#THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE PEOPLE CAPITALISM WORKS FOR HAVE USED THAT POWER TO KEEP THE SYSTEM IN PLACE

[fipindustries]

yet another thing i really like about dungeon meshi:

a lot of ink has been spilled on this idea that "people dont have autism/ADHD the problem is actually capitalism". usually paired with the notion that in agrarian societies being neurodiverget was actually super useful and that neurodivergent people would have been content with menial tasks like sorting berries or watcing over cattle, instead of the modern fallen state in which we find ourselves where we have to go to 9 to 5 jobs and sit in boring offices all day or whatever.

i wont rehash all the reasons this is clearly nonesense, instead what i will do is point out how brilliant ryoko kui was, yet again, for finding the way of eating her cake and keeping it too. dungeon meshi is clearly this power fantasy consisting of "what if your hyperfixation was actually extremely useful and was the thing that allowed you to thrive in this niche field". so in this case laios autism actually works almost as a superpower for him.

but then every single detail we come to learn about his past shows us how incredibly maladapted he was to the life he was born in. he couldnt meet his parent's expectations or those of his town, he couldnt fit in the army as a soldier, living on his own at a caravan he was malnourished, dirty, dressed in tatters and covered in fleas. and even after he manages to establish himself as an adventurer he gets constantly taken advantage by other people.

a lot of the reason why he is thriving in the story is because he is a) in the very specific niche of circumstances where his peculiarities actually are incredibly useful, in a dungeon filled with monsters where he doesnt have to deal with other people and b) surrounded by people who are either just as weird as he is or care about him deeply (or are consumate professionals like chilchuck)

[calder]

Themes of Gay Identity and Homophobia in Fallout: New Vegas

Revised and extended 4-30-25. Much of this essay is no longer available on the wiki. Please read attached PSA at conclusion.

Released in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas actively concerns itself with the realities of gay existence, and is widely recognized as a noteworthy work of queer science fiction. New Vegas extensively examines social attitudes towards homosexuality among the game's major factions, and primarily conveys this lore through gay and bisexual characters describing their own experiences. It also allowed the player to mechanically set the Courier's sexual orientation. By taking both available perks, the player character can be bisexual. By choosing neither, the player can opt out of seeing flirtatious dialogue options.

Uniquely, Fallout: New Vegas explores homosexuality in the context of wasteland societies, and touches upon related issues. The core theme of New Vegas is that the desire to recreate the past is driven by irrational nostalgia, and any endeavor to manifest past glory is dangerous and doomed. The social issue of homophobia is used as a demonstrative example. The resurrection of corporate and military power structures presents new avenues for Old World problems such as institutional homophobia to reemerge. One of the many issues that divide the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion is the latter's open persecution of gay people. The NCR is described as tolerant and even accepting of same-sex relationships, though acceptance tends to fall off the further one moves away from the developed, urbanized core of New California.

In recent years, the Republic's rapid economic transformation has led to an unforeseen erosion of the humanitarian ideals which it was founded to serve. In practice, to recreate America was to take on its shortcomings and its sins. As subsistence scavenging has dried up, the people of the NCR increasingly turn to wage labor, entrepreneurial venture, or military enlistment to keep their families fed. Meanwhile, their government enacts morally corrosive imperialism (narrative verbiage from the PRIMA guide), their dominion expanding indefinitely as their infrastructure crumbles from within. This has led to a profit-based imperial monoculture which must conquer, consume, and coerce to perpetuate. As personal politics and service labor grow in importance, people find themselves more inclined to present as "normal" in the interest of financial stability and political expedience. A loading screen visualizes this culture of artificial social normalcy: the portrait of President Aradesh on the NCR 5$ bill neglects to depict his unibrow, earring, and facial scarification, overall portraying the once-chieftain so cleanly-cut as to be unrecognizable at first glance. He also appears to be wearing a collared shirt or suit as opposed to the robe he wore in Fallout.

In the Legion, Caesar has mandated that every legionnaire take a wife and produce children, citing high infant mortality rates and the constant need for soldiers, and going as far as instituting child quotas. He treats human beings as a resource to be exploited for war. Ostensibly in this aim homosexuality has been declared a capital offense punishable by death. Historically, routine demonstrations of violence towards women and gay people are a deliberate feature of fascist societies, the only logical cultural conclusion of a government devoted entirely to war and control.

In Forlorn Hope letter 9, an NCR soldier wrote wrote the following to his boyfriend:

Dearest Andrew, Writing this seems pretty morbid, but tomorrow we march into the no man's land between our camp and Nelson, which is crawling with Legion. The Major insisted I write this damn "if you get this, I'm dead" letter so here it is. What a crock. I have the luck of the devil and your love on my side, so I'll be home soon. Keep the porch light on for me. We'll party in New Vegas when I get back. I love you. —Devin

Devin believed he would prevail over the Legion because his love would keep him safe. He was found dying or dead on the battlefield, the letter was found on his body. In a post-release patch, the injured soldiers were removed from the battlefield for performance reasons, and never re-implemented.

Driven largely in reaction to the Legion's hyper-masculine posturing and misogyny, rumors persist across the Mojave that gay male relationships are not only common within the Legion, but condoned. These rumors are repeated commonly in NCR society. A closeted NCR Major mentions that the Legion is "a little more... forgiving" about close male "friendships," speaking in a hushed tone to avoid suspicion. At the same outpost, the player can encounter Cass, a bisexual civilian woman. She may flirt with a male Courier, who may imply they are gay, prompting her to imply gay men are more common in the Legion. Even as gay men fight and die in the name of love under his command, NCR General Oliver may remark to Courier Six at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam: "If you think after all that's happened, I'm going to grab my ankles and take it like the Legion..."

This writing pertains to institutionalized homophobia which manifests in practice though power structures and social interactions without being written into law. Simply put, in his derogatory remark, the general expresses to his army that military surrender is gay, much like their gay enemy. From the brevity and bluntness of this remark, it's clear that this sentiment is already well understood among his ranks. Logically, to project strength in the eyes of such a leader, one might also project homophobia by scrutinizing and harassing one's peers and subordinates. In this atmosphere, the expression of homophobia is not only normalized, but materially incentivized. For the ambitious, it becomes a tool, and a way of casting shame upon rivals. For the closeted, homophobia becomes a survival tactic, hoping to throw scrutiny off oneself. This is why Major Knight is immediately frightened when a male Courier flirts with him. He is so profoundly alienated that he romanticizes life as a gay man under the Legion. The Legion punish homosexuality with death, and yet Knight characterizes them as more "forgiving" than the NCR. Through these apparently disparate events, the audience can trace how a distorted perception of gay people emerges among insecure men in a military environment, and subsequently becomes ingrained in the corresponding civilian culture.

At the 188 Trading Post, a lesbian from the Brotherhood of Steel named Veronica also wryly remarks that she believes legionaries have gay sex about as often as straight sex. She also notes that this only applies to men, as women have no rights whatsoever in Legion society. In this aside, she conveys a pre-existing frustration with lesbophobic social norms. Veronica also mentions that the people of her bunker would rather she remain on the surface.

The Mojave Brotherhood of Steel has no official policy prohibiting homosexuality, but an implicit attitude among its dominant members that their limited numbers require everyone to have children to avoid extinction. Numerically, this may seem logical on the surface, given their reluctance to recruit outsiders. However, given their tiny population, this is an ineffective countermeasure, as they do not have nearly enough members to maintain genetic diversity for more than a few generations. 

This approach is not universally supported by all family units within the Brotherhood, but every individual is ultimately at the mercy of the elder. Veronica was in a lesbian relationship, but they were quietly separated by Elder Elijah, due to the dominant culture of enforcing heterosexual pairing among their population. No Brotherhood character makes any remark conveying hatred or disgust towards homosexuality; malice is not a necessary ingredient of homophobia. Fear, ignorance, tradition, and control are forces that shape their society, resulting in the needless oppression of gay people. The subject remains subtextual, apparently taboo, which may reflect their culture's origins in the U.S. Army. Additionally, the Brotherhood's medieval theming dovetails intuitively with these themes of traditional propriety, regressive superstition, and closed-minded stagnation.

Caesar's law has not ended homosexuality within his domain. Despite the obvious risks, some legionaries have continued to pursue relationships behind closed doors, especially given their access to slaves. So long as members complete their societal obligations and fulfill the child quotas, they are able to pursue romance with other men in secret. One line suggests homosexual relationships in the faction are relatively equal to the average Legion husband and wife in some ways, apparently a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" sort of open secret policy. Despite this, gay legionaries must always make sure to keep their activities hidden.

A centurion was once almost caught fraternizing with the teenage boy he had chosen to tend his tent. Despite previous "romantic" intentions, he quickly resolved to dispose of the slave to dispel suspicion. Had they been caught together, the centurion would have been charged with homosexuality and sentenced to death. This story is only known because the enslaved young man, Jimmy, managed to escape execution. Further illustrating the cruelty intrinsic to Legion governance, it's stated that homosexuality was the crime, and not the rape of a young slave; in fact, it seems Jimmy was forced to contribute to the child quota despite being a gay teenager, and the experience left him traumatized. He has resolved to never have sex with another woman, as the very notion triggers memories which fill him with disgust, and (in his own words) makes him feel like a slave all over again.

The Strip is indifferent to gay people, viewing them as another opportunity to make caps. Both the Gomorrah and the Atomic Wrangler are interested in maximizing profits, and their prostitution services cater to clients regardless of their orientation. The openly gay Jimmy works at nearby Casa Madrid, but there is some tension among his peers due to his co-worker Maude's blatant homophobia. She supposes he's "okay, for one of those," and if propositioned by a female Courier, Maude will direct them to Sweetie for such "perverted" services. Pretty Sarah must regularly intervene to keep the peace among her staff.

New Vegas ventures further into themes of healing from the trauma of sexual violence, from the perspective of a lesbian character. NCR sharpshooter Corporal Betsy is a survivor of rape, and suffers with PTSD from the incident. Her unprocessed trauma has manifested as a maladaptive tendency to aggressively and explicitly proposition the women she encounters, in an effort to reassert a sense of control. This defensive hypersexual impulse has negatively impacted her ability to connect with other women. A male superior officer notes that her behavior is inappropriate for anyone of her stature, but abstains from disciplining her out of sincere concern for her mental health. The Courier can help her begin to recognize these problems, and convince her to seek treatment from Doctor Usanagi at the New Vegas medical clinic, which proves helpful to her as she processes and heals from her trauma. An NCR side-quest involves finding and killing her rapist.

A more significant movement out west, the Followers of the Apocalypse only control one major outpost in the Mojave, the Old Mormon Fort, somewhat ironic given the social and historical connotations of Mormonism. They allow outcasts and downtrodden to take shelter among their tents here, and do not stigmatize sex workers or addicts. A bisexual ghoul sex worker named Beatrix Russel can be encountered here, and the Courier may do business with her.

The Followers tend not to form hierarchies, and insist that the Courier choose non-violent approaches while carrying out their quests, which involve directly bettering the surrounding community of Freeside. Among other tasks, the player may be tasked to distribute Fixer (a medicine comparable to methadone) to homeless people experiencing withdrawal, or aid those abused by chem dealers. The main quest giver for the faction is community coordinator Julie Farkas, a doctor with a bold and unusual mohawk.

At Red Rock Canyon, the Courier can help a young man find purpose and kinship by convincing him to leave home and join the Followers. Jerry the Punk is a Great Khan who has been ostracized for writing poetry, and the upcoming masculinity rites expected of him by his small, tense village give him reason to actively fear for his life. Jerry has positive memories of the Followers from his childhood, because there was a time when they would bring books to share with the Great Khans tribe. The Punk finds a sense of purpose and connection when he leaves his isolated home settlement of harsh, angry men to live among the Followers, who see value in his gentle, creative nature as opposed to belittling him.

At the time of the events of Fallout, the Followers of the Apocalypse presented as benevolent secular monks who opposed the Children of the Cathedral cult. In the wake of the Unity Crisis, the city of Boneyard peacefully joined the NCR. The fiction of New Vegas establishes that, in pursuit of their founding principles, the Followers developed into a transgressive force for leftist values, openly critical of the NCR's capitalistic profit-based society. Director J.E. Sawyer freely acknowledges that the values of the Followers of the Apocalypse were informed by leftist philosophy:

"The Followers of the Apocalypse: Libertarians, socialists, communists, or greens?" Sawyer: "They vary significantly, but range from anarcho-syndicatists to socialists to communists. Their general tendency to be inclusive and non-hierarchical means they don't have a single outlook or 'platform.'"

The distinctive character design of faction representative Julie Farkas resembles an archetypical punk woman. Being a far-left counterculture of a capitalistic empire, the Followers of the Apocalypse generally evoke and directly mirror the goals and organizational methods of the modern punk movement--more acutely, they embody the sensibilities of America's rail punks, a highly transient subculture who overwhelmingly emphasize volunteerism and anti-imperial philosophy, as opposed to the sensationalism of the reactionary punk rocker scene, which is defined by the moving target of aesthetic/social transgression. This read is further informed by the Followers' inclusiveness, abundantly evidenced in their care for people marginalized by other wasteland societies, including unhoused people, addicts, sex workers, gay people, tribal people, political dissidents, criminalized people, and mutated people.

The most prominent member of the faction is Arcade Gannon, a player companion and openly gay man, who was born an illegal person under NCR law. Upon meeting Courier Six, Arcade offhandedly makes his gayness known, unprompted. The audience must face the fact that Arcade's apprehension of the Legion is far from abstract; under Legion law, he would be put to death.

Arcade will not hesitate to abandon the player if he disapproves of their actions, but if his trust is carefully earned, he will reveal his origins. Arcade was born into the Enclave just before it collapsed. He hides this because his existence is a crime under New California Republic law. He abandoned his fascist background to serve the Followers' ideology of learning, harm reduction, and antifascism.

Additionally, Arcade is critical of the NCR, and encourages the player to re-route the power of HELIOS One to Freeside rather than the NCR power grid. Should the Courier sell Arcade to the Legion and subsequently lead the NCR to victory at the Dam, Arcade will ultimately be identified as Enclave-born and arrested from his position of slavery to spend the rest of his life in an NCR prison. As a gay man originally born to the Enclave, his very existence is criminalized under the law of both the NCR and the Legion.

Another possible ending provides further insight into Caesar's hypocrisy: should the player sell Arcade into slavery and leave Caesar alive, he will keep Arcade as a personal physician and philosophical advisor. They intellectually spar at length, and Caesar grows singularly fond of him. Accordingly, Arcade imitates the historic suicide of Cato the Younger by disemboweling himself, rather than suffer the favor of the mad Caesar. The Legion's remaining medics attempted to save his life, but none were Arcade's equal. Caesar understood his doctor's final gesture of contempt, and mourned him for months.

In Old World Blues, the Think Tank are five floating brains in jars who express themselves by waving robotic arms bearing screens depicting facial features. Before the War, they were federal scientists who committed crimes against humanity in the name of weapons development. Each is stuck in some sort of neuro-bionic feedback loop which prevents them from moving forward with their projects, mentally binding them to their central laboratory. Walking through their homes at Higgs Village, it's clear each was deeply neurotic before they were transformed into floating brains.

Now without bodies, they attempt to maintain the illusion that they are exempt from sexuality as purely mental beings, but each displays obvious interest in the human form. They have codified this shaming with the term "formography." Most of the men are obsessively defensive over their complete disinterest in penises, which they talk about constantly. However, the shameless Dr. Dala shows overwhelming interest in observing and recording any and all human functions. Already androgynous in her pre-War life, Dala has taken to self-identifying as a "gender neutral entity" (though she is not known to use they/them pronouns). Regardless of the Courier's gender, they may coquettishly scratch themselves, clear their throat, and stretch in front of Dala until her biomed gel decoagulates. Dr. 8 also responds positively to graphic masturbation advice from Couriers of either gender.

The X-8 research facility is ostensibly a massive immersive shrine to Doctor Borous's hatred of Richie "Ball-Lover" Marcus, a long-dead child who bullied Borous centuries ago. He also clings to his resentment of one Betsy Bright, who refused to attend a dance with him, supposedly so she could "go smoke with RICHIE MARCUS." Clearly arrested in development, Borous has literally built a temple to the fantasy of torturing his adolescent romantic rival and feeding him to dogs. His frozen, static characterization of the jock Richie Marcus as a "pinko-commie" who "likes balls" reflects the shallowness, pettiness, and overall misanthropy underlying his patriotic identity.

It remains apparent throughout Old World Blues that the Think Tank are all chronically sexually repressed, which is inseparable from the values of the violent and judgmental pre-War culture which created them. With time and isolation, this ingrained repression has manifested as various intense and deranged psychosexual behaviors, including rage-fueled homophobia, voyeurism, and the obsessive performance of puritanical pretense.

____

“Although I’ve been out for a very long time, I made a conscious effort to be out with relation to this project, as I wanted to be visible as a lesbian in the game industry. New Vegas itself is, I think, one of (if not the) best games out there in how we treat homosexuality – and all of that is very intentional.”

“If my work on FNV, if my being out has helped even one gay person, then I have succeeded.”

— Tess “Obsidian’s Gay Cowgirl” Treadwell

____

written (with help from other editors) for Nukapedia.

Nukapedia has been seized by an alt-right high-control group.

Please see this post for more information.

[robertreich]

Boeing Is Everything Wrong With American Capitalism

Excuse my language, but why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?

Their planes are literally falling apart in the sky.

At least six Boeing planes have had parts fall off this year — including an exit door in mid-flight. A whistle-blower has accused Boeing of a “criminal cover-up” of its safety failures.

But beyond this one company, Boeing’s descent is a case study in how American capitalism has become so rotten. Let me explain.

I’m old enough to remember when people used to say “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”

But in 1997, everything changed when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas and became the only major maker of commercial aircraft in America. With no domestic rivals, it no longer needed to stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

Executives at Boeing who once specialized in engineering were replaced with Wall Street types who looked down on the engineers. One money-hungry CEO described those who cared too much about the integrity of Boeing’s planes, and not enough about its stock price, as “phenomenally talented assholes.”

To keep Wall Street happy, Boeing began spending billions on stock buybacks that pumped up the value of shares — money that could have been spent on safety and innovation.

It doled out hundreds of millions on campaign contributions and lobbying to lower safety standards, rake in massive government contracts, and boost its bottom line.

To cut costs, Boeing outsourced roughly 70% of its design, engineering, and manufacturing rather than rely on its experienced union workforce.

To further undercut its union, Boeing opened an assembly plant in South Carolina, a notorious anti-union state. Executives reportedly told managers not to move any unionized employees there.

This quest for profit resulted in massive quality control problems that were reported by engineers and machinists, but allegedly ignored by management. All of this inevitably led to the deadly safety issues Boeing faces today.

And because of Boeing’s monopoly-like power, it has been largely immune from any repercussions for its poor performance.

Boeing made it seem like it was punishing executives who led it astray by firing them, but still rewarded them with “golden parachutes” on the way out.

Folks, Boeing’s troubles should serve as a cautionary tale. It’s reflective of broader trends in our economy over the past forty years. Monopolization. Wealth siphoned off to rich shareholders at the expense of everyone else. Cutting corners on safety to save a dime. Bashing unions. All while spending big money lobbying the government.

Boeing may have become a shitty company, but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with it.

The government has the power to increase antitrust enforcement to bust up big companies — something that we are already starting to see in other industries.

It should also attach strings to government contracts and subsidies to ensure that private corporations are working in the best interest of the country, and not just their bottom lines.

It should ban stock buybacks, which were illegal before the Reagan administration, so profits are put back into improving the company, including the safety of products, rather than solely padding investors’ wallets.

Union power should be rebuilt, so that workers can once again act as a countervailing force to Wall Street.

And we should continue the fight to get Big Money out of politics.

It’s not too late to reverse course and chart a new flight path.

[harmonicpearl]

Something i don't know how ppl still dont understad is how OBVIOUS it is that no Mark is gonna outtake the other, no love (neither for Gemma nor Helly) is gonna outgrow the other. And it's not only a matter of if that is possible (it is, its a tv show) it's a matter of narrative and thematic ideas.

The writers have briliantly gave Mark and Gemma a 5-year marriage and Mark s and Helly a half life relationship (because even if they are very young they have known each other for a huge portion of their concious life). This balances the stakes and validation for each Mark, and makes their battle so interesting, because they are literally equally deserving. And since they are equally deserving, having one of them "win" would be contradicting that claim. It doesn't matter if you as an individual have a preference, as liking one of the Marks more (hell, i myself like one of them more, that's human) but ethics dont work like that, ego death doesn't work like that either and obviously the show is trying to say that. This opens two crucial themes to discuss:

First things first, this impossible-winner situation is the fucking dramatic drive of the show. I wouldnt phrase it as Helly and Gemma because they're characters in their own right, but Mark's relationship with Helly and Gemma is there to represent a battle of the ego and conflicted desire. I really think the show chose to make this a romantic conflict because, yeah who doesn't love romance, but most importantly because we are so monogamous as a society that it was the clearest way to show how these two Marks are different people. We can't fathom the idea that you can love more than one person romantically at the same time (it doesn't matter if it's true, it's the predominant thought of our society). And i think they use this aknoledgement of how society works and they were so right to do so because look what everyone is talking about. That's why im so really shocked that some people are trying to bend the laws and philosophy of this show to theorize which Mark will win or which love will he choose at the end. Neither will, and both will. And simply because narratively, thematically, thats the only coherent choice. One of the Marks "winning" or Mark choosing completely either Helly or Gemma, would destroy the very points this show is trying to make. The love for Helly needs to be a rightful pushing force just as equal as the love for Gemma, just as Mark S needs to keep existing as a foil to Mark Scout. The show is trying to say that (to put this coloquially) doesn't matter how shitty or brief or undeserving your life is to a system or to others you are deserving of human rights, freedom and autonomy.

Which gets me to the second point: This goes both ways. Because even if Mark Scout belittles Mark S's experience, lumon did the same to him when they kidnapped Gemma and lured him into severance. They are both being used. After all, i very much think this is a postmodern show dealing with the residue of modern capitalism. This is a show about the problematic and complex relationship between revolution vs establishment. A modern show made in the past century would have framed this as a straight up victim vs victimizer problem but this is different. Capitalism creates this micro-power relationships. Corporations expoit the white collar worker and the white collar worker exploits the cleaning lady. And even if they are both clogs in a machine, the white collar worker and the cleaning lady may have different ideas on how a revolution should play out, or even if a revolution should occur in the first place. And sometimes revolutionaries can have disregard of the lower classes in the name of grater good. With all the shipping stuff (that i also fully enjoy) we forget that THIS is also the conflic that's taking place between Mark Scout and Mark S. Even if they clearly arent aware of all this shit at the moment.

Even so, they, again, are equally deserving of happiness and compensation. And to put Mark Scout in the position of opressor and opressed at the same time is amazing. They both need to win. But how can they both win? Will they both win? And how would a win-win situation look like? This is why i think severance really is something else. I'm at the edge of my seat because i don't have a fucking clue how they will resolve this. But i trust this show to be better than simply make him choose one of his loves or make one Mark overrule the other. They won't do that, mark (jk) my words. Both Marks need to truly work as one, to understad the other's struggle and see it as equally valid and well, negotiate. Just as the white collar worker will have to negotiate with the cleaning lady if they truly want to make an impact should a revolution actually happen. Both Marks need to understad they are not the real enemy and even more, that the real enemy is the cause of this friction in the first place, a friction that only diverges them from the real goal. Helly's and Gemma's love is only the cathalyst to put in motion this conflict. A GREAT choice because just as the Marks, they too will have ideas of their own on how to navigate this situation, yes, but they will also have a say in the innies vs outies vs lumon conflict and well i think these four are gonna surprise us.

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[dressed2k1ll]

I’m giving up on men because

1. The fact that they all assume they’re experts in everything

2. The fact that they all assume they’re smarter than me immediately

3. The fact that they allow and use slurs to divide women like Karen, Pick Me, Terf, The Main Character, SWERF, prude, slut bitch

4. The only slur they have is incel which relies on the premise that they’re entitled to sex

5. Moms are expected to be perfect and if she makes a mistake she’s a bad mom. Dads are considered perfect despite their mistakes and even being a poor parent

6. They think sex is a service

7. They cannot have a magic sexual moral barrier that divides children from teens from women. I refuse to believe it. And the media sexualizes kids and infantilizes female sexuality… so what now?

8. That porn is so normalized and teen is a category and yet we can’t check a man’s porn viewing history before allowing them to coach, treat, or be alone with vulnerable people.

9. That some will and can and do have sex with corpses. That deadness is sexualized in fashion photography as arousing

10. That choking has become normalized in porn

11. That we know porn becomes increasingly more extreme through algorithm and capitalism

12. That they hide behind plausible deniability and think we are too stupid to see it - like the devils advocate position

13. That they convince themselves their plausible deniability is a moral standard

14. That even the normal married ones with little girls for kids are shitty

15. That they think their pleasure overrides the civil rights of a person

16. That they believe consent magically changes abuse into kink

17. That they don’t even know what misogyny is

18. That they think misandry is somehow comparable

19. That they think my hurting their feelings or making them feel uncomfortable is a violent act. That pointing out violence makes me the violent one.

20. That they defend Johnny Depp

21. That they’re afraid of false accusations

22. That they defend the reputations of men they haven’t met more than the reality of the women who report them lmao

23. They don’t take care of themselves physically

24. They can choose to be civilized but use animal evo psychology to defend subhuman actions

25. They believe that women’s sexuality is an economy for them

26. They created religion to usurp creative power from women

27. They convinced other men that humans came from a man’s rib, from a patriarchal god, when literally no man has NOT come through and from a woman.

28. They have sexualized every aspect of women’s existence including pain and crying

29. They’ve convinced women that empowerment is a feeling and not a change in power position

30. They blame their antisocial loneliness epidemic on us

31. The tried to use the Love Languages on us

32. They created psychiatry as a way to at least in part control women just as they created medicine to control and destroy midwives

33. They place the locus of responsibility outside themselves which makes them perpetual victims

34. They created purity culture

35. They created porn culture

36. They buy and use and masturbate to trafficked and vulnerable women and it doesn’t matter to them

37. They corner me in the workplace

38. They are always looking at us - I want to not be perceived sexually at all

39. They use women for all of their emotional dumping and we aren’t certified to handle it

40. They resent our happiness (shaming it)

41. We had to create laws to keep them from marrying and having sex with kids. Like, everywhere. We haven’t even succeeded globally

42. They hold women in power to an entirely separate standard than men

43. They’re lazy

44. They can solve complex problems and be incentive and self-improving at work, but are seemingly really incapable of doing this for relationships

45. They won’t see something unless it directly impacts them personally

46. They are emotionally unintelligent

47. They are violent

48. They are wilfully ignorant of the constant threat of sexual violence women face

49. They are making and using technology to get past consent

50. They believe women have a use value

51. They’re lying when they say they can’t show emotions : art, culture, music, etc belie this. And this is aside from the fact that we acknowledge their pride, nationalism, anger, boorishness, sulkishness, entitlement, jealousy, etc. these are emotions too.

52. They use power to get or pressure or coerce sex

53. They don’t mentor women professionally unless they’re sexually attracted to them physically

54. They’re bad and aggressive drivers

55. They’re predatory and some don’t know it ???????

56. They play dumb

57. They owe us reparations and refuse to even consider this - we were left out of Das Kapital

58. They try to turn their wives into their mothers

59. They moderate men and women differently in social media spaces

60. We can’t trust them as soldiers or peace corps

61. We can’t trust them alone with kids period - who do we tell kids to go to if they’re lost?!!

62. That they’ve turned violence into sex “body count” “fuck the shit out of you”

63. We can’t be honest with them - we have to tiptoe around them

64. I’m pissed more men aren’t speaking out about the obvious loss of civil rights of women globally - what the hell! It makes me believe that they kinda want it to happen (plausible deniability of course) because like it’s not gonna hurt them right?

65. At any given time I could pull up incidents where instead of intervening while a woman is being assaulted, the assault is filmed by other men. The reverse simply doesn’t happen.

66. They love borrowed authority

67. I hate them because when they ask “what do you want me to do about it?” And you say the most slacktivist thing, they won’t even do that. They’ll do NOTHING.

68. Because the most unsafe place for a woman in the world is the home

69. Because a woman is killed by an intimate partner globally every 11 minutes

70. Because the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the states is murder

71. Because they believe their morals are their best intentions. It’s like they all think they’re brave but he’s anyone done anything brave ?

72. They use weaponized incompetence to control people and be lazy

73. They believe sexism is benevolence

74. Because someone taught them that it’s the thought that counts and it almost never is the thought that counts

75. That gang rape is a thing

76. Because only a handful of men have most of the global wealth

77. They move goalposts: you can say what your experience is but they’ll discount it as one. You can say it’s others that have experienced the same thing and they’ll discount it as over represented.

78. There’s no acceptable way to be really angry with them, and express that, as a woman

79. They feel comfortable making comments about women’s physical appearance, touching us without our consent and bank on us not rocking the boat.

80. They refuse to believe in the wage gap

81. We could have child care as being mandated but because women are primary childcare givers, we don’t have this.

82. Medicine was only tested on both genders recently because it was too difficult to do apparently

83. Our medical issues aren’t taken seriously

84. Mass shooters are almost exclusively men

85. Because they moan about suicide rates and forget to mention all the women and kids and sometimes strangers that suicidal men take with them

86. They believe they’re entitled to sex - through payment guilt or force

87. They rarely care about what girls think unless they have a daughter

88. Cultures abort girl babies and before they just exposed them to the elements. As a result there’s India and China and the Middle East Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan Vietnam etc there are more men than women

89. They don’t stop female genital mutilation. And they could if they wanted to.

90. More than 100 million women are missing - the shortfall of the number of women in the world we would expect in the absence of sex discrimination

91. They desire us to be dependent on them. Independence terrifies them.

92. They let women leave the workforce during the pandemic.

93. They see male history, male writing, male law as standard and they aren’t. They’d freak out if the USA had 9 woman Supreme Court justices

94. They are more sexist than even racist

95. Male over female Domination is the first and most primal form of oppression

96. Prostitution is the first form of trafficking not the worlds oldest profession

97. They can compartmentalize the pain of others - especially if it doesn’t impact them or their family (their own private kingdom)

98. Every man assumes he’s the king and grows up taught that they deserve to own things, people and property

99. They see women as girls all as potential sexual objects. Especially if they’re mad.

100. They treat sex workers as a different class

101. Women don’t keep men as sex slaves

102. They’ve made the law such that women cannot logistically perform murder in self defence

103. They say porn is free speech and that it’s not real when it’s convenient

104. Despite all of this: all of the proof and every experience logged and litigated… that they don’t believe that women still are being oppressed under male supremacy.

105. Because someone has said it’s okay for drag queens to use “bitch serving cunt” as an expression of femininity- and claim it’s not misogynistic

106. Because of the so-called “husband stitch”

#misandry #misogyny #feminism #feminist

[sapphicscholar]

Something I landed on today while I was talking to a friend ( @trying-to-get-somewhere-real ) about a post that frustrated me was that part of what I feel is changing fandom so drastically is that it’s mimicking influencer culture. And here’s the thing: most of these annoying things are nothing new when taken in isolation, but what is new is the way these old patterns are 1) becoming ingrained and therefore acceptable (if only begrudgingly so); 2) threading themselves together to constitute a new norm for what fandom participation entails; and 3) becoming so visible that it makes other ways of doing and feeling fandom harder to access to newcomers in a given fandom or to fandom writ large.

For me, these amplified strands of behavior that turn fans into influencers include (a non-exhaustive list below the cut)

1) Consumption over Community: I’ve talked about this issue ad nauseum, but it’s genuinely the thing I believe will doom creative sides of fandom if we can’t find ways to correct at a large scale. As fandom has spread to new platforms with different norms around engagement (e.g. consumption, scrolling for entertainment, creator vs viewer dichotomy compared to a more community-oriented ethos of reblogging, commenting, mutuality of creation, etc.), there’s been a shift toward thinking about things like fic esp, but also art, vids, and more as content where engagement is limited to consumption and maybe talking about it elsewhere or tossing the original work a like. There’s also been a backlash against those pointing out the problem of this shift, saying that those of us who are annoyed with being treated as content farms are greedy, that you can’t demand feedback, even going so far as to say that it’s the writers and artists who are the ones ruining fandom vibes by making it stressful. And what this does is drive the artists who showed up for fandom-as-community out because the community aspect has gone missing somewhere along the way, and there are far more lucrative ways to create if you’re already gonna be working in isolation

2) Monetization of Fandom: now I know that artists have done commissions or collected tips while live streaming for ages, that authors often have Ko-Fi accounts buried somewhere on their tumblrs (which ppl have long been v weird about compared to the art economy which…anyway, a hot take for a different post!), but the mainstreaming of filing off the serial numbers and the shift to using things like patreons and Ko-Fi accounts as bartering chips or gate-keeping mechanisms has done a number on the fandom ethos. I have no issue with people making a couple bucks doing fannish things they love, but when it becomes so established that there’s an expectation that if you’re good enough or productive enough or make your creations match what the fandom wants enough that you’ll be able to turn fandom into a lucrative side hustle or even career is…not the same. At all. And the infusion of capital into fandom creates a vicious cycle with the shift from community to consumption! They’re mutually reinforcing!

3) Entanglement of Fandom and the PTB: the increasing accessibility of showrunners, writers, producers, cast, and crew (the powers that be in old school parlance) to fans on social media has allowed for some cool interactions, but it’s also led to a greater investment in canon at the expense of fan creativity, as well as the exploitation of fan labor as free promotional labor. It’s hard, right, esp for small queer shows (or even big ones that, esp when they’re focused on queer women or queer poc, seem to get hit with cancellation threats almost instantly) because we want to support in all the ways we can! But then this ethos infuses the viewing practices elsewhere, pushing fans into doing work that studios and networks used to pay people to do while reifying the final say-so of the PRB. And suddenly fans are being chastised if their vision contradicts statements made outside of the show but by someone involved in creating it. And studios are cherry-picking fans who have the most followers or who tweet at them the most to send gift bags or special vip access to, and suddenly we’re creating a whole new category of fan-influencer.

4) Drama-mongering as Influence: not unrelated to the PTB-ordained fan-influencers—sometimes it’s the same people, but not always—but I’m talking about fans who ride what used to be called “fan wank” all the way into a place of influence in what goes and what’s “allowed,” esp in bigger fandoms. There have long been BNFs (big name fans), but as fandom spreads across platforms at the same time as fan community is collapsing, there’s been a real calcification of “acceptable” headcanons to the point that they solidify into the fanon one must follow if you want readers or viewers. (In smaller fandoms, this often doesn’t weigh as heavily, though I’ve seen it take its toll even there!) A controversial take, perhaps, but imo, NGL is one of the worst things to happen to fandom. At its best, it acts like a tumblr ask box in a fandom with ultra shy fans, but most of the time it’s used to stir up shit, pitch fans against each other, shore up the idea that there are right and wrong headcanons, and make demands on authors and artists in lieu of building relationships via comments, community, and engagement that could lead to these conversations happening organically. Those who willingly have open NGLs often end up as the arbiters of these conversations, which necessarily skews patterns of influence, providing them with outsized power to shape whose fics, for instance, get recced, or how one can or can’t write or envision a particular character. It all just serves to curtail the once incredibly capacious field of fan creativity, and that’s a bummer.

~~~

Anyway, I’m not here to reify some utopian vision of the way fandom once was. There are things that have changed for the better, much like there are things that have been a problem for ages and remain a problem. I don’t like the “fandom was once a creative paradise” narrative because it elides the vital question of for whom, and there are real conversations to be had about the deep entrenchment of racism not just in fan spaces and fan creative works, but even in the way we narrate our own history (think about the prominent place afforded to Strikethough as a point of crisis that forced a change, but the way Race Fail almost never features in these stories—perhaps because so much never fucking changed!). But I do think recent years have witnessed the exacerbation or introduction of new issues, and so this post is less about an “unprecedented crisis moment!” and more about “new moment of reckoning” to add to the pile.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Is it wrong that in some ways, I'm actually pretty fed up with the near constant amount of people whining about capitalism?

It isn't because I think they're wrong for disliking it and they're not wrong for being angry at the state of things, but rather that it's just an extension of their general learned helplessness and demands/expectations that someone else do the dirty work of getting rid of the evil billionaires while they sit around and whine and cry about things not happening fast enough?

Because that's what gets to me: That all they ever do is whine about the elite looking down on them as slaves and servants, all the while never lifting a finger themselves to even attempt to save themselves, either because "it's too scawwy to stand up against the billionaires", or because they keep on clinging onto the "Revolution" or for someone else to do the mass slaughtering to keep their own hands clean of blood as some kind of instant panacea that will fix everything. Or even more nastily implied, because they think it's beneath them to do the work because THEY might not get the benefits in their lifetimes.

At this point I'm frankly just "either put up and risk your own damned lives and livelihoods to do something about it, or shut up because you're just a poser and whiny little prick who will never do anything to even attempt to save yourself".

It's not wrong at all. All your points are correct. I'll also add that blaming everything on capitalism is a bit of a meme that, as often happens, devolved from being understood as a memey shorthand to being understood literally. Many of the things referenced in anti-capitalism rants are not exclusive and/or inherent to capitalism. Sometimes those posts include things that are not capitalism at all. Capitalism serves the same function as "the man," a vague, powerful enemy at which to direct your anger. Notably too vague to take any tangible action against. Honestly it kind of resembles the way the right talks about socialism/communism, which is possibly where some of these people picked it up; they simply inverted their Republican parents' arguments.

It's deeply frustrating because if you want to seriously criticize capitalism, you have to use the word correctly and understand what you're criticizing. It obfuscates the problem to throw the word around and that is counterproductive. Marx would certainly not approve lol.

[brazenautomaton]

Could you go into more detail on the "feminism made men's shelters not exist" thing? I have no idea how the causal chain there works. (Also just fyi there ARE men's shelters - at least in my country - but you're not capital-W Wrong, it's legit weird there aren't way more.)

I mean because feminists get extremely, extremely upset when anyone talks about male victims of domestic violence and then start screaming and threatening and harassing everyone in range?

the woman who opened the first women's shelter was Erin Pizzey, and it did not take her long to notice that a lot of the women there were just as violent as the men they escaped, and that it was obvious they needed a men's shelter just as much. feminists flipped their shit about this, protested her, lied about her, tried to get her fired and blacklisted, threatened her, and killed her dog. All of the people who did this were feminists and none of them were not feminists; feminists did not oppose the people who did this and no feminists attempted to help her.

Earl Silverman tried to open a men's shelter in Canada after being domestically abused by his wife and seeing the only resources for men were all predicated on men being the abusers. Feminists lost their shit. They protested him, lied about him, harassed him, went out of their way to strip funding from him, and eventually drove him to suicide. All of the people who did this were feminists and none of them were not feminists. Feminists did not oppose the people who did this and no feminist ever attempted to help him.

Feminists demanded that arrest be mandatory when police showed up to domestic abuse calls. Then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of women got arrested, because domestic abuse is not a gendered problem. Feminists could not accept this. They created a thing called the "Duluth model," which became the standard view of how to deal with domestic abuse, that literally states only men are abusive and any behavior from a woman that appears abusive is due to how a man abused her. The organizations who deal with domestic abuse run off a world-model that literally states men cannot be abused and women cannot be abusers. Feminists pushed for "primary aggressor policies," which meant that when the police showed up on a domestic abuse call, they should consider the "primary aggressor" to be the male, and arrest him. Men who call the police to report being abused are far, far, far more likely to be arrested than the women who abuse them. This is the explicit goal of a policy that was made by feminists, all of whom were feminists and none of whom were not feminists, who used the political and social power of feminism to make it happen, who had free access to that power in order to do so, who enjoyed complete support from feminists, and who did not face any opposition from feminists.

Feminism gets a pass because of the deep-rooted sexism it appeals to. Feminism claims to be synonymous with womanhood, and women are so precious that anything that claims to be aligned with them has to be good. And women have so little agency that this thing can't have possibly DONE anything in the world that is bad, it has to be a mistake, or a lie you told because you hate women so much! You can't remember all the ways that feminism is wrong and hurts people, because they're women, and women don't DO things! You forget it the moment it leaves your vision cone because it doesn't fit the biased narrative. And you just keep going "well, but real feminism is for real equality, and feminism is definitionally good!" no matter how many times you see it isn't. No matter how many times it's proven that yes, feminists do hate men, and yes, feminists are wrong, and yes, feminists are cruel, and yes, feminists care more about hurting men than helping women, and yes, if you mention these things to your "real feminist" friends who are for "real equality" they will expel you and harass you... it just can't stick. The narrative is too powerful. No matter how it's proven, we're going to hear "well I know real feminism is for real equality so we should all still be feminists and give power to feminists and support people who use the mantle of feminism without ever looking into what they believe" over and over and over.

[thewisewill80sbyers]

Friendly reminder that I have communist ideals, I am an atheist and anti Zionist and I am pro resistance too, I'm not going to be harassing anyone online because that's simply not who I am and I am against that + I don't think that's useful in general, but I'm also not interested in entertaining your Zionist propaganda here, there is no conversation to be had after all the barbaric violence and injustice and the corpses of children that I've seen with my eyes every single day since this started that would ever change my mind and in particular there's no conversation about the situation that would change my mind about the dynamics of abuse of power that are clear, there's nothing complicated in what's going on, western governments are the ones in the wrong as they often have been and it's all connected to capitalism and the colonial mindset of our countries, and if you're okay with what's going on or can find any justification, especially because of religion, then you're either completely sick in the mind and have dehumanized Palestinians so much that it makes you blind or so ignorant that it would take months to fix that.

I want peace and justice for the people and the fall of abusive systems in society and I am not entertaining ideas of "justice" that don't make it truly fair for all of us as people.

So, block me if you have any problems with this. I have decided a while ago that the only way I am going to try to change people's minds about stuff this much important is if we're talking face to face, otherwise I'm keeping this space free of that, especially when I can see from what you write that I would need months of conversations to make you deconstruct that amount of propaganda and it's even difficult that it would work completely at this point, first of all because if you haven't changed your mind after seeing everything that happened I don't know what could work and then also because we don't have a trusting relationship and I don't have the energy to do that with strangers in this period of time in particular because of personal reasons

[tekka-wekka]

Pre-Sanctus Fortuna Worldbuilding, Part 1

I've decided to put all of my thoughts about pre-Sanctus Fortuna here, just to have them collected. Maybe I'll come back and add annotations and gifs for evidence later. Warning, this is long.

The Order of the Sword preached that Sparda was once the feudal lord of Fortuna. Canon supports their claim and given Sparda was likely a benevolent lord, I think he would try and leave a society prepared to deal with the unique challenges humans living on Fortuna would face. Like Dumary Island, Fortuna is a place where the veil between the two worlds is thin. Unlike Dumary Island, Fortuna isn't fortunate enough to have demon-human hybrids to squash whatever demons squeeze through the gaps in the veil. They have to get everything done with human power and ingenuity, and apparently managed quite well until Sanctus came along.

Demons attack so often that Scarecrows might as well be the national bird, but despite everyone wearing partial Assassin's Creed cosplay, Fortuna doesn't look destitute, battle-weary, or even particularly primitive. In Vergil's opening cutscene in the Special Edition of DMC4, there's several signs of modernity: cars, a power line, a no-parking sign, even what looks like a unit for central air. All signs that aside from clothing and architectural style, Fortuna is not behind the times. This scene is set either shortly before or after Sanctus poisoned Vicar Sullyman, so he didn't modernize Fortuna-- it always had the capital, trade relations, and technical know-how to keep up with the outside world.

What really strikes me is that the Scarecrows attack Vergil in daylight, on a relatively busy path-- there are businesses on both sides of street, and people (including the famous Lady in Red) walk down it not even thirty seconds after he's taken out an entire pack of demons. Hell, they probably heard and possibly glimpsed Vergil taking those Scarecrows out, but they all seem completely unbothered. Vergil is catnip to demons, but Scarecrows are literally just sacks of rags animated by unintelligent demonic beetles. These aren't servants sent by Mundus to try and take out Vergil for the nth time, this is the indigenous wildlife acting up.

Lady in Red: *approaches*

Deadly Fortune makes it clear that the ordinary people can call upon and expect Holy Knights to take out demons without much problem. The usual paradigm for Fortunans is "demons show up, we call on the Holy Knights, demons get killed." Honestly, perhaps the Lady in Red wasn't interested in Vergil's mostly-hidden good looks, but simply grateful for someone with one of the most dangerous jobs in Fortuna doing it well. I don't think it's impossible for something like this to have happened after the cutscene ended.

Vergil: *prepares to tell her to clear off*

Lady in Red: "Pardon me, but who is your captain? You handled that with great skill, you should get a commendation."

Vergil: "What--"

Vergil: "...what just happened."

Lady in Red: "Oh wait, you're a tourist! If more tourists were as prepared as you, the Knights would have much less work." *leaves to go about her day*

Just imagine how strange walking around Fortuna would be for him, and not just because his father is a figure of worship. Demons and demon attacks are literally a fact of life, but they always have been and people are prepared for them. It's probably normal, even expected for people to openly walk around with weapons, and Sanctus even describes Vergil's clothes as only a "bit dated." Unlike anywhere except maybe Dumary Island, Vergil would fit in-- if he wasn't a foreigner.

But then again, despite all the pros to Fortuna being lousy with demons, there's an obvious con: Fortuna is lousy with demons. Even if the Holy Knights are used to taking out Scarecrows, it's shown that in a one-to-one fight, a Scarecrow is a formidable opponent to a smaller and weaker Knight (Deadly Fortune, pg. 31-32). If a Scarecrow can challenge someone geared and trained for anti-demon combat, then your average non-Holy Knight will definitely have a hard time.

Here's where my personal headcanon for pre-Sanctus Fortuna, and to some extent post-Sanctus Fortuna, begins.

The Holy Knights are definitely outnumbered by civilians, since just to support a warrior class someone has to create the food, gear, shelter, and weapons that Knights need. Sure, everyone can receive some survival training, but not everyone can be a Knight just like how not everyone in reality can be a fireman or a soldier-- not all humans have the same capabilities, and everyone will eventually get sick and/or old.

So the average non-Knight Fortunan has to come to terms with how dangerous their home is. Simply the stress of knowing there's so much danger will have ramifications for everyone's health. The best strategy the average Fortunan has against demons is to keep their head on a swivel, their legs ready to run, and their brain full of where to find the nearest Knight or anti-demon shelter. If you're sick, or just a little too old to run as fast or see and hear as well, your ability to survive an encounter with Scarecrows plummets.

Most people start expecting that their next encounter with a demon will be their last once they reach their 40s. Some people, like Sister Sesta, live to be quite old-- but she's the dean of Fortuna's orphanage (an always busy institution), likely one of the most heavily protected areas in all of Fortuna, due to the high density of children.

Since lifespans in Fortuna are shorter, life moves faster. People start receiving career-specific education at the age of fourteen. It's considered a little odd if someone isn't married and planning for children by their early twenties. At the age of 35, someone may have already reached the highest rank they'll ever reach in their career-- and they're already thinking about their possible successor. Life on Fortuna is short and frequently ends in a brutal fashion, so psychologically, how do they deal with that?

Well, what do they have to angst about? They live on a holy island, the place where the Legendary Dark Knight took his rest after saving humanity from being ruled by the worst of demonkind. Sparda has already saved you from being enslaved by demons, where your life would be even shorter and more brutal, so every day is a gift from the Dark Knight. Living in Fortuna allows you to continue Sparda's holy work by exterminating whatever demons come through the gaps in the veil, so you are blessed. Closed caskets are not a thing in Fortuna, for the wounds of those killed by demons are the wounds of a martyr.

However, your life is a gift, so when your time comes, sell it dearly. Know where the nearest demon-resistant shelters are (nothing is demon-proof), and choose one less than five minutes away. If you make it to a shelter, be prepared to draw lots. If you pull the red straw, and if demons breach the shelter, it is your duty to stay behind and draw attention so others may run and live. Always treat every evacuation drill at your workplace as if a pack of Blitzes were howling at the door. If you are cornered, if you are wounded, if you are too weak to get away, do everything you can to make it easier for the next person targeted by that demon. Claw at its eyes, tear at its hide, choke it as you go down its throat.

When you visit your deceased loved ones on the Isle of the Dead, bring rosemary wreaths and red candles. Place rosemary on their mausoleum door to ward away demons who may disturb their rest, and for the martyrs among your kin, leave a lit red candle by their urns to commemorate their sacrifice. For the newly dead whose bodies must rest before cremation, open their coffin lids and anoint their remains with holy oils and blessed water, so their mortal shell will not be profaned by evil spirits seeking a vessel to possess.

Unfortunately, while Fortunans can rationalize their lives all they want, there's one fact they can't ignore. Very few people want to immigrate to an island where there is a non-zero chance you'll run into a demon on the way to the bathroom at night. Very little immigration means a limited gene pool. A limited gene pool means inevitable inbreeding, and inevitable inbreeding results in people like Agnus, with jawlines straight from Habsburg royalty.

Other hereditary diseases crop up, like the Clergy Disease. Sufferers are immunocompromised to the point that the safest occupation for them is joining the clergy or other scholarly pursuits, where they can be isolated away from bacterial and viral disease. It is thankfully recessive and choosing your spouse carefully helps reduce the possibility your children will develop it, but even someone with a healthy immune system can be a carrier. Worse, it really doesn't matter how careful you are about who you reproduce with if your gene pool is shallow.

There's quite a few families where the father of record is not the blood father, because the chances of hereditary illness were too high-- but don't be too open about how your child's father was a tourist or a sailor, because should foreigners even be allowed on the holy isle of Fortuna, where every inch of soil is soaked in the blood of martyrs?

Being known as a demon-haunted land with strange traditions not only reduces immigration, it makes Fortuna a land and a culture with a double-edged sword of a reputation. What a lovely place to visit, with beautiful beaches, delicious seafood, tantalizing ruins, and exotic religious practices, but who would be foolish enough to live there? Fortunans, who consider their island a holy land gifted to them by Sparda and safeguarded by generations of martyrs, do not appreciate being called foolish.

In addition, nearly everyone knows or loves someone with Clergy Disease. Those with Clergy Disease can adapt to the microbiome of Fortuna, and sometimes even live longer than others due to their sheltered professions, but move them to the mainland and its foreign diseases will kill them within a year. Are the people of Fortuna supposed to abandon their ailing loved ones, their homes, their martyrs buried in Fortuna's holy soil, all because outsiders don't understand their sacred duty to protect the rest of humanity by guarding the thinnest part of the veil?

Every so often some magazine akin to National Geographic comes through and writes about the strange practices of the mysterious demon-worshipping Fortunans. Several Vicars have closed the island in retaliation to such portrayals, only to reluctantly reopen for wealthy tourists.

Of course, when the rest of the world looks down on your community, you turn even more inward for support. In such a place where outsiders are mistrusted and frequently for good reason, anyone who sticks out and doesn't follow the mold is suspicious. Anyone whose existence threatens the careful lie insisting that men are the father of children who look nothing like them doesn't truly belong. Yes, I'm talking about Nero.

The people who were once ready to lay down their lives for the rest of humanity will now cower in back alleys instead of remembering that there are shelters less than five minutes away.

Worse, when a community only trusts people within that community, trusted authority figures can sway the culture to a destructive place. No more sermons on how Fortunans have held the line against demons for generations. Instead, new sermons on how terrible things are, on how if things get any worse the island can only hope a Savior will appear. If the man who bears Sparda's blessing preaches long enough about helplessness and hopelessness, his word becomes gospel. Yes, I'm talking about Sanctus.

Part 2 of Pre-Sanctus Fortuna Worldbuilding is here. Part 3 is here.

[blueishspace]

Hero, Villain God 45

(Prev) (Next) (First)

*Grian's (Mother Spore) pov*

Ok, you are done. You thought this was going to be exciting...and it was! At first...but Xonorth and that Quackity guy been talking about what is basically nothing for the last hour and it doesn't seem like It's going to stop being like this for a while still.

You are bored out of your mind, the other villains are fully out and Mumbo looks like he's one loud noise away from folding onto himself and becoming a black hole... You haven't even begun discussing the actual plan to defeat the cult thing! And that's the whole reason why you are here.

So you cough up, you get everyones attention and the room's temperature drops. Everyone is staring at you, Boogeyman is frozen, the duck guy is intrigued, Xonorth just looks offended and the others seem to just be confused.

Mumbo tries to get your attention.

"Mother Spore!"

"..."

"What do you think you are doing???"

"..."

It's kinda sad to watch him struggling like this, you wonder why he came here in the first place when he's so socially anxious. . . He does deserve a bit of an explanation though, call it pity or call it sticking to your deal with him.

"I got bored"

. . .

"Wha-"

You turn.back towards the table, the room only growing more cold as you push fungi to grow in the corners and darker spots of the room.

"I'm sure everyone here was flattered to have been invited here... However I feel the current discussion isn't going anywhere."

Xonorth hits the table with his fists and Mumbo barely restrains himself from jumping back... Xonorth just snarls at you, quite pathetic really.

"These are matters between me and him, do not speak of that which is not any of your buisness Spore."

"They became my buisness...no, our buisness, when you decided to discuss it so boldy here in front of us during this meeting... And It's Mother Spore for your information."

"How dare you! You-"

"Really it is... surprising that you would divulge your own business so freely in front of so many people. Really, if said buisness was anything of worth you would have put yourself in quite the sticky situation. Of course, luckily for you, everything you have discussed thus far was truly a waste of everyone's time."

You hear the noise of someone covering up a laugh and something resembling a dying breath, you can guess the latter was Boogeyman, call it a hunch...

Behind Xonorth tendrils grow out and spread, the others don't really look impressed, so that's how he wants to play? His loss. You can do that as well, the wall behind You is soon covered in mycelium... He even tries to attack you, sending a tendril your way but you just sidestep it and grab it, as you keep hold on it as mushrooms begin to grow onto it until it is dried out completely and turns to dust.

"Me and Boogeyman were told there would be no fighting here, clearly we were lied to."

Here the casino owner is shocked out his stupor and moves to de-escalate the tension between you and the other.

"No! Ehm, I mean, I'm sure we can resolve this like civilized men."

Can you, you are no man and Xonorth is hardly civilized.

"We have still much to discuss after all. For example-"

"The plan. To deal with that...eggpire problem?"

"Ehm, why yes!"

"Perfect, then we'll stay here a while longer, just to hear the details"

You sit back down, Boogeyman is still frozen in place, you might have to check if he's still alive though, It's hard to tell still the way his breathing is so shallow.

"Recently I have discovered a banquet is going to be held by the Egg bastards and I got an in on how to get in."

Boogeyman unfreezes at that and still slightly shaken asks one very important question.

"And why do you need us?"

"You, I need you for some technical work to deal with some of their weirdly advanced protections, they spent a pretty huge amount of capital on protecting their egg... As for everyone else I might have a way in but we need power if we want to do anything against them"

"So? You want to crash this party then?"

"That's the plan, at least the basis of it"

". . . I see, guessing there's more of it."

"Of course, that's what I hoped all of you would join me in ironing out."

[hidden-poet]

S. lands on top: chapter 4

summary: Coriolanus returns home to the Capital with two women from district 12 plaguing his mind. One a (presumed) dead mystery but another well within his reach.

warnings: unco, dark!Coriolanus, possessive!Corirlanus, Dark themes, mentions of death, she/her pronouns, kidnapping, violence, somnophilia.

Editor: @hotline-to-hell

chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

S. lands on top; 4

Strabo Plinth was waiting for Coriolanus as he exited his university class. 

“Mr. Plinth, sir,” Coriolanus greeted, his voice carrying his annoyance. 

“Coriolanus,” the older man returns, placing a hand on Coriolanus’ shoulder and propelling him forward out of the crowd of his peers. 

“We haven’t seen you in a while. Mrs. Plinth was asking about you.”

“I’ve been busy, sir, with University.” 

More, in truth, with Mabel. 

“Of course, but perhaps you could manage dinner on Saturday night. We promise not to keep you long.” 

Coriolanus swallows his distaste. He hated being at the beck and call of district blood. Now that he was a Gamemaker, he earnt a decent wage and could afford to distance himself from the Plinths. But Strabo Plinth offered far more than money. He was a powerful ally to have in Coriolanus' corner.

So he smiles at the older man and doesn’t jerk from his touch. 

“Why don’t you and Ma come up to our penthouse Saturday? There’s someone I would like you to meet.” 

It would be a good opportunity to test Mabel’s training on people who don’t really matter.

Strabo seemed pleased with the news, and confirmed that both him and his wife would be there. He finishes his sentence with ‘son’ and Coriolanus couldn’t help but flinch. 

—--

With Reaping Day coming up, Coriolanus and the other Gamemakers were working overtime to get everything organized on time. 

It frustrated him to no end. Dr. Gaul had already set him an impossible target and now she was shortening the deadline. 

He had been forced to authorize a heavy hand with Mrs. Fox. Mabel’s hands were often red and sore from the cane by the time he came home, but her temper flared bright still. 

She was a dog with teeth and he was yet to get her to eat from the palm of his hand. 

She loved a challenge, but so did he. 

By the time he got home, the house was dark and quiet. Normally Tigris would sit up and wait but she wasn’t talking to Coriolanus much these days. Another problem that would be solved the second Mabel learned to submit. 

Coriolanus finds his way to his bedroom and locks the door behind him. 

He could see Mabel’s outline on the bed as he dropped his bag by his desk. He isn’t quiet as pulls his pajamas from the drawer, and heads to the bathroom. He hears Mabel move as he switches on the light in the bathroom, he turns back to see if she had woken. 

She had not but the sight before him struck a match. 

She was back in his top and underwear. Her soft hair seemed to shine with its new care and was sprawled around her. Long locks curled on her shoulder towards her breasts. She laid on her back as if she was showcasing her beauty to Coriolanus. Her neck stretched out to him as her head rolled to one side. Her legs slightly parted as one rested on the pillow she used as a barrier. Pretty pink lips and long eyelashes called out to him, taunting him, ‘You can look but you can’t touch’. But why couldn’t he? He owned her now. He was soon to own Panem. 

He drops his pajamas and crawls on the bed over her. She doesn’t wake from his presence, and he takes it as a go-ahead to unbutton her top. The cold air does wake her. She instantly knows what he’s doing and screams for Tigris. 

Covering her mouth with his hand, he brings his lips down to her ear, “Shh, don’t wake the house.”

She screams into his hand and he removes it to backhand her. She lets out a moan of pain, but nothing more. 

He is rougher with his movements, yanking the shirt off her shoulders and pulling her up by the neck to get rid of it completely. He uses both hands to pull her pants off her ankles before returning. 

“Get the fuck off me!” she yells and he covers her mouth once more. 

“You’ve cost me quite a bit of money these last few weeks. Your governess, the peacekeepers, food, chocolates.” 

His hand lowers to rub circles over her sex. 

“You should really thank me.” 

Her hips buck at his touch. She was no virgin and knew of the release Coriolanus was offering. 

He presses his lips down against hers harshly. It was their first kiss and it was intoxicating. She doesn’t kiss back but makes no move to hinder his kiss. His hand goes back over her lips when he’s done and he undresses himself one-handedly. 

He tries not to hurt her as he clumsily tears his clothes off but as she wiggles and fights under him, he is forced to press her back into the mattress with his elbows and knees. 

He presses his naked body down on Mabel to stop her from wiggling. His strong fingers grip over her mouth and her nails claw into his shoulders, trying to hurt him. 

“Put your hands on the headboard,” he demands. 

She brings them up to his neck and digs in. 

“Headboard,” he repeats with a firm twist of her hair. 

She does put them up, curling her little fingers around the rich material. 

One day, when everything was settled, he was going to take his time exploring every inch of Mabel. But for right now, he just needed to reach the end goal. 

He inserts a finger into her to pleasantly find she was wet. His eyes darted up to her at the sensation. 

She had chosen to close her eyes. He takes it as another victory. 

He breaches her entrance with his finger but never fully enters. Just pushes his finger back and forth. 

“Let see, your governess is on a thousand panem an hour and you districts make only one panem an hour. Add that to all the chocolate you eat, and well, you’ll be laying down, taking my cock for a while to come.” 

In anger, she lowers her hand to give his curls a harsh pull. He slaps her thigh in retaliation. 

“Keep your hands on the headboard.” 

She places them back on the headboard.

He used to imagine sneaking out the back of the Hob with Mabel like he watched her do with so many other men. This was better. 

She tossed those men aside when she was done. Never to be spoken about again. 

Here, the only man who would touch her would be him. 

He lines himself up with her and pushes himself as far as he could go. She arches her back at the feeling of him inside her. With a hand over her mouth, he begins to thrust into her. He could feel her lips part under his hand in quiet moans. She used her feet to push back at his hips but it was a half-hearted effort at the least. 

He reaches up to the headboard and clamps one of his hands down on hers ensuring that it stays there. His thrusts are hard and fast.  

He hits a particular spot and her hips buck. 

“You like it there?” he targets the same location. Her hands grapple the headboard almost as a praise. 

“Bet those boys in 12 never fucked you like this. Never gave you the proper attention you deserve.” 

She said something into his hand but it was muffled and surly from her lust. 

Her breathing hitches as the pleasure builds, he can feel her little puffs of air fall on the skin of his hand. Giving her the full treatment, he lowers his hands and rubs two fingers over her clit. She jumps and whines from the attention. It was better than any song Lucy Gray ever sang. 

Between his thrusting and his fingering, she came within seconds. 

He lets out an unintended moan as she clenches around him. Her fight returns as her orgasm is flushed from her and she begins to wiggle underneath him. 

He barrows down again in retaliation, so she was forced to lie there and take it. He shows her mercy by taking away his hand and using it to hold her hips in place.

“You’re used to taking charge, aren’t you? Once you’ve had your fill, you would toss them aside without theirs. Rude girl.” 

She throws her head back and his hand follows as his thrusts become painful. When she lowers her hands to his arms without permission, he doesn’t mind. 

His head spun. For the first moment since childhood, he was living in the present and not plotting and scheming for the future. 

Heavy pants accompanied his thrusts as the hard and fast movements worked his body.

He lowers his head to her neck as he feels his end coming. The position meant his lips were pressed against her collarbone as he came inside her. His hips buck weakly a few times at the end to ensure that he had fully emptied himself. 

Coriolanus rolls off her and into his side of the bed. 

She lays there as Coriolanus’ cum drips out of her, deathly still while he pants breathlessly. 

She doesn’t say anything as she rises and takes Coriolanus’ shower, slamming the door behind her. 

The next morning he rose in good spirits. After so long he finally got a taste of Mabel. He was right to say she was addictive. Still, he didn’t want children running around his feet. He had only just got her. He rang down for Profeous, a pill that worked within a 24-hour time frame to ensure that nothing stuck. 

It was delivered with his morning paper. Mabel was still not up yet. He doubted she went to sleep until the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t his problem, he needed her to get up now, take the pill, and have some breakfast. She could nap later on. 

He brings her the pill and a cup of water. 

She lay curled into a ball on her side. He shook her until she unrolled herself. 

She sat up, with her eyes stuck together from sleep. She won the battle against them and looked at Coriolanus sitting on the end of the bed. 

“Good morning,” he greets, holding out his palm with the little white pill. 

“What is it?” she asks. 

“It’ll stop you from getting pregnant.” 

She snatches it off him and downs it without water. He places a hand on her shoulder as he leans over to place the cup of water on the bedside table. 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she brushes his hand off. 

“You didn’t seem to mind me touching you last night.” 

She glares at him with a fury that doesn’t suit her beauty. 

“That had nothing to do with you.” 

“That had everything to do with me.” he cockily replies. 

“It’s a natural reaction. God's gift to any man who can find the clitoris.” 

She takes the water off the table and gulps it down. 

“I knew you were going to,” she admits softly. 

“Well, you’re not stupid”. 

“So that’s how it will be now? It’s begun.” She rested her head against the cool glass as she spoke. Before regaining herself and placing the glass bedside table, forfeiting her comfort in an effort to seem more put together. 

“Sex doesn’t scare me,” she remarks. 

“It’s not supposed to.”  

“You can’t use it to break me.” 

He places a hand on her thigh in comfort. She tenses under it but doesn’t move it off her to show him that intimacy couldn’t be used as a weapon. 

“Mabel, your life here can be comfortable or it can be very uncomfortable for you. Sex can be something enjoyable for both of us, or it can just be enjoyable for me. You can have food and clothes and as much chocolate as you can eat.” 

“So long as I open my legs,” she had a habit of interrupting him that he had yet to break. 

“And keep your mouth shut.” 

He gets up from the bed, shoving his hands in his pocket and standing above her. 

“There’s a dinner on Saturday night where you will be presented to the Plinths. A trial run for you to show me that you can learn your place here in the Capitol.” 

“My place as you captive,” she bit. He yanks her chin up to him, 

“Your place as my pet.” 

She glares at him. 

“My little lap dog,” he mocks, releasing her.

Intimacy didn’t scare her, the loss of independence did. 

—————-

Coriolanus spent his Saturday completing an assignment that wasn’t due for another two weeks. But the quicker he got school out of the way the more he could focus on Mabel. 

He hid at his writing desk, penning the paper while Mabel sat with Tigris in the living room sewing.

He had left the door open to hear any commotion but he only heard laughter and the occasional scolding of Grandma’am. 

The night was fast approaching and he still had to organize the meal for tonight. Despite being district, Strabo had particular tastes that he demanded to be catered to. 

He sighs as he places his pen back in its holder. Two assignments down, four to go. 

Coriolanus rises from his chair and heads to the living room to organize dinner with the chef.

Mabel paid him no mind as he entered the room. She makes a point to not look at him but continue her sewing as if he wasn’t there. 

He plays the same game as he continues his way to the kitchen and calls down for the chef to be brought up. 

While waiting in the living room for the chef, Coriolanus calls for Tigris. Mabel doesn’t turn at the sound of his voice but Tigris scurries over to him. 

He produces two tickets from his pocket and passes them to her. 

“I’ve made dinner reservations at the Venezia at 6 and requested a lounge with Pluribus at his nightclub for after the Opera.”

“Opera?” Tigris checks the dates of the tickets, “Tonight!”

“For Grandma’am and you”. 

She eyes Coriolanus suspiciously. 

“I’m not so sure, Coryo.” 

“Mabel will be fine here with me.”

“She’s been funny recently. Quite. I don’t think I should leave her.” 

“You leave her every day, Tigris, when you go to work,” he flicks the tickets in her hands, “Besides I’ve already told Grandma’am that you’re taking her.” 

There’s a knock at the door from the chef and Coriolanus pats Tigris on the shoulder as he leaves. 

He passes the living room, crossing directly where Mabel sat but she still refused to look at him. 

—----------------

Coriolanus digs in Tigris’ closet while Mabel was taking a shower. No dress was up to his standard. He wanted something that let Mabel’s beauty speak for itself. Tigris hid behind her clothes. They were all too colorful. Too eccentric. Nothing Mabel wouldn’t drown in. 

His hands went still over a simple black evening gown with a sweetheart neckline and small cap sleeves. He takes it for Mabel along with Tigris’ makeup bag off her vanity and brings it to his room with the dress. Still hearing the shower running, he leaves the items on the end of the bed and joins Mabel in the shower, leaving a trail of clothes as he strips. 

She gives no reaction to him. Showers together were a regular occurrence. 

He picks up the scented soap and lathers it over her body. 

“I’ve put a dress on the end of the bed for you. And some makeup. Do you know how to use it?”

She grabs the soap off him and distances her. 

“We had makeup in District 12.”  

She goes to pass him out of the shower but he catches her arm and pulls her back under the stream. 

“Nothing clownish. Keep it simple. And mind your manners tonight. Plinth doesn’t take disrespect easily.”

Coriolanus leaves the shower first to prepare himself. He brushes and dries his curls into submission. Rubs an expensive cream into his skin to give it a healthy, glowy look and then hunts in his closet for something to match Mabel. He knew he had a black suit that had dark patterned printing on it. But amongst his many clothes, it was difficult to locate. 

When he finally locates it, Mabel had already dressed and begun styling her hair and makeup. He could hear her behind him as he then went to find the perfect pair of shoes to match. 

She hums as she does her makeup, finding joy in once again dressing up.

It was nearly time for the Plinths to come up from their apartment just below. They had brought the floor below the penthouse to stay close to Coriolanus after the death of their son. They latched on to him quickly when he returned home. Replacing the hole Sirjanus left before it bled too much. At first, Coriolanus relished in the attention and the money. But as he rose in society, they got in his way more often than not. 

While Strabo was often an ally, one that Coriolanus was surprised to find had a lot in common with, Ma was a hindrance. Her outdated fashion despite her money, and her babying of Coriolanus in public made it almost not worth the connection to her husband. But all people still had their use. She had brought him the suit he now wore. 

The jacket buttoned upon his right shoulder, giving the suit an almost military feeling. 

He turns around to see Mabel putting on her red lipstick using a small standing mirror. She looked stunning. Her dress was tight upon her body, exemplifying her curves and pushing up her small breasts. She pinned her hair up in a loose bun and followed his instructions on the minimalistic makeup.  

His breathing hitched looking at her. He thought she was beautiful as district scum, he had no idea how beautiful she could be as a Capitol debutante. 

She catches him staring in the mirror and tosses her lipstick down. 

“They’ll be here soon. It’s custom to wait in the living room.”

She rises and spins for him.

“Happy?”

“You look fine,” he dismisses but a glint in her eye tells him she knew how good she looked. 

The doorbell rings as soon as they reach the living room.”

“For a party of a higher standing, we would have servants answer the door. Being as the Plinths are close family friends, I will answer,” he spoke as he walked to the door. 

As soon as it opened, a short woman in a dark green skirt suit popped in. 

“Coryo!” Mrs. Plinth croons and he bends down to her level so she can plant a kiss on his cheek, “We’ve missed you horribly!” 

“I’ve been busy, Ma. With school and work.”

“You mustn't work too hard,” the older lady looks concerned at Coriolanus' schedule. Her eyes softened at his before they caught Mabel out of her peripheral vision.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Plinth had not told her about the special someone Coriolanus wanted them to meet and was surprised to see Mabel standing in the living room. Mr. Plinth smiles as he lingers behind his wife, holding a plate of food. It was a pleasant surprise, one that he knew would make Ma happy.

“Hello,” Mabel greets politely. 

Ma was happy with the surprise, grinning from ear to ear as she walked towards Mabel. 

“My, aren’t you pretty!” Ma compliments. 

“That’s very kind of you,” Mabel returned humbly, “I’m Mabel.” 

Ma pulls Mabel down into a hug, “I am Ma. You can call me Ma!”

Mabel instantly warmed to Ma the same way she warmed to Tigris. Still, Mabel had not passed any test. Impressing Ma was hardly a feat. 

Strabo follows Coriolanus to the living room and holds out the hand that was not carrying a plate. It engulfed Mabel's entire hand as they shook. 

“Strabo Plinth.”

Mabel nods her head back. Coriolanus noticed an instant shift in her demeanor as he approached. 

Her sassy mouth shut, her shoulders dropped, and she kept her head slightly down. 

Coriolanus felt jealous that he did not have the same effect on her. He wondered if it was Strabo’s dark features or large frame that he did not have that produced such a result. 

“Coriolanus never mentioned you.” He could see Strabo drinking Mabel in. He eyes her hungrily as he stands next to his wife. They cloud with darkness, and Coriolanus feels a certain pride. He had what others wanted. The boy in the too-tight shoes came out on top. Snow came out on top.

“He never mentioned me to me either.” Coriolanus’ fingers balled into a fist at her jab. The Plinths looked perplexed at her answer, sharing a glance between them. 

“Can I take that?” Mabel quickly moves on, taking the plate out of Mr Plinth's hands. She uncovers the cloth wrap and looks up in excitement. 

“Are these rock cakes?”

Mrs Plinth laughs, “Yes. You know them?”

“My mother makes them for every birthday.”

Mrs. Plinth looks fondly upon the girl, “My mother used to as well.”

“I’ll put these in the kitchen for later.” 

Coriolanus grabs her arm to stop her from going. Her first fail of the night. 

“Ring the bell and have the maid come out. You don’t enter the kitchen when guests have arrived.” 

Mabel huffs but does as she is told. “There are so many rules in the Capitol. It’s hard to keep up.” Mabel talks squarely to Ma who stands surprised. 

“Yes,” she agrees in a soft voice, “I had trouble at first too.”

“You’re not Capitol?” Mr. Plinth cuts straight to the chase. 

“You’re not Capitol?” Mabel shoots back. 

“Yes,” Ma answered at the same time as Mr. Plinth answered “No.” 

“No,” Mr. Plinth reiterates, “Not anymore.”

Coriolanus finds this time to intervene, “The same is to be said about Mabel.” 

He snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her closer to him. 

“Mabel lives here now. In the Capitol.” 

The maid enters the room and Coriolanus takes the plate off Mabel and passes it to her. 

“Bring it back out with dessert,” he instructs. She bows in response and takes back off into the kitchen. 

“Goodness, what a surprise,” Ma couldn’t hide the look of shock off her face.

“Coriolanus, perhaps it is best if we continue with dinner.” The man puts his hand on his wife's back and urges her forward. She sits at his side and Coriolanus follows suit, pushing Mabel to the table. 

He rings the bell and the first course is brought out. Mabel smiles at the familiar maid but it is not returned. 

“What district are you from?”

“I told you before that we are not district.” Strabo had started to eat his meal and did not look up as he spoke.

Ma sighs answering the question, “We are from District 2.” 

“Oh! I went there once with my father. When they needed workers for the railway developments.”

Just as Coriolanus went to reprimand her, Strabo slams his fist down on the table. 

“No more talk of districts. Eat your food and be quiet.” 

Coriolanus could see a glimmer run across Mabel's eyes. He hoped she could contain it before she embarrassed him. 

“So Coryo,” Ma began, “How’s school going?” 

“I hear you're top of the class,” Strabo added. 

“Yes, sir. Although there is not much competition. Most of the students pay for their place in the university rather than earn it.”

“Have you made any friends yet?” Ma often got Coriolanus confused with Sejanus. Coriolanus was friends with everyone, or at least enough to be able to call upon them for a favor. However, if he said yes, it would start a line of relentless questions. 

“It is difficult with work. I miss a lot of the social events, and I often leave straight after the lecturer has finished.” 

Ma looks upon him with undeserved sympathy. The maid returns from the kitchen with champagne and pours out the glasses. 

“How is work going, Coryo? Dr. Gaul is not too hard on you, I hope.” Ma asks almost meekly. 

She hated that he had followed Dr. Gaul as a  Game maker. She tried for months to pressure Coriolanus into the family business, but he needed to separate himself from the Plinths as much as possible. 

Coriolanus smiles politely back at her, “Fine, Ma.” 

“Oh that’s good,” she answers, taking a bite of her entree. 

“You know, you don’t have to study and work. If you want to focus more on your studies, we would be happy to increase your allowance.” The Plinths had offered several times, to the point the conversation had become dull. 

His allowance was far more than he could spend anyway. He worked to separate himself from the Plinth fortune. One day because of his work and education, he would be president. 

“I like the challenge,” Coriolanus contends. 

“What do you do for work?” Mabel asks. He realized that Mabel doesn’t know a thing about him. 

Coriolanus hesitated to say ‘Gamemaker’. She was in a relatively settled mood. It was sure to disrupt that. 

“I work for Dr. Gaul,” he says instead. 

“Doing what?” she pushes back.

An awkward silence crosses the table.

“Oh, something bad.” she guessed. 

“Mabel, we are having dinner. Eat it or I’ll take it back.” He reaches out under the table and squeezes her thigh in warning. 

“Mabel, what a beautiful dress you are wearing.” Ma was trying to save the night and Coriolanus mentally thanked her for it. 

“Thank you, Ma. So Coryo, do you kick puppies or rip blankets off sick children?”

Coriolanus passes Mabel's plate back to the Maid waiting by the wall to serve drinks. She takes it from him and returns it to the kitchen. 

Strabo gives Coriolanus a head nod of approval. 

Ma clears her throat, “Truly a beautiful dress. Is it one of Tigris’ designs?” 

Mabel nods her head.

“You look fantastic in it.” Strabo comments. 

“And what do you do Mr. Plinth? To earn such respect from Coriolanus?”  Mabel ignores his compliment.

“I am a weapons manufacturer,” Strabo eats quickly. 

She turns to Coriolanus with a glare, “What do you do?” 

“Ma,” Coriolanus ignores her and focuses his attention on his guests, “How’s volunteering at the hospital?” 

Mabel stews over what it could be. While Coriolanus stews over Mabel’s conversation etiquette.  He could not have her talking like that in front of Dr. Gaul, she would be sure to demand Mabel’s tongue. 

He takes her wrists in a tight hold as a warning as he eats and listens to Ma prattle on. 

The first course was done and the plates were cold and empty as Ma finished her tales of working in the hospital. 

Coriolanus offers her a smile as he rings the bell for the next course. It was ready and waiting, coming out almost as soon as the bell was heard. 

Mabel’s servant friend goes to place the dish in front of her but Coriolanus waves it off. 

Mabel looks at him annoyed but doesn’t say anything. Neither do the Plinths. 

They eat in silence while Mabel sits looking at them. 

There was no bread on the table for her to even pick at. 

“Hm, this is good,” Ma tried to break the tension but her cheeks flushed at her words, “Oh I am sorry Mabel. I didn’t-” 

Mabel laughs as if she thought it was funny and Ma unshrinks from herself. 

Her laughing sets the mood of the night back on track and Coriolanus mentally praises himself for making the correct choice to withhold dinner from her. 

Polite conversation passes around the table. Mabel even uses some of the questions and responses learned from her governess. 

He felt proud of his girl. Maybe she would impress Dr. Gaul on reaping day. Maybe Coriolanus was ready to be hailed president of Panem. 

The servants come back and the girl holds the dish of the balled sugar bread known as rock cakes. 

She was silently asking if she was to put it down. 

Coriolanus stares still deciding. 

“Oh Coriolanus, surely she can have dessert. She said rock cakes are her favorite.” Ma pleads. 

“Don’t spoil the girl. She still has lots to learn.” Strabo interjects. 

The decision lay with Coriolanus who allows her to have just one. 

She looked pleased with the decision and it helped to settle her into a better mood. She ate with her hands which would have earned a scolding from Coriolanus if Ma also wasn’t forgoing her utensils. 

He and Strabo choose the cheesecake on offer. 

“If you're free any day Mabel, you should come down to our apartment and I’ll show you how to make them.” 

Mabel perked up at the news but Coriolanus was not pleased with the offer. 

“Maybe once Mabel has settled.” He was quick to respond before Mabel could accept. 

“Oh, of course. There is no rush.” 

Mabel quickly finishes her cake and reaches for another from the plate in the middle. Coriolanus intercepts it and throws it back. 

She huffs but accepts he was serious about only allowing one. 

Strabo finishes his last bite and snaps at the wait staff to take it. 

“Strabo!” his wife chastises.

Another maid brings out a tray of tea and places it in the living room. She takes a small silver box off the tray and brings it over to Coriolanus. She opens the box in front of him showing the cigars. 

He turns to Mabel explaining, “You and Ma will go to the living room now to have tea. Mr. Plinth and I will have our cigars, and join you later on.” 

“I am not one to argue.” Mabel jests, holding out her hand across the table for Ma, who gladly takes it. 

The women were happy together in the living room where the conversation was lighter. Mr. Plinth had moved to take Mabel’s seat next to Coriolanus so they could talk privately. 

“She’s gorgeous. I can see why you sent for her.” Strabo comments. 

“She knows it too. Far too sassy for her own good”. He felt this information was safe with Strabo. 

“Yes. I picked up on that. She needs a strong hand.” 

“Well I am trying, sir, but it’s a fine line between dampening her spirit and extinguishing it completely.” 

Strabo flicks the ash from his cigar into the tray, looking solemnly down at it. 

“I always wondered what would’ve happened if I got Sejanus a woman, if maybe it would’ve refocused his attention,” his eyes flick back to Coriolanus, “A woman like Mabel would have done him wonders I think.” 

Coriolanus felt jealous at just the thought. Sejanus wouldn’t have been able to control Mabel. She would have ended up the family’s avox, eating Ma’s custard. 

But verbally he agreed with Strabo. 

The talk changed to new developments in weaponry and Coriolanus’ teachers that Strabo knew. 

The cigars finished before the tea. The women were too busy talking to finish their cups. 

Mabel had no trouble in conversation with people she deemed worthy of it. 

The men join the living room conversation. 

Strabo went to stand behind his wife and placed a loving hand on her shoulder. 

After Coriolanus poured Ma another cup of tea, he copied Strabo by standing behind Mabel and placing a hand on the back of her neck. She jumps away from him. 

It was not a good look in front of the Plinths and Coriolanus wanted to smack her for embarrassing him but he restrained himself. 

Strabo took it upon himself to compel Mabel into a better attitude. He moves from his wife towards Mabel. 

Strabo takes her shoulders into his hands and rubs up and down her arms. 

“I know how scared you must be. Capitol life can be a tough adjustment. If you ever need anything to help you here. You just let us know.” 

Mabel tore free from his hold, a look of disgust upon her face. 

“Help? From a man who killed his own people for scraps at the Capitol table? I’d rather lay with dogs than take that company.” 

Coriolanus groans at her words. Strabo Plinth was not a man to cross. 

“Oh!” Ma had a hard time with the subject of money and how they required theirs. Her eyes filled with tears and she choked as her throat closed up. 

Mabel reaches out to comfort her, but Ma is taken into the hold of Strabo who demands she go back down to their apartment. 

He leads her to the door, ensuring she gets into the elevator before coming back inside. 

Coriolanus held Mabel’s arm in a tight grip as he scolded her for her behavior. 

Strabo pulled her from Coriolanus and struck Mabel across the face with such force that it knocked her to the ground. 

“Learn what my son did not; submit to the ways of the Capitol or die.”

Mabel glares up at him from the floor, “I’ll tell him you said hello.” 

Before Coriolanus could stop him, Strabo had her by the throat.

‘‘Do you think your beauty will save you?” 

“Strabo,” Coriolanus calls, grabbing the man by the shoulders and pulling him away. It was the first time he had ever used the man's name. 

Mabel gasps for air on the floor.

“I think my beauty will get me killed,” she heaved out. 

Strabo shoves Coriolanus off and straightens back into his sophisticated demeanor. 

“Coriolanus. I am sorry.” Strabo apologizes, “She wasn’t mine to correct”.

“Your wife is waiting for you, Mr. Plinth”, Coriolanus takes the older man to the door by his shoulder, leaving Mabel on the floor. 

Coriolanus closes the door behind them and Strabo turns to him once more. 

“I am not sure what came over me.” 

Coriolanus looks at him bored. It was hardly surprising that Mr. Plinth was a violent man. In so many ways Coriolanus felt understood by Strabo. They could have been father and son in another lifetime. But if they had been, Coriolanus never would have been sent to District 12 and Mabel never would have caught his eye. 

“I apologize for Mabel’s behavior. She was out of line with her comments.”

Strabo nods his head, looking down at his shoes.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t marry her,” Strabo addressed, “You could see how it would reflect upon us.” 

Coriolanus fixed the cuff of his shirt. There would be nothing worse for his reputation than to play son to district-born Plinths and then go and marry a district-born girl. 

“No one will know she is from the districts. I plan to introduce her as a long-lost heiress.” 

“A long lost heiress,” Strabo scoffs, “She’s more district than I am.”

His movements are rash as he pulls on the flaps of his jacket.

“For now. She improves daily.” 

“I thought the same thing about Sejanus and now look where he is.”

He presses the button to the private elevator down to their apartment, “My son would have really liked her.”

There was truth in that comment. Their willful and unshakable values would have made them fast friends. 

“Goodnight, Coriolanus.” Strabo bid entering the elevator. 

“Goodnight, Mr. Plinth”. 

Coriolanus enters back into the apartment to find Mabel had moved off the floor. The experiment had failed and Coriolanus found himself disheartened. She didn’t have long left until the reaping.

He storms to find her in their room. She sat at his desk and tore the pins out of her hair, angrily. 

He takes hold of her ear and pushes her against the wall where he could pin her. 

“Anyone else and your actions would have got you killed tonight.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“I care,” he foolishly admits. 

He pushes off the wall to take off his belt. Spinning Mabel around to face the wall, he lays the belt across her back. 

She yelps as it comes down. The staff in the kitchen would be able to hear her but Coriolanus was so angry with her that appearances didn’t matter. 

He didn’t stop until she was sobbing so hard, it interfered with her breathing. 

“I want you to write an apology to the Plinths before you go to bed.”

Mabel wipes the tears from her face.

“Yes, Coryo.” she bit out. 

With only two weeks before the Reaping, Mabel was nowhere near ready to meet Dr Gaul. 

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[tobiasdrake]

Can you elaborate on the broly cheelai leemo dynamic? I could see what they were going for but thought it seemed a little underdeveloped

It's definitely underdeveloped but for what we get in the film, it works for me.

On their own, what makes Cheelai and Lemo interesting is that we rarely get to see rank-and-file Planet Trade forces. We've gotten to know Saiyans and their mutant elites, but ordinary Frieza Force troops are rarely in focus.

So far as the writing goes, Lemo is basically a purse for Cheelai; He goes where she goes. She's the one that drives the plot of DBS: Broly. An irreverent car thief who stole a cop car and then got ID'd by the police. She didn't really join the Frieza Force; She's using Frieza as a shield.

This woman gives zero fucks.

She's right, too. As Jaco: The Galactic Patrolman clearly established, there's a limit to how much Galactic Patrol can interfere with Frieza's operations. Capitalism is far more powerful than law enforcement.

In any case, this makes Cheelai an interesting figure in the whole conflict. She's not so much with Frieza as she is a wild card in the mix. She's scrappy; She goes where she will, does what she wants, and problem-solves her way out of the trouble she lands herself in through whatever means are available, even if they're unconventional. That's a good setup for a protagonist.

And make no mistake: Cheelai, Lemo, and Broly are the protagonists of this film. In much the same way that Infinity War is more Thanos's film than anyone else's, this is their movie, without a doubt.

For his part, Lemo's an old-timer with the organization. One thing I really like that this movie does is acknowledge that an organization like the Planet Trade requires the existence of staff beyond the direct military. We even see it with the Saiyans, as this same film introduces us to the Saiyan mechanic Beets.

Like Goku's chef of a mom Gine, Beets exists to demonstrate the existence of Saiyan infrastructure. Saiyans may be the most powerful race in the universe but even a warrior race needs bread-making Saiyans and mechanic Saiyans and stuff.

The same is true of Lemo. By his own admission, he's been with the Frieza Force for a long time but he is not a soldier. And, y'know, neither is Cheelai; She's a car thief in hiding.

Leemo's main job is to be Cheelai's sounding board, and to Me Too Me Too every choice she makes with Broly. This serves the purpose of keeping Broly and Cheelai's dynamic from seeming romantic. They're certainly shippable, of course, but the film never crosses that line of making them a canon ship.

This is good because actively trying to thrust Broly into a romantic relationship with the first non-parent person he ever met would seem unbelievably predatory and kill the sweet vibe of their dynamic. Cheelai is not here to be a Love Interest, so the film uses Leemo as a chaperone to keep their scenes from coming across like she is.

They're out here scouting the universe for recruits to join the Frieza Force but having difficulty finding people who can meet the standard requirements for enlisting in the main army. Until they go to pick up Paragus's distress signal and stumble upon the jackpot of their lives.

Once we get the Dragon Ball Minus portion of the film out of the way, so much of the first act is just setting up and developing the chemistry between Broly and Cheelai.

This is the first conversation Broly has ever had with someone who wasn't his abusive father in his entire life.

When they introduce Broly to Frieza and we get an explanation of his tendencies, the animation on Broly is so good.

Paragus explains that he cut off Broly's tail because Broly would lose his mind whenever he became the Oozaru, and lets slip that Broly still sometimes loses his mind and becomes wild and unstable. When Frieza naturally takes issue with such a person being on his ship, Paragus quickly clarifies that he has Broly under control.

As he removes the controller to Broly's shock collar from his pouch, we get to see Broly's eyes go wide with fear, and then he starts grasping at the collar and pulling at it in panic. Pure Pavlovian terror just at the sight of the remote.

With the scene calling attention then to Cheelai and Lemo, horrified by what they're both seeing and hearing.

"It is not a strong current," Paragus assures Frieza while Broly is having a full-blown panic attack behind him.

Lemo and Cheelai collect a very generous payment for finding Broly. We have no idea how galactic currency works but they both react like "OH MY GOD SO MUCH CASH" so we can assume this is a lot of, uh, cosmic cigar cases or whatever.

Admittedly, the "Lady asked you to leave her alone" cliche where the likable male protagonist beats up an asshole harassing the likable female protagonist at the bar is pretty old and tired at this point. But I will note two things I like about this scene:

1 - That Broly isn't the one who escalates. He's not the one who started this fight. Lemo tries to intervene first, attempting de-escalation by offering to buy the thug a drink. It's only after the thug gets violent and decks Lemo that Broly then steps in.

2 - And also, the main point of development that Cheelai, Lemo, and Broly have isn't "Broly stepped up to defend Cheelai". This is just a mechanism for bridging the gap between the important stuff. That is, Cheelai seeing how controlling Paragus is....

And Cheelai getting to see for herself what the "mild current" of Broly's collar looks like in action.

God, if the visuals of Broly writhing around in pure agony don't make you feel for the guy, the sound of him screaming bloody murder for like fifteen seconds straight sure will.

Paragus declares that he had to do it because Broly would have killed that guy if he hadn't. Cheelai retorts by calling Paragus's parenting into question which. Like. Yeah.

We tend to just kinda take Paragus's word for it that Broly's a raging uncontrollable beast purely by nature and it has nothing to do with his failings as a dad. "That's just how the boy is, nothing to be done about it, gotta torture my kid," says the father who tortures his kid while also weaponizing him for personal gain. Why are we trusting him?

The thing this movie did for Broly that makes it so fascinating is that it asks those kinds of questions. It dares to ask, "What if the abusive father's interpretation of his child is actually full of shit?" It reinvents Broly as a character by condemning Paragus, but doesn't have to condemn Paragus any more than the original Z film already did. All it really does is take away the meta-narrative's vindication of his abuse.

The domineering Paragus barks at Cheelai to stay the hell away from his boy. He doesn't even notice Cop Carjacker Cheelai solving this problem herself.

Fun fact: In this moment, Cheelai kills Paragus.

It's a bit of a walk from here to Paragus's death, when Frieza hysterically murders him in order to motivate Broly to become a Super Saiyan.

But this only occurs because the fight between Broly, Goku, and Vegeta has continued to escalate beyond the point when Paragus would have stopped it. His fate is sealed when he reaches for the remote to stop Broly's fight and finds it missing.

The highlight of their relationship-building is, of course, Broly telling the story of Ba's ear after Leemo introduces him to water for the first time. The heartbreaking tale of the first and only friend he had before these two.

Broly wears Ba's severed ear so that he'll always remember what it felt like when he had a friend. Oh my god. Are you shitting me with this. That is the most heartbreaking thing. How dare you make me want to wrap Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan up in blankets and give him hugs and chocolates.

Broly doesn't even like fighting; His dad forces him to train. Which sure makes it really fucking interesting when Paragus turns around and goes, "I have to use a shock collar because my violent and uncontrollable child is violent and uncontrollable!"

Then, as the fight goes on, we keep checking back in with Cheelai and Leemo to get Cheelai's assessment of what's happening. Cheelai sets the tone for how we should be feeling about Broly's fight with Goku and Vegeta.

I love how, when she says Paragus raised Broly to be "the kind of warrior that he wants him to be," the shot isn't of Broly looking fierce or menacing, or beating down Goku or Vegeta. It's the shock collar. This is the visual expression of what Paragus wanted Broly to be.

And that, in turn, is the tone of Broly's fight with Goku and Vegeta. This isn't awesome, it's tragic. They don't even know. They legit have no idea who this guy is. Frieza showed up with a super cool warrior and went "FIGHT THIS STRONG GUY" and so they're doing that.

They have no idea who he is.

And they're probably going to kill him in this fight.

All of this context is what makes the finale of this movie work so hard. Because this is Cheelai, Leemo, and Broly's movie. Cheelai by this point has been firmly established as an irreverent thief who does whatever she feels like. She has no loyalties to anyone but herself and whoever she cares about, she makes dangerous choices, she's young and impulsive, and she's emotionally invested in the wellbeing of this abused boy who deserves better.

Consequently, the triumphant climax of this film isn't when Gogeta defeats Broly, but when Cheelai fucking robs Frieza to save Broly.

This is the emotional climax of the film, offset against the tragic action climax where Gogeta is utterly destroying our boy in a predictable but heartbreaking fashion. The magic of this movie is that by the end of it, it has you rooting against Goku and Vegeta, and utterly distraught when they pull ahead and find the answer in the third act.

This character relationship is underdeveloped. It could have used a lot more fleshing out, and honestly I would never say no to more of these characters.

But for what we got, I love it. Cheelai and Broly are the best characters that DBS ever came up with, and Leemo's cool too.

[emblemxeno]

It's sad how many people simply ignore Fates' worldbuilding, because it really shows how Hoshido isn't an innocent nation. Think about the idea of killing the Nabateans and their remains used for powerful weapons, now think about how the Kitsune are hunted by Hoshidans for their fur to the point they kill any humans who enter their territory. Hell, killing humans is treated as a game by them as a result.

All throughout the later half of Birthright, we hear about Hoshido's defenses falling all the way back to the capital. We actually see it in Conquest, but it still happens in Birthright while Ryoma runs around trying to stir up Cheve to fight Nohr like the CIA and bailing when he gets caught. Once again, we see the aftermath in Conquest, just like the aftermath of the Hoshido Siblings attempting to capture Garon at the opera in NEUTRAL territory. They did the same thing Zola did in Conquest. You get Ryoma stealing medicine for Takumi, but then using the medicine to try and force Corrin into returning to Hoshido. And then there's the whole thing with Shura's homeland, where Hoshido abandoned it's allies to side with the guys who conquered them.

Conquest is meant to undermine Birthright, which ends with Hoshido being completely unaware of a bigger threat. Even then, the underlying problem hasn't been dealt with and no guarente this won't happen again. There's a reason why it's not a good route and an evil route rendered pointless by Revelations, it's two flawed routes that fail to address the real issue and one route that leads to both sides working together to actually end the threat or as Corrin puts it "end the night".

Were I to venture a guess, I'd say it has to do with black-and-white perceptions of innocence and morality. People think the be all, end all of being a pretty shitty nation is just invading other lands and killing their people, but it's really not.

As you say, Hoshidans have a lot of black spots on their records. Coericion (Ryoma with the medicine), a king neglecting his citizens by foolishly trying to find the easy way out (Ryoma with Cheve), breaking pacts with neutral territories (Cyrkensia), provoking insurgence (Cheve again), ignoring refugees (Shura), and-in a JP exclusive line from Azura iirc-annihilating anyone who has a connection with Nohr after Corrin breaks away from Hoshido.

The biggest one though, is the rampant isolationism and xenophobia, both which fuel each other heavily. They have such an excess of resources that lots of it start to spoil or expire, they don't concern themselves with the outside world beyond what can help maintain their own sense of peace, and have perceptions that Nohr is full of selfish monsters. That's why part of Birthright's core messaging is "peace can't last without acknowledging that others need our help, we can't act as if we can keep to ourselves anymore."

I like how you ended your ask as well, I enjoy the "end the night" aspect of Fates' dialogue, especially since the JP names of the kingdoms are "Midnight Sun Kingdom" and "Dark Night Kingdom", as both kingdoms have flaws, thus being 'in the dark' about the truth, and never fully overcoming it, yet still managing to work within it. In contrast, Valla, the "Invisible Kingdom" provides 'clarity' by removing the threat that becomes visible once you change your perspective, a la Hoshido and Nohr not antagonizing each other anymore.

[thumbdrivethoughts]

The Long Game of the Republican Party and their Donors

I’m inclined to say Republicans in power have a deliberate plan to rollback as much social and economic progress as possible to remain relevant as a political party. Elon Musk is just one Right-Wing ideologue in on the game. Republicans know that if many of the problems and issues Democrats are attempting to fix get fixed, the Republican party platform will become irrelevant. The Republican's knew for awhile their party was in danger of dying and all this is their attempt to keep it relevant and alive.

So the plan is to roll back as much progress as possible so Democrats and Republicans have to keep refighting the same political battles of the last hundred+ years.

I studied political science (although I did not graduate) and figured this out way back around the early 2000’s when some of the political stances the Republican party were taking even back then didn't make sense and seemed senselessly hurtful and damaging to people.

Another reason for the rollback of progress is because they know, with the economic rise of the chinese populace, corporate industry might need to secure a cheap source of labour in the future until automation kicks in fully. If you impoverish the United States by rolling back as much economic progress of working stiffs as possible, capitalist industry secures a handy source of cheap labour for itself for future exploitation. That's why they moved industry to China in the first place. It was a handy source of cheap labour in a country with little regulations.

It’s a game capitalist industry is playing. They move around the board, making promises of prosperity in some existing poor places while impoverishing other places that once had higher standards of living.

They are playing the long game over decades and hence why most people don't notice it.

Case in point: Remember in the 80’s and early 90’s when Republican’s were all gung ho for moving industry to China? They said it would reduce prices for goods and it would bring Capitalism to China and that it would even bring down the communist party. If anyone has a memory like me you’ll remember that's exactly what Republicans were saying when they defended American industry moving to China. (You might, like me, even remember Bernie Sanders speaking out against American industry moving to China around the same time). Besides Republicans said, because of unions and government policies, the American worker was getting too much in salaries and other retirement benefits for industry to remain sustainable in the U.S. And so Republicans got their way and a lot of American industry moved overseas to China.

And prices of goods did come down but not the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

And today what are Republicans saying and doing?

They're saying China is screwing us, they are a Communist adversary and we need to move industry back to the good ol’ USA! And as Republicans are saying all this, they are gutting protections for American workers, rolling back economic protections and progress for the American people. Why? You know why. Because they see the standard of living in China is increasing due to their industrialization and they know the Chinese worker is going to demand a higher salary to afford their increased standard of living. And also because environmental standards are kicking in in China due to all that pollution from industry and thus it will be more expensive for industry to stay in China. The same reasons industry left the U.S. in the first place.

That's why these companies - in partnership with Republicans— are preparing the U.S. as a future source of cheap labour by reducing its standard of living and by rolling back the economic, social and environmental progress of the last hundred years. These industries want cheap labour and to find cheap labour in a world running out of such places you have to impoverish people, make them desperate, cut off safety nets so they'll work for you and eliminate government regulations.

They want to bring the U.S. worker down to the level of the pre industrialized Chinese worker.