#National Address

[townpostin]

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Resigns, Interim Government to be Formed

Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the formation of an interim government to run the country. Sheikh Hasina has stepped down as Prime Minister of Bangladesh, with an interim government set to take over, Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman confirmed today. WORLD DESK – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned, and an interim government…

[tomorrowusa]

Tuesday September 17th is National Voter Registration Day! 🇺🇸

It serves as a reminder to register ahead of the upcoming general election.

Some ballots are already being sent out. So reminding people to register needs to happen earlier than in the past. And because voter registration does close in various states as early as October 4th, this serves as a heads up.

So double check to see if you're still registered. Here are several resources.

I Will Vote

Be a voter | Vote Save America

Register to vote in U.S. elections | Vote.gov

While you can register online in most states, my own preference is to register in person at the local Board of Elections office, the County Clerk's office, or at City Hall. The advantage is that you will know immediately if you have all the right documentation. Plus you can take a phone picture of your completed application.

Certain states are more interested in restricting voting than encouraging voting. So if you make any minor mistakes (like wrong zip code) then it's possible that such things could be used to deprive you of your right to vote.

As I frequently remind people, voting is geographically based. If you have moved since the last election, you must register at your new address – even if it is just across the street. Registering to vote at a new address should be part of your routine whenever you move.

Today is a good time to check with your friends, family, and co-workers to see if they're properly registered. Be polite but insistent. To win an election, you need the votes. And you don't get the votes unless people are registered.

[flailypichu]

Husband and I were having a heated debated yesterday, so I've turned to Tumblr for answers.

[omtai]

say the skirtsuit character from the ring of fire leg wasn’t just gerard putting on an outfit and making up a story with each show. say the inclusion of that skirtsuited lady in the trailer wasn’t there to reference the outfit, maybe the outfit referenced her. like the thing abt gerard is they plan out these ideas wayyyy in advance. which leads me to think that if they were to do a concept album about Draag, then we might hear something about that poor dame dying brutally and tragically & living on as a ghost 😢

[redtail-lol]

Hey

If you're Jewish, this post is about you

I know it's gotta be shit right now. Antisemitism is on the rise. People are using Israel's genocide as an excuse to perpetuate antisemitic ideas. If you acknowledge that you're Jewish, someone will take that as an excuse to accuse you of Zionism and supporting the genocide. Celebrating your holidays? Same result.

And then on the other side, if you try to speak out against the genocide, to stick up for and show your support of the Palestinian people, your own people label you as an Enemy, and an antisemite. Your own Jewish identity is ignored or denied.

If you say nothing because you've realized nothing you say seems to be the right thing, you're accused by everyone of not caring, or secretly supporting one side - any maybe you do, but you can't say anything because you can't win no matter what side you're on.

The entire world has been equating Judaism with Israel on both sides and it isn't fair. It isn't fair when Jewish people are being arrested for antisemitic crimes in Germany - making up 37% of arrests despite making up a significantly smaller part of the population - because they weren't going to be quiet about genocide after their own people were met with silence during the Holocaust. It isn't fair when Jewish people are vocally denouncing the actions of Israel and calling for an end to the ruthless bombing. It isn't fair when even some Israelis risk everything to speak out against the state and their horrible crimes. It isn't fair when Jewish people are simply existing as Jewish people, either. Even when they aren't "proving" their support, it's still unfair to make such assumptions about someone because they're Jewish

And if you're one of these people who's shown hostility towards Jewish people over Palestine when they hadn't indicated they supported Israel at all, fuck you.

[orcelito]

thinking about.............. this. when vash calls wolfwood a coward vs his thoughts immediately post-legato.

trimax volume 2 chapter 4 VS volume 14 chapter 2 (pages from @trigun-manga-overhaul)

vash, caught up in his ideals, calls wolfwood a coward for resorting to killing for survival. these words are Cutting for wolfwood, & he spends the next several chapters thinking about them. he knows he can't live like vash does, not as a normal human, bc it would Kill Him. (and, of course, when he does try to follow vash's ideals, it Does end up killing him.)

fast forward to after wolfwood's death. vash is forced to kill legato, and... he has this thought. he thinks back to that time with the thought of, "Did it feel like this for you, too?" we see by his expressions throughout this scene that he feels Horrible for it, the very act of killing going against his staunch moral code...

but he couldn't bear to let wolfwood's sacrifice be in vain, so he killed someone.

and he now knows how wolfwood felt in that scene. he understands the fact that this has Never been easy for wolfwood. it's Never been a matter of cowardice. vash remembers the words he said to wolfwood, now with the knowledge of how much those words must have Hurt Him... and so vash cries.

the worst part is that he can never apologize for those words, because wolfwood is already dead.

[lemonlinelights]

HI

Share the news, send emails, do phone calls to Florida's Gov. DeSantis. Please y'all help protect these state parks

[katyspersonal]

Marika & Messmer are fascists but not the hornsent who chop people to small pieces and put them inside jars to achieve divinity because they believe they're "chosen" people and therefore superior to other races? Have you considered the possibility that sometimes both sides of a war can suck? This is why frenzied flame is the way🙏

Anon, I am going to scold you before I get to the topic because "have you considered [thing]" here should be reserved for a problem when someone is ignorant and in a bad, poor-taste way! Which I was not because obviously I "considered" this! You are referring to a silly post of me liveblogging how I got to Messmer, and so of course I addressed Messmer! I should not add long disclaimer about every other lore-relevant thing when I make a basically liveblog-ish remark to "demonstrate" that I do not let other culprits in the story "get away" either! 😣 For example recently I've been focusing on Fire Knights to express my hatred for religious purism, but later in another post about story of Abyssal Woods I've instead focused my vitriol on Hornsent Inquisitors! There is its own post and time for everything!

Okay back to the LORE with light heart now!! This is true of course that both sides are atrocious; the Hornsent basically pulled a mad cult crusade on the shamans, and very ironically long time after their folks were victims of also a religion-driven crusade! This is basically playing extermination ping-pong for generations and regardless of who "started it", none of the innocent people (children, those who disagree and simply belong to [race], distant descendants that did not DO anything etc) deserved to be exterminated by association.

To get more elaborate, one has to take into consideration just how long the conflict has been going on for, and everything else Marika has done besides the Crusade. The people being killed by Messmer's army are most likely generations apart from the people who hurt Marika's! I've mentioned that earlier where I questioned how Grandam and Hornsent (NPC) seem to not even know why Marika/Messmer went with war at them at ALL. Like, both are/were barbaric in their own way, but there's clearly a side that has suffered enough now. Like, this was such a disgusting conflict that even Marika, who was the one who had it ordered in the first place, felt the need to distance herself from it because it WAS the battle without glory or honor. There were the Hornsent, likely a cult or something, who murdered and mutilated the Shamans back in their time, but Marika was the one who started the war and kept it going even after it was clear that the Hornsent had lost, and ruined the lives of many people that weren't even part of the war in resistance like the Hornsent NPC! (One more nitpick about it is that her/Messmer's war was that of exterminating of all who have no Grace, as opposed to some insane idea on how to force them to be reborn to "join" her type of people hfhhhbhf)

Correct me here if I am wrong, but so far we can't know if ALL Hornsent accepted the practices of Bonny Village and their higher religious institution. The Greater Potentate Cookbooks that we find relating to hefty pots describe the author as having been "haunted by the grotesque practice of his village of birth". This guy didn't sound like he was very proud of what his people were doing, and it's coming from someone who was raised there! There's likely a lot of other Hornsent who found the practice just as disgusting, especially amongst those that didn't do it themselves, but we don't know that because most of them are dead and the ones who remain are understandably upset and distrustful of "our" kind!

🤔 It is also because of this why it's more reasonable to call the two leading figures of a cleansing war fascists than an entire race, because we can't just assume that ALL Hornsent are fascists just because their religious order and justice system is fucked up. We just don't have a key leader figure to redirect such sentiments towards, unlike with the Golden Order! Basically confirmed fascists are Marika, Messmer + Fire Knights + Black Knights + troops, various warriors and perfumers and what not who agreed to participate @ the Hornsent who are doing the potting, the Hornsent who did slaughter Marika's village, and remaining corrupt clerics leaders of the religion!

(On a side note, Frenzied Flame is definitely the answer but y'all shouldn't tell Melina on me hfjjchjgdh)

________

UPDATE 1 from July 4th that I wanted to add in the OG post instead:

I have nothing to add here, all of these are rather fair points! I am a little late with adding these screenshots but you've probably seen some more speculation on the Hornsent Inquisitors these couple of days by me and @val-of-the-north in my blog! Here if you missed these: ( x ) ( x ) The gist of it is that seems like Inquisitors are hunting their fellow Hornsent as heretics for serving the "impure" nobles, but regardless of whether it happened before Marika's mentioned "betrayal" or after, it is STILL horrible to harm people for association with those that didn't even do anything wrong :^)

Still applies that calling the whole race fascist doesn't work (heck, the Hornsent who choose to stand with Midra and Nanaya are confirmation of strong exceptions!), but the sentiment is certainly very strongly rooted culturally.

Sigh.. I am pretty sure there are people somewhere in the fandom that would fall into "hornsent deserved it" pit over this, too. Like "hey, even currently Hornsent culture is a rich soil for Shaman Villages 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 and so on to happen, so why not preventively exterminate an inherently dangerous culture?" (..if anyone here really thinks along these lines, please know that this is a dangerous line of thinking and you'll get ideologically groomed into excusing genocides before you know if you don't question what you're implying here) What they needed was more communication with other cultures and adopting more tolerant and humane principles. Seeing that various horn-ness species are just like them rather than sitting in the "we divine they filth" bubble if it is THAT bad. Maybe Marika even HAD the power to provide such change and bridge the gap while she was still a trusted figure to them during her "infiltration", and yet instead of putting and end to terrible traditions with careful planning and diplomacy, she chose the path of revenge..

Genuinely a depressing point to think about. And yes, absolutely doesn't do her a honor to choose ruin and hate.

________

UPDATE 2 from July 11th:

I also completely forgot to back it up that the fellow Hornsent were also facing execution through being stuffed in jars!

Yeah nah, definitely their people in power were so dangerous that should someone protest against the murder of Shamans and alike, they'd meet the same fate.. Having to swallow what your insane authorities do, with your own life in the line, is also something very real. This situation obscures the number of people who are against it from the superficial look.

I myself live in the country where people can't protest against the government unless they want to go to prison or face other dire consequences, so having to sit quietly for the sake of yourself and your own families for the outside world LOOKS like we don't care and ""'"agree""". :)))) Fun stuff. :') Here, anyone who would ask why Hornsent that disagree with their leaders don't express it would technically be in their right to do so, but most people will protect their own life first, especially if sacrificing it won't really avail anything. Again, Elden Ring is incredibly real with these topics. :')

[aqlstar]

Jumping in with an Assyrian perspective on calls to “free Palestine from the river to the sea,”- or even (generally well intentioned) calls for a single, fully democratic state.

We’ve lived in a “free Palestine” before, under Ottoman and British rule, and it was a Palestine that felt free to attack and torment us for not being sufficiently assimilated into Arab culture. No thank you.

Our desire not to be subjected to the will of an Arab majority is not racism; it is pragmatism.

[naggingatlas]

last post ill make abt this today but saw somebody rb my keeping the rent low image w the tag #real and i scroll down and the very. next two posts. are what i was. talking. about.

[daylightandlongnights]

Welcome to the eras tour (animal crossing edition)! This has been a project I've been working on on and off over the past year. I like to think of this project as my love letter to Taylor Swift's music catalog and also all of the amazing swifties I've met over the last few years alone with things like the eras tour movie and the ttpd release party I attended at a local shop.

[goatedgreen]

every time a new nation drops people flock to go "it doesnt feel like genshin anymore!!!" people said it at the start of fontaine, then people said it at the start of natlan.... but then a few months into it, the new nations is "peak" and "hoyo really cooked with this one" ... just admit that new things are scary and take time ot get used to 😭😭😭 every nation is supposed to be DIFFERENT, of course it feels different to play

people will say the same thing when snezhnaya drops as well

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

In a World Without Heroes: deleted scene

Author's note: The Saturday morning interview scene between Grantaire and Enjolras in chapter 8 originally started from Grantaire's arrival and was intended to go through the events of the scene that has since replaced it. This scene ended up being replaced partly because the characterizations weren't panning out how I wanted (as you see by the end) and partly because it was dragging the scene/fic. Yes, it was good background for the reader, but ultimately (as Grantaire now comments in the replacement scene) this is the same thing Enjolras would have said in every interview since his release from prison, so it didn't make sense for Grantaire to be acting like he'd never tuned in for any of Best Boy's television interviews.

Anyway, I'm finally sharing it here because it's the backstory behind Mabeuf's Manhattan Autonomous Zone and Enjolras's arrest, and also I've been meaning to for uhhhhh two years. Enjoy.

By the time Grantaire texts that he’s on his way, Enjolras feels very nearly relieved.

He’d spent Friday evening catching up on what little cleaning has been neglected since the last time he had a guest ��� that is to say, since moving in — specifically in order to sleep in Saturday morning, only to find himself wide awake at 9AM with little to do but anticipate the events of the day.

“Hey,” says Grantaire when Enjolras lets him into the building.  He’s dressed down from how he usually is at the correctional facility but up from what he wears at the Chinese restaurant, which makes Enjolras feel better about his choice in clothes today.

“Do you mind walking?  I’m on the fourth floor.”

There’s hesitation, and Enjolras thinks Grantaire may be about to protest, but when he speaks it’s to say, “Yeah, sure.  I haven’t had a leg day in a while.”

“You work out?” asks Enjolras, surprised.

“Nope.  Lead the way.”

The walk occurs in silence except for their heavy breathing and a quick apology when someone coming down from the third floor brushes past, and then they’re at the door to Enjolras’s flat.

“Make yourself at home,” he says, heading for the kitchen.  “Would you like anything?  Tea?  Water?”

“Seltzer if you’ve got it, water if you don’t.”

Seltzer.  It’s what Grantaire has ordered both times they were out, too, and Enjolras makes a note that he should pick some up beforehand if they do this again.

There’s no reason for them to do this again, of course: with this past week’s interview completed, they’re over halfway finished with the collaborative part of the book, and there will be no reason for them to be spending time with one another anymore.  Even with Enjolras’s resolution not to pursue a relationship with Grantaire, the prospect of their burgeoning friendship coming to a halt with the end of their professional correspondence makes Enjolras’s stomach twist.

He re-enters the living room with two waters, placing one on a coaster in front of Grantaire and sipping the other for something to do.

“Thanks,” says Grantaire belatedly.  His eyes have been wandering around the flat since Enjolras’s return, and Enjolras wonders what he’s looking for.  At last, his attention falls back on Enjolras.  “You’re dressed different.”

Enjolras lets his eyebrows quirk in feigned surprise and glances down at himself as though he hadn’t spent fifteen minutes lingering over the decision that morning.  When he was merely a law student and the point person for a far-left branch of a tutoring group, Enjolras had had a lot more flexibility in what he wore; since his release from prison, however, his wardrobe has become a rotation of the same six white dress shirts, three tones of neutral trousers, and the occasional matching suit jacket.  Even on days when he isn’t working in some capacity or another, Enjolras finds himself dressing as inoffensively as possible in anticipation of someone’s inevitable recognition and the associations to follow.  His attire hadn’t been particularly flamboyant before then, but his use for his green rally shirts and blue cozy clothes has certainly fallen to the wayside since.

Today, after nearly five minutes of deliberation, he had settled on a pair of gray-ish jeans, a pale red undershirt, and a blue fitted shirt he’d nearly forgotten that he owned.  At the last second before he’d gone down to meet Grantaire Enojlras had pulled a white hoodie over, but already he feels himself overheating in the extra layer.

“Yes, well,” he shrugs, realizing that he should sit and taking the armchair on the far side from where Grantaire has seated himself, “I don’t need to leave today, so I can dress down.”

“That’s what it is!  I haven’t seen you in jeans and a shirt without a collar since you got out.”  Grantaire’s eyes suddenly narrow.  “You aren’t wearing a collared shirt under that, are you?”

Despite his discomfort, Enjolras snorts.  “I’m not.”

“I don’t know that I believe you.”

“My deepest condolences.”  His retort is met with crinkling at the corners of Grantaire’s eyes before they divert altogether as his attention turns to his lap.  Enjolras clears his throat.  “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you in purple.  It looks nice.”

Glancing back up, Grantaire’s brows furrow as he looks over his clothes.

“The scarf,” Enjolras clarifies.

The outermost layer of the sheer material is picked up and rubbed under close scrutiny between Grantaire’s fingers.  “I guess?  I thought it was gray when I grabbed it this morning, but in this lighting it looks blue to me.”

The scarf is definitely purple, but it isn’t worth disputing.  “It looks nice,” Enjolras instead repeats.

“Well cree, thanks.”  

Taking a deep breath, Enjolras decides to put an end to the stall tactics.  “The interview, then?  How do you want to do this?”

“Uh.  I was thinking just kinda like at the facility?  You say what you want, and I respond and ask questions as they arise.  Obviously no notetaking or recordings or anything, so it’ll pretty much be like a normal conversation that I know some of the answers to already.”

Nothing about it feels like a normal conversation, but Enjolras braces himself nevertheless.  “Let’s begin, then.”

“You sure?”  There’s a dubious crinkle between Grantaire’s eyebrows.  “We can shoot the shit for a while longer if you want, let you get comfortable and whatnot.”

Resting his hands carefully over his knees, Enjolras arranges his features into a neutral façade.  “I’m sure.”

Grantaire sighs deeply, a hand skating over his scarf and jerking the front back from his hairline as he scratches the back of his head.  “Okay then.  Well, where would you say it all started?”

He’s about to fall back on the polite clarifying tactics he’d been drilled on for televised interviews before when he realizes that he doesn’t have to.  “Where what all started?”  

Apparently Grantaire holds a similar amount of compunction toward his professionalism.  “I dunno, whatever you want.  The rally?  Broletariat?  Activism in general?”

Enjolras has managed to avoid shining a spotlight on his childhood this long, and his parents have made it clear that they have no interest in having their names attached to any of this, but beginning at the rally would feel like starting a sentence in the middle of a phrase.  “Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and I have known each other since we were young,” he says, finally settling for their indoctrination to the betterment of humanity as a promising starting place, “and we all were accepted to and attended Columbia for undergrad and stayed for our graduate degrees.  None of us were from New York City, and while we were studying, we saw a need in the local community for support, and we started up an afterschool tutoring group in conjunction with Barnard College’s urban teaching program.  I believe they’re still running, though I lost touch with them while I was away.”  

“On the road,” nods Grantaire.

“In jail.”  There’s no use dancing around it now: if Enjolras can’t say it in front of Grantaire, who else is there?  

“Right, that too.”  Grantaire’s body is draped over the corner of Enjolras’s couch casually enough, but there’s a stiffness in his posturing and the way he rubs the tip of his thumb back and forth along the side of his index finger that makes Enjolras think he’s uncomfortable.  

“The Broletariat’s inception was nearly accidental,” he continues. “Feuilly worked in the afterschool program at one of the schools we operated out of, and we got to discussing education law one day while he was packing up and I was waiting on a pupil and agreed to continue the conversation as a secondary location at a later date.  It was never official, but it did become regular: once work and classes let out, more and more of us met under the guise of lesson planning or studying or spending time with friends, while under it all we were organizing.”

“Organizing what?”

Enjolras shakes his head.  “At the time, we’d had no way of knowing.  We could feel unrest building toward something, and we made sure that the channels of communication were open and to keep up with the news and share resources and to — to be prepared for any eventualities,” he says.

“Enjolras, I was there.”

“It occurs to me that announcing our weapons stores to the general public may not go over well.”

“Good thing you’re not announcing it to the general public, then.”

Enjolras sighs.  “We were ready for anything, and one day, ‘anything’ finally had a name: Jean-Charles Mabeuf.

“Before his arrest, Mabeuf had been a churchwarden at a local church, a respected member of his community.  His friends said he had an expansive collection of books and was trying to grow indigo to start a small business.”

“Does indigo grow well in New York City?”  This time, it seems like a question Grantaire genuinely doesn’t know the answer to.

“Evidently not.  At the time of his arrest, he was several months behind on rent, had nothing in his fridge, and his famous book collection had dwindled to hardly anything: he was destitute.”

“Tough break.”

Enjolras shoots a sharp look at Grantaire.  “Do you remember what happened to him?”

“The prison left him to die of treatable causes, what more is there to know?”

“His landlord took him to court for the missing rent; Mabeuf had already fallen ill and couldn’t make it, and the judge issued a bench warrant.  He was arrested for being sick and poor.”

“Well, I’m seeing why I would selectively have culled that bit if I heard it.”

Enjolras feels his nostrils flare at the flippancy, but a small part of his mind reminds him that the Grantaire in front of him is not the Grantaire who drank his way through the entire rebellion and every strategy meeting leading up to it.  “I would be surprised if you hadn’t: his arrest hardly made the news.  I’m told that his church was in the process of arranging some care package or another for him, but that most likely would have been the end of it if not for the pneumonia.”

Now comes the part that the news and everyone knows: all of the symptoms were recorded upon his intake, but no action was taken to treat him.  Mabeuf remained in jail as he waited for his new court date, complaining every day of chest pains and requesting to be moved to the med pod.  He was never moved, and on 1 June, at eighty years old, Jean-Charles François Mabeuf was found dead in his cell.

“With the release of the coroner’s report, his church community took to the web for Justice for Mabeuf.  The movement against the privatized prison system had already existed and was merely on the backburners, and it seemed like the time for change had finally come.”

“Okay, so wait,” Grantaire interrupts.  “I was a bit hazy on the details at the time, but I mostly chalked that up to a whole slew of substances combined with a complete and manufactured sense of total apathy; as it would turn out, I am still just as confused.”

Enjolras leans back expectantly in his seat.  “About?”  

“A couple of points, honestly, but mostly what an armed splinter from a tutoring club expected to happen.”

A fair question.  “I was supposed to go into education law.”

Grantaire blinks.  “Okay?”

“There’s no special concentration in legal programs to choose one’s specialization: you take the relevant courses offered, intern with firms that handle the sorts of cases you’re interested in, and once you pass the bar, pursue that area.”

“Got it.”

“Once you start looking into the way the United States education system is set up, it becomes immediately evident how inextricably linked all of these pieces are: children are born in low-income communities.  Low income means that the property taxes that fund the schools amount to less, leading to fewer resources and higher drop-out rates.  The wages in positions for unskilled labor aren’t enough to live on, so people either pick up more and more jobs until they’ve worked themselves to the bone and, quite often, to the point of their bodies breaking down, at which point the failings of the health system become painfully apparent; are turned out onto the streets, which exposes the failings of our government’s housing system and its rotting capitalist firmament; or turn to more lucrative but less legal job opportunities.  

“Two of these are arrestable offenses disproportionately targeted communities of color, and the third skips past those steps directly to killing the dime-a-dozen wage slave.”

Grantaire stares at the coffee table in silence for long enough that Enjolras begins to suspect that he may not have been paying any attention at all before his brows finally furrow and he looks back up at Enjolras.  “So what were you expecting to happen?”

He sighs.  “I couldn’t rightly say what we expected to happen, but the goal was to draw national attention to any one of these points.  If something gave, we thought that the whole system might crash down around it.  Exposing the for-profit prison industrial complex as the corrupt, predatory, outdated, inherently racist system it is … it felt self-evident.  The whole system is broken, let’s build a new one together that serves all of its citizens equally and doesn’t feature intentional loopholes for legalized slavery.”

Grantaire is quiet for a long time before he finally asks, almost too quietly for Enjolras to hear, “When did you realize it wasn’t going to work?”

‘When’ indeed.  Enjolras makes no motion to answer.  When had he known?  Has he ever known?  Perhaps he still doesn’t.  “It still might,” is what he finally says.  “We haven’t failed yet.”

Grantaire looks affronted.  “You almost died, Enjolras.”

“I didn’t."

[jetantifa]

I don't accept that the Fire Nation should be allowed to keep their monarchy and maybe Zuko tries and tries to cling onto power because he's convinced he can change things in the Fire Nation from the inside out. It's ill thought out, he's naive but he's desperate to try and the Avatar lets him, just as misguided.

Zuko talks the right talk when he's suggesting they need to pull back from the Earth Kingdom, but when an advisor points out that the quarry only exists because the firebenders made it possible to mine, that if they're pulling troops back then Earthbenders will lose their jobs, and what else will they find to do? Will they go backwards without people to guide them? He sounds troubled as he says it, it reminds Zuko of Iroh and something in him twists.

Zuko doesn't recognise it for what it is he's done until the military stationed there are drowned out, like rats, and the advisor begins to let spite bleed into his words, when he calls the Earth kingdom leeches who don't even know what's good for them because they aren't accepting that hand the fire nation offered them, and Zuko can't find a reason to disagree, he knows they can't govern themselves

It keeps happening, nobility stopping him from doing a smooth, clean break, a unit gets maimed, and Zuko doesn't know how to navigate it, he doesn't even know who could be involved. It's tied to the Earth kingdom but that just draws suspicion, after all, wasn't Zuko in Ba Sing Se for a while? Who's to say he wasn't murdering them in cold blood to stir some terror, to make his advisors push back, Ozai liked to do this then cut down anyone too unwilling to fall into line quickly.

The way it looks to the people, he's attempting to snatch away power from the nobility who usually back him, his family? Zuko can't get rid of them, because he knows too much change could set up a coup, so he's moving slowly, but in doing so, he's not removing fire nation bases, or pearing down his army, he's stagnant. When people start talking about Ozai again, in whispers, he doesn't understand, he thought if the head of the snake was removed, the rest would follow along so he could rebirth the fire nation into a new era.

But the imperialistic fire nation was always more than one man, it's systematic, it's a disease and Zuko only realises it when the walls are closing in and he's abdicating under threat of being usurped, he's stuck trying to figure out what's happening and anyway, I just think Zuko finding the freedom fighters, with Jet alive and making sense of what the fire nation represents, that the advisors and nobility obviously don't want to let go of their power because war is profitable, so ofc they dress it up as benevolent rather than controlling

I just think class traitor Zuko finally joining the freedom fighters could be so fun because the Palace was always stifling but he's only realising it when he's in the trees again, when the blue spirit comes alive again because you can't wash away 100 years of imperialism when it's embedded in the structure itself and they should start getting along in their shared ideal of wanting to resist. For Zuko it's to remove the rot, the corruption from the Fire Nation, for Jet and his people, to get the Fire Nation army to stop oppressing them, to leave them to govern themselves.

That it's Fire Nation propaganda that they (the Earth kingdom) can't function without the Fire Nation, it's nothing more than a way for the Fire Nation bourgeoisie to line their pockets because war is far more profitable than demilitarising like Zuko wanted so ofc they'd be at odd ends with him

[ladyelainehilfur]

Tumblr girls should realize calling Christian users "puritans" is not the insult they think it is.

I also invite people who say this to think about how easily they fling similar jabs towards Muslims or Jews.

What makes people think Christianity is the only religion they're allowed to be inflammatory towards? Did followers of these other religions not also do questionable things in the past because of their beliefs? Are people not currently suffering because of religious wars?

Or are those religions off limits because insulting them would make you look bad 😐