#What if she turns against the civilian population etc etc

[janamensch]

There was so much talk of ‘spider Ophelia’ and ‘spider Gruff’ that I just couldn’t help myself

[ofstarsandvibranium]

Swipe Right

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x F!Reader

Summary: Bucky has been your neighbor for a few months now, so he likes to think you two are friends. Which is why he thinks you're the best person to go to to help him get back into the dating scene.

AN: inspired by one line of dialogue from the first ep of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. lol also, FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER EP 1 SPOILERS!

Bucky felt lost. Well, he's always felt lost ever since he suddenly came back along with have of the world's population. He was pardoned by the government and now a civilian. He was going through therapy to deal with his 70+ years worth of trauma and trying to navigate his way through the modern world. Everything was new and exciting but also overwhelming and exhausting.

His therapist encouraged him to date and make friends. So that's what he did, or at least, tried to do.

He considers you a friend. You live in the apartment right beside him, gave him a friendly smile and helping hand when he first moved in. You two chatted when you'd run into each other in the hall or in the laundry room. You were nice, attractive, funny. He honestly thought about asking you out a few times, but you were his friend, his only friend it seems. So he couldn't ruin that. Therefore, he resorted to online dating.

He signed up to a bunch of dating websites and apps: eharmony, match.com, plentyoffish, tinder-SO MANY. Why are there so many dating apps?!

He's scrolling through his phone, so overwhelmed by the different pictures and information. What does DTF mean???

He scowls, tossing his phone onto a pile of dry laundry he should be folding. You enter the laundry room with a chuckle, "Everything alright?"

He glances over his shoulder and sees you. He immediately smiles and faces you, "Hey, um, yeah," he gestures to his phone, "Just, um..." he lets out a sigh and asks, "Do you know anything about dating?"

You look at him curiously and reply, "A little. Why? What's up?"

"I'm just," he nervously scratches his head and places his hands on his hips, "I'm trying this online dating thing and it's...a lot."

You can't help but snort, "I feel ya," you give him a reassuring smile despite your heart dropping to your stomach, "So, uh, what sites or apps are you on?"

"Um...all of them?"

You snort again, "No way. Let me see your phone." you hold out your open palm to him and he places his phone into your hands after unlocking it. You swipe through his apps and your brows shoot up to your hairline, "Well it's not all of them , but it's definitely a lot." you look up from the phone to Bucky, "Can I give some advice?"

"Please, I'll take anything you can give me," he replies desperately.

You hop onto the washing machine and hold up his phone, "Okay. These apps are usually for the older crowd. Like thirty five and up, so if you're not picky about age, feel free to keep these. Now, these apps are what the younger generations use. Tinder is usually for hook ups, one night stands and all that. Not many people take Tinder seriously. Bumble, is a level up from Tinder. You'll find people who are more serious about finding a relationship with also a mix of people looking for something casual. Hinge, I think, is a level up from Bumble. You don't see people's typical lame ass bios, but their answers to some fun questions, what kind of relationship they're looking for, if they smoke or do drugs, etc. Also, I'm not sure if you know this, but you can change the age range on all of these apps. So instead of having it from 18 to 50, you can narrow it so 25 to 35 or however you want."

You look at Bucky and see his brows are furrowed in...concentration? Confusion?

"Was that too much? Do I need to slow down?"

He shook his head, "No, no, that's not it. Um, thanks, Y/N," he shoots you a grateful grin and you smile back, "No problem, Bucky." You see the gears turning in his head and you ask a question, he might be scared to ask you, "Do you want me to help you find some potential dates?"

"Will you?" he asks in that same desperate tone from earlier.

Again, you put on a smile, despite your breaking heart, "Sure!"

You tap on Hinge, double checking on his preferences, and then going to the main page.

"Oh! Look here. She's a single mom, but she's also a nurse. On the weekends, you're most likely going to find her wine drunk and watching movies with her kids. She has pets. She'd like to have more kids some day. She sounds nice. How 'bout it, Bucky?"

"Sure. She-She sounds good."

"Cool! So you tap on the heart on whatever thing on her page. So let's like her....answer here. If you want, you can comment something, but if not, you just forward it and hope to see that she'll like you back and you can start messaging her! Also, it looks like some people already like you! So you just tap on this icon here and you can scroll through the different people who've liked something on your page and it's up to you if you want to make contact or not."

Bucky hums and plucks his phone from your hands, "Wow. This-Thanks Y/N. This really helped."

"No problem, Buck! If you ever need more help, just let me know!" you hop off the washer and proceed to start up a load of laundry. You mind running back and forth about how you should shoot your shot, but you were too afraid of ruining the friendship you and Bucky have.

______________________

Bucky: Hey

You: What's up?

Bucky: can you come over? I need more help with this online dating situation.

You: sure!

You let your phone fall to your side with a sigh, Bucky has been asking for your help with his online dating for two weeks now and while you're always happy to help him, it just sucks seeing someone get his attention that you wish you had.

You roll out of bed, not caring about how you looked and exit your apartment, knocking on Bucky's door.

He swings open to reveal him in a tight blue henley and some black jeans, "Hey!" he shoots you a grin and moves aside to let you in, "So, um, this girl, Janine. We've been messaging for a few days now and she wants to meet up. Is that too soon? And where should I take her? I've," he pauses to chuckle to himself, "I haven't dated since the forties so..."

Despite your feelings for him, you knew Bucky deserved to be happy, especially after all the shit he's gone through.

"Hm, well, what kind of vibes are you getting from her?"

"Vibes?"

"Yeah, um, what feelings do you get when you talk to her? Do you feel happy? Do you want to get to know her more?"

"Uh, yeah, I suppose so. I think it'd be nice to meet her in person and get to know her more face to face."

"Then yeah, take her out. But since it's your first time meeting her in person, it should be something casual. Low key, no pressure. A decent restaurant or a bar is probably best."

Bucky nods, "Yeah. Okay. Um, do you think you could help me pick something out?"

You can't help but laugh, "Bucky, I'm sure whatever you choose to wear, you'll be fine."

"Okay. Thanks, Y/N," he slowly wraps his arms around you for a hug, but not too tight in case you're uncomfortable. You surprise him by hugging him back, giving him a little squeeze, "You're welcome, Bucky."

It was Saturday and you didn't have work. You friends asked you to hangout with them, but you didn't want to. You wanted to stay holed up in your apartment, wallowing because Bucky would be going on his date with Janine tonight.

You're mindlessly watching tv , curled up on the couch. You turn your face into the pillow and scream in frustration. You should've just asked him out when you had the chance, but now that chance is gone.

You groan as you roll off the couch and head to your balcony. You just need some fresh air. You push up your window and climb onto the metal balcony. You sit on the outdoor chair you have there and stare up into the night sky. The stars are twinkling, the moon is shining. It looks like a perfect night for a date and here you are, alone.

"Hey-"

"AAAHHH!" you scream by the sudden appearance of Bucky on his own balcony. You're staring at him wide eyed, hand on your chest.

Bucky couldn't help but laugh at your expression, "Sorry."

You shake your head and stand to meet him, "It's fine. What're you doing here? I thought you were on your date."

"Yeah, uh, turns out Janine didn't, what phrase did you use once, pass the vibe check?"

You snort, covering your mouth as you giggled. Bucky's smile grows at the sound and you pull yourself together, "Um, yeah that's it. But I'm sorry."

He shrugs, leaning against the railing, "Honestly, it's okay. I don't think the online dating thing is really for me. I think I'll probably stick to the old fashion way: meeting in person and asking them out on a date."

"That's understandable," you say with a nod.

"So how 'bout it?"

You look at him confused, "How 'bout what?"

"Do you wanna go on a date sometime?" you give a look of surprise and Bucky immediately adds, "But I totally understand if you don't want to. I just-you're nice, and beautiful, and funny I thought maybe-but we're friends so I totally understand if you don't-"

"No, no. Bucky, I just-I'd love to go on a date with you."

"Yeah?" You nod and he holds out his hand, "Come on then."

You give a nervous chuckle, "What?"

"I picked up a pizza after that disastrous date. We can eat and watch a movie. Casual and no pressure, right?"

You look from his striking blue eyes to his outstretched glove hand. You reach out to place your hand in his but then pull back, "Wait. I should probably change."

You step back to head back into your apartment, but Bucky grabs your hand, "You don't have to. You look great."

You chuckle and begin to climb from your railing to Bucky's, with his help, "Alright, Prince Charming. I expect to be wooed tonight."

"Of course you do, which is why I ordered pizza from your favorite place and I'm letting you pick the movie we watch."

"Bucky Barnes, I could kiss you!" you exclaim thoughtlessly but then you realized what you just said. You shook your head and began to ramble off excuses, "No no! I mean not now! Now that I don't want to kiss you. You're very kissable. Not that I imagine kissing you or anything it's just-"

Bucky leans in and gives you a little peck on the cheek, "I don't kiss until after the date's over, doll. So will that suffice for now?"

You could feel your cheeks heating up as you nodded and squeaked out, "Yup!"

He chuckled, taking your hand in his again and leading you to the couch where the pizza was waiting for you.

[itsclydebitches]

I’ve been seeing an uptick in “anti-RWDE” posts lately  — which is a phenomenon I’d like to comment on at a later date  — but for now one of them (quite unintentionally) made me realize something about the finale that I haven’t seen others discuss yet. 

So RWBYJNOR saves everyone, right? Let’s just put aside the animation for a moment  — which didn’t show any army members making it out  — as well as the forgotten side characters  — Maria, Pietro, Qrow’s group isn’t forgotten, but still left behind  — and take things on good faith here. We’ll read the finale through the thematic intention: RWBYJNOR saved “everyone” in the Kingdom of Atlas in Volume 8, deliberately contrasting them with Ironwood who was willing to sacrifice a chunk of the Kingdom in Volume 7. Forget all the messiness and just accept that regardless of the consequences  — like a destroyed Kingdom and a “dead” team  — the heroes are heroic because they didn’t give into a “lesser evil” thinking and managed to save everyone. 

Now, how was that possible? 

Let’s go back to the beginning of the seventh episode of Volume 8, “War.” Salem’s grimm have just burrowed through Atlas’ defenses and taken them out. The shields are gone. She flies Monstra into the fields and releases an army of darkness that immediately heads for the city. What’s the very first thing Ironwood does? 

Soldier: Yes, sir?

Ironwood: I am evacuating all citizens to the subway. Prepare Manta Squad Omega, and dispatch to every part of Atlas.

Soldier: But sir-

Ironwood: Now!

He evacuates the people, with “the people” meaning all the Atlesians and however many Mantle folk got to the city prior to Salem’s arrival. When this episode aired I mentioned being confused as to why the soldier was so hesitant. Why wouldn’t you want the people to get to safety when a grimm army is heading their way? Fans against Ironwood took the soldier’s side, claiming that Mountain Glenn proved that any underground evacuation is a death sentence and thus he obviously doesn’t really care about the peoples’ safety. Fans in support of/neutral towards Ironwood pointed out that this is a pretty big leap, no one is coming up with a better idea for what he should do instead, and that within these circumstances it reads like the soldiers is illogically against this idea simply because everyone is against Ironwood now. The show wants characters criticizing his decisions and making him out to look like a crazed dictator... even during moments when it doesn’t make any sense to be upset with him. Shooting the councilman yes, trying to keep the people safe no. Basically, this small exchange was a mess, but the rest of the volume proved that this was a sound call. The subway never collapsed and no grimm ever made it to that enclosed space to pick the civilians off like fish in an underground barrel. 

So, why didn’t that happen? Well, one answer is because Oscar and Ozpin destroyed the whale. But how did they have time to do that? Without the people dying while they were being tortured, talking to Hazel, escaping with Emerald, fighting Salem, etc.? A lot happened between Salem starting her attack and Oscar ending it, so why wasn’t 2/3rds of the Kingdom’s population decimated during that time? 

Because Ironwood sent his army out to keep the grimm occupied. 

Outside of Ironwood’s cartoon villain actions  — random murders and bomb threats  — which get the most attention due to how deliberately, over-the-top horrific they are, these are the two actions that get the most negative attention from both the story and the fanbase. The soldier seems horrified by the order to evacuate. Marrow is devastated that young adults are fighting in this battle. The fandom is disgusted by both aspects of Ironwood’s character: giving orders that, as general, he expects to be obeyed and having an army that follows those orders. Putting side that cartoon villainy, this is what supposedly makes Ironwood the antagonist here. These are the qualities that have existed since Volume 2, resulting in a “he was always a bad guy” interpretation. These are the qualities that have resulted in anyone who likes his character being labeled as a “bootlicker.” We know these qualities make the fandom hate him because otherwise, more people would be confused as to why a presumably heroic character randomly shot Oscar. Orders, armies, and general military associations are at the heart of Ironwood’s presumed villainy. 

So let’s remove them. 

Ironwood has no evil army. Ironwood gives no evil orders. Power and control lies solely in the hands of our non-military heroes. Everything is better! 

...well, no. Because we saw in Volume 8 precisely the choices our heroes made when the attack started: half of them focused on saving a single individual (Oscar) and the other half kept to the sidelines. At no point did our RWB group act after sending the message and prior to securing the Staff. AKA, during the attack of Salem’s army. We got a very explicit moment in which Ruby looked out the window at the battle going on and turned away from it, continuing to discuss ethics instead of joining the fight. The people of Atlas (which, again, includes many Mantle citizens) had no one but Ironwood and his army because a third of the group was trying to rescue Oscar (they never even had a plan to blow up Monstra — that was also Ironwood), a third of the group was up in Amity, and a third was sitting in the mansion. They did nothing to help the people of Atlas being attacked by grimm. 

Thus, if you remove Ironwood’s actions, everything goes to hell. There is no longer an order to evacuate to the subway. Maybe some people go there anyway. Most probably don’t. They run in a panic wherever they can. Hide wherever they can. Go back home for some semblance of safety. 

There’s no longer an army. Either it doesn’t exist because we’ve determined it’s simplistically bad despite RWBY’s grimm-specific context, or Ironwood likewise never gives the order to protect Atlas’ border. Salem’s army moves unimpeded through the city, killing countless people as it goes. How do we know? Because they’re civilians who can’t defend themselves and there’s literally no one else to help. Remember: Ironwood is not giving orders, there is no army, RWB is in the mansion, YJOR is in the whale, Penny is out of commission, the Happy Huntresses are in Mantle. Those in Atlas are entirely alone. In time, Oscar destroys the whale, but by then it’s too late. There’s no concrete way to theorize how many have died, but it’s inevitably a lot. Everyone else is scatted across the city, trying to survive. 

So this scene 

no longer exists. 

When the group gets the Staff and creates portals for “everyone” to escape through, Mantle is ready to go. They’ve gotten everyone into the crater and can funnel them straight to Vacuo. Atlas, however, is in chaos. When Jaune enters the subway there’s only a few people there, many of which may be wounded or dying. He’s right back where he started, in Mantle at the beginning of Volume 8: needing to go door-to-door to find where people have hidden themselves, trying to convince them all to follow him (remember Oscar commenting to Ozpin about how difficult that was?). Except now, he and Nora are the only ones trying to get people to safey, the city is filled with far more grimm, a significant amount of time has passed for people to be killed or injured (making evacuating them even harder, both due to injuries and an unwillingness to leave hurt/dead/missing loved ones behind), he’s trying to convince these panicking people to go through magic portals, not just walk to a crater, and he’s aware that there’s a very short time limit for this task. 

Jaune returns in a panic of his own, explaining how difficult it will be to get that 2/3rds of the Kingdom to Vacuo. How many are already dead. Barricaded. Missing. Closeup on Ruby looking horrified, but then she rallies. They can do it. Atlas is falling, but residual dust gives them just enough time to find, calm, and evacuate those people. They’re heroes after all. Beating the odds is what they do. 

Then Cinder attacks. 

Suddenly, the group can’t evacuate people because they’re trying to keep themselves safe from her. Maybe Cinder gets the powers because Jaune was off looking for civilians, leaving Penny without a mercy kill. Maybe Nora dies because she’s still trying to help people on the city that plows into the one below. Regardless of how details might change, they’re not getting a spread out, decimated population through those portals before Cinder changes the wish and makes them disappear.  

In this version, the story starts with Ironwood wanting to sacrifice 1/3rd of the population to save 2/3rds and the future of the war. It ends with 2/3rds of the population dying instead. 

This is what I mean when I say the majority of the fandom wants to view a very complex situation through a ridiculously simple lens. The fandom wants to denounce every bit of RWBY’s fictionalized military, the context issues of that aside. The story wants to paint RWBYJNOR as the only heroes, in part because they succeeded in saving everyone (“everyone”) in the Kingdom when Ironwood gave up. 

But they only managed to save everyone because of Ironwood. Because he kept fighting for his people to the bitter end. This is why, though his horrific actions obviously exist in the story, they make no sense (he’ll threaten to kill his people so he can... save his people?) and mess up what little is working in the finale. The story wants us to celebrate the group for evacuating Mantle and Atlas, but the Atlas evacuation would not have happened if not for Ironwood’s actions  — the actions that are ignored in favor of having Winter blame him for everything and then killing him off. The rescue of “everyone” was very much a joint effort. RWBYJNOR’s win is not actually a contrast to Ironwood’s intended sacrifice, for the simple reason that their win depended entirely on Ironwood’s actions. 

If we’re going to celebrate the group getting everyone to safety, we should probably also celebrate the guy who got them all to an easy evacuation point and ensured they weren’t eaten before then. Does that mean Ironwood never did anything wrong? Of course not. As established, the story went out of its way to make him into a villain. Rather, it means that other parts of the story failed to maintain that black and white view, complicating the heroism of RWBYJNOR in the process. If we want Ironwood to be incapable of heroic action, always the bad guy, nothing good to say about him whatsoever... then we likewise need to accept that the group is rather unheroic in many regards too. That, on their own, they would have failed to save everyone, just as Ironwood’s plan failed to save everyone at the end of Volume 7. Because they chose their friend over a kingdom. Because they sat around in a mansion. Because by the time they took action again and tried to escape, without Ironwood’s help they would have lost a larger majority than they originally insisted be saved. 

[ilovemybettafish]

16 Questions to Consider When Protesting Against Israel:

As demonstrations against Israel take place around the world, I am asking those in my Facebook world who might be attending one to please consider the following questions in advance:

1) When demonstrators chant “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”, meaning from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, do you realize they are calling for the ethnic cleansing of 6.5 million Jews from their indigenous ancestral homeland? Is so, where do you suggest these Jews go, who will take them and how do you plan to guarantee their safety? My elderly in-laws were born and raised in Israel. What should they do? What will keep them from the fate of the Kurds?

2) If Jews are not indigenous to Israel, where are they indigenous to? From where did they come? And why does Israel host so many Jewish religious artifacts and archaeological sites featuring Hebrew inscriptions? Were those planted underground as some sort of grand ruse? Would you consider an Irish person choosing to reside in Ireland as a form of colonialism?

3) If Israel’s citizens are guilty of genocide, as the demonstrators regularly declare, why are they so bad at it? After all, the population growth in Gaza and the West Bank far outstrips that of Israel proper. And why is Israel giving advance warning to Gaza’s inhabitants so they can flee before Israel fires upon Hamas installations, such as the media tower today? 10) Is Israel that inept at genocide? And if not, how do you think it feels for a people who actually suffered genocide to have the accusation so lazily slapped upon them?

4) Have the protesters around you shown equal concern for the genocide of Uighurs in China or the Rohingya in Myanmar? Have they recently protested at either country’s embassy? 11) If not, why is the situation in Israel so unique for them? What makes the Jewish State so particularly villainous in their eyes?

5) When people such as Bernie Sanders say “Palestinian Lives Matter”, do you honestly believe that Israelis feel otherwise? I don’t know any Jews or Israelis who are not distraught over the death of civilians in Gaza, and wish desperately that a peaceful resolution could be found that would allow all of Israel’s inhabitants to live safely and securely in the land. Do you really conceive of Israel as an entire country of genocidal maniacs?

6) What will you say (not if but) when the protesters’ chants mutate from Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism with calls to harm Jews wherever they may be found? Late last week, one such demonstrator bloodied a Jewish man with a metal chair. Does this sit well with you? Does your protest include Anti-Semitic images of Jews as vermin or blood thirsty animals? Accusations of Jews controlling the world’s media and finance? Libels of Jews as demonic or parasitic? Do you realize this is why all synagogue preschools need to hire full time security guards?

7) If Israel is truly an apartheid state, how is there such diverse representation of various communities within private industry and government office? In America, can you openly advocate for the country’s destruction and yet serve in congress? You can in Israel! How did Israeli Arabs come to make up 9% of Israel’s Knesset members? And how did Arab Israeli George Karra get a seat on Israel’s Supreme Court? Why do the majority of Israeli Arabs regularly poll that they would rather remain citizens of Israel than one of her neighbouring states or even a newly formed Palestinian state?

8) Did you know that the majority of Israeli Jews are from the Middle East or North Africa? Or did you assume they all present as white? And if Palestine is truly “freed” from the Jews, will you tell the hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled to Israel when they were expelled from Arab countries to “go back to Europe”?

9) If you are upset about the wide discrepancy of civilian casualties between Israelis and Palestinians, would you feel better if more Israelis were killed? Should Israel be blamed for building bomb shelters and Iron Dome missile defense systems while Hamas shoots rockets from schools and hospitals? Would more dead Jews satisfy your rage?

10)If Hamas has so little money for infrastructure and services for its citizens, how do they afford 2,000+ rockets, tunnels, drones, etc? Where did those come from? Did they suddenly win the lottery?

11) Do you think that if Israel returned to its 1967 borders and offered a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, that all would be forgiven? If so, why was an offer of nearly this magnitude turned down without even a counteroffer? Why does Hamas’ charter distinctly call for the destruction of Israel and attacks upon Jews? And why did the Arab states seek to wipe Israel off the map both in 1948 and 1967 when not a single settlement existed?

12) Did you know that Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which could be opened at any time? Have you protested against Egypt for not doing so? Jordan occupied the West Bank between 1948 and 1967. Why was a Palestinian State not declared during this time? Why is Israel uniquely to blame for the Palestinians’ awful predicament?

13) Did you know that Israel allows for a free press while all pictures and stories out of Gaza must be approved by Hamas? Did you ever wonder why there aren’t more pictures of Hamas terrorists in action? And if an Israeli soldier shoots a Palestinian teenager who lunges at her with a knife, is she guilty of killing a child?

14) If Israel is a warmonger for attacking Hamas missile positions, what would be the more appropriate response as its citizens are fired upon? Sit tight and wait until the attacks end? Offer thoughts and prayers? What would the US do if Mexico launched 2,000 rockets from Tijuana into San Diego?

15) If your protest is co-organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, do you actually know any Jews who affiliate with this group? Do you realize that they serve as a cover for Anti-Zionist rhetoric and openly advocate for the destruction of the State of Israel? Do you also think that the Westboro Baptist Church speaks for all Christians? Because I would bet that the ratio is pretty similar.

16) And perhaps most importantly - where are you and your fellow protesters receiving your information? Do you think Twitter, TikTok and Instagram offer the depth of analysis that such a complex situation requires? Can the conflict really be summarized in a tidy meme? Have you spoken with anyone who has spent considerable time in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza? Does your favorite celebrity or influencer research Middle Eastern history in their free time? Would you take a Middle Eastern Studies class taught by Dua Lipa?

I fully understand your sense of empathy for the plight of civilians under fire and the awful images of maimed children and dead civilians. And I understand your desire to point towards a culprit and define a terrible situation in terms of good and evil. And I similarly understand the propensity to equate powerlessness with nobility and power with corruption. But I ask you to consider these questions and decide for yourself if these protests truly share your values.

[codenamesazanka]

TOGA!

and the answer she’s looking for: a very long ramble. 

Toga! Toga Himiko! Her quirk lets her transform into anyone she wants, provided she’s got their blood. When she was 14, she reportedly stabbed a classmate she had a crush on to take a sip of his blood, and from then on, she’s been on the run. Spent the next two years on the streets, dodging Heroes and avoiding capture, until she joined the League of Villains. Now she’s 17 years old - still a minor, though, and that’s likely why Giran says her name has been kept under wraps, at least until Kamino:

So that’s 14+ years of her life living as a “normal” kid, going to school, having friends, living with a family— as far as we know, out of the League, Toga is the one member that had been living most adjacent to the standard norms of the world; been enculturated/socialized as a person living in a Hero society. (Shigaraki was raised from age 5 by All For One, Twice was on his own as an homeless orphan for more than half his life, Spinner was a hikkikomori, etc) She was from “the other side”, she was from the “right” side, part of the civilian population that Heroes had a duty to protect.

In other words, she would’ve learned, from an early age, that when she’s in trouble, a Hero will come save her. Heroes are good people, Heroes are there to help, Heroes protect everyone. Symbols of justice and peace, associated with fairness and kindness and all that nice stuff, etc etc. Heroes are people who save people.

So... why is Toga so scared of Heroes?

Ever since her attack on her classmate, she’s been running, desperate to avoid capture. When I say ‘desperate’, I do mean desperate.

Everyday she has had to run, and so she had to learn some street smarts, gain new skills, train her instincts. Within two years, she’s mastered her quirk and all it entails - like observing people, behaving just as the original person did or close enough, and measuring the exact amount of blood needed to finish her goal without killing the person (Camie). Within two years, she can hold her own in a knife fight and more, she has learned to be sneaky as heck and gain a frankly supernatural level of hiding, and who knows what else.

Which is understandable. She’s up against multiple Pro Heroes, which Shigaraki has said regular Villains don’t stand a chance against, probably because Heroes are trained combatants who have mastered their quirks and have years of experience. So she had to learn fast and quick. Toga says the trick is to not see the training as training - because to her, it wasn’t, it was like being thrown into a rushing river to learn how to swim or else drown.

But still— why? Why this amount of fear? Why throw her lot with Villains and the underworld at 14 years old, instead of going to juvenile court and rehabilitation?

Why in the world did she think she’ll be better off hiding among vicious, dangerous Villains than Heroes that are supposed to help her, like she’s been (supposedly, I admit) taught her whole life? Heroes, who are people who save other people.

And she’s still scared! She’s joined up with the nation’s most notorious terrorists, but she kept her wariness. Moment more Class A students - kids younger than her, still just trainees - shows up, she’s retreating, she picking flight over fight.

—saying she doesn’t want to die. It’s a statement that I think we can logically say comes from a belief of something like, “Heroes can kill me,” which then also logically means—

To Toga, getting caught by Heroes will mean she’ll be killed by them.

No, she’s not insane. No, she’s not some airheaded teenager prone to melodrama. No, she’s not a ‘psychopath’. Toga’s got some strange ideas about love, but otherwise she’s perfectly functional: she’s clever, she’s able to assess the situation and risks and act upon that information, and she’s shown to be observant and empathetic to her teammates, especially Jin. Any ‘damage’ she has isn’t from reasoning or understanding social norms and cues. She’s smart, she gets people, and she knows that as a Villain, she’s liable to be executed by a Hero. Even if that was just a fear before, she’s now seen it happen in reality to Twice.

I think we can all agree that in a civil society, people who have done wrong still deserves to have the right to due process and a trial, and not be executed right then and there on the street. That’s the agreement most societies has come to on conflict resolution - innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and despite what crimes you’ve committed, there’s a system to give you a fair chance for amends and atonement. Ideally, when you know you’ve done something wrong, you’ll turn yourself in because you expect to still be treated as a person and that the justice you’ll receive is appropriate. At the very least, that’s the better option than living the rest of your life on the run, always looking over your shoulder, possibly committing even more crimes because you’ve run out of options in your effort to not get caught.

But that’s not what’s happening here, with Toga. Whatever she learned from her 14 years of life in Hero Society tells her that now that she has committed a crime, a Hero will come and kill her.

And that’s kinda messed up. Why is that?

Putting aside Twice’s situation for now, we haven’t seen blatant proof of this - that if you’re a Villain, you might as well have a target painted on your head for a sniper’s bullet. What we have seen is the masses’ quick and harsh condemnation of potential criminals. Toga’s parents essentially disowned her after the stabbing incident.

But even with people who haven’t done anything wrong yet, people are so quick to judge.

“Does he even have a future?” That’s harsh, Journalist man. Bakugou’s a kid, 15 years old, he’s the victim here of a Villain plot, and here you’re talking about “no future” - meaning no career, no functional role in society, no chance for a normal life. That’s like giving him up for the dead. There’s not even a body and you’re already chipping in the words for the gravestone. Except maybe even worse, because there’s at least the courtesy to not speak ill of the dead; Villains tho, Villains are ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘violent’. Demon child.

What we have seen is a terrifying ostracization of anyone deemed criminal, considered acting against a Hero’s work, considered outside the norm. You’ve got people giving up on you, you’ve got your property getting vandalized—

And maybe you even eventually get a lost kid denied help for not looking like a proper victim.

If you’ve got any association with being a Villain, Heroes aren’t gonna help you. Even if that’s not true, I think people can be forgiven for thinking that from what we’ve seen. Toga certainly thinks this. Villains won’t be helped, even if they need it. That’s what she has gleaned from all her years living in Hero society; that’s what all the Heroes might do to her, if she ever gets caught, and she’s not getting caught to find out; and now that’s what she has seen, her friend dying right in front of her, killed by a Hero. Villains - and those who approach that label in any capacity - don’t get saved by Heroes; they are at best defeated, at worse killed.

So then, if Heroes are people who save other people, then who exactly are those who Heroes don’t save?

And that’s the answer she needs to know.

[jenniferstolzer]

Babylon 5 Rewatch ep 2.20 The Long, Twilight Struggle

Sheridan and Delenn receive an invitation to Epsilon III where Draal pledges the Great Machine to the campaign against the Shadows. Meanwhile Londo commits his Shadow allies to one more attack against the Narn, allowing the Centauri to commit war crimes and end the Narn conflict.

Things I like about The Long Twilight Struggle

1, An energy fluctuation happens on the planet and Corwin turns to his coworkers like “There’s something happening. Contact Commander Ivanova” then the camera drifts to a private quarters. A shower is running. We see the steam as we coast slowly toward the bathroom for a tasteful near nude shot of Claudia Chris—NOPE Bruce Boxleitner. I CACKLED.

2, Draal is great and I love him. It worked out that Sheridan is new here to get a refresher on who Draal is and what’s going on with the Great Machine. Also the Great Machine making him younger is a good way to explain why he’s Herman Munster now. I’m guessing he’ll stay young and vibrant until he disintegrates like the last guy.

3, I appreciate seeing Londo’s true colors in his conversation with Refa. He’s tired, both from the trip to Centauri Prime and of all the war and darkness he’s involved himself in. He’s also still mourning Ursa Jaddo from Knives which was a nice callback considering he had a significant moment of doubt and regret in that episode, and it’s good to be reminded that he’s not totally sold on what’s going on right now. It’s also nice that he’s against the mass drivers at the outset but is convinced to go with Refa’s plan because he considers the glorification of his people more important than himself or anything else. He talks himself into doing something truly horrendous, but it’s wrong and his face knows its wrong. And then Refa makes him watch, when he fully intended to hide from what he’s done. Gguhh the pain is wonderful.

4, Watching this in a rewatch hurts so bad. Like Franklin gives G’Kar a warning about the Centauri’s interest in homeworld. There’s the possibility he can stop it.

5, Delenn and Sheridan go down to Epsilon III she is acting super cocky and in control because she wants to impress her crush, even using clever colorful English phrases. Everyone remembers Abasfrigginlutely Damnit. Oh Delenn….

6, Sheridan looks at the inside of the Great Machine and is like  “Lord, I may not go home” and I laughed b/c it looks like Tron in there.

7. The jump-kicking Centauri.

8, The mass drivers really are the most disgusting move. To devastate a civilian population from space is the ultimate ranged weapon. What could they possibly do? Watching Londo watch it happen is peak drama because as disgusted as he is watching, you know he’s as disgusted with himself in facilitating it. The drama is there but also horror on a level few shows can communicate, that of self-horror. The moment earlier where it was established and Londo still had a concept of right and wrong even as he was dealing with the Shadows is pulling full weight here. At the beginning of this season he was a buffoon struggling to stay afloat, in the middle of the season he finds the power and respect he wanted but loses the trust and friendship of the station in the process, and here at the culmination of his choices he sees what he was really willing to sell his soul for. He could have remained powerless and kept his sense of self, but instead he chose advancement and learned to hate what he’s become. It’s just staggering.

9, G’Kar is also pulling full weight in this episode. He’s prepared to go back to Narn, be with his family, and die among his people but he is the only member of the Kha’Ri not on homeworld and being so, he is an in credibly valuable asset for the race now that surrender is unavoidable. The tears in his eyes when asking for sanctuary are soul crushing, and the horror and shame he’s feeling is an inversion of Londo’s… powerlessness and being suppressed despite knowing he could do more verses being powerful and regretting it.

10, The Centauri terms of surrender are so cruel. It’s the turn of a knife that’s already been plunged to the hilt and Sheridan coming in to yank the dagger back an inch like a badass is extremely galvanizing and give Delenn grounds to commit the Rangers to him later in the episode. Also something I want to note about this scene that I think is even more important than Sheridan being a hero, it’s G’Kar sitting in his normal spot in complete despair, enduring Londo’s terms. Londo is dressed in every decoration and medal he’s ever owned, screaming at the top of his lungs like being the loudest makes him the rightest, yet G’Kar is silent. Londo demands G’Kar be removed from the council chambers like an invader. Sheridan replies by recounting the request for sanctuary, resulting on the two fighting over G’Kar’s head, but no one calls the bailiff to come get him. No one except Londo tells him he needs to go. They give G’Kar the chance to move. Even Kosh waits to see what he’s going to do. Will he attack? Will he scream and cry? No. He stands and with every ounce of self control he contains, delivers one of the greatest axefalls in television history.

“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once, we will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.”

11, AND THATS NOT EVEN THE END OF THE EPISODE! I can’t believe this wasn’t a two-parter with everything that’s happened in this one half an hour of screentime. Sheridan essentially tells G’Kar he’s on his side in this war. He offers G’Kar his hand as an ally, and G’Kar considers it saying; “The last time I offered someone my hand, we were at war 24 hrs later” He pauses to make you wonder if he’s lost the ability to trust, then shakes with Sheridan and the look on his face tells something completely different. He still believes he’ll be at war very shortly, but he’s hoping for it. He’s counting on it.

12, Finally we get the introduction of the Rangers and the only thing that can kind of fit on my “Liked less” list. I like this just fine, but there’s something about Delenn who is in charge of a secret sect of warrior monks pledged to side with the Vorlons against the Shadows, turning the control of those monks over to Sheridan without fully introducing him to their existence. To be fair, she gives him partial control and doesn’t hand it over to him, removing herself from the field and I know having watched the rest of the show that she still is the sole figure in charge of the Rangers and is more accurately pledging herself and those in her service to Sheridan’s cause… but the way they read in this episode it looks like she’s giving Sheridan the reins. The next episode is KIND OF dealing with this with the inquisitor, but in general I think we could have avoided a lot of nonsense if she just phrased her pledge more accurately.

13, And this leads me to a theory… that Babylon5 was labeled their best hope for piece, but really it was built specifically as a neutral ground for the staging of the Shadow war. It really is Babylon 5, as in a replacement for Babylon 4 which was used as a warbase. This is why the Minbari co-founded the station, this is why it ends in fire at the end of everything. It’s existence is specifically tied to the the return of the shadows and the drama and diplomacy of the Narns, Centauri, Telepaths, Earthdome, etc etc are events of the universe that happen to occur there. Wihtout the Shadow War, there’d be no Babylon 5, and without Babylon 5 the universe would not continue.

14.

Finally.

The ARMY OF LIGHT

I got teary-eyed

Things I liked Less about The Long Twilight Struggle

The Delenn thing. But we’ll get back to that next episode. And that’s it.

This episode is truly one of the greatest and most emotionally wrenching pieces of television ever created. It’s a silly scifi show with rubber masks that dares to delve deeper beneath the skin than anything else I’ve seen. We see the horror and depravity of war, but we also see the people turned inside out by it and what colors they are within. Ten out of ten. Thanks for breaking my heart. This is why I had to take pause on my rewatch to prepare.

oh by the way @gin-007 and I are resuming our rewatch from 2019.

and I’m putting all these eps up on @b5picanep as well if you want to go back to see previous episodes. 

[the1stn0elle]

Attack on Titan Analysis Prt.1

This analysis will contain MAJOR spoilers for the AoT series, so if you wish to not have anything spoiled be warned now. This is also not a FULL analysis of the series since it is so ridiculously plot heavy. It would take probably over 100 pages for me to get to everything I'd want to, so this is all for now :)

Summary:

Attack on Titan (AoT) follows the story of a civilization of people forced into living trapped behind walls due to the fear of the giant human-like creatures called titans who thirst for nothing but human flesh and blood. Titans have terrorized the remainder of humanity for many years and the population has been kept safe behind the 3 walls Maria, Rose, and Shina for an entire century. The main 3 characters of the story Eren Jaeger, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlert witness the end of a century of peace as the colossal peeks above the 60-meter tall walls that have successfully protected humanity for 100 years and kick a giant hole in it, exposing all of the civilians to the horrors of the bloodthirsty titans. The 3 friends strive to become members of the survey corps, a group dedicated to protecting the people from titans and uncovering the many mysteries of the existence of titans; in order to reach their goals, they must complete grueling training to prepare them for venturing outside the walls to slaughter titans and bring the creatures to their extinction, but the duty of a corps member evolves being prepared for one’s likely and untimely death while fighting against the titans. AoT is a thought-provoking story that is based around perspectives and discovering the mysteries surrounding the near extinction of humanity. Questions are posed throughout as the plot is filled with twists and surprises, and morals are questioned as the viewers grapple with themes such as “do the means justify the ends?” and “who is the real enemy?”.

Analysis:

Part I: Erwin Smith

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

The Monstrous Commander

AoT is very morally complex in the sense that when an entire group of individuals risks their lives by going outside the walls to save humanity, an individual must lead the herd. Said individual goes by the name Erwin Smith, the commander of the survey corps. Erwin is an individual who must send thousands of his soldiers to their death during each expedition outside of the walls; Erwin’s a pretty morally gray character since his job is to ultimately save humanity but the question is at what price? Immeasurable sacrifices are made in the form of human lives as a successful expedition may result in the loss of more than 40% of the soldiers due to being devoured by titans. At an outward appearance, Erwin is a strong leader who is willing to become a monster in order to provide the eventual win of humanity over the titans, but when diving deeper into his character he is a man who is caught up in his childhood desire to learn all the answers to the mysteries about titans and the world that he lives in.

In these few panels, Armin Arlert picks apart how commander Erwin is an amazing leader despite what many people may believe since he has the ability to make sacrifices even though the outcome may be devastating as many lives will most likely be lost in the process. Armin’s opinion of a great leader is brought around again at different points in the story to emphasize its importance.

Part II: Eren Jaeger

The Boy who Wished for Freedom

Eren Jager is the main character of AoT and might be one of the most dynamic characters in his amazing character development throughout the story. Eren starts as a hotheaded teenager whose only desire is to eradicate all the titans after witnessing his mother and hundreds of people die after the collapse of wall Maria by the colossal and armored titans. His bloodthirst for killing the titans is unnerving in its intensity but he’s become dedicated to the cause because he no longer wishes to live like cattle enclosed in walls for the rest of his life. Eren’s core value throughout the entire series is freedom. Each and everything Eren does is to attain freedom in the hellish world he was born into. His value of freedom is most notably portrayed when Eren is out with his father Grisha Jaeger to visit the Ackerman family; Eren finds Mikasa in her home with the dead bodies of her parents accompanied by dangerous individuals attempting to kidnap her. Eren’s solution to the situation is to aid Mikasa in killing the individuals who have murdered her parents. The turn of events is quite frightening as both Mikasa and Eren were only 10 years old at the time, but it highlights Eren’s desire for freedom. He saw that Mikasa’s freedom was being threatened and he felt so passionately about this that he was not fazed at the prospect of killing the kidnappers who were trying to steal someone’s freedom.

Eren and Armin are able to bond over an illegal book that has drawings and descriptions of the world outside the walls and both boys instantly develop the desire to travel outside the walls to go see the vastness and beauty of the ocean. It serves as a goal to mark their eventual freedom from the terrors of the titans.

After the breaching of wall rose by the colossal titan the cadets experience their first real mission and witness many of their comrades die in the jaws of titans. Eren has headstrong and confident as ever lands himself into the stomach of a titan after protecting Armin from being eaten. Eventually, it is revealed that Eren can turn into the creatures he despises with his whole being. A titan. Following the discovery, Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are tasked with the challenge of trying to convince the leaders of the military factions that Eren is on humanity’s side and will not resort to killing more people. The major event is followed by many trials and questions in whether or not Eren is a threat to humanity until he is finally taken into the care of the survey corps where commander Erwin and “Humanity’s Strongest” Levi Ackerman are finally able to convince the military police to give them custody of Eren. It is concluded that Eren is to be kept alive as a comrade of humanity as he claims that his childhood home in wall Maria has a basement that holds secrets about the titans.

A Life that Carries Weight

As the story progresses, Eren goes from a headstrong hothead to a boy that carries an immense amount of weight on his shoulders. Eren realizes that his very life holds a great weight; many soldiers and civilians die for the small thread of hope that the Jaeger home’s basement holds important information about the titans that will lead to the victory of humanity. The world of AotT is nothing short of being bleak and void of hope so it is understandable that Erwin and other members of the corps are willing to take the risk because what do they have to lose? Up to this point, Eren has faced numerous great losses ranging from the death of his mother, learning how he caused the death of his father, his most trusted comrades being uncovered as traitors, etc. Eren’s mental state is in tethers as he tries to come to terms with the meaning and value of his life and begins to wonder if he was ever “special” to begin with but has been burdened by a special path of life by his father. All of these events take place in the royal government arc of the story. Historia Reiss (formerly known as Krista), a character who was previously only in the background assumes an important role as it is revealed that she is some of the last bit of true royal blood left in the world.

Following Historia’s growing importance to the story, we learn more about the titans and where they come from. I won’t get into all of the technicalities of the 9 titan powers and whatnot but the most important fact to note is that all titans existed as humans at some point in time. Due to the complexity of the topic, I will only graze the surface and state that humans become titans with an injection of spinal fluid from an individual of Eldian descent, this includes almost all of the humans that reside within the walls (I will come back to this sometime later). Rod Riess, Historia’s father has received help from the interior military police to capture his daughter and Eren to have Historia inherit the power of the attack titan which is currently held by Eren (was given to him by his father Grisha). Eren snd Historia learns that the 9 major titan powers are passed down when one consumes the individual possessing the power; this means Rod wishes to have Historia eat Eren so she gains the attack titan power, meaning the power will be in the hands of a pure royal and only those of royal descent can fully harness the power of the 9 titans.

Eren’s capture by Rod is marked by the total collapse of Eren’s mental fortitude as it all but crumbles when he discovers the crimes his father has committed and the consequences of his actions that have led Eren to shoulder such an enormous burden that the once confident boy has lost all hope in himself and his existence.

Now before I get into the next few parts of Eren’s development I have to address the powers of the attack titan, the power that Eren currently possesses. The individual who carries the power of the attack titan can see the memories of their future inheritors which equates to the user being able to see the future. Up to this point, it has been confirmed that only those of royal blood can fully utilize the 9 titan powers. can

Following the events between Rod Reiss, Eren, and Historia, Historia is tasked with taking the throne as the current king is a fraud. At Historia’s crowning ceremony and the ceremony to commemorate the few survivors of the battle at shiganshina where the corps was finally able to uncover the truth about the titans with the information in Eren’s basement, a simple touch of Historia’s hand grants Eren to fully use the power of the attack titan and the future is revealed to him.

The scene marks the complete loss of the Eren Jaeger the viewers are familiar with and marks a new chapter in the story because at this point forward quite literally everything changes.

[kendrixtermina]

The “Genocidal Edelgard” Shallowtake

I was not going to make a post about this because it’s most likely futile and not going to convince anyone nor do I believe in dinifying the purity police with attention, but maybe it will let some ppl know that they dont have to let themselves be shamed for liking the wrong video game character

Whatever might have been the case in the distant past when Nemesis was around, by the “present day” the Nabateans are not at all some commonly oppressed stereotyped minority - the setting is chock full of characters that fit that bill a lot better like Dedue or Cyril. Characters that are ordinary humans not magic dragons. 

And even that is more founded on general purpose xenophobia than from the specific, relatively new early modernity construct of racism. (the dedue situation probably comes the closest)

Sure, Seteth and Flays have to hide from their old enemy the Agarthans, I see how some might find that relatable etc. but most of the population isn’t aware that they exist at all. They hold high status positions, are worshipped by the local religion and Rhea all but rules the entire continent (and says so herself to Byleth in that speech about how she was just “ruling this wayward country in your stead”, “you” being Sothis) - though that is mostly Rhea’s doing of which Seteth and Flayn are relatively innocent. 

The interviews pretty much confirmed that the Nabateans constituted the local aristocracy and that many humans genuinely saw the Elites as liberators - though there was definitely also an element of ppl going around killing random Nabateans to gain superpowers, not to speak of Nemesis’ very obvious very unambiguous mass murder. Not wanting to be ruled over by foreign powers is understandable, though obviously killing them all down to the last civilian was just flat out evil - its certainly not a simple situation, we can all agtree Nemesis & the Agarthans were evil but there is no clear defined good guy. 

There are historical conflicts you could compare this to, perhaps some conflicts in Africa or the middle eastwhere different groups took turns being the ruling class after the latest war,  but it’s not at all like the modern USA or early modernity colonialism, and forcing every real or, in this case, imagined scenario inherently dependent of fantasy elements, into this one framework from the present or near past isn’t conductive to understanding at all. 

And in the present day, by the time Edelgard is alive, we are talking about three specific people that she has good reason to dislike individually. Not any sort of group at all. 

She calls Rhea a cruel beast because that’s all she’s ever seen Rhea to be. She’s the shadow tyrant who rules her world, who created the crappy world Edelgard grew up in. It’s no different Cubans thiking badly of the castros after suffering through famines - or, no need for such extreme examples really, ppl call their least favorite politicians monsters all the time. 

She’s wrong to assume that Seteth & Flayn are wholly on board with this, but on the other hand, it’s not at all a far-fetched assumption to make: They hold high positions in the church though they ostensimbly just appreared out of nowhere one day. Do you have to be an evil bigot to assume that the brother and right hand man to the tyrannical god-queen is condoning & supporting her actions?

The truth is of course that underneath her pseudo-parental facade Rhea is sort of a scared girl, very lonely, very afraid, and ashamed, in a shallow, childish way, for “breaking the rules” just because they are rules. She says she can’t trust anyone, that she feels lonely & isolated... and while no one can blame her for distrusting humans after the slaughter of her people, but the reason she can’t trust Seteth is that she’s keeping her bad deeds secret from him. He wasn’t there the whole time, he just showed up a few decades earlier. 

She sees herself only as filling out for Sothis and doesn’t quite grasp that she’s in charge, very much a follower personality bent on stasis & regularity. 

Is Edelgard obliged to try & unravel the complex psychology of the tyrant who rules her home to correctly deduce why she would deceive even her own family? By all intents and purposes, Edelgard is the one getting rid of an oppressive government that doesn’t let ordinary humans let a say at all. A government where ppl of others faiths and nationalities are typically oppressed unless they work directly for the church.

It’s like having a disdain for, say, Ivanka Trump. She holds a high position in her father’s administration despite having no obvious qualifications, she appears to be profiting & making bank from her father’s atrocities, she certainly hasn’t done anything to stop him or disavow him the way that, say, her cousin Mary did - if you suffered under Trump’s regime you’d be very justified in assuming that Invanka is probably a bad person.

Flayn only looks young (She might not if we saw her in other clothes). I mean, Kronya could badly impersonate a schoolgirl. At the very least they’ve supported the regime by refusing to question their own side and they show some however benevolent belief that it is their duty to “guide” the people. Leaving her to the Agarthans is certainly questionable, but no more so than doing it with Rhea herself, under the assumption that she’s guilty and that it’s a sacrifice that will prevent larger chaos. The agarthans had their plan long before they created Edelgard as we know her, and she couldn’t stop their plots all on her own. 

You could say that it’s callous, distasteful or a deal breaker - as the death knight is her direct subordinate & she makes a personal appearance in mask, I would argue that she definitely knew & sanctioned the kidnapping - but she’s no more callous towards Flayn than towards anybody else. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re evil, or that they deserve to die.... and Edelgard would agree with me.  She doing all this to prevent death – flipping the lever on the trolley problem so it crushes one person instead of five so to speak. She always gives her enemies the chance to surrender, unwilling allies the chance to leave, and jails enemies whenever leaving them alive wouldn‘t lead to further death… even the ones she has the most personal reason to hate, like the PM.

As servants of the church who have chosed to back her enemies, she’ll certainly kill them if she has to, but not any more than any other enemy. At no point anywhere in the story does she say anything like that they need to die on principle. Nowhere at all. Indeed there is much evidence to the contrary.

The church paints her as being completely against the religion or even wanting to set herself up as a satanic godess cause it‘s good politics & they don‘t get what she‘s doing – to an extent her own credibility & messaging is compromised by her secretive and at times unscrupulous actions, no one said she was perfect. In truth all she wants is to have the church out of politics, you know, what we have in nearly every modern country outside the vatican and saudi arabia.

You can absolutely let Flayn & Seteth go on CF and there is no word, no fuss about it anywhere. No „make sure to kill em all“ which would certainly be there if the narrative wanted to portray Edelgard that way. It requires the mediation of Byleth as someone they would talk to & not immediately assume the worst of, but, they see the church as the embodymet of all that is good & fighting its enemies as their sacred duty so of course it wouldn‘t be possible for just anyone to talk them down. It‘s framed as Flayn letting Byleth go cause they saved her life once, even if we know from behind the screen that she wasn‘t going to survive a fight to the death against the player-controlled faction.

Heck, even when it comes to Rhea, the one most guilty that Edelgard has the most reason to loathe, she‘s ultimately surprisingly gracious. She gives her the option to surrender – and this is not a lie, she discusses this with Byleth in a lecture question, and seriously ponders the possibility. Here Byleth gets a range of options like „stab her in the back“ and „keep the church under imperial control“ but you know which one nets you the support points? „Strip her of her authority so she can‘t interfere in politics“. She wasn‘t gonna mess with the religious folks & their religion at all, just make it so it‘s separate from government. Rhea could even keep being pope, if she could be satisfied without having complete supreme authority (and ripping her precious artifact out of Byleth‘s chest) – even when she puts her down she‘s not 100% without pity, telling her that „Your duty is done“ (the translators mucked this up)

Couldn‘t be any further from „lets kill them all on principle“.

What really annoys me is how ppl go and twist everything Edelgard says out of context to ascribe a motive to her that just isn’t there.

Common examples:

„If you have Flayn or Seteth fight her she‘ll say they need to die because they‘re nabateans“

Actually what she says is this: „You are a child of the godess. You must not have power over the people!“ Not getting to be privileges rulers anymore =/= being opressed. Stay out of politics =/= Diediedie. Also, this is from the VW/SS boss fight, where they have literally come to get her in her own capital.

„Linhard & Leonie don‘t tell her & hubert about Indech, probably cause he expects that she‘ll go & kill him„

What he actually says is: „Lake Teutates is a place that concerns the saints of the Church of Seiros. It may become bothersome should the two of them find out...“

„It may be bothersome“ as in, „we might get in trouble“, for doing the possibly very inadvisable thing of waltzing into what could possibly be an enemy location to satisfy personal curiosity. If it‘s something related to her agenda she might take over and Linny wouldn‘t get to investigate as he pleases – at very most you might construe it as Linny fearing that they‘ll be accused of consorting with the enemy, but „bothersome“ suggest possible annoyance not imminent murder.

The whole scene ends with Linhard telling Byleth to fill her in later. Doesn‘t sound at all like he expects her to go back with a harpoon.

„She said Claude isn‘t fit to be a ruler cause he‘s a foreigner“

What she actually says: „I understand your ideals are not so far removed from my own. But without knowledge of Fodlan‘s history, I cannot entrust its rule to you“

Now without the additional contexts that Claude won‘t get until after the fight, it might easily feel a bit like the former with the raw spots he‘d have from his backstory, but what she means is that he‘s ignorant of the Agarthan threat – which he is. Edelgard is all for making peace with Almyra and sees fostering isolationism & prejudice as one of the many faults of the church.

Once Claude basically kills Edelgard for information, he winds up having to take care of the storm she had been holding back. But to his credit, he DID „finish the job“ and get the info. But he didn‘t have it at that point.

And I don‘t mean any of this in the least bit as a diss of Claude - He is the smartest character, so there would be no plot if he got easy access to the info.  At this point, they both think they can probably do better, and more importantly, both their backstories have made them so that they won‘t let down their guard far enough to cooperate in this scenario.

That‘s also why the outcome in CF is contingent on Byleth‘s choice. - You‘d sort of have to trust that he will also act so as to minimize casualties.

Very disingenious since many players wouldn‘t necessarily trigger these dialogues.

I guess because Adrestia got a vaguely central-european aesthetic (partially; all the countries are hodgepodge mashups and there’s more than enough spanish or ancient roman vibes there) and central europe existed only for those 12 years of tyranny I guess, even though many other places have had similar BS happening, including the US that delights in making craptons of movies about their faraway victory because their governments haven’t added much of value to the planet as of late. -.- 

Faerghus (vaguely french/ russian - not at all places where nothing bad happened ever) has actually annexed some territory from their northern neighbors in the recent past, not to speak of the whole Duscur atrocity - but no one seems to go around laying that at Dimitri’s feet, because it would be nonsensical - he was a child at the time and as an individual he is super against it and champions a policy of reconcilliation if he gets to rule. after all, there wouldn’t be much of a plot if the characters inherited three perfect faultless problem free countries. 

Edelgard, too, is completely against the previous administration under Duke Aegir (which was in charge during the Bridgid war). She deposed him and is plotting to do the same with Arundel once she can politically afford to do so. For all that one can understand why she would chose the other path  (depending on how much she knows about what Edelgard’s doing and why) it makes all the sense in the world for Petra to support her on CF or if not recruited, because again, she got rid of that previous administration. 

[dragonturtle2]

My greatest apprehensions for the new My Little Pony movie & generation.

Today MLP Generation 5 has been made available on Netflix, and on Saturday I’ll be seeing it with my friends in the Milwaukee Bronies. I’ve had an uneasy feeling about it, and finally putting much of that into words was helpful. It was certainly interesting, and I’d like to share it with other people. I’ve done so with only a few, but I want to put this out there before anyone thinks my opinion is contaminated by either seeing the movie, or something getting spoiled. Tomorrow I may be relieved, let down, or just impressed that I managed to predict so much. Something I’ve definitely kept in mind is that with Generation 4’s premieres, finales, and own movie, the trailers were always cut unimpressively (IMHO). So I tended to be pleasantly surprised with pretty much everything I watch from G4, when I even bothered looking at the trailers. So I’ll be quite happy to be proven wrong this Saturday. Now…

They certainly didn’t intend to be flipping off everything Gen 4 established. No creator ever tries that when they’re brought into a franchise in the payroll of the IP owners. But for their society to regress to this point of segregation? The only thought process I can think of for this bizarre departure are A) The new show staff threw their hands up on matching anything with G4... or B) they came up with a totally fresh setting and timeline, and then some exec or analyst at Hasbro said “Heck no, you are GOING to connect this with our previous money-printing machine. Got it?” And that level of mandated storytelling doesn’t fill me with confidence.

I’ve heard at least one comparison to the Sequel Trilogy, which I expected. True, there’s some notable superficial similarities. It’s decades(?) later, the original heroes are spoken of as myths, for various reasons the world is in trouble, and our protagonist is a disciple-slash-fangirl of what the previous heroes fought for. But this is way more drastic and bizarre of a development.

The conflict in the Sequel Trilogy for the galaxy at large is that the Empire has returned, but rebranded. A new set of new jerks wanted power, teamed up with some of the old jerks, got a bunch of big guns, and held the galaxy hostage. That’s something that just happens in repeated strokes of history. It’s the re-drawing of a bunch of borders. The only moral failing there is being lax with fascists.

Having the Sequel Trilogy retread a plot also isn’t as weird as the My Little Pony franchise. The Force Awakens was made decades after the OT concluded, and the previous Prequel Trilogy took a really different direction and wasn’t received well. Then the franchise got completely new owners. So going back to its roots to start things out was a logical move. It’s only been THREE YEARS between these different shows of MLP, so the repetition doesn’t have much charm. Although repetition may not be the right word, since the setup for this show’s racial dilemma is way more extreme.

Equestria for some reason has gone through a jaw-dropping morale decay. Not only have they embraced division they were fighting against in seasons 8 & 9, they’ve regressed to the level of segregation before Equestria was FOUNDED. The Star Wars equivalent of that would be not only everyone fighting the First Order, they also suddenly don’t allow Wookies and other aliens to drink from the water fountains. Like, how the heck did that turn into a problem?

If the only progress undone from Gen 4 were the relationships with the non-ponies introduced later, that would actually make more sense. Social equality has reactionary backlash, which often occurs immediately after landmark victories. Ponies were the ones that held the most power on the world stage (some kinds more than others in Equestria).

But the WAY bigger issue isn’t internal logic and retcons. I learned long ago to set aside any expectation of a reward or pandering for my years-long commitment to a toy franchise. It’s the potential mishandling of the topic of racism, and I worry we’ve already on shaky ground. The morale of “segregation is bad” feels like bottom of the barrel, kind of copout way of tackling racism. At least, it does for settings that are extremely modern like Generation 5 clearly is. Segregation of people by ethnicity, by rule of law, has fully shifted to obsolesce in the cultural landscape of first world countries. Not even the most deranged lunatics in our government like Boebert or Greene advocate for it (not yet anyway). Stories about segregation can still be done really well of course, but it can’t just be about wiping it off the lawbooks and solving everything. It needs look at why people do this in the first place, who fights for it as the status quo, and what social structures and habits keep the thing in place despite the efforts of good people.

Of course, we still HAVE segregation in society. Not legally, but de facto thanks to economic status and civic planning. And not just physical separation, but grotesque imbalances of power and means. Look at job opportunities, home ownership, insurance evaluations, scrutiny by police, investment in local schools, etc. In G4 it was pretty clear that WAY more unicorns got to live in the lap of luxury or centers of commerce and education. Earth ponies were more spread out, rural, and based on an agrarian existence to feed the country. It’s not that G4 did much with it, but that kind of setup is way closer to modern day inequality, and would be a more fertile bed for those kind of stories. Admittedly, the Pegasi city in the trailer looked absolutely LOADED, so maybe we do have that element in store.

What the trailers and press releases are saying feels weak even as just a segregation story. The ponies separating makes segregation look like a bunch of people moving out like feuding roommates… instead of being put in place by a group of people with WAY more power and money than everyone else. Segregation is portrayed as a mutual agreement, not exploitation. My worry is that they’re going to go to Pocahontas routes, and make the root of racism a select few rich figureheads spreading lies. And undoubtedly, rich people in the private and public sector DO profit off of ignorance and violence, and divert attention from real problems. But when white people in America were treating everyone as subhuman, it wasn’t FEAR that was driving it (at least, not exclusively). For one, it was profit and sheer convenience. Manual labor and the least desirable tasks could be foisted on to ‘lesser’ peoples, and they wouldn’t even require a humane wage. Even if there hadn’t been those empirical benefits, discrimination also brought the sadistic sense of self-importance that comes from standing on someone else’s neck. The imaginary structures of racism let people feel comfortable about their place in the universe.

I wouldn’t call Zecora’s introductory episode all that nuanced, but it was definitely more accurate to real life than the (hopefully hypothetical) scenario I described above. In Bridle Gossip, it’s extremely apparent that the Pony majority of Ponyville are the ones acting like tools, and singling out Zecora for being different. They are the ones obligated to apologize to HER. (Even though it’s of course awkward that they wrote Zecora as a rhyming witch doctor, when she’s meant to represent an African person. It might not be so bad if she wasn’t the ONLY Zebra, and the only creature coded that way.)

Companies and studios will gladly tell their audiences to sympathize with victimized individuals and populations of oppression, and hate the individual acts done upon them. But then they’ll get cagey about making some members of the audience feel any kind of guilt, from distantly benefitting from that system; or maybe even subtlety being part of one. It’s not good for the bottom line to name a civilian population for taking any racist, oppressive or outright murderous actions. No, it’s a single evil dictator (or CEO, or general) and their gaggle of cronies, who just needs to be overthrown. We see this toothless crud play out over and over because corporate entities are either A) that naive, or B) scared of some losers with megaphones losing their minds over the suggestion of self-examination. Some people are SO fragile at the idea of self-examination, or guilt. Because it goes back to having an identity, an innocent and sympathetic self-image.

[digitaldreams0801]

Frontiers Unexplored AU: Alitia

The one where I cross over two of my written stories for funsies.

Alitia World Building

Basically, this section catches people up to speed on the basic world building of Alitia in case they haven’t read it. It’s very heavily abridged for the sake of being timely, and better details can be found in Alitia itself on my Archive of Our Own profile.

There are two types of people: mages and leaths. Mages have outward magical abilities that allow them to use magic (duh). Leaths have passive manifestations that give them prodigal strength in a given subject (tactics, swordplay, communication, etc.) and are stronger in that matter than any mage ever could be.

There are two types of magic: Light and Dark. Light is more focused on control and then working up to power while Dark is raw power with less control at first. Mages pick if they want to be Light or Dark when they first start coming into their magical abilities around the age of 16-18. Light has the added ability to heal others while Dark offers access to magic revolving around symbols and glyphs. After becoming particularly strong, Light mages can start using symbols while Dark mages can start healing. It takes a long time to reach this point though. 

Mages and leaths fall into two categories: winged and wingless. Having wings or not changes the way one uses magic both transformed and in civilian form (different regulation of the magical core). Wings are often found in feminine people but gender is fake anybody can have them. This is a choice made at the same time as the Light/Dark decision at roughly age 16-18 and can be both passive and conscious. 

There are exceptions to the binaries of wings and Light or Dark. Shapeshifters lie on the center of the spectrum involving having wings or not since they can change that at will. Shapeshifters are rare and often have a wide range of magical abilities. Light and Dark magic are opposites with Blends (mages with two types of magic rather than one) being between them. Blends are particularly rare (.01% of the population or so) and are known for being inherently powerful from birth.

There are six types of people with these factors taken into account: Mage/Wings/Light: Enchantress Mage/Wings/Dark: Witch Mage/Wingless/Light: Wizard Mage/Wingless/Dark: Cantor Leath/Wings: Heroine Leath/Wingless: Hero

The Millennium Six are schools centered around each of these types of people, and they train the next generation in matters of combat to defend their realms: Alitia: Enchantresses Sacred Heart: Witches Angelwood: Wizards Sierra: Cantors Acadia: Heroines Ridgeview: Heroes

There are two main religions: the Churches of Starlight and Moonlight, named for the creators of the world. The two gods (Starlight and Moonlight) have Keepers that act as modern proxies of their power. Keepers are reincarnated and have the power of their partnered god. Every church is led by a specific archbishop, and the churches take place on the primary planets of the gods (Starlight’s being Amity while Moonlight’s is Enmity). Starlight is essentially light magic while Moonlight is dark magic (same sort of vein as canon Digimon Frontier and Frontiers Unexplored). Keepers can grant Blessings of their power to others. The closest companions of the Keepers earn their places among the Sealed Ones, trusted fighters working for the sake of peace across the universe. Sealed Ones are twelve in number per generation and based on the twelve zodiac signs. They are selected as Sealed Ones when they confirm their resolve to their cause in a moment of immense strife either inwardly or outwardly. Markings of the zodiac signs can be found on the bodies of the Sealed Ones outwardly to show their positions. 

There will be other technical details mentioned below such as planets, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, let’s get into the crap that’s specific to Frontiers Unexplored!

History

The previous Keepers and their respective team of Sealed Ones went off to battle against one of the darkest forces known to recent history: Luce. He was once a powerful sage working for both the Churches of Starlight and Moonlight to keep the peace throughout all realms, but he turned away from both of them after gaining too much power and allowing it to go to his head. He came to view living creatures as beneath him, prompting him to turn against the light and start to advocate for nothing short of complete destruction. 

The Keepers and their Sealed Ones marched towards Luce, intent on killing him to save the world. In the end, the team managed to seemingly destroy Luce, but in a final blast at the hands of Luce, the team was wiped out. The Keepers and their Sealed Ones were all killed in one fell swoop, leaving behind no protectors for the universe. The Keepers were reincarnated into a new generation, and Luce was widely presumed to be dead. 

The Keepers and the Sealed Ones are named after the Ancient Warriors of Frontiers Unexplored. The previous Keeper of Starlight was Garuru while the previous Keeper of Moonlight was Sphinx, for example. The final two were Wizard and Silphy of Cosmos and Energy respectively (since those two are original Digimon and only appear in FU). 

Koji Minamoto: Keeper and Wizard of Starlight (Light)

Koji is the Keeper of Starlight and a Wizard originating from the planet of Amity. He’s known to be somewhat detached and bitter when it comes to addressing others. He is looked after by the archbishop of the Church of Starlight, Kousei, though the two have a volatile and difficult relationship at best due to Kousei’s emotional immaturity and focus on increasing Koji’s strength. Koji gets along much better with Satomi, a high-ranking priestess of the Church of Starlight and treats her as his confidant. He struggles to make connections with others because of how isolated he was from the world growing up, a byproduct of Kousei’s obsessive protectiveness. Rumor has it that Kousei once looked after the previous Keeper of Starlight, Garuru, as well, but their connections ended after an angry confrontation that resulted in much anguish on both sides. Garuru died shortly thereafter, hence Kousei’s difficult treatment of Koji. 

Koji fights with swords in battle, something that he learned at Kousei’s instruction. He came to fight in his own style though, often combining it seamlessly with his Starlight magic. High expectations were placed on him from a young age because of his position as the Keeper, and he came to master his element as quickly as possible as a result. Koji lacks an affinity for healing unlike most other Light mages though, prompting him to be primarily involved with combat during battles. 

Koji is the Sealed One of Scorpio among this generation, and his marking can be found on the back of his right hand. He came to attend Angelwood when he was of age, falling under the category of Wizard because his Starlight magic forces him under the discipline of Light. There, he met Takuya since the two were roommates at school, and despite their frequent butting of heads due to stubbornness, they came to get along well over time. 

Koichi Kimura: Keeper and Cantor of Moonlight (Darkness)

Koichi is the Keeper of Moonlight and a Cantor. He grew up on Enmity and is on the quiet side, choosing to keep to himself more often than not. He was raised by Tomoko, a leath woman and the Archbishop of Moonlight. Tomoko did what she could to shield Koichi from the rest of the world and its cruelty, but because of the turmoil that followed the deaths of the previous Keepers, there was only so much that she could do, leading to Koichi becoming emotionally rundown despite his attempts to put up a facade of peace. He’s on the passive side and has a talent for talking out matters with others, making him well-liked among those that he knows, if not a bit quiet. He can be found reading a lot of the time, using fiction as a way of escaping the harsh reality that awaits just beyond the book’s pages. 

Koichi uses a staff as his preferred weapon, though he tends to use magic more often than not due to being much more proficient in it. He has completely mastered his power despite the raw magic that comes with the Dark practice, and many have stated him to be a Moonlight prodigy, much to his chagrin. He is strong with symbols and glyphs with a special talent for healing as well, something unusual among Dark mages. 

Koichi is the Sealed One of Aquarius. His symbol is located on the back of his left hand. He left for Sierra as per tradition of Keepers, and he met the rest of the group there through inter-school activities among the Millennium Six. He and Koji share a birthday and a common thread of appearance because their predecessors were killed on the same day, leading to them fostering a surprisingly close connection among Keepers. 

Takuya Kanbara: Wizard of Fire

Takuya is the first prince of Etruna and a Wizard of Fire. The Kanbara family looks after Etruna, the world of fire and ice, from its palace on the center of the realm’s halfway mark between the two magical types. Takuya is the older of the two princes, the younger being his brother, Shinya. Despite being a prince set to take the throne one day, Takuya is headstrong and passionate regarding the topic of adventure. He loves the idea of finding a quest all his own and tends to be somewhat reckless in his search of something beyond the status quo. Takuya is a natural-born leader, and he’s close with Chihiro. Because of his role in Chihiro’s departure from Igni’s elite, Takuya is notably protective of them and would do anything to keep them safe. He is charismatic and confident, never yielding in the face of danger for better or worse while still remaining human and relatable to others.

Takuya fights with fire magic above all else, and when he does use physical weapons, he tends to rely on claw attachments to a set of small gauntlets. He prefers to get up close and personal during battle, and his recklessness shows with his proficiency in combat. He’s not the best with healing magic unless he brings the constant activity of his mind to a halt and concentrates on something that desperately requires his attention. 

Takuya is the Sealed One of Leo. His mark can be found on the front of his left shoulder. Takuya roomed with Koji when the two went to Angelwood, and while it took a while for their relationship to iron out its issues, they became rather close. Takuya and Chihiro have remained best friends despite attending different schools among the Millennium Six. 

Tomoki Himi: Wizard of Ice

Tomoki is a Wizard of Ice born on Etruna as a commoner. He is the youngest son out of the Himi family with his older brother being Yutaka. Tomoki’s brother saw few restrictions growing up due to his prodigal status as an ice mage, leading to high expectations being heaped onto Tomoki’s shoulders. On top of that, Yutaka took the power he possessed to be a reason to pick on Tomoki for being inferior, leading to an imbalance of power that had Tomoki abused by his brother throughout his youth. This caused Tomoki to grow up as a sensitive and easily-frightened individual as he struggled to escape the bloodied shadow that his older brother left behind for him. Yutaka’s prodigal status gave him the chance to escape all consequences for his wrongdoing, and while Tomoki’s parents were aware of what Yutaka was doing, they were unable to stand up to him either due to not having magic as strong as his, making them likely targets of Yutaka’s ultimately volatile temper. All of this caused Tomoki to be fragile emotionally, easily overwhelmed and introverted. 

Tomoki’s magic is based in ice, and he has an incredible proficiency over it because of how much he’s pushed himself to practice. He uses axes as well, his way of setting himself apart from Yutaka’s strength in lances and swords. Tomoki is a decent healer as well because of his heavy bias towards using magic in battle. 

Tomoki is the Sealed One of Pisces, and his symbol can be found on his lower back. He tends to hide it where possible because he fears the reaction his brother would have. He and Yumiko became fast friends due to their similar sense of distrust for the world. He’s a year below Takuya and Koji, and he came to admire them both from afar within Angelwood. 

Izumi Orimoto: Enchantress of Wind

Izumi is the oldest princess of Hiloft and an Enchantress with dominion over wind magic. She has come to be idealized as a perfect figure by her people and those who surround her, causing her to develop a strong persona through acting. She is kind and caring but seems to lack any depth, often throwing on a mask to keep people from finding out about how insecure and self-loathing she truly is. Izumi’s younger sister, Masae, looks up to her immensely, and Izumi is incredibly protective of her, coming to look after her sister after their mother’s death by assassination. Their father is distant due to his work as the king of the realm, causing Izumi and Masae to be heavily dependent on one another. Despite how close they are, Izumi refuses to yield with her practiced mask even around her sister, wanting to be a good role model no matter how much it hurts her in the process. 

Izumi’s weapons of choice are claws similar to what Takuya uses, though she has a heavy bias for her magic. She is a strong healer, though nowhere near as much so as Yumiko or Hinoka. Izumi is a potent fighter and knows how to defend herself, though she hates battle simply for the sake of battle and does it mostly out of a sense of obligation towards those she cares for. 

Izumi is the Sealed One of Cancer with her mark being on her right forearm. She is a student at Alitia who, much like Yumiko, has the potential to be well-liked and popular, though she keeps to herself instead. She is part of the Keepers’ year. 

Junpei Shibayama: Cantor of Thunder

Junpei is a Cantor with the ability to manipulate electricity. He was born on Millennia and grew up there as well. His parents are well-known mages and teachers at the Millennium Six (with his mother teaching at Sacred Heart while his father is part of the Ridgeview staff). Junpei was often bullied throughout his childhood, particularly at the hands of students at the Millennium Six who looked down on him with scorn for struggling with his developing magic. He started to develop a fiery temper as a result, and his spite towards the rest of the world grew incredible and became part of his mindset. Even after Junpei was able to get help to make sure that this stopped, he retained this mindset for better or worse. He is a very polarizing figure in personality, being both overbearingly positive by putting on a mask of endless optimism and notably pessimistic because of his nihilistic views of the world at large.

Junpei’s fighting style revolves around his use of a pair of gauntlets that he has engineered to be able to shift into a ray gun at a moment’s notice. His magic is the most likely to go out of control as a result of his temper issues, leaving his power somewhat unstable and prone to explosion for better or worse. He is strong with glyphs and symbols contrary to what his uncontrollable magic would suggest, a talent he shares with Saki. 

Junpei is the Sealed One Gemini, and his symbol is on his left bicep. He came to be unlikely friends with Saki since they were enrolled at Sierra at the same time, and he was the first person to figure out their mission before they revealed it to the rest of the group. He’s a year older than the Keepers. 

Chihiro Ayumu: Cantor of Earth

Chihiro is a Cantor who was born on the planet of Igni. They have influence over the element of Earth. Their parents were high-ranking noble mages on Igni, a planet known for its discrimination against leaths. During a meeting with the royalty on another planet, Etruna, Chihiro met Takuya, the oldest prince of Etruna. The two got to know one another, and as soon as the chance came, Chihiro used the trip on Etruna to run from their parents, who treated them poorly as a result of their magic taking an unexpectedly long time to manifest in full. Chihiro returned to the palace after their parents left Etruna, and they have been living as an unofficial third sibling of the Kanbara royal line ever since then, making them notably close with both Takuya and Shinya despite their first appearances of bitter defiance towards any who dare to get close to them emotionally. 

Chihiro is physically strong in many ways, resulting in them finding power with many weapons. They can use hammers, axes, and the like well, though their preferred weapon is the gauntlets. Chihiro’s physical strength is unparalleled, and when combined with the raw force that comes with their earth magic, they are a defensive and offensive terror on the battlefield to match their stubborn nature. 

Chihiro is the Sealed One of Aries, and their marking can be found on the back of their left shoulder. They set out for Sierra at the same time as Takuya, and through him, they were able to become fast friends with Koji. It took a bit longer for Chihiro to fall in with Koichi despite attending the same school as him, but they eventually grew to be notably protective of him and the rest of their team. 

Yumiko Mihara: Enchantress of Wood

Yumiko is an Enchantress with the power over Wood, including plant life of all breeds as well as vague abilities regarding life and death. She was born as the princess of Fortunia, a planet known for its traditionalism. Her parents were often detached from her life because of their royal endeavors, and they paired her off with a noble of the planet for an arranged marriage from a young age. Yumiko defied the wishes of her parents, though this only led to continued harassment from both her fiance and the other nobles who sought her attention and the power found in her family. She came to hold reality at arm’s length, keeping it away from her where possible. Yumiko is said to be pleasant at a first glance, a way of defending herself from the rest of the world. She holds quiet scorn towards those who have hurt her, though she masks this as a way of ensuring that she is not infringed upon again in the future. She came to attend classes at Alitia as a way of escaping the plans that her parents had laid out for her since they were dismissive of her pain at best. She left in search of a new start and hopefully companions who she could rely on to not abuse her.

Yumiko is a notably potent healer. She can patch up just about any injury out there, and her healing powers have earned her the title of a prodigy, though she often denies this in favor of fading into the background. Yumiko manipulates plants in battle, often using a magical bow and arrow to further her abilities in combat.

Yumiko is the Sealed One of Taurus with her marking falling across her chest where her collarbones meet. She is a year below the Keepers in classes, putting her in the same class as Tomoki, Mayumi, and Haroi. She tends to keep to the social circle of the rest of the Sealed Ones out of fear of being hurt by others despite her grace and ability to connect emotionally with others. 

Hinoka Sakatami: Enchantress of Water

Hinoka is an Enchantress of water born on the planet of Rivergold, the realm of water. Her mother was of Loduke while her father was from Rivergold. After a messy split between her parents, leaving her mother emotionally unstable, Hinoka moved to Loduke with her mother. There, she found herself suffering because of her closest companion: a boy named Emon. He was the first to accept Hinoka following her move, reaching out to her despite her sticking out for having the notable traits of Rivergold’s people (patches of scaled skin, for example). Emon’s personality soon shifted towards hatred though, and he came to abuse Hinoka by exerting his power over her that came with being her sole source of companionship. After Hinoka and Emon dealt with a toxic relationship of three years, Hinoka was accepted into Alitia, and she went there in search of a fresh start. However, her history remains clear in her demeanor, as she is fidgety, anxious, and soft-spoken unless she feels safe around the people in her vicinity. 

Hinoka fights almost exclusively with magic, and her sole weapon is a staff with a magical gem mounted to the top of it to boost her influence over water. Hinoka is an amazing healer as well, using her staff to augment her natural affinity for helping others. She has notable curiosity towards glyphs as well even if she cannot use them well with magic. 

Hinoka is the Sealed One for Virgo, and her marking can be found on her left ankle. She generally avoids others under most circumstances with Izumi being her first notable friend. Hinoka is in the same year as Junpei and Saki. 

Saki Fushida: Shapeshifter and Blend of Metal

Saki is a shapeshifter and Blend with specific influence over metal. Their magic is highly focused around matters of telepathy and other types of mind magic as well as influencing metal. They have incredible intuition and have been noted by others to be as shady as it gets. Saki is a master at manipulating situations to their every need, and they use this to their advantage to work under Cherubi, Seraphi, and Ophani in the search for Luce. They operate as a spy within the shadows for the sake of the three mages, ever in search of definitive proof that Luce is still alive somewhere. 

Saki was born on Enmity to Wise, one of the Sealed Ones of the previous generation, and their partner. They lived in the Church of Moonlight since Wise was heavily affiliated with Sphinx and acted as the tactician of the Sealed Ones and their Keepers. Roughly one year after Saki’s birth, Wise was killed alongside the rest of the Sealed Ones in the final battle with Luce. Wise’s partner started to investigate, believing that Luce was still alive, only to be struck down during the search. Saki, left orphaned, was ultimately taken in by Cherubi in the chaos that followed. Cherubi, Seraphi, and Ophani were close friends of the Sealed Ones, and the three of them are also convinced that Luce is still alive. Saki grew up in their custody before deciding to use their unorthodox magic to become a spy in search of the truth behind the past. Later, they enroll at Sierra as a Cantor in search of clues that could lead to Luce, keeping their mission secret from all. 

Saki has a varying fighting style because of the fact that they are a Blend. They shapeshift for the sake of their work but are known to take the form of either a masked vigilante known as Lyra or an unnamed dragon. They tend to use mind magic that comes with their shapeshifting abilities often in tandem with metal magic. They are strong with a rapier as well, and this is their weapon of choice. They tend to hide their shapeshifting unless they have to reveal the truth to others, masking as a regular Cantor (since they would only be outed as a Blend if their shapeshifting magic was known). 

Saki is the Sealed One of Capricorn, and their mark is found within their right eye. They hide the symbol with their mask when in the form of Lyra if they aren’t outright using magic to shield it from sight. They are in the same class as Junpei and Hinoka at the Millennium Six (a year above the Keepers).

Mayumi Reiku: Witch of Energy

Mayumi is a Witch with the ability to manipulate energy. She was born as a commoner of Hiloft, a planet known for its wide variety of magical types. Her mother abandoned her and her father when she was young, something her father considers to be a good thing due to her abusive tendencies. Mayumi lived on Hiloft for many years before her father was offered a chance to research the world of N-Yx, a planet with a particularly powerful connection to Moonlight. Mayumi followed with her father, which is where her family settled down with Haroi and his mother. The four became a happy new family with Mayumi becoming notably close with her new stepbrother. Despite the dreary circumstances behind her birth, Mayumi is upbeat and cheerful, easily able to attract the admiration of others. She can be prone to mood swings at times, but her good intentions cannot be denied no matter what. 

Mayumi’s magic is more volatile than most others’ because of her not having much formal training. Her lack of emotional regulation does not help in the slightest, and her mood swings can randomly drain the energy of herself and others if she is not careful. She fights with retractable claws in combat and struggles with matters of glyphs. 

Mayumi is the Sealed One of Sagittarius, and her mark manifests itself on her right calf. She is close with Haroi even though they attend different schools, and she falls within the same year as him, Tomoki, and Yumiko at the Millennium Six. 

Haroi Tsurumaki: Cantor of Cosmos

Haroi is a Cantor with the ability to influence the cosmos. He was born on N-Yx, a realm with heavy ties to Moonlight as a result of its many temples dedicated to magic. His mother is a priestess at one of these temples, and she raised Haroi within them after his father abandoned them. Haroi is naturally a frail young man, causing him to be somewhat secluded due to his inability to leave for long periods of time. He found admiration and whimsy in Mayumi, his stepsister, because of her endless energy and penchant for adventure. Their blended family means everything to Haroi, filling in the gaps of loneliness and yearning that he used to struggle with when growing up with only his mother and those at the temple by his side. Haroi is an introverted yet empathetic young man, highly in tune with the emotions of others despite his quiet demeanor. He is intelligent as well, loving to learn more about magic and how it manifests itself outwardly and passively in mages and leaths. 

Haroi’s weapon of choice is a staff, though he rarely uses it in battle. Instead, he prefers to use his magic when given the option. Haroi’s influence over his magic is impeccable because of the fact that he was raised in an environment meant to boost such strength. He is incredibly potent with symbols and glyphs and researches them when he can. 

Haroi is the Sealed One of Libra, and his symbol can be found on the back of his neck. Haroi is close friends with Mayumi due to their years of connection as siblings before they came to attend classes at the Millennium Six. He shares a year with her and is a year below the Keepers. 

Boko: Hero of Tactics

Boko is an assistant to Seraphi known for his affinity in tactics due to his manifestation. Since Seraphi is a teacher at Angelwood, Boko acts as the librarian of the school. He greatly looks up to Seraphi, and his curiosity is learned from his mentor. Boko was born and raised within Millennium City on Millennia, and he is vaguely aware of Junpei since they are both connected to teachers of the Millennium Six, though the two can hardly be considered close. Boko often looks after Nee, the other assistant of Seraphi, out of obligation to ensure that his friend stays out of trouble. He lacks the ability to fight since he chose to not train in such matters out of choice, preferring to offer tactics from the back of a group of fighters. 

Nee: Hero of Charisma

Nee is Seraphi’s other assistant and a close friend to Boko. His manifestation allows him to easily attract the attention of others through his words, though this is something that he struggles to channel due to how slow he can be on the uptake at times. Nee is notably emotionally intelligent despite this, and he is able to cover the bases that Boko misses in terms of communicating with others. He looks up to Seraphi just like his friend does, though his admiration is much less profound than Boko’s is. Nee is the one person who seems to know how to catch Saki by surprise, likely because of how strangely his brain seems to work in comparison to the strong majority of Saki’s targets within their line of work. 

Seraphi: Wizard of Sun

Seraphi is a teacher at Angelwood and a Wizard with the ability to manipulate light. He received a Blessing of Starlight many years ago from the previous Keeper of Starlight, augmenting his power and making him a fighter to be feared. He, Ophani, and Cherubi work together to make up the Three Angels, a trio of powerful warriors who once worked as allies of the Sealed Ones. He settled down as a teacher after Luce’s supposed defeat, though he thought that Luce was still alive somewhere. From there, he took in Boko and Nee as his apprentices while carrying out secret research into what had truly happened to Luce in the aftermath of the previous conflict. Seraphi is a kind and caring man who seeks only peace, making him a strong mediator in times of turmoil. 

Ophani: Enchantress of Spirit

Ophani is a teacher at Alitia and an Enchantress with the ability to channel foreign types of magic. Her powers allow her to bring in the spirits of deceased souls to temporarily contribute to her magical strength, and she uses this as a way of defending the peace alongside Seraphi and Cherubi as one of the Three Angels. She also received a Starlight Blessing many years ago from Garuru when he was the Keeper. Ophani is a charismatic woman and the unofficial leader of the Three Angels, easily able to pull in the attention of others and use it to her advantage. Her weapon of choice is a spear to contrast Seraphi’s sword and Cherubi’s bow. Ophani rarely takes nonsense from anyone, knowing how to put others in their place without going too far, and she is a terror on the battlefield. 

Cherubi: Cantor of Shadow

Cherubi is a teacher at Sierra and a Cantor who can freely manipulate shadows. He is the final of the Three Angels alongside Seraphi and Ophani, but unlike the other two, he received a Blessing of Moonlight from Sphinx many years ago. While researching Luce’s fall, he learned of what happened to Saki’s parent who did the same thing, and he offered to take in the young Saki soon afterwards. Saki decided to follow in Cherubi’s footsteps to learn more about Luce as a way of avenging the deaths of both of their parents and following in the path they had left behind. Cherubi is somewhat distant and aloof at first, struggling to speak his mind the way that Serpahi and Ophani do. Deep down, he is a kind soul, if not a bit paranoid and prone to bouts of emotion, especially if he believes his protege may be in danger. 

Susanoo: Wizard of Heaven

Susanoo is a figure of pure legend with their last noted appearance being years ago during the final battle against Luce. There is no way of confirming their existence beyond the rumors that have stated that they do exist in some form or another. In truth, they are the manifestation of the Sealed Ones pulling their magic together after fostering a close enough connection as a group. They are an amalgamation of all of the Sealed Ones both in personality and physical appearance, and they bear the symbols of the Sealed Ones scattered across their body in the proper places to match those who have combined to forge them. Their magic is stated simply to be ‘heavenly’ due to blending so many different types of magic, though it lacks an official title. 

Luce: Blend of Heaven and Hell

Luce is a Blend with the ability to fuse both light and darkness together. His magic is polarizing as can be, coming from the far ends of the spectrum of power. His strength is difficult to harness and stated to be highly volatile when placed in the wrong hands. He once found himself in a place of influence due to his natural charisma, but he broke free of that when the power got to his head, and he started to want complete control over others. Luce would go on to try and enforce this power through sheer force, though he was stopped by the Keepers and their Sealed Ones roughly sixteen years ago. However, Luce managed to survive the attack after the Keepers died, and he retreated to restore his power until the time was right. He sought revenge against the new Keepers and Sealed Ones for their predecessors defeating him, and he used immense attacks of magic to figure out who they were before striking. 

Age Guide

This is as of the time that the story starts. 

Tomoki, Yumiko, Mayumi, Haroi: 15 Takuya, Koji, Izumi, Koichi, Chihiro: 16 Junpei, Hinoka, Saki: 17

Plot

The group of twelve come to attend classes at the Millennium Six, each going to their respective schools to match their status of discipline and wing status. They meet in passing but do not get close with one another yet. After the Three Angels uncover information to reveal that Luce is truly alive, they prepare for an attack from him. Rather than being met with Luce himself, the Millennium Six are attacked by waves of magical soldiers made by Luce so that he doesn’t have to face them directly. The main cast is brought together by circumstance through these miscellaneous attacks, and they bond in an unlikely friendship based on their shared experiences. Their Sealed status is revealed along the way, allowing them to play right into Luce’s hands without even knowing that this is part of his plan. Through Saki, they meet the Three Angels, Boko, and Nee. The truth about Luce being alive is revealed, and the group begins to prepare to stop him. They train together, becoming Sealed Ones at their own paces throughout the process. Eventually, they find themselves faced with Luce himself, and in a magnificent battle, they are able to fuse their powers together to become Susanoo and defeat Luce once and for all, retaining their companionship all the way through. 

And that’s about all that I’ve got! I don’t know if I’m going to be coming back to this AU at any point in the future, but for now, I absolutely love this AU. If you haven’t already, pleeeeeease read Alitia and Frontiers Unexplored; they’re both on my Archive of Our Own, and I think that they are very good (and other people do too). I’ll see you for my next big rambling post, but until then, farewell, dear readers!

[paulinedorchester]

Mosley, Leonard. Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire, 1939-1954. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; reprint, as Backs to the Wall: The Heroic Story of the People of London During World War II, New York: Random House, 1971.

Each generation gets the history that it needs — or wants, or demands. That’s what kept going through my head as I read Backs to the Wall, which appeared three years after France’s youth explicitly rejected both Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed leader of the Free French during World War II, and the political ideology that he represented, and amidst ongoing unrest over the Vietnam War. (It’s also worth mentioning that it was published in the same year as Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War and two years after Angus Calder’s The People’s War.) This book gives up a World War II narrative in which Churchill was an improvement on Chamberlain only in that he wasn’t an appeaser, de Gaulle was worse than both of them put together, the Allied leaders all cordially loathed each other, half the British public wanted to sue for peace, and there was across-the-board mutual dislike between London civilians and American troops (and British dismay at the way African-American troops were treated by their white counterparts was far from universal). Do I exaggerate? Only slightly. Backs to the Wall is a sort of distant, city-specific pre-echo of Juliet Gardner’s sour 2004 book Wartime: Britain, 1939-45.

As with Wartime, however, this book does have the virtue of introducing us to a number of very interesting people. I became interested in reading it because it brought Vere Hodgson’s wartime diary to public attention. Mosley quotes or paraphrases Hodgson’s writing from the beginning of the war through its end, and also seems to have interviewed her extensively. His primary villain, meanwhile, is not Chamberlain but Chamberlain’s chief acolyte, Henry “Chips” Channon, from whose diary he quotes widely (and who turns out to have been born and raised in the United States, to my surprise). We hear a great deal from the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow and follow the misadventures of two civilians, Jenny Martin and Polly Wright, whose consistency in both bad luck and bad choices meant that neither of them was able to stay out of serious trouble for any length of time.

There are many glimpses of the London home front through the eyes of two boys, both eight when the war began: John Hardiman, of Canning Town and later of Aldgate, who was evacuated in 1939 but soon returned to London, and Donald Ketley of Chadwell Heath, who was never evacuated at all. Donald, who thoroughly enjoyed himself during the war, had an experience that speaks to our own recent reality:

Another good thing: quite early in the Blitz, his school had been totally destroyed by a bomb. Since Donald was shy, a poor student and unpopular with his teacher, he was overjoyed when he heard the place was gone. Thereafter he went each day to his teacher’s home to pick up lessons, which he brought back the next day for marking. In the following months he changed from a poor student to an excellent one, and although he was aware that his teacher rather resented it, he didn’t care. 

Mosley also introduces us to Archibald McIndoe, the real-life counterpart of Patrick Jamieson, Bill Patterson’s character in the Foyle’s War episode ‘Enemy Fire.’ Art seems to have imitated life pretty accurately in that instance: he and his burn hospital in East Grinstead were apparently exactly like what was depicted, the only difference being that the hospital was set up in an existing hospital building, not in a requisitioned stately home.

Backs to the Wall seems to have been one of the earliest books to make substantial use of Mass-Observation writings. Most M-O diaries are anonymous, but there are two named diarists here who stand out. John James Donald was a committed pacifist whose air of lofty detachment as he observes the reactions of those around him to air-raids and other wartime event and prepares for his tribunal — which, in the end, he decides not to attend — quickly grows irritating. More interesting is Rosemary Black, a 28-year-old widow, in no small part because she differs markedly from what I had thought of as the archetypical M-O writer. Here’s her self-description on M-O documents: “Upper-middle-class; mother of two children (girls aged 3 and 2); of independent means.” Mosley continues:

She lived in a trim three-story house in a quiet street of the fashionable part of Maida Vale, a short taxi ride from the center of the West End, whose restaurants and theatres she knew well. She was chic and attractive, and lacked very few of the niceties of life: there was Irene, a Hungarian refugee, to look after the children; Helen, a Scottish maid, to look after herself and the house; and a daily cleaning woman to do the major chores.

Black took her children out of London at the beginning of the war but quickly brought them back, and when bombs began falling she kept them in place — air raids might be disruptive for them, but apparently relocation had been worse. She was very much aware that she was riding out the war in a position of privilege, and she often expressed guilt feelings; but this tended to fade away before her irritation at the dominance of “the muddling amateur or the soulless bureaucrat” in the war effort. Offering her services, even as a volunteer, proved very frustrating. “She was young, strong and willing; she typed, spoke languages, was an expert driver and had taken a course in first aid,” Mosley tells us, “but finding a job even as a chauffeur was proving difficult” in September 1940. (She actually wasn’t all that strong physically: as we learn, she suffered from rheumatism which grew worse during the war years and probably affected her outlook.)

Black was greeted with “apathy and indifference” by both A.R.P. and the Women’s Voluntary Service. Early in 1941 she was finally able to get a place handing out tea, sandwiches, cake, and so on to rescue and clean-up workers at bomb sites from a Y.M.C.A. mobile canteen. She was a bit intimidated by the women with whom she found herself working:

Their class is right up to the county family level. Nearly everyone is tall above the average and remarkably hefty, even definitely large, not necessarily fat but broad and brawny. Perhaps this is something to do with the survival of the fittest.

And the work did bring her some satisfaction, even if it was of the type that lent itself to being recorded with tongue placed firmly in cheek:

We had a pleasant and uneventful day’s work serving City fire sites, the General Post Office, demolition workers and Home Guard Stations, etc. We were complimented at least half a dozen times on the quality of our tea ... I think the provision of saccharine for the tea urns to compensate for the mean sugar allowance is my most successful piece of war work. What did you do in the Great War, Mummy? Sneaked pills into the tea urns, darling.

For all her good humor and astute observations, Mrs. Black was far from immune to tiny-mindedness. After an evening out in 1943 she wrote:

I had to wait some time for the others in the cinema foyer, and I was much struck, as often before, by the almost complete absence of English people these days, from the capital of England. Almost every person who came in was either a foreigner, a roaring Jew, or both. The Cumberland [Hotel] has always been a complete New Jerusalem, but this evening it really struck me as no worse than anywhere else! It is really dismaying to see that this should be the result of this war in defence of our country.

Indeed, Mosley cites the results of a multi-year Mass-Observation study that showed a marked increase in anti-Jewish views London’s general population over the course of the war. Since it’s just one study, and since I haven’t seen that study mentioned anywhere else, I am reluctant to trust blindly in its accuracy; and there’s also this:

The small flat which George [Hardiman] had procured for [his family] ... in Aldgate was cleaner and airier than the old house in Canning Town [which had been bombed], and the little Jewish children with whom John now went to school seemed to be cleaner than the ones in Elm Road; at any rate, he no longer came home with nits in his hair.

On the other hand, Mosley himself gives us only a fragmentary view of London’s wartime Jewish population: everyone seems to be either a terrified refugee or an impoverished East Ender. We hear nothing about the substantial middle- and upper-middle class population — mostly of German descent and in some cases German birth — that had already taken shape in Northwest London; and while we are briefly introduced to Sir David Waley, a Treasury official, in connection with the case of an interned Jewish refugee, we aren’t told that Waley himself was Jewish, a member of “the cousinhood.” On yet a third hand, Mosley also quotes other M-O surveys from the same period that indicate largely hostile attitudes to most foreigners in London, with Poles at the bottom of the ladder and the small Dutch contingent on top. (Incidentally, the book’s extremely patchy index identifies Vere Hodgson as a Mass-Observation diarist, which she wasn’t.)

Backs to the Wall closes with a very brief, remarkably non-partisan account of the 1945 general election and its immediate aftermath. “Neither side had any inkling of the way the minds of the British voters were turning,” he writes.

When [Churchill’s] friends suggested that he was a victim of base ingratitude, he shook his head. He would not have such a charge leveled against his beloved countrymen. Ingratitude? "Oh, no," he said quietly, "I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time."

The book is worth reading for the primary materials that it includes, but it probably tells us as much about the era in which it was written as about the period that it covers.  

[itsclydebitches]

None of them liked Ironwoods growingly tyrannical actions, it's the whole reason Ruby lies to him, he looked shady as hell. They are shown very clearly uncomfortable with what he's turned Atlas into in the First episode. It's just that at the end of Volime 7 he crossed the line.

The key words there are “first episode.” I’ve mentioned on other posts that if the plot had simply continued the forward momentum of the group being disgusted with Ironwood’s choices and working against him (hiding out in the city, gathering like-minded allies, etc.) then we would have been golden. Ironwood is Volume 7’s antagonist. There, done. The problem is what starts in the second episode. Our basic events are as follows:

The group (and audience) learn that Ironwood has arguably justified reasons for everything “shady as hell” that he’s done. The embargo? They are at war with Salem and people have been stealing resources since our introductory trailers (Blake). Soldiers in the streets? That first episode showed that grimm are attacking defenseless civilians and, if the soldiers hadn’t been there to fend the grimm off prior to Penny’s arrival, they likely would have died. Taking resources? That’s to re-establish global communications and enact a plan to stop Salem for good, freeing the world from the danger she presents. 

However, they’re still morally gray choices which our group could have opposed… but they didn’t. They join Ironwood as public allies (standing with Clover and Penny against Robyn), as Inner Circle allies (they learn all of Ironwood’s plans—and we learn that he never lied to them), as huntsmen (it’s his power as general that gives them their licenses), and as fellow soldiers (they are indistinguishable from the Ace Ops in the missions they conduct). Now toss in a bunch of other connections like living in his academy, taking his weapon upgrades, and carrying the Relic. They might not like his actions, but they’re certainly doing everything possible to support and reap the benefits of them. 

Ruby does lie to him… which two in the group oppose (however lackluster that was). Yang and Oscar both question the wisdom of doing the very thing they punished Ozpin for. Ren also develops a strong (if quiet) alliance with Ironwood that will carry into Volume 8... until his semblance changed and he forgot about it. 

During all this there are efforts—mostly through Nora—to condemn Ironwood for his choices. How can you continue to hurt the people like this? Same answer as above: because he believes a short-term struggle is worth the long-term victory. Nora doesn’t agree… but Ruby, the leader, does. She pushes Ironwood to finish Amity somehow.

Which is an incredibly strange stance to take considering she knows that amassing a world-wide army will not defeat Salem. If the group wants Ironwood to stop hurting Mantle, all they have to do is tell him that Salem is immortal… but they don’t. They let him continue under this false belief, despite having more information about this war than he does and despite that information being the key to stopping the harm he’s enacting.

The arc of the volume is not the group choosing to trust Ironwood and then realizing he actually isn’t trustworthy, it’s the group (or rather, Ruby) deciding not to trust Ironwood and then realizing he is trustworthy. We get that climactic scene of Ruby and Oscar simultaneously realizing they should tell him about Salem and Oscar apologizing for keeping that secret in the first place. 

 Note that this occurs after they’ve talked him into telling Mantle about her. So not only is the group not made up of mindless subordinates being ordered about by a powerful general—it’s their advice Ironwood listens to—but now they’ve put an entire city in the position they were in during Volume 6. We’re told, via Ozpin’s arc, that telling people about Salem without including the issue of her immortality is a horrific thing to do. Those like Qrow have supposedly “wasted” their lives fighting an impossible war and the fandom has argued strongly that Ozpin has manipulated everyone involved in this fight by not giving them the full picture. Yet now, the group has spent months keeping that information from Ironwood when his questionable choices are based on that ignorance, and they’ve talked him into telling half his population that Salem exists and they should rise up to fight her… but not the pesky detail that she’s immortal. They did to Ironwood and all of Mantle exactly what Ozpin did to them.

Immediately after hearing that they’ve kept this secret from him the entire time they’ve been here (which he takes very well) Ironwood captures one of their main villains, loses his arm in the process, learns that two in the group have outright betrayed him to a political enemy, learns that despite all their best efforts Cinder has just waltzed into his office, learns that Salem herself is on her way and their defenses are already gone, knows that everyone is exhausted from a major battle… so when he decides to take all of Atlas, the majority of Mantle, and the Relics/Maiden they have to try and get out of Salem’s reach… Ruby says no. What’s her plan? She doesn’t have one. You’re just not allowed to leave.

The problem with the writing is it wants us to believe two contradictory things at once. Looking back, Ironwood is meant to be seen as an unambiguously bad guy in Volume 7, which we know because of scenes like Winter’s fight wherein she condemns him for everything he did in Volume 7, not just Volume 8 stuff like threatening to bomb Mantle. Yet at the same time, we’re simultaneously meant to believe that the group is made up of unambiguously good people who function as direct contrasts to Ironwood. Given what we got, these two things cannot coexist! Either Ironwood was a good man who the heroes backed for an entire volume and there’s no acknowledgment of that, or Ironwood was a bad man… who the heroes backed for an entire volume and there’s no acknowledgment of that either. If the group’s defense is, “We knew he was shady as hell. We knew what he was doing was wrong. We knew he was the bad guy here… but we still helped him maintain power, forward his plans, and reap the benefits of the flawed system for months on end”… that’s really bad. “I supported, assisted, and benefited from the guy who was shady as hell, but that’s fine because I felt uncomfortable about it the whole time” is not the hot take the fandom wants it to be. We cannot make these broad, sweeping statements about how the Atlas military—merged with its huntsmen—is an Evil Thing and then show scenes like, say, Jaune using his military grade huntsmen license to convince a bunch of civilians to follow his evacuation plan. The heroes cannot be Good and Pure while supporting the supposed villains and their systems; or, the villains cannot be purely Bad and Evil if they’re supported by the heroes.

The reality is that RWBY is badly written and this sort of simplistic, inconsistent writing doesn’t lend itself to a topic as complex as this one. To be frank, we don’t even know enough to make informed decisions about these actions because the world building is nearly nonexistent. What are these “resources” and how are the resources to patch a hole in the wall the same as the resources used to make Amity Tower into a world-wide communication device? How much power does Ironwood actually have and what other decisions has he made that impact Mantle? We never hear about any policies to explain things like the poor conditions, or the slum areas with the faunus. Why are the civilians so against the soldiers patrolling when we don’t see them abusing the public in any way, but we do see the grimm threatening them on the regular? Why does Ruby want Amity built so badly—willing to hurt Mantle to do it—when she knows a bigger army isn’t the answer/that telling people about Salem has almost always led to panic and betrayal? Is there really any difference between huntsmen and soldiers here? And if the answer is, “Yes. Huntsmen aren’t beholden to any power. That’s a good thing because following orders is Bad. They do what they think is best” than what are we supposed to make of someone like Rhodes who, apparently, did what he thought was best? If he’d been beholden to some superior there might have been a system in place to help Cinder. As it was, he was left to his own devices and a lot of fans are furious with the solution he, as one flawed individual, came up with. We simply don’t have a good picture of this world and when we do, things constantly contradict. It’s good for huntsmen to make their own choices, but only when Ruby does it, not Rhodes. It’s bad for heroes to keep the Salem secret and tell lies to their allies, but only when Ozpin does it, not Ruby. It’s bad for someone to try and save who they’ve got, but only when Ironwood does it, not Ruby, who apparently left Atlas after failing to create portals for her Uncle, Robyn, the Ace Ops, Pietro, Maria, and an entire army.

The way that the fandom gets around these problems—because too few are willing to just acknowledge that they are problems and RWBY is shoddily written—is by simplistically comparing RWBY’s military to a real world one. I cannot tell you how many posts I’ve come across that amount to, “Imagine thinking the teenage girls are the bad guys when a military general is right there, being a military general 😒 ” Those posts imply that fans like me are too stupid (too brainwashed, too close to “bootlickers”) to be critical of the military, but I assure you, that’s as far from true as can be. Those posts are trying to conflate real life politics with a fantasy story whose world looks nothing like our own. The is not a question of being critical of the military, it’s a question of being critical of RWBY as that fictional text… and that fiction never established any of the military problems we deal with in the real world. It might have (very easily), but it didn’t. Is Ironwood leveraging his people to conquer others or go after wealth? No, his world has literal, unambiguously evil monsters to fight. Does he amass power out of a desire to control the people? No, he lays out his exact thoughts on how these measures will help protect against those monsters and a witch. Does the military abandon its soldiers after war, leaving them with few resources and fewer prospects? No, we never see anyone struggling in that manner and one of the most prominent tragedies—Yang losing a limb—is answered by Ironwood personally sending a replacement to her home. Is the military at least built around propaganda, painting civilians an inaccurate picture of Freedom and Glory to convince them to fight? No, we see no propaganda, Ironwood—since Volume 2—has been focused on replacing people with robots and our entire story is built around one child’s desire to fight the exact same battle. Why do you want to be a huntress, Ruby? Because I want to help people! And that goal is never painted as a naïve outlook that Ruby becomes disillusioned with. Posts like the one mentioned above bank 100% on the reader mapping real life military criticism onto RWBY… rather than actually looking at the world RWBY built, what choices the characters make, the amount of information we’re given (little), and whether that in any way reflects our current, political problems. It doesn’t. 

I’m never going to pretend there weren’t problems with Ironwood’s decisions. In fact, I love that this was actually a conflict in Volume 3 that gave both sides a fair shake: is it better to scare people and have an army at the ready to defend them, or is it better to keep them in the dark and potentially be defenseless? Ironwood’s kind heart bumping up against extreme measures is what made him compelling, especially when the story was having him grow in the “right” direction (AKA, listening to Ozpin). His treatment of Penny is another big issue, creating a whole ass person to serve as a military defense tool. That’s horrifying! So he’s absolutely had his problems long before the writing had him turn into a trigger-happy murderer, but part of the issue here is that the writing doesn’t acknowledge those problems in other characters. If Ironwood is “shady as hell” for forwarding a military agenda and using military resources… then so is Ruby, the leader who backed that for months. If Ironwood is “shady as hell” for funding the creation of a person to defend his kingdom… then so is Pietro, the scientist who not only built Penny, but came up with the idea in the first place. He’s not some defenseless victim who was forced by the evil Ironwood to create something morally reprehensible, he suggested it! The same way Winter wasn’t some defenseless victim who was forced by the evil Ironwood to go along with these plans. She supported them, agreed to be his Maiden, and was the first to suggest martial law! Yet Ruby, Pietro, Winter and their like are all presented as unambiguously Good People, whereas Ironwood is presented as the unambiguous Bad Guy—and when a lot of fans went, “But you’re not writing him like a Bad Guy? Especially when we compare him to the heroes?” we got his sudden, OOC murder streak in Volume 8. But it doesn’t work. Either the group is made up of morally gray/bad people because they did the things our antagonist Ironwood did, or Ironwood is not the morally gray/bad person the show insists he is (prior to Volume 8) because he did the same things as our heroes. You cannot give us that plot, those choices, that agency and insist on both at once. This problem has existed ever since we got an entire volume about how simplistically evil Ozpin is for keeping this secret… only for Ruby to immediately turn around and keep it herself, with no acknowledgement that either a) Ozpin wasn’t the bad guy then or b) Ruby is as bad as he is. But the show wants Ruby to be the Good Person in every situation, no matter how much she models her behavior after those she deems her enemies, and Ironwood’s arc only increased that problem tenfold.

[loove-persevering]

Hideaway (Steve Rogers Imagine) PROLOGUE

Description: The Avengers are making a comeback ready to finally make a move against Thanos five years later. First they have to find everyone..Including those who don’t want to be found. 

A/N: Reader has powers similar to Hope Summers  I used some of her back story as well! (Telekinesis, Red eyes when feeling immense motions, fire optic blast, Hand to hand combat, etc.)

 You reach out grabbing the piece of fruit examining it for any bad spots, you do this with a few before putting them in your basket. You take a few minutes walking around the small market trying to fill up your fridge with at least a little before even more bad weather hit. The snow was beautiful and your little cottage handled the cold well but getting out in it was terrible. 

 You took about an hour in the market before you started to head back home, it was a pretty short drive from your house so you got home quickly. You took your keys and unlocked the door hurrying to get inside away from the cold Alaskan weather. You walk over to the counter as quickly as you can trying to not to drop the bags in your hand as you sit them on the countertop. You finally make it over relieving yourself from the weight you toss your keys on the counter next to you and begin to peel off your jacket. 

 Then you heard the crack of the fire in the living room, which you knew that you had not left on when you went to the market. You walk backward slowly peering through the opening of the kitchen into the living room noticing you were right and the fireplace was in full force. You reach over grabbing a knife from the display in the kitchen where usually it would be used for cooking, you never knew who was inside. You heard the floor creek and before you could even think you threw the knife straight in the direction, it ultimately hit the wall next to you missing the familiar woman next to it. 

 ‘’You’re out of practice,’’ She says smirking at you, you lean against the counter letting out a breath of fresh air. 

‘‘I was trying to miss,’‘ You lie to her not wanting to admit it. Although you had kept up your physical strength your knife skills were rusty, but it wasn’t like you had been going around throwing knives at people in a long time. She smiles at you and walks away from the wall over toward the kitchen. ‘’Think we could talk?’’ She asks you. 

 Unsure of what this talk was about you agreed, it had been years since you had seen Natasha. The last time you saw her was around the time the Sokovia Accords came about and the team was split down the middle. Sides were taken and the Avengers were no more, at least until Thanos came then they seemed to be back minus a few and one of those few included you. After the Sokovia Accords got passed you went against your boyfriend at the time Steve Rogers and sided with Tony. At the time you were still out of control with your powers and you felt that having a restriction put on everyone was a good thing. It seemed like anytime the Avengers went to save the day destruction and death followed closely every time and too many civilian lives were being lost and the blood was on your hands. 

 It caused a shift in the team, especially after the fight. You had to use your own powers against your boyfriend and although you went easy on him in a way you knew nothing would stand in the way of him and what he thought was the right thing. So when he and Bucky found themselves caught between you and their getaway you just gave Steve the benefit of the doubt and let him slide past, and that was the last you saw of him. 

 When Thanos happened it was all over the news, you sat in horror and watched. You wanted to help but you couldn’t you were scared you’d only cause more damage. So you stayed away from it all, but in the end it didn’t seem to matter and half the population was gone and all you felt was guilt. 

 You walk over to the couch in front of the fire place sitting a hot cup of coffee in front of Natasha and take a sip of your own. You cross your leg over the other and lean forward placing the cup on the table, ‘’I’m assuming you’re not here to visit an old friend huh?’’ You ask her. 

 ‘’No,’’ She says smiling softly. ‘’We found something,’’ She explains and you look up at her noticing the hard expression on her face. ‘’A chance to bring everyone back, maybe.’’ She explains. 

‘‘Maybe?’‘ You ask her. 

‘‘Still working out the kinks,’‘ She explains. ‘‘We need you Y/N,’‘ She says and you shake your head looking down at your arms which you had now crossed over your chest. ‘‘We need everyone we can get, some of the others they...’‘ She says causing you to look up, ‘‘Well you know..’‘ She says trailing off nodding her head at you. 

‘‘I don’t know-’‘ You begin to say but a flash of anger passes over her face. 

‘‘I thought you were the Y/N that showed up?’‘ She asks. 

 You furrow your eyebrows looking at her, ‘’I don’t show up he couldn’t even-’’ You begin to say feeling the burning sensation in your eyes and you knew they were glowing red, it happened when you felt an overwhelming amount of emotions. 

‘’This is much bigger than you and Steve, whatever happened there can be dealt with later but this...these people Y/N they deserve to come back,’’ She says. ‘‘They deserve a chance, and we have to try..’‘ She says. ‘‘And our best chance is with everyone, all things aside.’‘ She says kind of suggesting with her eyes that she knew that you knew what was right. ‘’Just to try Y/N,’’ She says.

You take a second to think and once you do you realize you’d want nothing more than for everyone to come back. ‘’When do we leave?’’ You ask looking up at her a smile already making it’s way to her face. 

‘‘Now, but we have to make a quick stop,’‘ She explains.

______

When the Quinjet landed back at the compound you glance over at Clint who had a stone expression on his face, it put you a little more at ease to know that you weren’t the only one making a come back after years of being retired. You glance over at him and take a deep breath and he nods at you standing up following Natasha outside. You grab your duffle bag and shut the storage unti that was behind your seat making your way out your feet hitting the grass and you look around sliding your sunglasses over your face shielding the blinding light. You follow a few paces behind Natasha and Clint looking around trying to be aware of your surroundings before being unaware got you in trouble. You couldn’t help but feel a panic at the thought of seeing Steve again, but everyone else as well. You were the coward that didn’t show up to the fight with Thanos, would they resent you for that?

  Natasha opens the door allowing both you and Clint to walk in first and immediately your both in the common area with faces appearing on the screen in front of you. You walk over dropping your duffle bag and the familiar faces begin to show on the screen Peter, Bucky, T’Challa, Sam, Wanda and so many more. You take your hand covering your mouth to try and hide the look of shock but it probably didn’t do the best job. 

 ‘’Natasha?’’ You hear the familiar voice call out that immediately made your heart stop. You could tell your eyes were turning red because Natasha looked over at you a sympathetic look on her face. She mouthed to you ‘’Calm down,’’ And you let out a deep breath one you didn’t know you had been holding. 

 Steve strolls into the room and the man you recognized as Scott Lang followed behind, Steve was flipping through some papers of some sort not paying attention as the entire time you had your eyes dead set on him. ‘’I thought you said she was back?’’ You heard him ask Scott. 

‘‘I am and I brought company,’‘ She says making him look up finally first to her then to Clint and finally at you. You forced yourself to block out your emotions not wanting to show through your eyes what you felt, because Steve probably already knew as his gaze lingered on you a few seconds longer than anyone else. 

 ‘’Clint, Y/N,’’ He says glancing back to Clint, ‘’Nice to have you back.’’ He says sounding a little to formal. ‘’Uh this is Scott Lang,’’ He says and Scott steps out in front of him walking straight to you holding out his hand and grabbing yours shaking it. 

‘‘A pleasure!’‘ He says, ‘‘Sorry about last time,’‘ He says his face scrunching together and he smiles at you sheepishly. You knew he was regarding the time he went huge and knocked you straight to hell while doing so, you let out a small laugh smiling at him and you can see Steve looking at your from over his shoulder. 

 ‘’No hard feelings,’’ You tell him. He then moves over to Clint finally making his acquaintance as well. The room got pretty silent after that nobody talking which caused you to glance back at the screen of faces of people who had seemingly vanished. Peter Parker showed up on the screen and you knew that the red gaze had made it’s way to your eyes because Scott Lang was waving his hands over his face. 

 ‘’Is she suppose to do that?’’ He asks looking at Steve, ‘’The whole red eye thing?’’ He blurts out. 

Natasha holds back a laugh and you see a smile make it’s way to Clint’s face one thing that you were actually happy to see. ‘’Come on I’ll take you guys to your rooms so you can put your stuff away before we get started.’’ Natasha says. You walk over picking up your duffle bag and making your way behind her following in pursuit you walk past Steve and felt an odd sensation as you passed him but you ignored it for now. 

 Once you settled into your room you notice that in the closet their was already a uniform waiting for you a white one. You walk over running your hands over the material of the suit, it had been years since you had worn yours and you felt the tingle in your fingers the same as you use to before you’d put on your own suit, this really was gonna be the fight of your life. Everything lead to this, ‘’You ready?’’ You hear Clint’s voice from behind you as he leaned against the door frame. 

‘‘Are you?’‘ You throw the question back at him. 

‘‘If it means I get back what I lost, then I’m more than ready.’‘ He says and you nod your head at him. 

‘‘Well since your both ready let’s get started,’‘ Steve says just as you turn the corner. He stood with his hands crossed over his chest, immediately he turns around and you look to Clint before following behind. 

 You were ready. 

A/n: Series?Tell me what you think! Leave me comments or inbox me!:) 

[tepkunset]

Military Propaganda is Nothing New to the MCU, but the Rendition in Captain Marvel is

(This post contains major spoilers for Captain Marvel, so read at your own discretion if you have not seen it yet.)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been chalked full of military propaganda from day one.

In fact, the very first scene in Iron Man is one of US troops driving though the foreign desert, making jokes and taking selfies in an attempt to paint them being there as normal and not at all intimidating. Iron Man is even one of the examples in the Insurge Intelligence article about the Pentagon’s Hollywood influence. This is an overall theme that carries through all the Iron Man films; humanizing the military because they’re the good guys. They can be trusted with all the weapons from Stark Industries. They don’t hurt innocent civilians, that’s what the bad guys do.

The propaganda in Iron Man is very simplistic and the same kind you see in most western movies when dealing with anything that takes place in the Middle East. White man good, brown man bad, #Murica. Because it’s so simplistic, it is easier to see through, once you actually develop the sight for it. 

Then comes Captain America, who’s very name was meant to use US patriotism as an attempt to convince the US to care about WWII. And Captain America: The First Avenger brings a new type of military propaganda. Because let me just say that as a Canadian, American films about WWI and WWII are baffling. I mean I know your history classes are messed up, but do they really not even talk about Stalingrad? Crete? Hong Kong? Etc? Because your films all paint it like it was just the States against Germany, with maybe a mention of Britain there somewhere. Ya’ll were late to even join the war! But anyway before I get too off-topic, the point is, Captain America: The First Avenger is the kind of military propaganda that is all about heroic imagery. This is especially common in WWII films because there is no moral ambiguity in a lot of it, so it’s easy to point and say wow, look how great we were. American military at it’s prime, yep. Totally not like there are millions and millions of people dying to be concerned about, because look at all these manly heroic American men. And the military uses this imagery as propaganda as if WWII and American meddling in Iraq are the same.

Even in the later Captain America and Avengers movies, when up against the government, the films are careful to take blame away from the military and put it more on Hydra or politicians. The corruption in SHIELD? That wasn’t really SHIELD, that was Hydra influence. 

You could argue that this is not in the same vein as true propaganda like what comes from Iron Man; I would agree to an extent. But it’s still there.

But the military propaganda in Captain Marvel is different.

Captain Marvel introduces the MCU’s take on the Kree and Skrulls. Well, there was minor Kree involvement in Guardians of the Galaxy with Ronan, but this is the first time on a larger scale. The movie starts by telling the audience that the Kree are peacekeepers and the Skrulls are terrorists, but upon actually talking to the Skrull leader, Carol comes to find out the Skrulls are actually mostly refugees trying to avoid total decimation from the Kree, because they refused to submit to their rule. The whole story has very anti military parallels... ...and it is at a huge contrast with pro-military subliminal imagery and messages.

What does Carol do the minute she realizes the Kree are bad? She points to child-turned Monica’s air force shirt and says that those are the colours she should use. The movie just finished painting a masterful comparison between the Kree military and US military, then took a dump all over it by saying no, that is not a comparison at all. The Kree are bad, but the US Air Force is good. Despite doing the exact same things Carol was shaken by the Kree doing just a scene ago. Frankly I would have been fine with them still using Carol’s red and blue outfit, because the States do not have the monopoly on the colours red and blue, but they had to go out of their way to make it about that.

I have seen a few people talk about how messed up that scene is already though, but what I have seen less of is people talking about the weaponization of feminism as military propaganda.  There is a very strong #GirlPower message in Captain Marvel, and that on it’s own is great. I loved the scene where Just a Girl plays while she’s kicking ass, and I can’t think of a better ending than her telling Jude Law that she doesn’t have to prove a damn thing to him. But this #GirlPower doesn’t end there. Captain Marvel turns Carol’s military life into a statement of Girl Power. From the Air Force article they shared on the official twitter:

Less than one percent of the American population will know what it’s like to serve in the Air Force. However, major motion pictures give the global audience a glimpse into the service’s history of breaking barriers and a taste of its fighting spirit.

...

“Our mission is to project and protect the image of the U.S. Air Force through entertainment media,” said Lt. Col. Nathan Broshear, Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office director. “Major motion pictures, like ‘Captain Marvel’, provide an incredible platform to educate and inform the American public about the people, culture and heritage of the U.S. Air Force … inspiring the next generation of Airmen.”

...

The Air Force’s involvement also impacted character development and storylines. In December 2017, Larson, Boden, Fleck and producer Jonathan Schwartz visited Nellis AFB, Nevada, and spent one-on-one time with Brig. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, Air Force Recruiting Service Commander and the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot.

It’s there. Just because they hid it better than before, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The fact that the propaganda in Captain Marvel is not so direct like it is in past MCU films is what makes it even more dangerous. If it continues to fly below the radar for people, if people continue to say that it’s not fair to point this out because Captain Marvel is a woman and therefore it’s misogyny, then that is sending exactly the message the Pentagon’s Hollywood Liason wants to hear. And that’s what is scary about the propaganda in Captain Marvel in particular.

[quakerjoe]

In the end, not even the Progressive Bernie Base showing up for Hillary in larger numbers than her own supporters did for Obama in 2008, could prevent the inevitable. A massively flawed candidate who failed to electrify the Democratic base and make the case to Rust Belt voters- why she is the better option than the Populist candidate spraying out anti-trade rhetoric.

Blame whatever you want. The blame rests squarely on all of us. But there is so many lessons to learn from the 2016 Primary and General Election. Populism and Progressive policy became the central topic. Healthcare is a right. The ultra-rich are KING in America, and they must be reigned in. Primary process should be more fair. Flowery platitudes aren’t enough to generate excitement for the poor to turn out, etc.

Literally ZERO of these lessons were learned. Even in the face of an ACTUAL Corona-virus pandemic, with over 30 million unemployed, more and more uninsured at the time of writing this- the Democratic party has done nearly nothing to fix the problems from 2016. Actually, in all my shock- they’ve made them worse. The Democratic party pulled every string it could. Bent over backwards to not only stop Bernie Sanders, but stifle Progressives and our policy agenda. All in an orchestration to crown their nominee just years after a 2016 lawsuit said the DNC can meddle how ever they like in their own “Democratic process”. All to push a man who did next to no campaigning in any states past South Carolina. A man who didn’t actually work for your vote, but instead- coasted on “Hope and Change” establishment nostalgia, for when times weren’t so chaotic.

So for pragmatism sake, let’s push all that aside for just one moment. We can debate all day about how “fair” Joe Biden’s path to the Democratic Nomination has been. But let’s view Biden on his own merits for his candidacy’s sake. What’s the incentive for Progressives to vote for Joe? Well- unless you’re sticking to the concept of the very first paragraph of this article, the answer is: There isn’t one.

If Hillary Clinton were a flawed candidate, Biden may just be the worst nominee in history. A long history of terrible behavior including coddling racists, racist behavior, repeated threats at slashing the safety net, warmongering for a devastating Iraq war that’s helped kill endless innocent civilians all based on a lie, the nomination of Justice Thomas and controversial treatment of Anita hill, the Obama administration’s failure to even pass a Public Option with a Super Majority government, while pushing a healthcare plan that was little more than barely a small step in the right direction.

Now- Biden stands as the presumptive Democratic Nominee, and with a sizable Progressive Bernie Base up for grabs, what has Joe Biden done to earn our vote?

Answer: Nothing. Well, at least nothing significant.

Three items come immediately to mind on what Joe Biden is doing to “reach left”.

1: Joe wants to lower the Medicare age to 60. By comparison, Hillary Clinton wanted to lower it to as low as 50.

2: Joe Biden wants to eliminate student debt for those making under $125K. By comparison, Bernie Sanders wanted to eliminate it universally.

3: Nebulously- Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have created “working groups” on various policy issues focusing on education, criminal justice, climate change, immigration, the economy, and health care policy. As of yet, nothing has come of these “groups” on policy.

As the Primary was coming to a close, I as a Progressive- was completely open to Joe moving (not reaching) left on policy positions.

Overwhelmingly, if you ask Sanders supporters what they care about most, it’s Policy.

What will you do for the underprivileged working class people of America?

What will you do for my children and grand children facing a Climate Change future?

What will you do for your Mass Incarceration mess, ending the drug war, legalizing Marijuana, and freeing non-violent drug offenders?

What will you do for the upwards of 45K people who die each year because health care is not affordable?

The 67% of American bankruptcies being due to health care costs?

BUT. Sanders supporters also believe in principle. Consistency. History. Fighting for change. Decency. Human rights. We’re also majority young people (a group Joe Biden did not do well with). Perhaps these things could be talked out. But now there’s a bigger elephant in the room. One that establishment Democrats and Joe’s supporters are ignoring.

Joe Biden was credibly accused of rape.

Democrats spent months yelling about “Believing Women” during the Kavanaugh Confirmation hearings. Rightfully fighting for Christine Blasey Ford’s story to be heard- knowing it would be a fruitless task at the hands of a twisted Senate Republican majority. Now, establishment Democrats are making the media rounds with Biden campaign talking points with denials and every attempt to downplay Tara Reade as not a credible accuser, even as several corroborations of her story have surfaced, 1 of which was an archive video of who Tara Reade alleges is her mother discussing the issue with Larry King on CNN in 1993. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s campaign has it’s surrogates and supporters on news networks shielding Biden. Nancy Pelosi downplays the accusations, Kirsten Gillibrand (who helped cancel Al Franken) is downplaying the accusations. Alyssa Milano, prominent #MeToo voice, who made a performative appearance at the Brett Kavanagh hearings, now wants to “change the rules” on the movement in favor of a sort of ‘Due Process’- a process that many perpetrators cancelled by #MeToo never got, in favor of protecting Joe Biden.

What this means to me is that Democrats think it’s perfectly fine to be selective on who and who doesn’t deserve to be heard and taken seriously, based on who’s on your team. As if it should be that easy to just shed your principles like Snake skin, hypocritically protecting one predator, while gunning for another that doesn’t fit with you politically.

In 2016, I was perfectly fine voting for the “lesser evil”. Now that the party has loudly stated that not only does my values, principles, and policy demands for the poor and sick of America, not matter- I should fall in line with a candidate that has helped endless innocent people die overseas with America’s imperial military reach, helped endless people die at home because they cant afford a doctor, said that he has “no empathy” for young people- the same young people that have to live and suffer under the conditions of Climate Change while he’s dead and gone, sexually assaulted and violated multiple women, said that nothing will fundamentally change for the same rich people who are now gaining BILLIONS under pandemic conditions while their workers get sicker, if they’re even employed at all.

Moderate establishment Democrats and voters tell me that Trump is the number one threat. That we need to “vote blue no matter who”. Just how “blue” is Joe biden? Just how dissimilar is Joe Biden and his supporters from Trump and his following? For all of the cries of the “angry Bernie Bros” online, I see countless accosting and abusive discourse examples from Biden supporters calling any dissenters “Russian Bots”, or “MAGA Hats”. Being told that I’m somehow a Trump voter by default, for not immediately supporting Biden. All this when all I’ve ever seen from “the Bernie Bros” is aggressively holding smear artists to facts and truth in a thick environment of misrepresentation of Bernie Sanders and his platform.

So- Why shouldn’t Progressives vote for Joe Biden?

This Democratic party doesn’t give a damn about you. Nor does it care about Progressive policy. The party and its supporters spend all this time, smearing Sanders and his base as “Not democrats”, angry “socialists who want free stuff”, “How are you gonna PAY for it?!” etc etc, all while claiming to support SOME form of our policy, and then dropping it the second it doesn’t feel politically advantageous. This party threw everything it could into stopping YOU. With tactics like voter suppression, using a silly app suspiciously funded and supported by shady actors in Iowa, taking WEEKS to give final results, running Super PACs against Bernie and our movement, fear-mongering about Bernie when he did win states, gas lighting the public on “elect-ability”, using a literal pandemic against Bernie to guilt him into dropping out while attempting to blame him for continued spread of COVID-19, while they sent voters to the polls and we didn’t.

And after zero policy concessions, zero good will, repeated demands we fall in line after more than a year of being slammed and disrespected, showing up for Hillary Clinton and then being blamed for her loss anyway, which is inevitable again if Joe loses? Are we just going to keep allowing that? Just how long do we have to hold our noses, voting for Moderate do-nothing lite Republicans who would sooner see you die, than provide you affordable and universal healthcare, because a Billionaire would stand to lose money. Even NOW, during a Pandemic this party has done next to NOTHING to secure the livelihoods of American citizens, as more and more die, get furloughed, and cant pay their bills. All while Trump and Republicans take credit for pitching more common sense plans (even though they want to send us all back to work/school to feed the machine).

This- is the “resistance” party? THIS is the best we can do? Performative rage against a fascist clown while propping up an accused rapist warmongering corporatist with cognitive decline and previous racist tendencies? THIS is what the party keeps telling us we better support or be shamed as somehow supporting the “bad guy”?

Listen, #NotMeUs- this will never stop. This party will NEVER stop using us as a prop for our ideas and passion, then throwing us under the bus when they think they no longer need us. They cannot continue to be allowed to drag us further to the right with guilt trips and shaming. They will NEVER take you seriously unto you take serious action. We’ve been preaching about “action” this whole campaign. Why should that “action” stop in the ballot box? Have some foresight for just a moment and envision how this plays out in future elections, unless you stand up and make them WORK for your vote.

I, for one will not vote for Joe Biden. But I wont shame you for your vote, no matter who it’s for. Why? Because the party did a terrible job at earning -your- vote. I’d maybe only criticize you if you don’t show up at all. There’s so many down-ballot candidate who need support. Even if you leave the President box unchecked, at least show up for the other races.

But consider: There are other options that have been stifled for way too long. Perhaps its time we give them a shot, no? Green Party is running Howie Hawkins and a platform that is much closer to our principles that Biden would ever try for. Justin Amash just jumped into the race if you’re a little more on the Libertarian side. Jesse Ventura is also discovering running on the Green ticket as well. Just imagine Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura on the debate stage with Donald Trump? Popcorn for DAYS.

In order for us to be taken seriously, we must prove that we’re capable of holding the party accountable. Not voting for them is the ultimate accountability, and you get to keep your principles intact.

Now- to the ultimate argument you’d inevitably get: “You would be helping Donald Trump secure 4 more years”.

My response? You don’t have to bare the blame for that. You wont be at fault for Joe Biden losing any more than those who chose not to vote at all. It’s on the party to earn these votes. That’s how elections work. If you hate the candidate and don’t feel good about them as a person, why is it your responsibility to put them in office? To me- one of the most personal things a person has, is their vote. Not their dollars, or their Tweets. It’s checking a box for the person YOU chose to represent you. If that person doesn’t believe in hardly anything you personally believe in- why is it that they deserve your vote, again? How is it that they’re are somehow entitled to that vote? They don’t, and they aren’t. I’m looking at you too, Republicans.

In closing…

Progressives, I’m sorry to break it to you but- Medicare For All is not on the ballot. Taxing the rich is not on the ballot. Ending corruption and crooked politicians is not on the ballot.

But- ending a terrible two-party system IS on the ballot. Taking your personal vote back, IS on the ballot. In my opinion- the only wasted vote, is the one you were demanded in giving up to what you don’t believe in.

-LZ

https://medium.com/@legacyzero/why-sanders-supporters-should-not-vote-for-joe-biden-a9146bee189b

[asklepiean]

30 Days of Devotion - Mars

1. A basic introduction of the deity

Mars is one of the Dii Consentes, the twelve major Gods honored in the Roman religion (or as Cicero calls it in “De Natura Deorum”, Cultus Deorum). He’s the God of soldiers, victory, battle and martial frenzy, and He’s the father of Romulus and Remus - hence He’s the divine father of Rome.

2. How did you become first aware of this deity?

Let’s just say that being interested in Roman and military history helped a lot with the introduction.

3. Symbols and icons of this deity

Mars is often depicted naked -as His Greek counterpart, Ares-, with a spear and a shield. Romans used to keep a spear in the Regia (the former residence of the kings of Rome), and it was said that this weapon moved or vibrated if Rome was in danger. He is also depicted with a lorica musculata, an anatomical armor used during the Republic and the Imperial period. Sacred animals are the horse, the wolf, the woodpecker.

4. A favorite myth or myths of this deity

Ovid tells the story of how Mars is tricked by Anna Perenna. The God is madly in love with Minerva (quote “Armifer armiferae correptus amore Minerue - Uror et hoc longo tempore uolnus alo” (Fasti, book 3, 681-2), that approximately means “I, a warrior, burn with love for the belligerent Minerva, and for a long time I’ve nurtured this wound”) and asks Anna to help Him. She agrees, but instead of speaking to Minerva, She lies and tells Him the Goddess accepted. Mars prepares Himself for the rendezvous, only to find out that Anna, disguised as Minerva, tricked Him and almost had an affair with Him.

5. Members of the family – genealogical connections

Rhea Silvia - The vestal virgin that gave birth to the sons of Mars; niece of Amulius, usurper of king Numitor’s throne

Romulus and Remus - His children, founders of the first settlement of Rome. Romulus killed his brother during a fight (there are many versions of this story: the most famous tells that Remus mocked the sanctity of the pomerium, jumping over the border while armed, and the fixed punishment for this transgression was death), becoming the first king of Rome. He became a God, Quirinus, after death (the senators killed him, but the myth says he ascended the heavens while speaking to his soldiers during the training).

6. Other related deities and entities associated with this deity

Janus - in times of war the doors of His temple were left open and were closed during peace (Emperor Augustus says that under his govern the temple was closed twice - an extraordinary event).

Nerio - the personification of valor, sometimes identified as Bellona; She’s said to be His consort

Iuppiter and Quirinus: with Mars, they were part of the archaic triad of Gods that ruled over Rome. Quirinus is the name of the divinized Romulus, a Deity (Dumézil in “Archaic Roman Religion“ offers a good explanation) and an epithet of Mars.

Venus: as in the Ares/Aphrodites couple, Mars is often depicted as one of Venus’ lovers thanks to the syncretism with the Hellenic mythology

Minerva: in Ovid’s “Fasti”, Mars is said to be in love with Her

Anna Perenna: certain versions of the myth tell that Anna was married to Mars

7. Names and epithets

Mars Gradivus (from gradus, “step”; the marching God))

Mars Quirinus (from quirites, “civilians”; God of the citizens)

Mars Grabovius (a title shared with Iuppiter and an Umbrian Deity, Vofionus)

Mars Pater (from pater, “father”;  Father Mars)

Mars Silvanus (found in Cato’s “De Agricoltura”, probably it's not an epithet but the name of another God, Silvanus)

Mars Ultor (from ultor, “avenger”; the avenging God)

Mars Augustus (from augustus, “venerable”; the venerable God)

8. Variations on this deity (aspects, regional forms, etc.)

I don’t want to turn this post into a wall of names, so I’ll leave here the link to the Wiki article about Mars, where you can find an exhaustive list of syncretic  Celtic Gods.

9. Common mistakes about this deity

In Cato’s “De Agricoltura”, we find a rite that involves Mars as a protector against the dangers of the woods and illness, and a prayer that asks His action in the growing of the crops, the wellness of the shepherds and the animals. This leads many into thinking that Mars is a rustic God, but it’s a shallow interpretation. Mars does not protect the fields per se, He stands against the chaotic forces of nature - He’s a sentinel on the border, and His duty is to block any intruder that tries to sneak in. He guards the perimeter and the entire land, and His role doesn’t change: He never becomes an agricultural God, He just shifts His attention from the wall of the city to the grass of the fields.

10. Offerings – historical and UPG

A common offering for Mars is the suovetaurilia (the sacrifice of an ox, a ram and a pig), and according to Plutarch, during the ides of October, one of the horses that pulled the winner’s chariot in a race is sacrificed to Him (the October Equus). Other common offerings are incense and wine.

11. Festivals, days, and times sacred to this deity

Equirria (February 27, March 14): in this day, the Romans organized chariot races

Quinquatrus (March 19): a sacred ceremony in which the weapons were polished and purified

Tubilustrium (March 23, May 23): a sacred ceremony in which the trumpets were polished and the army was purified

Tigillum sororium (October 1): a ceremony linked to the legend of Horatius and the purification after the war

October Equus (October 15): in this day, the Romans organized chariot races - one of the winning horses (the one who pulled the chariot on the right) was sacrificed to Mars

Armilustrium (October 19): a sacred ceremony in which the weapons were polished and purified

Mars was linked to the ceremony of the uer/ver sacrum (”the sacred spring”), a time when the new generation of warriors was sent out of the settlement in search of better lands and resources. Many groups used to follow sings, like animals, to find a new place and settle down - these groups usually took the name of the sign that helped them (e.g. the Picentes named themselves after the picus, “woodpeker”)

March and October are probably linked to Mars because they signed the beginning and the end of the martial season (wars were fought in spring and summer) - I haven’t found this info in any book/paper yet, it’s one of my assumptions.

12. Places associated with this deity and their worship

the campus martius (the place where the comitia centuriata, the citizens in arms, used to gather)

the Temple of Mars Ultor (erected 2 BC, founded by Emperor Augustus as a vow to avenge the death of Caesar)

the ara Martis in campo, located in the campus martius (in 138, Decimus Junius Callaicus founded a temple in that area as a vow)

the templum Martis extra portam Capenam, located near Porta Capena (where the legions gathered to intervene in the southern regions)

the sacrarium Martis in the Regia (a depository for holy objects related to war)

any temple dedicated to Mars was usually built outside the pomerium, the sacred border that circumscribed the first settlement of Rome, and because of its sanctity, it couldn't be violated with war. Other Deities, such as Bellona, Vulcano, and Venus, were kept out of the pomerium.

13. What modern cultural issues are closest to this deity’s heart?

Honestly, I don’t believe there’s something that still holds the values embodied by Mars, so I would say that our culture has nothing that this God would really care about. War is a useless, mindless bloodshed that kils innoncents; citizens are divided; leaders don’t care about the population. Probably I’m too cinic.

14. Has worship of this deity changed in modern times?

Apart from the obvious impossibility of animal sacrifices and public rites (the heart of the religion), what we can reconstruct from the literary sources is as similar as possible as what Romans used to do. We are lucky enough to have a lot of writings that can be used to refine our practice.

15. Any mundane practices that are associated with this deity?

Martial training and learning discipline (both physical and mental): Personally, I would add studying military history and military strategy.

16. How do you think this deity represents the values of their pantheon and cultural origins?

Romans were not priests who fought in times of need. Romans were soldiers who stipulated deadly serious vows with Gods and men.

There’s a theory that says that the Roman Empire spread its influence because Romans started fighting the neighboring populations as a way to defend themselves. In 390 BCE, Rome was plundered by a Celtic tribe and the shock was so severe that the entire Roman mindset changed immediately. War was no longer seen as an act of violent imposition on others but as an extreme act of defense. War was regulated by laws and rites, a specific group of priests (the fetiales) was involved in the declaration of the bellum iustum, the rightful war, and victory was seen as a sign of divine favor. Omens were taken before the fight, and it was possible to “bribe” the Gods of the opponents with prayers and vows, taking their statues from the temples and bringing them to Rome. War was a matter of religion, and religion permeated every aspect of Roman life.

Mars is defense, discipline, martial order. He’s the centurion, the man who marches with the wounded soldiers; He’s the vexillifer, holding the Roman banner in the middle of the fight. Mars is the sentinel, the last bastion, defending the Urbs, Rome, against its enemies - both outside than inside. He’s the embodiment of the essence of what Rome aspired to become, and what became after centuries of war and diplomacy.

Mars doesn’t just represent Rome and Roman values. Mars is Rome.

17. How does this deity relate to other gods and other pantheons?

*blank

18. How does this deity stand in terms of gender and sexuality? (historical and/or UPG)

With the exception of poetry, in the Roman religion and practice, there was little to no space regarding the sexuality of the Gods (apart from the Male/Female dichotomy). Mars can be considered straight, though.

19. What quality or qualities of this god do you most admire? What quality or qualities of them do you find the most troubling?

I don’t have a “best/worse quality” list because I don’t think that Gods should be analyzed like we do with people. Our Gods are the essence of the Cosmos, and saying that we prefere or oppose something They represent implies that we are disconnected from Them and that essential aspect of reality.

20. Art that reminds you of this deity

Jacques-Louis David - Oath of the Horatii

21. Music that makes you think of this deity

Dvořák  - Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, B. 178 "From the New World": IV. Allegro con fuoco

22. A quote, a poem, or piece of writing that you think this deity resonates strongly with

Si sta come

d’autunno

sugli alberi

le foglie

(G. Ungaretti, Soldati - english translation here)

23. Your own composition – a piece of writing about or for this deity

Warcries crush the skies.

Your spear’s shaking, Mars Pater.

Tonight we’ll bleed again.

(I posted this is June, but who cares)

24. A time when this deity has helped you

*blank

25. A time when this deity has refused to help

*blank

26. How has your relationship with this deity changed over time?

*blank

27. Worst misconception about this deity that you have encountered

The blatantly idiotic idea that Mars is a bloodthirsty, mindless imbecile. People seem to have ginormous issues with war Gods and I’m so tired of this trend - it’s desrespectful for the Gods and the devotees. If Deities are not light and fluff and don’t stick to the “tumblr aesthetic”, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to mock Them.

28. Something you wish you knew about this deity but don’t currently

29. Any interesting or unusual UPG to share?

Nothing I feel comfortable sharing on the internet.

30. Any suggestions for others just starting to learn about this deity?

Disinstal tumblr

Go to the library

Look for books on Greek and Roman religion/mythology

Read them, then read the bibliography

Look for the books you found in the bibliography

Repeat every time you want to research something

Resources:

Cicero, De Natura Deorum

G. Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion

G. De Sanctis, La Religione a Roma

Ovid, Fasti

Cato, De Agricoltura

Emperor Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti

the good ol’ Wikipedia (the article is really good and full of useful resources)