to end the importation of slaves after 1808, which would give them time to prepare for what the considered a radical change to their economy. Everyone thought that slavery would Peter out and die off on its own if they could at least end its increase.

Jefferson had a plan to end slavery and actively worked towards it from the 1770s to the day he died. It involved: 1. Ending transatlantic slave trade (which he did), 2. Requiring slaeowners to better the living conditions of their slaves, and 3. All slaves born after a certain date would be freed. Jefferson had felt that this plan was the best shot at making slavery unprofitable to slavewoners, and the only way to successfully end slavery would be if the slavholders willingly gave it up. He felt that it should be a democratic issue, and if they were forced, then the Southerners would dig in their heels and leave the union (which is exactly what happened). An unintended side effect of this plan is that a lot of people twisted it after his death and argued that if slavery could be "bettered" then there was no reason to abolish it. And despite the fact that the importation of slaves had been abolished, the number of slaves in the U.S. still continued to drastically increase ("forced pregnancies" is a nice way to say it).

George Washington was also frequently outspoken about slavery and attempted to free his slaves in his will and stipulated that any slaves that were to elderly or sick to work would be supported by the estate in perpetuity, but the vast majority had been inherited through his wife Martha from her previous husband Daniel Custis after he died without a will, and by law neither George or Martha could free them. So after her death the inherited slaves were divided up among her grandkids, while the rest were given their freedom by Martha.

There were many other Founding Fathers who were slave owners, and spoke out against slavery, such as Colonel George Mason, and I'd love to include them but this post is already waaaaay longer than I intended it to be. I just want to end with saying that I know we as people we like to try to fit other people into boxes or labels because it helps us to easily understand what role they play in the historical narrative, and I'm definitely not trying to give a definitive answer on whether or not anyone of these founding fathers were "good" or "bad". Historians much more experienced than I have been trying to reconcile how people who owned slaves could also be actively working against it at the same time. I'll end by saying that people are complicated, and I just don't think that you can accurately understand who a person is by only looking at one aspect of a bigger picture.