#and especially the imperialism

[wintercalamity]

THIS

Look I haven’t even played Fallout 1 & 2 but the entire set dressing of glorious midcentury americana and the nuclear war aren’t important. They’re a smokescreen. It’s like a murder mystery where nuclear bombs are the extremely obvious nasty dude with an axe to grind who seems like the obvious culprit but you wouldn’t have a story if there wasn’t a more sinister truth.

When you actually play the thing it turns out it’s all hiding the failures of America in its historical totality. An America addicted to wars and expansionism. An America that was experimenting on its own citizens before, and unrelated to, the apocalypse. An America that utterly devalued human life as it upheld a cutesy 50s aesthetic over its rotten depths. 

There is a vast difference between the experience of picking through the centuries old ruins of a civilisation to mourn it, and kicking through the rubble to learn that a failed state ensured its own demise and there is an opportunity to take a new, different path. The ruins of America are a time capsule museum of violence from a country founded on violence and addicted to violence to the end, and it’s gone. The people though, are still here, and they can decide what to do next. There are 3 endings in New Vegas that intend to rebuild by emulating templates of the old world, to the tune of the ideology of whoever’s in charge, and they are portrayed as obsolete, incompatible, or monstrous. The fourth and most hopeful ending says that the future belongs to the individual, those who learn from the past, and the anarchists. War never changes - women do, through the roads they walk. 

[bixels]

Baffled.

[juney-blues]

when you're part of a group with structural power over another goup, you really do gotta just learn to say "i am not exempt from 'fuck 'em' when relevant" whenever someone expresses frustration with you or people like you.

[shu-of-the-wind]

The Ainu have not intentionally forgotten their culture and their language. It is the modern Japanese state that, from the Meiji era on, usurped our land, destroyed our culture, and deprived us of our language under the euphemism of assimilation. In the space of a mere 100 years, they nearly decimated the Ainu culture and language that had taken tens of thousands of years to come into being on this earth. ~Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006) Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir

[serpentface]

are the talking crows still around? what are They doing while all this drama is going on around them in the world

Mostly doing their own crow things and not commonly having direct and mutual interactions with other sophonts. They're similar to yotici in the capacity that they have Very different modes of living than most other sophonts, and they generally are not recognized as 'People' in the same sense as humans, elowey, qilik, caelin, and delkhin. However, (given their strategic and intelligent capacity for word mimicry) talking crows tend to be comprehended as unique magical animals or spirits, or are not recognized as a distinct type of entity but rather feed into broader corvid folklore (as they are very difficult to visually distinguish from many common crows).

They make a few appearances in Whitecalf as small flocks of crows trailing the pilgrimage, picking at its food supplies and occasionally scavenging on its dead. This is a family unit of talking crows that has suffered heavily in the drought, with very few of their chicks surviving infancy and even some of the healthiest adults dying of thirst and starvation. They have recognized this mass movement of big two legged people as a source of potential sustenance, and are very persistent and skilled in keeping themselves fed.

In-text they may come off as an ambiguous, possibly magical element (or partially hallucinatory) from the character POVs, due to them going from a mundane presence indistinguishable from common crows to them uttering dire threats in clear and fluent Wardi. This is very unsettling and hard to reconcile for most who witness this, but is actually just a learned method of taking advantage of beliefs in corvids as ill omens to frighten off or distract targets while another crow snatches bits of food or a nice wineskin.

[netmors]

Eleventh Fleet AU - Admiral Karyn Faro

This was supposed to be an art post in honor of the anniversary of the release of the Thrawn Trilogy from Legends, but I'm only on the second book, so my opinion on the story has not yet been fully formed.

It was still the May weekend and after such a good cold I wanted a banal, basic rest.

However, I discovered such a thing as photobashes in concept art… And I decided to make a “sketch” for screenshots from the game. It turned out to be a very strange experiment, but the experience was really interesting…

Disclaimer: such a game does not exist… It is unlikely that it will exist.

Music: The Clone Wars - Unreleased Soundtrack Shattered & Victory and Death

[funeralprocessor]

I feel like the Primaris should have been the catalyst for like, an imperial civil war. At the very least, much unrest in the house of Guilliman. Their existence, let alone rollout/integration, should have had many chapters absolutely rioting. It should be beyond the pale by several orders of magnitude and be seen as an enormous overreach by the more autonomy loving chapters, a blasphemy by the more orthodox chapters, and an existential threat to chapters with geneseed quirks. Plus anyone with any awareness of the thunder warriors should take one look at them and recognize the writing on the wall. Guilliman should absolutely recognize what they represent, what they imply. Like they're the leading wave of a paradigm shift that doesn't bode well for what came before. And I say this as someone who's not averse to Primaris, I just think they could've, should've, been a waaaay bigger deal. I know they loathe changing the status quo and we're never getting rid of the posterboys but I think we missed out on something interesting.

[resurgentclass-stardestroyer]

You can pry "Hux has a very slight Arkanisian accent if you know what you're listening for, that gets stronger when he's enraged upset etc, and he is in complete denial about it" from my cold dead hands

[liesmyth]

would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

[focusonmy]

This is for the Indians that support i*rael. Unfortunately I've seen lots of comments with the Indian flag supporting I*rael. And I want them to understand that this is how I*raeli citizens see them.

[bixels]

I wanna get around to doing some small story beats for the "Main Six Takes Manhattan" story. It'd be a good chance for me to play around with different art styles too.

I'm really excited about this story too because it'd be splitting everyone up into pairs for their own little arc.

Rarity attends a fashion showcase in upper Manhattan, with April-Jacqueline in tow as her "attendant." The two get swept up in industry drama as they uncover the abuse faced by amateur designer Carol Cho under the American fashion house "Polomare."

Pinkie and Thea head to Harlem for a rent party, hosted by Thea's city friends. Despite Thea's protestations, Pinkie can't help but be the life of the party as its tenants and musicians attempt to raise enough money to fight their landlords and demand housing justice.

Dash and Félicie navigate NYC's transportation system to go to a ball game: the New York Wonderbolts vs. the Washington Senators. While Dash meets her heroes, Félicie can't help but feel homesick and smothered by the big city.

[dellovestorant]

Oh shit

[rexscanonwife]

Inquisitor!Brea is one of my favorite angsty AUs cause I can just SEE how the drama would unfold, especially being one of the universes where Kepler actually lives 0u0 certainly that has nothing to do with her speech bubble!

(Taglist + alternate hairstyle under the cut)

Taglist♡: @me-myself-and-my-fos @tiny-cloud-of-flowers @sunstar-of-the-north @dearly-beeloved @adoredbyalatus

@changeling-selfship @crushes-georg @cherry-bomb-ships @rosieaurora @rejaytionships @sunflawyer @in-true-blue-love

@tropicalgothships @little-miss-selfships @hotrodharts @cupiidzbow @frozenhi-chews @limey-self-inserts @candyheartedchy

[stellastra-scribbles]

(May 16, 2022) - First concept doodle of Battlespire apprentice, Velesandriel. She exhibits certified knife cat™ energy, which if you've ever played Battlespire, that's just how the dialogue options are lol

(May-July 2022) - Some doodles based on some in-game dialogue.

[autismguy55]

controversial, but: jack being irish is a very common headcanon and i honestly just can’t see it. in chapter 2, jack says “we’re english, and the english are best at everything.” if lotf takes place in the 40s-50s like many assume, the irish war of independence had only happened about 20 years prior and ireland was freshly liberated. i’m sure we all know the atrocities the english committed against the irish, and i just don’t think an irish kid would say “the english are best at everything,” especially so soon after ireland gained independence. i don’t mean to bash anyone by the way, this is only my opinion

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Can you elaborate on the Our Flag Means Death thing? If you want

Yeah! So I get that realism isn't the be-all end-all of fiction, but. I really wish Taika Waititi et al. had done even 30 seconds of research on 18th century American history before they wrote an extended joke about the protagonist having a "man for sale" in episode 3. Yes, it's a white man being sold, but a guy still gets led to a market by a rope around his neck and then auctioned off... and this is played for laughs. I don't know a ton of Caribbean history, but even I know that no one in Nassau in 1717 would have been confused by the idea of selling a human being, the way they are on OFMD.

That was all before I found out that the real Stede Bonnet was a known enslaver and possible rapist. I think his story could be a horror comedy about a horrible person being horrible (see: What We Do in the Shadows) but the Stede we see on OFMD spouts progressive pop-psych slogans and is allegedly here to teach us radical self-love. Not a great combination.

Also, I'm one of the people who found OFMD unwatchable partially because I'd seen Black Sails. Black Sails came out 8 years before, features a lot of the same historical figures and Treasure Island characters, and has more queer rep than OFMD. But Black Sails's main plot is about a doomed-yet-glorious fight to end slavery in the Americas in the 1700s, and it is unflinchingly honest in its depictions of racism, imperialism, and homophobia. So it's jarring and deeply unfunny to see some of that same material cleaned up (the polyamorous main character is now a monogamous gay man; the kill-or-be-enslaved stakes are now potted plant thefts) or else swept under the rug (acknowledging slavery and homophobia would ruin the fun! let's pretend they don't exist!) for a different show that gets lauded as "groundbreaking" for its milquetoast repackaging of queerness.