#as of his old country wasn't literally destroyed by war

[carnasnow]

My dad doesn't usually say anything about *that*, but it's Pride Month so I guess it was to be expected. Super annoying to hear your parent rant about this 'bullshit' when you're aroace. I have to restrain myself to not reply because I am absolutely *not* in a position where I can be kicked out.

I'm just glad he waited until we were like what? 15? At least for me, before he started ranting about those things. Made it possible to have my own opinion on things and not become like him :D Also made it really weird when he started ranting about the whole Pride thing, kinda like a slap in the face? Like 'oh, okay, you think like that too'. Sigh

I really don't want to argue with him because first of all, I suck at it, and second of all idek if he'd listen to me, so listening and not saying anything it is.

[quirkwizard]

Midoriya was forgotten by almost all of society. How would he become the greatest hero? Besides, the ranks still work. Mirio is first and Todoroki is way above him. Heroes still care about ranks and Midoriya achieved nothing.

Look, I don't know why you sent this ask. All that I know is you've opened an old wound and I'm about to let out all of my pent up frustration with this ask. It may be off topic from why you sent this ask, but I've been looking for an excuse to destroy this terrible take.

What on Earth are you talking about? Let's ignore everything Izuku has accomplished throughout the series and focus on the war. He is the guy responsible for beating All For One, the single greatest villain in human history, on international television. He is literally the only person who was ever capable of doing that. If he hadn't done that, everyone would be dead. And he did that by sacrificing his Quirk, the thing that allowed him to be a pro hero. Which is nothing to say of the waves of change he had on the culture of heroes and civilians through his actions. If that is not the definition of the greatest hero, then I don't know what is.

Even then, he's still arguably doing a lot even as a non-hero. He's the heroics teacher in the best hero school in the country, if not one of the top in the world. He gets to help grow and foster the potential of dozens of kids, all of whom will go on to help save more people. All while not even having a Quirk. He got that job through his own skill, intelligence, and experience, all while being happy and fulfilled doing it. I have to say that's a pretty big accomplishment in its own right. Especially at his age and in a place like Japan, where being a teacher is a highly valued and respected position. That's like saying a teacher at Harvard Law didn't achieve anything.

And no, Izuku certainly was not forgotten, neither by the public nor by his fellow classmates. When Izuku talks about the class hanging out, he's referring to them as a group as a get-together. Because being able to organize twenty different friends in a single room is next to impossible unless it's a holiday. He certainly wasn't forgotten by the public either. We see that he has a statue with the rest of the Class 1-A kids, one where he is at the forefront of it. And when Dai said that he couldn't believe Izuku was real, that's not because he was forgotten. It's because Izuku has reached such a legendary status that people struggle to even believe he was a real person. That kid meeting Izuku is like suddenly walking into Heracles on the street. 

Which honestly is the thing that grinds my gears the most about all of this. Actually, the blatant misinformation is what bothers me the most, but what bothers me second is how people act like this wipes away everything Izuku has done over the years. Because the whole point was that he was supposed to be better than All Might. And he was. He was better in every metric. And having Izuku not get the spot is an extension of that. Because so much of All Might making him the peak heroics rather than the foundation did a lot of harm in the long run. So it's been so frustrating to see people act like Izuku's actions didn't mean anything. All because he didn't reach the top spot in a meaningless popularity contest.

[qqueenofhades]

While I generally agree with your writings, I find myself confused by the term "Online Leftist". As a 75-year-old who has had a Social Democratic bent (and because of that has seen more of his votes lose than he ever wished in these United States), I have voted in every county-through-federal level election in my life since age 21. I also use social media sparingly, but I feel I certainly could be considered to be a leftist who is online, but I don't share the viewpoint of those you call "Online Leftist". Please clarify the meaning of that phrase in your writings.

I have to add that I've voted third party only once. I voted for John Anderson in 1980 and instantly regretted that action when Ronald Reagan won. (At that time, Jimmy Carter wasn't perceived as the great humanitarian and climate visionary he truly was, and the economy and the hostage crisis ruled the election arguments.) It was a lesson that was hard-earned. Thus in 2016, even though I supported Bernie Sanders's ideas and philosophy, I voted for Hillary because 1) she had unimpeachable (no pun intended) qualifications, and 2) not to vote for her would ensure that a really nasty and incompetent clown would be leading our country.

Thank you for all of your Tumblr postings. I find myself reblogging them hoping to reach the idealistic voter who tends to want to vote "purist" rather than "pragmatist."

The term "Online Leftists," as myself and others use it, refers to the specific group of often-young, often-white, often-western terminally online social media users, usually on Twitter, who post frothing manifestos about how corrupt the world is (specifically, how corrupt and fascist the Democratic Party of America is) and how the only way to fix it is to have some mythical leftist Revolution that will destroy late-stage capitalism and the current world order and somehow have no bad effects whatever and then a magical "progressive" utopia will spring into existence and everything will be fixed. Even the ones who don't go that far are heavily influenced by the ideology that the establishment/country is corrupt beyond repair, voting (especially voting for Democrats) is morally evil and indefensible, that there is no difference between the political parties of America, and that America/the West is the cause of all evil in the world. It has become especially visible with the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas wars, when they enthusiastically or at least tacitly support Russia and Hamas simply because those states/groups are "anti-western."

It also has to do with the whopping western leftist levels of virulent antisemitism and eagerness to call Israel a "white western colonialist settler state," as discussed in previous posts. Even while they decry Israel's genocide of Gaza, they will twist themselves into knots to excuse Russia's genocide of Ukraine or any legitimacy to a Jewish state or need for Israel to defend its own civilians, because you see, those genocides are committed by people they like in support of something something, Advancing the Great Revolution Cause. This is partly influenced by the belief that modern far-right fascist Russia is somehow a standard-bearer for old-school USSR socialism (which itself was horrifying enough) and should be defended and cheerled as a principled enemy of the West. This is the same group of people who unironically spend all their time posting fulminations that Biden is a genocidal fascist and America is a dictatorship, because they know that literally nothing will happen to them and they will face no real-world consequences, because none of those things are actually true. But as long as they can claim it for the rhetorical martyrdom, that does not matter.

By political beliefs and presence on Tumblr, I too am definable as a leftist who is online, but the Online Leftists (used together and with capital letters) are a distinct group whose ideology is marked by righteous nihilism, rejection of voting, support for a mythical "Revolution" in place of ever trying to work within the flawed political system, support for violent genocidal states or groups as long as they are "anti-western" or "anti-Israeli" (witness how they flocked to quiveringly defend the Houthis) while simultaneously yelling at everyone else for supporting genocide, making no attempt to incorporate actual politics, history, or reality into their all-consuming ideology, and shaming everyone else who doesn't agree with them. As you say, they are focused on some "pure" level of political engagement, which is of course impossible and therefore means the only thing they do is spend their time on Twitter rampantly spreading misinformation as long as it fits their beliefs. Pragmatism, harm reduction, nuance, or making a flawed choice that puts any kind of "moral burden" on them does not exist to them and is a dirty word, because it might conflict with bringing about La Revolution. So yeah.

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

(I stand with Palistane) RANT IN 3...2....1

SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UPSHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP AND I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH, SHUT THE FUCK UP

People aren't mad because you were born Israel. We're mad because Israel is committing LITERAL WAR CRIMES. We're mad because Israel IS KILLING INNOCENT CIVILLIANS. We're mad because Israel is KILLING CHILDREN AND INFANTS. We're mad because they're bombing homes. We're mad because a young boy's home was destroyed and his parents killed. We're mad because a toddler was so traumatized that he didn't understand that the adults around him were trying to help. We're mad because they're imprisoning innocent people, including children, and starving them at best. We're mad because ambulances and hospitals were bombed. We're mad because there are recordings of mothers crying while holding their dead children. We're mad because Israel military shot a nine year old child. We're mad because a six year old was stabbed to death for being Palestinian, which wasn't even in Palestine, it was in America--proof that the hate spreads.. We're mad because all this trauma and the world turns a blind eye to it all.

And this is all just what I, a caucasian in Canada who's greatest worry is my grades, knows about it.

I'm not saying you can't be upset as an Israelis, but you should be upset AT YOUR OWN COUNTRY. You should be mad AT YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT. You should be mad because they're the ones causing all this death and destruction. You should be mad because they've soured the name of your home and religion.

You shouldn't be mad because people are getting upset that all these deaths and abuse are happening.

And You definitely shouldn't post your horrific, selfish, and idiotic thoughts along with a drawing of you crying when you still have fingers to draw with and an internet to post this to.

You know why other people are crying? BECAUSE THEIR HOMES WERE BOMBED, THEIR FOOD, WATER, AND INTERNET SOURCES--SOURCES OF COMMUNICATION TO EACH OTHER AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD--ARE VIRTUALLY GONE, THEIR BODIES DAMAGED, AND THEIR FAMILIES TORN APART OR KILLED

Jesus Christ the privilege.

[witchcraftandburialdirt]

✧ ─ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐒 ─ ✧ ℍ𝔸ℝ𝕌𝕂𝕆 ℕ𝔸𝕂𝔸𝕊𝕆ℕ𝔼 ... 【 ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴄʀʏ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴀᴡɴ 】 - ʟᴇᴀɢᴜᴇ ᴠᴇʀꜱᴇ

── "𝐒𝐋𝐈𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒."

I know its been a while since I've done one of these but bear with me; I've been thinking quite heavily upon the fact that I use a lot of religious references within my writing with Haru, particularly in his league verse with @bells-of-black-sunday's Tarhos - and I don't think I've ever went into detail about how literal it is. When its said that Haru worships the ground Tarhos walks on and sees him as a God ...

It's 100% literal;

Haruko legitimately views Tarhos as a fallen ancient God who has given him the power and influence to save his country, his people, and drive out an invasive pest that threatens to destroy everything he holds dear. This is largely due to the timing in which they met; they did not meet on the first day of the Noxian invasion - Tarhos was on the Northern coast of Bahrl and Haruko was on the Southern coast when the invasion began. Before the war began Haru lived in relative peace with his family and his community, a 300 year old Vastaya who did not drive a lot of conflict and was happy with his little life. Within the first few weeks of the invasion Haruko lost all of that, his community was gassed, his family was killed, and he could not defend any of it - the best he could do was heed his mother's warnings and flee to the North. He stewed in his mind for weeks on end that were filled with nothing but misery, carnage, and the desecration of life - and not a single GOD answered his prayers.

He prayed to the Spirit, to the Gods of Targon he'd heard whispers of, to the Sun, the Moon, and not once did he receive any sort of solace from the laceration of his homeland. Not only that but the farther North he went the more whispers of how Karma, the Kinkou, and many others were opting for peace - which destroyed Haru's faith in his own fellow man too. The leaders and spiritual guides of Ionia were cozy up on the mainland, they couldn't even begin to imagine the horrors taking place on the island and how the Epool River had become like Styx with how many corpses were floating in its once sacred waters. Seeing the Wuju temples destroyed is what finally sent him to flee to the Mainland to try and escape the waking HELL that was the active conquest of Bahrl. His grief was insurmountable, his very soul quaking with the very Land's screams of torture as Guardian tree's were burned and its people ransacked, killed, and used like trophies.

Haruko's spirit had cracked violently by the time he met Tarhos, and it was by mere chance that Haru's spear was knocked away on a coastal assault just before he was about to leave; and it was chance that the Noxian fleet's churning motors knocked the Dakrin weapon free. When he saw a blade of sanguine within the pools he wasn't thinking about if it would harm him, he was only thinking about how it would block the next sword thrusting at him. The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt he was immediately invaded; his mind instantly boiling with a poison stew as he saw inside of the mind of a Darkin. He almost lost himself but through sheer force of will he pushed Tarhos' being down into submission in his mind and suddenly - the Noxians within his path were falling like flies. The blade absorbed the filth and viscera, and once it had gained enough strength; it spoke to him ... and answered him. This bloodthirsty, screaming God locked within a sword was the only thing to have EVER answered him and show him its barest power by allowing Haru to litter the beach with bodies without earning a single scratch.

Gods, for most of history, were not loving and benelovent beings, they were explanations for carnage, horrors of nature, and the unknown - beings that stood upon the pinnacle of existence and stewed within the bowls of the pit of terror inconceivable by the mortal mind. This act in and of itself, to be able to steal the lives away of so many without consequence - Haruko was in awe, nothing else could possibly explain in his mind what had just happened but divinity. Given his life and origins Haru never had any education on Darkin, they didn't concern him and he didn't even know they existed since his village was small and he's never left Ionia. All he knew is that finally something had answered him.

Even so, once this was all over Haru was able to put the weapon down, but the connection remained and the Vastayan was given a choice - Tarhos was impressed enough by his bravery that he didn't dominate Haruko when he was vulerable again after the fight. He could leave Tarhos behind on this ship and doom someone else to become his vessel or ... he could pick the blade back up and drink down the blood within it; to gain power like he felt on the beach, to never have to be alone and scared ever again. The choice was easy to Haru; the war was still raging and he saw well enough into the Darkin's soul as well to know that Tarhos was much more than what he appeared to be, both mentally and the physical shape he took. After weeks of disassociating Haru's second grasp of Tarhos awoke his mind and reconnected every bit of him back together again; his essence and his physical form had never felt so connected. Himself and Tarhos were present in every muscle twitch and pump of blood in his veins, he felt strong for the first time since the invasion began.

Now able to control his fate and with the power of a God in his soul, Haruko finally had security; his faith to Tarhos a stepping stone into a higher plane that will allow him to grasp all of his dreams with the right amount of effort. Even ones that seemed impossible before. The Darkin had already proven his loyalty and honorable nature to Haruko and the Vastayan found it easy to trust him, its difficult to not trust someone after seeing every corner of their mind and sensing their very existence in every waking moment of your life. Tarhos proved that he could answer Haruko's prayers and this is what drives Haru to actively search and find a proper Vessel for conquest. As a showing of his dedication to Tarhos, Haruko is even willing to go so far as to cut down one of the most powerful creatures in Ionia for Tarhos to take over; A Dragon. Not even this act caused a flicker of doubt in his mind; watching that noble creature be cracked to bits was one of the most pleasurable visions he'd ever seen - he'd finally be able to hold his other half and gaze upon his God within a more fitting vessel. It is a symbolic ceremony that relinquishes Haruko's commitment to the peaceful calls of Ionian leadership and places his resolve in something that has given and offered him not only a way to rest his mind and a forever companion, but means to exact revenge on those who have hurt him.

At a shallow looking it does appear to be quite Not Good™ with how Haruko will and does listen to Tarhos for guidance, he holds the Darkin's opinions even above his own at times and does allow himself to be convinced of things he might not have been before. A key example of this is his treatment of Noxians vs Ionians; his countrymen are treated kindly and even in cases of @deathdxnces he takes people under his wing - his personality calms and he lacks the same ferocity. This even extends to @deathfxnds, who, while born Noxian, Haru does not see as one - perhaps thinking that the Darkin God Kayn wields has equally cleansed his soul of his weaker limitations. Haru's incredibly brutal treatment of Noxians is both an influence of Tarhos own carnality as well as the Vastayan's seething hatred towards what was made of his people and home; the Darkin bond between the two of them brews up something truly malicious. Tarhos and Haruko are both now above what normal people are capable of, The Ascended are Gods and Haruko has been chosen to merge with one - thus making him close to one as well; and his hatred of Noxians alongside this new power has turned them into insects in his mind. He's completely dehumanized them, and he's content - even pleased - to be the one able to bathe in their blood.

Haruko has also greatly influenced Tarhos - this isn't a simple case of one taking over the other, its a perfect 50/50 split of corruption; they are one soul split into two bodies. The Darkin's view of mortals has even shifted due to the Vastayan's influence, Haru has never necessarily cared for mortals, but instead tends to view them as stumbling children who need guidance. He didn't have any urges for slaughter before the war and the ones he currently holds are saved for Noxians - and this is shown in how Tarhos specifically targets Noxians for feedings; he'll avoid Ionians. The Darkin is at ease in Ionia because of Haru's own feelings towards his home - neither of them are trying to sway the other in anyway or change them; they exist as a melting pot of two lives, much akin to the Kindred. Somehow even if Haru's physical form was destroyed, he would just end up trapped with Tarhos back in that blade - but at least now they would have eachother to keep company with in the dark.

[misireads]

Sang by Elina Pitkäkangas

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

a story set in a fictional rendition of east asia that follows an orphan boy who, together with his brother, works as a bianfu -- a sort of black market ninja courier who's also able to use qi powers to create a "bridge", a psychic connection with other living creatures.

in the relentless post-apocalyptic world they live in, every person gets a smartwatch permanently attached to their wrist at young age, and the watch not only embodies a person's value as a human being but also records their every movement to the government internet (or skynet, literally) plus comes with the delightful feature of burdening every citizen with a national debt that they have to pay off before turning 20 or they'll be sent to this world's equivalent of gulags.

unable to pay his debt, the story starts off with the main character's brother going into hiding and forcing the little brother to partner with a stranger for some work errand instead. the stranger ends up taking him on a personal vengeance trip where she murders some merchant guy, then gets caught and proceeds to rat him out as a partner in crime almost immediately. for punishment, he's sold to be trained as an elite soldier to protect the royal family of a foreign country, led by a cruel matriarch who doesn't give a shit about human lives and loves torturing the soldiers for entertainment.

the main character decides to endure the training in order to eventually reunite with his brother, who has at this point been sent off to the slave camp. he ends up befriending one of the princesses and gets caught up in crazy court drama.

🦅🐯🌩️

➕ SIGHS what a difficult book to assess again. i'll go with the obvious pluses: it's fantasy with a lot of worldbuilding, love that. and a lot of the fantasy worldbuilding draws from the real world mixed with mythology, fantastic. it includes several fictional countries with their own cultures and languages, wow tell me more. and though the main influence is china, the main character is clearly from a fictional version of tibet (edit: actually in the acknowledgments the author mentions nepal so maybe it wasn't tibet like i thought.), and other characters are from other east asian countries if you pay enough attention. though i would have preferred if the story were a bit more explicit about whether this is like a post-apocalyptic version of our world far in the future, or if it's just an alternate fantasy version altogether. it seems to hint that a world war and an environmental disaster in the past destroyed the old version of the world, but then there aren't enough references to a place named china ever having existed instead of fusang, so.

➕ there's queer romance. or more like just queer drama but anyway, i respect any fantasy story where things other than heteronormativity exist

➕ i guess i'll give this a plus for being unpredictable. truly i never could tell where the fuck any of the events were leading me

➖ aaand now i'm gonna be a sack of pessimistic shit for a bit again. i have two main reasons for not liking this book very much; one is 100% petty, one is more sensible i think. starting with the petty thing: this fucking book reminds me way too much of my 4kingdoms and renders it impossible for me to like, because i don't in fact enjoy reading something that feels like it's been copied from my fic even though i don't actually think it's copied because that's frankly impossible. the PoV is obviously different, but this takes place in a world ruled by four royal families named and designed after the four symbols of chinese mythology. i'm aware it's not that rare a source to draw inspiration from in any fiction related to china but that doesn't make me like it any more. there's just no way for me to look at this objectively and in any way feel good about it. i'm aware i maybe should? like yaay a real ass finnish fantasy novel that uses all these elements i like so much that i use them in my own fanfic!!! but i'm not that kind of good-hearted person. i'm an annoyed kind of petty person who hated reading it all. also by the way, in addition to this being a shounen-ass story in general, the main characer's name is kong dawei and he has thunder magic powers. like. you know. a certain kon rei i know

➖ second reason i don't like this: it's just not written very well. even though this book is heavy on visceral violence, the writing is flat and straightforward enough to give it a juvenile sound fitting a book for teens. it's not bad or anything, just that it reads like a script for a television show, it's not exactly a work of finnish word art. the writing is also extremely exposition-heavy, very light on the "show, don't tell" department. but in addition to all that, it took me almost the whole book to put my finger on why exactly the story wasn't resonating with me -- i mean apart from the aforementioned 4kingdoms reason because there are many good things in here too, and it is entirely possible for me to also look at it while ignoring the fic-related discomfort, and yet i still didn't like it. the plot meanders a lot and with it comes the problem of there really being no story arc to speak of. starting from the beginning, it was really difficult for me to think of a summary of what this is exactly about. because it's about the main character ending up in situations against his will and. ending up in some more situations. a lot is happening, but i think too MUCH is happening, actually. something is happening too much, all the time, without the main character having much agency over it. there are points in the story that you think will be the pivotal moment that spurs the rest of the story in motion… and then another moment comes that you again think is the pivotal moment, and another. and ultimately most turn out to be inconsequential, because these things just happen and you could take probably half of them out and it wouldn't affect the progression of the story all that much, except that the MC maybe wouldn't end up in the next situation where he has no agency again. it's just a whumping fest where we break break break the character so that he can angst and angst some more. it's exhausting and makes the story difficult to wrap your head around. the author is probably a shounen anime fan and packed the book full of those tropes, because shounen is so full of hard battles that leave the characters gravely injured but then they just heal like it's nothing and continue on to the next fight and stuff. i'm probably being too harsh here but that's how i felt reading this honestly

➖ what in turn was TOO "show, don't tell" was the system of magic powers in this world. dawei can go on and on describing some detail in the universe but how and why exactly he and some other people here have supernatural powers is just "and then i channeled my qi and it flowed in my meridians". or he sees a god in his dream and is suddenly able to summon thunder. dude WHAT? what is the framework for this??? bro.

➖ actually i have a third major problem and that's the main character. it's not that he's unlikable, but he's just a bit too perfect in that shounen protag way where he can be hurt and hurt and hurt and yet he comes out being this perfect warrior who again out-does himself in the next scene, and all the good guys like him and all the bad guys dislike him. also, the author has given him way too many people to care about/be his main motivation in the story. there's the brother who's like super duper important, but then there's the boyfriend (and later, a new crush) who is super duper important. but then there's the orphanage that's super duper important, but oh there's the hawk that's super duper uber important to him. when you have too many of those things fighting for the character's attention, you end up with me not resonating with any of it much. absolutely the author should have stuck to just one thing, two things max that are most important to him. also^2, unlike most shounen heroes, dawei is already skilled at the beginning of the story. there's no real sense of payoff in his soldier training at the royal castle because he's just great at fighting already. i think this story would have benefited if it started earlier on the timeline and introduced us to how dawei learned to fight, how he worked as a bianfu, his everyday life with his brother (but the book is already 500 pages long so clearly it's already stretching it as is). oh also he randomly gets even more powerful because some fucking god randomly connects with him for no real reason other than that he's just somehow special for suffering so much and so very talented and good without doing anything for it as far as i know

➖ way too many drops of random chinese words all the time. extremely weeaboo and leaves most readers scratching their heads

⭐ score: 3½ -- i thought i would like this more than i did, but it's still a three and a half because i did go on a 500-page journey with this book and it rewarded me with a rich world full of interesting details, and i liked that the main character returned to his home at the end because i really love stories that close a loop like that. the end is a cliffhanger because there's a sequel. i don't think i want to bully myself more by reading it

[bestworstcase]

the thing is, though, i don't get the sense that kingdoms have been collapsing on the regular throughout recorded history. small settlements and nomadic groups are said to disappear frequently, but the youngest of the four human kingdoms is atlas/mantle—which is at least between one and two hundred years old. mistral was a vast empire with overseas territories before the great war; vacuo had a thriving monarchy centuries ago before it was conquered by its neighbors and persisted as a colonial territory under foreign rule. the WOR episode about vacuo implicates both mistral and vale in this conquest, so vale has to be quite old too.

the circle—assuming that 'the infinite man' is a story about a specific historical event, and not an allegorical amalgam of many, many times ozma tried and failed to fulfill his task—was a single town ruled by warriors openly seeking to "make ready for the final judgment." it wasn't a kingdom; it was an eschatological religious movement.

we also don't know that salem destroyed it. we know that ozpin believes that salem sent the attackers who destroyed it (or that she sent every group of people who've attacked every similar movement, if 'the infinite man' isn't about any one specific event), because in the story the infinite man questions the leader of the attacking army about if someone sent her to kill him. and we know that in the story, she answers in the negative: that no, his "mere existence makes [him] a target." which, considering the whole "make ready for the final judgment" thing... salem or no salem, a movement like that will make enemies of literally anyone who thinks THE FINAL JUDGMENT sounds like, perhaps, not something we want to happen.

occam's razor: ozma is one person, with an inherently disturbing creed ("humankind as it is now does not deserve to exist and must redeem itself before the gods, lest they condemn us to annihilation" is not what you'd call a hopeful ideology, and there's only so many ways you can dilute it to sound less horrifying without just flat out lying about the stakes). he also doesn't seem to especially enjoy leadership, and in 'the infinite man' even tries to avoid it. we know that he's spent some of his lives doing things like living alone in the woods as a miserable hermit. and we know he's as likely to reincarnate into the mind of a fourteen-year-old farmboy as he is a king, and given that there are a lot more farmboys in the world than kings, ozma probably began most of his lives as an Irrelevant Nobody.

i don't think ozma has ever been an especially powerful or notable person, before he lucked out and ended up a king at a pivotal moment in history and then took the opportunity fate handed him to establish a system where he could be reasonably assured of regaining his previous position in his next life. if we presume 'the infinite man' is about one specific historical movement, it's said to be HIS BIGGEST success, and it's... one town. not a kingdom, not a country, a single village that grows into a well-known town.

i think the idea that all of human history since the ozlem kingdom fell has been secretly orchestrated behind the scenes by Just Some Guy and his immortal ex-wife as if the world is a chess board and everyone else who's ever lived has amounted to nothing more but little playing pieces for These Two to maneuver around is... well, a hell of a lot more likely to be ozma's deep paranoia and lack of faith in humanity talking than the truth! and i think the longevity of vale / vacuo / mistral combined with the complete absence of any "lost kingdoms" in the lore, aside from the ozlem kingdom, is best explained by salem not having made a regular habit of razing kingdoms to the ground.

bc in re, "why would she have trouble keeping herself a secret when she can just kill all the witnesses?"—you can't just wipe a whole kingdom off the map without people wondering where it went, and she would have to have achieved an absolute 100% success rate killing absolutely every single person and completely eradicating any and all records that may have been left behind, every single time she wiped out a kingdom. and i don't believe that's possible, not even for her. ren and nora survived kuroyuri, a refugee ship made it out of vale and glynda escaped to go seek help elsewhere, people remember mountain glenn and oniyuri and what happened to those places. before ozma reunited with her in his first reincarnation, he traveled all over for years hearing rumors about her wherever he went.

like, all it takes is one person surviving one time and making it to another settlement to tell the story. it's way simpler for the answer to "why didn't anyone else in the world except her and ozpin's handful of agents have the faintest idea she existed, not even as a legend?" to be "salem has been living in distant exile far away from human civilization for thousands of years, ignoring ozma and sometimes having silver-eyed warriors assassinated, while he assumed that every major grimm attack and every war and every time his latest stab at an eschatological cult collapsed was secretly all her fault, because he is paranoid."

leans out a window. it is not salem’s fault that oz uses child soldiers to guard his fortresses. it’s not her fault that he made a deliberate strategic choice to recruit children into a war they didn’t even know they’re fighting. (and it certainly isn’t her fault that he’s been getting kids killed in training for decades before she made her first move!)

he has been trying to destroy her for thousands of years while salem lived in exile, not fighting back, until one of those grown-up child soldiers found out the truth and gave her something to fight for. if your defenders are all children because you set up your fortresses to masquerade as schools, if you for decades continually made the choice to use children as unwitting human shields then you don’t get to blame the enemy when children die on the front lines. YOU PUT THEM THERE.

[inqilabi]

sorry maybe i misunderstood but in one of your posts when you said "Stalin and Mao killed millions" was propaganda, what did you mean? like did you mean Stalin's repressions/purges/ethnic clensings weren't real or...?? cos i'm Russian and there's hardly a family here that wasn't affected by that, including my own. It's all still in living ppls memory, it's not something we're just told by the government lmao. It's actually extremely insulting to suggest otherwise. Like literally ask a person from an ex-USSR country and 9 times out of 10 they'll tell you of an ancestor/relative that was executed/sent to gulag/forced to flee the country/etc during Stalin's rule. Esp if you ask a jewish or other ethnic minority person.

Not sure if you’re genuinely interested in the perspective, if so I can provide resource reccs. I don’t think it’s insulting to ask people to consider that the history they have known may be entirely wrong and to question the common narrative/claims they hear. 

Especially considering the fact that CIA was literally created to fight USSR first and foremost, and then any other emerging socialist states thereafter. And the fact that Britain had been at it long before that. The Allies literally supplied troops for the ‘White Army’ to as Churchill put it “strangle the [Bolshevik state] at its birth” in 1917/1918. Formation of NATO itself is an alliance of capitalist anti-communist states. Not to mention that post WW2, when CIA formed, it absorbed existing Nazi and fascists into its CIA & NATO operations to terrorize any leftists orgs in Eastern Europe (Operation Gladio) because of how great they were at terrorizing, infiltrating and sabotage. And in the USA itself, Ukrainian fascists were incorporated into various intelligence orgs. A NSC directive (4A, 1947) stated the following: 

The campaign against the Soviets would include “primarily media related activities, including unattributed publications, forgeries, and subsidization of publications. Political action would involve exploitation of displaced persons and defectors, and support to political parties’ paramilitary activities, including support to guerillas and sabotage”

It is in this context that I understand the USSR. I may have criticisms of the CPSU, though it wouldn’t matter now. For us now, even though the exact conditions that the USSR faced will not be repeated again- I think it is necessary to learn from the successes and failures of the first socialist state founded amidst WW1, fall of Tsarist rule/semi feudalism/civil war, rise of Nazism and being surrounded by fascists, WW2 in which America & Britain both directly and indirectly let Germany destroy USSR as much as possible before getting involved, and the USSR was also dealing with a Japanese invasion threat in the east. To me its a feat that the people rallied behind its foundation, that there was fervor of the masses at that time- I can’t imagine it today. There were nearly 2 million party members in 1930. Some 3-4 million people enrolled to take classes with the communist party in 1933.

Yes the repressions, Yezhovshchina & reallocation of people were real. Repressions of the Kulaks and other class enemies was real. And to define class enemy, the kulak case is an interesting one: we’re talking about a class who regularly exploited peasants, & when a drought reduced the grain harvest, raised grain prices so the soviet government couldn’t afford to buy the grain to feed people (and this is where the rationing came from). The government in response encouraged peasants to form collective farms (kolkhoz), which was actually a youth peasant movement and grain harvest from these kolkhoz was soon as much as the kulaks. The kulaks then realizing that they can no longer control the markets, started murdering people in these kolkhoz. And this is the point where the Soviet gov decided to seize the kulak wheat, expropriate kulak land (dekulakization program as is known in the west) & give the land to the kolkhoz. In response, the kulaks burned their wheat, and killed their own livestock in the millions.  And despite this, most of them were only exiled, forced to reallocate or sent to the gulags. Also, forced reallocation of probably millions of people from the east to prevent Japanese invasion, and from the western region as Germany was invading did happen. 

Yezhovshchina of 1937-1938 was excessive. Here they replaced their normal voting process (e.g, Trotskyites were voted out with a vote of 700,000 against to 6000 for) with a 3 person tribunal who just handed out sentences like candy- in this period alone, I think there was some 300,000 sentences handed out. Though they were responding to Nazi infiltration among their party. Eventually the party committees got a handle of it, overturned half of the sentences. Many of the remaining sentences were never carried out because there wasn’t that much infrastructure to do so. But certainly innocent people were caught in the cross fire here. But imo the typical perception in the west that this purge was to eliminate any political opponents or to consolidate power is not true. It was primarily to eliminate Nazis in the party and any other counter-revolutionary who would have essentially handed USSR to Germany. There were definitely executions. There’s a quote from Ludo Martens on his study of the USSR that indicates a bit how unequipped USSR was to handle sentences of Yezhovshchina:

"Grigorenko, a well-known Rightist general who defected to the West, stated that, to escape the Purge, it suffice to simply relocate to another city."

There’s also interesting notes from Hitler (via Goebbel’s journal)and Churchill’s WW2 memoir that Hitler had hoped to take advantage of these antagonisms, defeatist tendencies and fascists sympathizers within the Red Army, but Stalin had succeeded in making sure via purges that the Red Army could not be taken advantage of.

But to address what is actually your main point: to assess history based on lived experience. What you stated is not reconcilable with the following examples:

Frankly I think the further breakdown of the 35+ would yield even more interesting insights. Also its expectedly low in Lithuania, Estonia & Latvia. What do we know about the history of these three countries that would help us understand that? There’s also this interview and this one specially about Stalin & the gulags, which sounds different from the experiences of your family.

Here is a quote from Ludo Martens book:

‘But how is it possible', asked a friend, `to defend a man like Stalin?' There was astonishment and indignation in this question, which reminded me of what an old Communist worker once told me. He spoke to me of the year 1956, when Khrushchev read his famous Secret Report. Powerful debates took place within the Communist Party. During one of these confrontations, an elderly Communist woman, from a Jewish Communist family, who lost two children during the war and whose family in Poland was exterminated, cried out:

`How can we not support Stalin, who built socialism, who defeated fascism, who incarnated all our hopes?'

And also, Normal Finkelstein stated that his parents, both of whom survived concentration camps, would refuse to listen to any criticism of Stalin and called anyone who criticized him a traitor. 

So how do we parse through these different lived experiences? What helps us understand the differences in these lived experiences? 

[zoufantastical]

So, about that Gabi hate...

Hey everyone! A while ago, you may have seen this post floating around

I made this pure sarcastic post as a way to show how ridiculous it sounds when people hate on this character. Made it for fun but to also let people know a different point of view or understanding of this character as she, along with most if not all of Isayama's characters, are all in a grey area. However, I got this very intelligent response that completely obliterated my whole entire post:

And this is why my post was needed folks. Cause people like this user above who clearly missed the point that Isayama really REALLY tried hard to make. Like each of the points makes no sense but lets go through each one of them since this person was so bold to post such intelligence.

"Bloodthirsty lust for Eldian devils"? Oh you mean the Eldians in Paradis? I wonder who installed that type of mindset and deep hatred on such a young child? Oh that's right! The Marleyan military and government did. As Eldians living in Marley, they are constantly discriminated and guilt tripped on the "sins" their ancestors committed. To want a better life and future, families are sacrificing their own children's LIVES so they can possibly earn the Marleyan honorable citizenship and live a better life along the line. But of course like every brain dead irrational Gabi hater, they only see her as this eldian Ted Bundy. No hun, she had TWELVE YEARS of propaganda installed in her brain and she is just NOW starting to realize all she was taught is not what reality is. Isayama, a master writer and mangaka, couldn't really make this any more obvious.

I mean, I really wasn't going to even touch this because it has no ground to stand on. This is just pure hating nonsense but I'm going to say one thing. Isayama said her design was inspired by a gender bent Eren he drew. However, aside from that, I literally see no other correlation. Everyone seem to think that that panel where she said she'll "destroy all Eldian devils" in which Eren is also in it, that she was supposed to "copy" him. No you fools. Not only was this a callback but this was a way to show how things come full circle. The consequences of war and how it affects everyone differently. Gabi, who already had this strong desire to prove herself to not only earn her cousin's titan power but to help her family's life, felt it was her duty as a Marleyan cadet to DEFEND HER COUNTRY THAT WAS BEING INVADED. Even though we as readers KNOW why it was being invaded, Gabi doesn't. She saw a full blown invasion and her friends killed for it. This is what war does. But you Gabi haters are a bunch of simpletons to see that under the surface.

I don't know why people keep obsessing over this death, but you need to get over it. Yes Sasha was a good funny character with extraordinary abilities. But Gabi did not specifically choose Sasha. Let me tell you this since people fail to understand. SASHA ALONG WITH SURVEY CORPS INVADED HER COUNTRY AND KILLED HER PEOPLE ON HER LAND IN FRONT OF HER. Granted, Hange did not even want to come but had to, so she could rescue Eren's ass. So basically Sasha for old times sake and as an order, was to come to Marley to participate. Gabi however, had NO knowledge of any of that. In the heat of the moment, full of adrenaline, she shot the first person she saw which happened to be Sasha. Her bragging to Nicolo, was her assuming he would be proud as a Marleyan himself. Gabi did NOT know about the relationship between them and did NOT know that Nicolo switched sides. Gabi also did NOT know who the hell was Kaya and that she was adopted (and rescued) by Sasha's parents, who happened to be the girl she killed.

See above points 1,2,3 for reference.

I don't know why this person included Reiner in this but given how they hate Gabi, I'm not surprised they also hate her big cousin. Reiner is mentally ill. We as readers see and know this. His friends and family don't seem to notice. Killing all those people, in which Reiner was also installed the Marleyan propaganda as a child soldier, took an extremely heavy toll on him (as well as the rest of the Warriors). Reiner grew up unappreciated by his Marleyan father and emotionally manipulated by his mother (although she had her reasons to be that way it doesn't exclude on what she did). Reiner dealt with split personality disorder as a coping mechanism and is dealing with extreme depression. He is motivated once more only to rescue his cousin and Falco and because his hometown was invaded. I mean, Isayama spent time and time to develop Reiner as a fleshed out character. The least you can do is appreciate and acknowledge this. It was planted since chapter 50s and/or 60s (season 2 of the anime).

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Hopefully I had covered everything.🙄 While I have a feeling that this person will not change their ways and will continue to blindly hate this character, which was created to represent the consequences of war on children, I will hope I have educated those few of you who read this. If you did, please reblog! Will mean a lot to me!