#I'm not going to shut up about it

[embryhallowed]

People get real mad when you point out that they don't actually have morals or core beliefs they follow in spite of current social opinion.

"You've abandoned the ideals of leftism if you say Israel is 'occupying' Palestine."

Ok. Hey, what do you call it when a country sends military forces outside of its border to remove, with deadly force, the people who have lived in this region for millennia? What do you call it when they send military forces who massacre civilians, burn villages to the ground, and depopulate cities to make room for new colonial settlers? What's the word for it when you go to a land, violently remove the people living there, and then say it's your land and only your people can live there? What do you call it when that country puts any remaining indigenous people behind a fence and have armed soldiers patrol their neighborhoods? When they detain those people without trial for years on end with no legal representation? Hmmm what's the word for that?

How do YOU define a military occupation? How do YOU define colonial violence and ethnic cleansing?

"You're anti-semitic and just hate Israel!"

Ok. I mean, I believe that everyone on this planet, every person of any ethnicity and any religion, has the right to exist in peace and safety, has the right to be governed through representation, has the right to observe their faith without harm or persecution. This applies to any and all people.

I also believe that making laws that discriminate against anyone for their religion or ethnicity is wholly and entirely wrong. I believe states who privilege certain religions and ethnicities above others, who enshrine this privilege into the law of the land, are wrong. I believe that states who deny a group of people the right to be governed through representation are wrong. Wholly and entirely wrong.

Jewish people have every right to exist and practice their faith in peace and safety. NO ONE has the right to say "hey guys I'm going to take this already populated land away from the people already living there and make a new state where all the people who look and think like me have all the rights and anyone else doesn't belong here."

Like IDK what you want me to say. Should I make exceptions to my morals? Say that it's ok because it's supposedly "gods chosen" or something? Claiming divine right to anything just tells me you're going to commit some huge sins against other humans and use God as a justification for it. I think that's obscene in multiple ways.

Being an American is wild. You'll see people cry about "kids in cages" and say "what about the children!!" but turn a blind eye to the decades in which Israel has casually slaughtered children.

You'll see people clutch their pearls about Ukraine, then cheer and say "glass Gaza!"

You'll see people proudly claim "liberty and justice for all" and then be absolute bloodthirsty ghouls calling for the extermination of Palestinian people.

Have you ever considered gaining some fucking morals?

Wild.

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[somewhereincairparavel]

i will never understand how people have the heart to hate Jason even after they found out that his Ambrosia tastes like fucking sawdust. Ambrosia being tasty is like one single happy thing a demigod can have despite their tragic lives, because it reminds them of the home they once had, but lost. And Jason doesn't even have that, he doesn't even have a home to lose in the first place.

[dkettchen]

she would've told them unlike her canon! version who decided not to be an ally smh

[14dayswithyou]

HIYA ! I don't think I've shared this on Tumblr, but here's a WIP of Mer Ren's new design!! Under da cut because of spoilers + I'm not done with the final design yet >:3

[trash-and-trash-accessories]

Constantly citing this article and the studies it uses.

Here's a quote:

"That study shows that transmasculine individuals were actually more likely to be victims of childhood sexual assault, adult sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking than were transfeminine individuals (as shown in the chart below).

The only category in which trans women were more likely to be victimized was by hate violence, and even there the difference was small: 30 percent of trans women reported having experienced hate violence, compared to 29 percent of trans men."

[becasbelt]

[edelgards]

there are just so many ways to say "i love you"

[shu-of-the-wind]

i read somewhere that grey whales can live upwards of 150 years, and that there are likely grey whales out in the oceans today that were alive and saw the massive whale hunts of the 19th century that inspired herman melville's moby dick.

to be clear, i have no idea if this is true. it could just be apocryphal, or something someone made up. but even if it isn't true, i think there's a something to read into that in terms of trauma and repair. if there really are whales on this planet today that are alive after seeing so many other creatures like them slaughtered and dragged out of the water by unknown hands for an unknown purpose, then those whales know the dangers and flee from them even after the people who hunted their kin have been over a hundred years dead. and they taught their calves to flee the same way. and those calves taught their calves.

150 year old whales teaching younger whales who teach younger whales who have no experience with the reasons why they must avoid boats, but know in their blood and bones that their safety relies on it.

something something trauma long outlives the people who inflict it. something something trauma transforms how generations grow.

[theinfinitedivides]

wi papa look a thing there for me. awa.

prefacing this with a PSA that i'm going to try and keep short but basically regardless of anything i say here let me make it known that i do believe he should apologize. whether or not he's still actively saying that word in 2024 it is something he's used in the past even if he isn't performing said play anymore/saying things like that so flippantly. granted if he does apologize there's always going to be a section of fandom that's like 'he only apologized bc he got caught' yes?????????? that's what always happens????????? lbr you're not going to get on IG and announce you killed your ex two decades ago and you'll be turning yourself in when there's an entire true crime community in the depths of the internet who will dig up the cold case + the suspiciously convenient alibi anyway without you lifting a finger. politicians who get called out for blackface in college do not go around telling people they did blackface in college. celebrities who were homophobic on this hellsite in high school back in the early 10s before they realized they were gay are not going to let you know what their handle was. this is how the world works.

that being said i must confess i caught wind of the stirrings of this a bit early bc during the clusterfuck that was the Jam vs Zamasian RPF poll (i did not go in the notes. rancid ass shit) someone had taken a screenshot of a reblog made as a 'gotcha' to Zamasian voters by implying that they were anti-Black for voting for a ship featuring an actor that said the n-word in a play he hasn't performed for several decades since, with a short taped example that the general public was not going to know how to find unless they were on a mission. i poked around, saw a couple hints here and there that implied that the clip actually existed, marked that down for future ref and went about my business. disappointing? sure. run of the mill especially among people his age in the industry from that time period who are perceived to benefit from white privilege? absolutely. the former bird identified app dragging all of this back into the light (including the interview with Chris Rock. which i have not seen though there's no way it was within the last few years for AMC to still hire Eric if they had seen it. correct me if i'm wrong pls) is unexpected but tracks for the fandom on there.

generally i don't believe in cancelling someone for things they said or did more than ten years ago if they are no longer the same person they were back then. i don't believe Jacob or Assad or any one of the staff of color who may have been working behind the scenes would have agreed to continue interacting with Eric if he had the same attitude as he did when he first wrote and performed the play. i don't believe his Black comedian niece would continue to talk about him and share photos with him if he was calling her or the Black side of her family the n-word. i am willing to give the 'Eric Bogosian n-word' reply tweet he reportedly made before deleting it shortly after the brief benefit of the doubt bc it was 1. supposedly under someone else's tweet talking about the play incident and 2. i cannot count how many times i have accidently commented/almost posted something on here or YouTube or Reddit or ao3 bc i was on mobile and once the keyboard's open the app/browser flips the fuck out and puts the search bar and the comment box too close together. now if his ass shows up and shows out and stands ten toes down while he's currently on time-out or doesn't address any of this we're dealing with a different story. if more examples of him acting like this come out i'll drop him faster than you can call the election it will be that serious.

anyway for now i'm choosing to keep an eye on this while acknowledging that us Black folks do have the right to be upset and pissed as fuck. we deal with enough racism/microaggressions in fandom spaces as it is we definitely don't need new ones, and we don't need them from the past career choice of the main cast of a show a lot of us enjoy. amen

[rin-solo]

I love. LOVE. Get In the Water

It's one of the objectively best songs in the musical; I will die on this hill.

Poseidon was always, despite being pretty much the main antagonist of EPIC, a really underdeveloped character in my opinion. He just needed a little more nuance, and the fact that one (+ kind of one more) song managed to add so much to his characterization pretty much exclusively through subtext and implications is incredibly impressive writing. Because it did!

At the start, he's yet again playing games with Odysseus, the way he did in Ruthlessness. In both songs, he could kill him easily at any point, yet he chooses not to for the sake of playing games. In Ruthlessness, this becomes his own hubris as it leads to Odysseus escaping.

If you listen closely, at the start of GITW he already sounds slightly different. He's still trying to keep up this "God of Ruthlessness" front that he's so proud of, but he's no longer more or less carefree the way he was in Ruthlessness. He's been obsessing over this feud for ten years, and even if he would never admit it, it's actually clear just from his voice that he really is tired of it too. Not in the sense of it emotionally draining him the way it probably does Odysseus, but in the sense that it's a bother, a loose end in his life, a book that he finally wants to slam shut.

But he still has a reputation to uphold, and he still cannot close this book until Odysseus is dead, so he keeps up the game. Instead of just killing him, he's taunting him to kill himself. He might associate the idea of just striking him down with a sort of loss, like then he'd have to get his hands dirty. Then he's rambling about killing his people, his family. He's provoking Odysseus on purpose, likely trying to get him to snap back, to hate and fear him the way that Poseidon would think any mortal who has consumed this much of his time should. In his eyes, Odysseus deserves nothing less than to curse him with his last breath as his "darkest moment," the god who became the bane of his life.

And Odysseus replies, of all things, with ... sympathy.

Honestly, I don't blame Poseidon for being speechless for three full seconds. He literally just threatened to gauge Telemachus' eyes out the way Odysseus did with Polyphemus, and this absolute madlad of a man replies with an acknowledgment that he (might have) caused Poseidon pain too.

Now, I don't really think Poseidon was particularly hurt over Polyphemus' loss, or hurting in any way in that moment (if he were, I highly doubt he'd still be playing games, and he would've mentioned his son as opposed to speaking about his reputation.) But just the fact that Odysseus acknowledges that he might be hurting too is probably something Poseidon hasn't heard in ... who knows how long? His family is the Olympians. I don't think I have to say more.

It's actually more of a genuine apology than Odysseus' explanation in Ruthlessness ... (even though that was also a perfectly fine apology by Greek standards, as far as I'm aware.) Now he doesn't say "sorry" because he's still not sorry for hurting Polyphemus, since he still needed to do that in order to escape. But he expresses regret over the pain he caused in a more genuine way than ever.

I am convinced that Poseidon is utterly unfamiliar with sympathy or mercy. He's lived by his "Ruthlessness is mercy" motto for centuries, and he doesn't know anything else. No one would try to teach him something different. The other gods all live by this logic, even if he's the most vocal about it considering he seems to have made it his whole personality. Mortals wouldn't dare to question Poseidon in the first place. And barely anyone would be willing to treat someone with kindness who is in turn treating everyone around them with ruthlessness.

It's very likely that Poseidon hasn't encountered anyone like this until Odysseus. Ruthlessness is simply how he treats people and also how he expects to be treated back. The fact that Odysseus doesn't, the fact that instead of hating, fearing, or cursing him, he acknowledges that they have both hurt each other and that it doesn't lead anywhere to still pursue vengeance, must have triggered Poseidon in an unprecedented way.

To him, this was probably the most outrageous thing Odysseus could have said in that moment. And it throws him off so much that he is genuinely speechless, and then simply replies, "I can't." ... his most genuine-sounding line in the whole musical.

I cannot stress enough how much it threw me off to hear this line; in the best way imaginable, it doesn't sound like Poseidon. It sounds almost vulnerable. Almost human. Because he is genuinely at a loss so much that he forgets to put up his "wrathful god" facade for just one second. Standing ovation to Steven Rodriguez for his whole performance, but especially this part.

And then Odysseus goes all out to say something even more outrageous: "Maybe you could learn to forgive?"

... Which is when Poseidon snaps.

Kind of understandable, honestly. There's this mortal whom he has likely fantasized about seeing pleading, hate-filled, and terrified, cowering before him for ten years now ... telling him that he ought to learn something. Even hijacking his own motif and his instrument in order to turn it on its head, "defile" it if you will.

This f*cking mortal pr*ck took his own "Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves" catchphrase and turned it into forgiveness ... Of course, Poseidon is no longer hesitating; of course, he is no longer concerned with getting his hands dirty or not. He yells "DIE!" and unleashes his ultimate move (which is really overkill for simply killing a mortal if you think about it) ... But he does it anyway because this time he genuinely means it.

... That, and I am also convinced he jumps to that in order to simply shut Odysseus up, fearing what he might do or think if he lets him go on. Because you cannot tell me that Odysseus didn't actually reach him for just one moment. He was far too thrown off guard, far too vulnerable in that one second. That moment of kindness did something to him, and he hated it. He also probably didn't trust himself to be able to keep listening to Odysseus speak like that. So, he abandons his (still very technically feasible!) blackmail/intimidation and just straight-up kills him.

This simple exchange (my favorite moment in the whole musical, actually) tells us so much about both of these characters that it makes me want to skitter and squeal in excitement.

Here is Odysseus—the very same one whom Poseidon specifically tried to teach ruthlessness—becoming the first person in a long time to offer him sympathy despite how Poseidon himself showed him nothing but ruthlessness. And then one song later, here is Odysseus showing him the consequences of not accepting said sympathy.

Six Hundred Strike and what Odysseus does to Poseidon would've not hit the same, in my opinion, if he hadn't made this offer, if he hadn't given Poseidon this way out, even if no one watching genuinely expected it to work (probably not even Odysseus himself.)

Six Hundred Strike is not Odysseus exacting vengeance If GITW proved anything about Odysseus, it's that he does not want vengeance. He wants all of the hatred and pain to be over, to the point where he is willing to let go of, and I am inclined to say forgive Poseidon for what he's done to him. Six Hundred Strike is simply Odysseus teaching him this lesson that Poseidon couldn't have learned in any other way, because he has proven in GITW that he genuinely does not speak any language besides that of ruthlessness (more on that in this essay!)

It's just the perfect representation of how Odysseus has now finally learned the balance between mercy and ruthlessness, which seems to be the core theme of the musical: Both have their time and place; one simply has to be willing to act in both ways and know when to use either. No one extreme is the solution. I am genuinely exhilarated that Odysseus finally seemed to have figured out that it's been both all along.

[malamira]

no shut up roy's most hated parts of riza's body are the burn scars he left her

he hates them because he hurt her, failed her, brought her into a world where she's in constant danger; his choices led to the events that wounded her and he singed her by his own hand in a measly effort to stop the bleeding, stop the pain, stop the avalanche of consequence that he'd inadvertently barrelled into her direction since he took up the study of flame alchemy; he regrets every wrong thing he's ever done in his life when he's faced with her raised, discolored skin

riza was a victim.

but riza, riza doesn't think so—she's never had full autonomy of her own body since when the secrets of flame alchemy were marked into her skin, she's always been a study, a book, a material, as if inanimate with no right to decide how she lived her life; she only found her power of choice when he'd burned her back at her request, freely choosing to follow roy into the amestrian army, into harm's way, up to the doors of death, but this time they were choices she decided to make

roy gave her that power.

her scars remind them of his mistakes while they remind her of his love.

[cattewife]

thinking about,,, drunk sneezes

not only the possibility of sensitivity to wine/etc itself but just. the alcohol fuzziness meaning maybe they let a sneeze creep up on them without noticing, and the lack of inhibitions meaning they let it out without any shame they may usually have..... maybe even being more dramatic than usual, louder, bending at the waist, dazed after.... accepting care they may usually deny because they are drunk and happy and vulnerable

[paintpanic]

Resurrection AU: Void

In this AU, Void has been reincarnated as a little white puffball. He has no memory of his life before he was sealed away by the Heroes of Yore.

His main goal is to figure out who he actually was in his previous life. Aiding in this effort is Magolor, who's agreed to help in exchange for some assistance with his theme park work. He happens to be working on an ancient history-themed area, and could use a hand in the research process.

Personality-wise, Void is driven and has a no-nonsense attitude. He's not super thrilled about all this silly wizard theme park nonsense, but will do what it takes to get what he wants. He has a tendency to overwork himself. He doesn't seem to have retained any powers from his time as Void Termina.

(AU explanation here!)

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[forcedhesitation]

astarion origin playthrough worth it just for all the extra moments where he does the "sad wet cat" face