#bc it seems to be pretty widespread information

[dashiellqvverty]

these podcast episodes were sooooo amazing for my newsies special interest btw and i highly reccomend them for anyone interested in historical context on the strike that isn't usually covered elsewhere!! there's a bunch of stuff i learned here that i never encountered in trying to read about the historical context, including stuff that the movie/musical obviously DID draw on that i've just never seen mentioned anywhere else!!

and imo thats very much because these episodes have NOTHING to do with the movie/musical and are entirely from a labor history perspective (and as a result there are a few things mentioned about the musical that the host gets WILDLY wrong but its very much not the point lol). and this was put out around the start of the writers strike as a way to sort of compare the two of them and overall i just think its really cool to look at what this strike actually looked like in this larger context of organized labor and stuff

[other-peoples-coats]

I think. Mandalorian view on war crimes tends to vary wildly? I would say uhhh backstabbing tends to be bad, but then I remember the whole ‘combat determined ruler’ thing and challenges have to start somehow. Most of sw tends to have a different idea of war crimes anyway but if you think Mandalore follows the Yavin Code then you’ve got all of one rule, which I’m p sure is you can’t execute people without offering a blindfold, and the YC doesn’t even seem to be treated very seriously by most people? It’s mentioned like once? If there had to be a hard answer I’d say the Star Wars universe generally doesn’t hold war crimes to the same weight we do/have such varying ideas it doesn’t come up much? The Jedi probably have something bc of like sai tok being “frowned upon” (what wookipedia says) but that appears to stem from “what would the sith do” and then noping the fuck out of that, which. If you say is the entire galactic basis of a war crime stuff probably gets very awkward bc A.) Mandalore you know. Worked with those guys. B.) a chunk of current republic space used to be ruled by those guys and C.) at one point, has spent 20 years under those guys in what we know was an information suppressing regime

Oh also if we’re going off the 8 year old thing v the demagolka thing, I could see a mandalorian viewpoint that one scenario is like.,, rightful training/revenge, whereas a demagolka would be doing stuff against the will of the child? Like good parenting could be “take the kid out to fight where they’re surrounded by fam/friends, but not where we’re going to be clearly outnumbered” + To us helping an 8 year old kill people is obviously bad and they can’t really understand quite what they’re doing, but mandalorians probably have a very different view on death and Learning to Murder n stuff. In that vein I also think the mandalorian version of protecting a child is probably, at some level, teaching them stuff like shooting anyway

Yeah! I mean, I think you're kinda bang on, anon; starwars likely doesn't have a set definition of war crimes, at least on a 'We All Agree [x] is Too Far' level; any given group likely does have lines, but I'd assume those very much vary widely. Even the idea of war crimes as we think of it is pretty recent, though there's been some sort of 'you can do [This] in war but [Not That]' from various cultures since ~2000 bc (code of hammurabi, which is where we get 'an eye for an eye' from! that shit is very old); a lot of those older laws are very practical, for a level of practical that includes 'you have to offer the option to surrender (and become your slaves) First, then you can slaughter the shit out of people' and 'Don't go scorched earth (because You could own that once you win)'. A level of morality, in that those things are bad, but also, a very practical level of 'war is expensive, don't fuck up your ability to profit or hold what you take'.

I suspect in star wars there's some things that are horrifying, but mostly a 'oh my god' rather than a 'you can't do that'; there's certainly enough 'and Then We Blew Up A Planet' to show that, while that might be logistically difficult to pull off and existentially horrifying and thus basically only something Evil Shitheads do, it's not actually something star wars has, like, got laws (or even widespread agreement) about; I assume if there was laws at least someone might have, uh, mentioned it, like literally ever. Concord dawn is half a damn planet, surely it would have come up (we don't talk about alderaan; genocidal empires don't usually give a shit about war crimes).

Interesting about the yarvin code; as far as I know, firing squads in real life often use blindfolds for the benefit of the firing squad members, rather than the person being executed. (also like varying ideas of honor/respect/etc; that gets pretty complicated quick and I'm a star wars blog, not a history/anthropology blog). I guess given star wars is much closer to a medieval level of legal vibe, that's probably actually a groundbreaking civil rights law; were it not for the whole 'children's media etc' we'd probably be seeing a lot of breaking on the wheel or other super horrifying Ye Olde Execution Methods.

I assume the Jedi have very much a list of 'these are Unacceptable Tactics', and likely even more pre-rusaan reformation (army of light! god I wonder what chivalry looks like when your knights are space wizards; take the 'local attack tank' of a knight/lord and turn it up to 11), but that's less 'war crimes' and more 'organizational/cultural norms and morality'.

God, thinking about the whole 'used to be a full out sith empire' thing just drives me bananas; the logistics and legal issues in the star wars universe have to be fucking insane.

And yeah, hard agree on the mandos seeing it as a 'this is Good Parenting' vs, y'know, us being like 'uuuuuuuuuuh'. I tend to assume, tbh, that star wars as a whole leans very much on the 'children are Little Adults' concept that, again, you see in very much medieval (and up to the victorian era) times. so you have 14 yr old queens and 8 yr old bounty hunters and 10 year old generals, etc.

Which tracks with the 'doing stuff against the will of the child'; a kid can learn Life Skills (like murder), but experimenting on anyone without their consent is Bad.

[larrythefloridaman]

Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

[amethystroselily]

(This was originally written on Twitter and that’s why it’s so bad. (Now with unnecessary censoring!!!) I don’t go on tumblr enough to know the general consensus on Geto here. This might only apply to Twitter. I don’t know)

I don’t know why everyone on Twitter thinks none of Geto’s actions were his fault or even immoral. He was a deeply flawed person who made terrible decisions and that’s what makes him such a good character.

EVERYONE at jujutsu high was in similar traumatic situations as him, he’s the only one who decided to lead a r*cist m*rder c*lt. And while I understand why he did it, it definitely wasn’t a GOOD or honorable decision.

And his daughters. He loved them, but he also literally raised them in a c*lt. I’ve heard ppl say he wouldn’t have cared if they didn’t end up following his ideology, but, like, he did attack an institution full of ppl he was once very close with for that reason, so while I Don’t think he would have killed them or anything, I do think he would have been p*ssed. So I think he tried very hard to instill his ideology into them. We know he was doing that to other people, bc y’know, c*lt leader, so why wouldn’t he be willing to teach that to his kids? Even ppl who are usually against forcing their beliefs on people, instill their beliefs In their kids. So why wouldn’t a guy who thinks he’s SO right that he thinks EVERYONE should follow his beliefs also instill those beliefs in people he raised? He would have thought it right and moral thing to do, and that’s the problem. I think ppl tend to think he’s a “good person” bc he can explain his thought process in a way most people can empathize with, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good person it just means he’s a good character.

Him being right isn’t about whether his emotions were valid or not, it’s about how he handled those feelings and whether he helped more than he hurt. And he definitely did more of the latter. While he did tend to rationalize things as a way to help humanity, he was more driven by anger, bitterness, and self righteousness than his desire to help people. I think that’s why he never actually accomplished anything. He seemed fixated on revenge and ki/ling people, and a lot of his plans were about kil/ling non-sorcerers, rather than saving sorcerers from them. I think he let his hatred get in the way of his original goal of saving people. I don’t even think it was about saving sorcerers by the end there. He was completely willing to kil/l sorcerers just so he could kil/l non-sorcerers, and I think that takes away a lot of the validity of the reasoning he pretends he has. By then he’d spent a decade in his little echo chamber of hate, so at that point maybe even he would acknowledge it was no longer about saving people.

Also can we talk about how stupid his plan in vol 0 was? It’s kind of unrelated, but he is not the genius some of you think he is. (Affectionate, this time) The man was running on pure self-righteousness at that point (probably the result of only surrounding himself with ppl Who worship him for the last ten years) Maybe Kenjaku’s kind of blurring ppl’s perception of Geto? He does seem to be using Geto’s cursed technique much more efficiently than Geto was. But that’s probably bc he’s ancient and knows a lot of information Geto didn’t.

Anyway, back to my original point, his ideology was blatantly flawed, he’s just charismatic and really good at deflecting, so it seems like it makes more sense than it does. Bc it does make sense to him, and ppl like him, they want to agree with him bc he’s charming, and likable, And Tragic tm, so they do (both his cu/lt and readers) , but like, his ideas are pretty flawed (and borderline eug/enics-y?) and the narrative doesn’t want you to agree with him, it just wants you to understand why he’s the way he is. I guess Gege did really well at writing a cu/lt leader at least. Bc I swear some of you genuinely agree with him.

Like how happy did he think everyone was going to be when the vast majority of the population was de-ad??? Including a bunch of their loved ones? What was he going to when someone had a baby who was a non-sorcerer? Ki1l it? What was he going to do if ppl revolted bc he murd/ered all their loved ones? Kil1 them too? There’s only going to be like ten people left on the planet. I refuse to believe this b1tch thought that through.

I actually think KENJAKU’S plan may actually be more ethical. At least their end goal isn’t literally to k1ll people, and allows far more people to survive than Geto’s. Ppl dy/ing just happens to be part of the process rather than the actual goal. And oh my god, that’s such a LOW bar. Kenjaku may actually be helping ppl more than Geto, which isn’t much, but like I said low bar. He’s just less motivated by emotion and doesn’t have a tragic backstory (YET) so he comes of as more ~EVIL~. But it’s actually hilarious that people see Kenjaku as so much worse than Geto when they’re about on the same level. Kenjaku is considerably less outspokenly m*rderous and Geto is a better friend, so it evens out I guess? I would say it’s bc Kenjaku’s trying to ki1l the mcs and Geto wasn’t, but that’s not even true. Geto literally tried to kil1 all of the second years, and Kenjaku couldn’t care less about whether anyone lives or di*s, he’s just just trying to “evolve” ppl. He took Tsumiki h*stage But as far as he knows or cares she could win the culling game, Geto would have literally kil1ed her for being a non-sorcerer. (He attacked a elementary school, he wouldn’t care that she’s a kid, don’t lie to yourself)

And, yes, a lot of Geto’s traits could make him a good person, but those same traits are the ones that make him such a bad person. (Passion, charisma, even empathy at times, bc he empathizes so much with select ppl that when non-sorcerers (who he no longer deems ppl) hurt them He feels wronged and lashes out at the things he deems not worthy of sympathy)

Anyway it’s ok to acknowledge his flaws, or even feel neutral on him, he doesn’t have to be perfect for you to like him. (This isn’t a Kenjaku defense post, btw, it’s just funny that that’s true) I’ve seen way too many posts claiming the only bad thing Geto’s ever done is hurting Maki, and like, that’s nearly objectively false. And like half of them were completely unironic. A sympathetic villain isn’t the same thing as a hero.

This isn’t even Geto hate, I LIKE him, but the widespread perception of him being completely justified just feels so wrong. Why do so many people feel SO protective of him? Is his c-ult leader charisma just that effective?

I actually think pretending none of his flaws exist takes away SO much from his character. It strips away his agency and turns him into this tragic can-do-no-wrong figure that he just isn’t. He’s someone who couldn’t handle their own tr*uma and decided to take it out on the world. The way he decided to handle that is no one’s fault but his own.

[mianmiansimp]

mdzs au: my roommate is a detective 'verse

>>ok first of all go watch the show

>>second of all due to the presence of the british, the wens' presence will be different bc the sun motif is yikes

>>the major triads of shanghai - lotus pier jiang, unclean realm nie, jinlintai jin

>>there's also a widespread scholars society, lead by the lan, whose base is the cloud recesses institute

>>cloud recesses and the triads avoid each other's business but they have worked together for certain occasions

>>there used to be a nevernight triad, who were the biggest and had a base called nightless city, but it ceased several years ago when the other triads banded together for this big fight

>>cloud recesses assisted via legal means + propaganda spreading certain information

>>wwx was taken in as a ward by the jiang, and trained at lotus pier, but wasn't actually part of the triad

>>not that it mattered half the time bc he's so closely tied and involved that he might as well be

>>he works as a freelance detective, mostly for the public, and has a bit of a reputation bc he's both incredibly talented and effective + is a great guy + has affordable pricing

>>despite the weird thing with lotus pier, he's very close to the jiang children, who consider him a brother

>>jc won't admit but he is very protective of his attractive, caring, selfless brother who always gets into trouble but is so nice and sacrificial

>>look someone needs to keep an eye on him and watch his back bc wwx sure as fuck won't

>>jc ends up accidentally involved with a lot of wwx's cases bc of this

>>from the cloud recesses comes the esteemed lwj, who becomes an inspector

>>the coroners include the renowned doctor-scientist siblings, wn and wq

>>it's partly bc wwx recommended them

>>once lwj gets the job, he starts asking wwx for assistance in cases bc of his diligence and intelligence

>>their partnership becomes an even greater source of gossip - everyone knows the righteous lwj despised the eccentric wwx who is closely associated with the triads

>>jyl + my + nhs, who are partnered journalists, are wwx's primary informants, and by extension lwj once he gets involved

>>jc is very unhappy with lwj seeking out wwx bc he knows wwx is kinda in love and would do anything for lwj even tho the guy seems to hate him and is worried lwj is taking advantage of wwx

>>cue lots of jc vs lwj conflict over wwx

>>lwj has certain Opinions of the triads, and was kinda :\\ about wwx when they studied together bc he thought wwx was an actual member, but then he learns actually no wwx just happens to be a ward of the leaders so technically he's a standard civilian, and so then he's concerned that wwx's ties to the triads puts him at risk and is >:( bc he thinks that the triads aren't careful enough about wwx's safety

>>he's not wholly wrong but not wholly right

>>good time to mention all these rich kids went to school together

>>there's a persistent level of conflict bc of the whole simultaneous pining and not actually unrequited love + the sociopolitics of their backgrounds + the british being shitheads + their actual jobs

>>definitely some fights bc of the dissonance, both wwx vs lwj and jc vs lwj

>>additionally: relationships!!

>>nhs, jc, wwx, wn are renowned Bros (jzx becomes honorable mention when he gets his shit together)

>>lwj and mianmian, who left jinlintai to marry a cute baker and be a lawyer, are besties

>>mianmian, jyl, wq, qs are equivalent to the Bros

>>my, lxc (who is a scholar), nmj (who is only an heir bc his dad's alive) are "bros"

>>also additionally: lwj is secretly kinda baffled by how wwx is completely unfazed by gore (and the crimes get pretty gory sometimes) but as soon as there's even the hint of a dog's presence he makes a run for it

>>also also additionally: ever so charming wwx naturally has many 'suitors' but bc he's oblivious and self deprecating he doesn't realize and so jc is persistently Protecting his brother's Honor from these Despicable Bloodthirsty Beasts yes, this includes lwj, when he realizes wangxian requite the other's feelings

>>also also also: i can't believe i forgot to mention that lwj and wwx end up roommates bc i'm a tropey bitch

[ main . ao3 ]

[shiningjoy]

so i’ve finally watched s3 of free! and i wanted to put my thoughts in about it and hopefully also get some ppl to reply (respectfully) with their own input? also sorry if my knowledge of free seems spotty or incomplete since i don’t obviously have all free lore burned into my head so pls inform or correct me on anything i’m missing!

anyways before even watching s3, i noticed it was pretty widespread that s3 was rather disappointing or at least fell short to s1&2. and not only that, but i could see that s3 was likely going to be a bit disappointing just bc of how many less ppl were interested in it or even knew about it (ofc popularity=/=good but i doubted that the loss in numbers was just bc time had passed) sadly, the season actually exceeded my expectations of the worst.

first of all, i think way too many characters were introduced without any need of them being there. ofc not all of them seemed worthless to being there, but i think at least half of them didn’t have a need of being there (or at least didn’t need to appear as much as they did) or they could’ve at least waited to introduce them. don’t get me wrong, i loved characters like isuzu and albert, but with how little they appeared or added to the plot, i don’t think they were necessary at all. they introduced so many characters and kind of tried to forcefully endear them to us but it just seemed really shallow and random. i was really uninterested in the new iwatobi hs sc tbh (i love rei and nagisa, but i just don’t feel anything for the new members tho it was funny how the new manager is interested in fat instead of muscles) i don’t think isuzu was worth introducing, but i do get why they introduced albert at least. he was supposed to serve as their first rival introduced strictly from the professional world, and to emphasize there are many people above them not just in japan but the “world stage” but i definitely think they could’ve waited on that until the free 2021 movie tbh. plus i felt that any conflict he brought to haru was resolved within 1 maybe 2 episodes so yea they definitely didn’t really need him bc he hasn’t had much impact (yet) if anything, they could’ve just had him briefly appear at that training camp haru was at to race him and beat him to remind him that he still has a long way to go to get to the top. but all other appearances of albert were so extra and unnecessarily emphasized how inhumanely talented he was (the arcade scene, the thing with the chopsticks,etc) it just felt like really weak foreshadowing

also, the main conflict in s3 was just way too prolonged and solved unsatisfactorily. first of all, i don’t know why the blame seemed to be shifted by ikuya and hiyori almost solely to haru, like yes he was the one who quit first but it wasn’t an attack specifically to ikuya and the rest of them left too, so they should’ve held more grudges on haru makoto and asahi rather than just haru (or if anything at least have more blame on asahi bc makoto at least talked to ikuya beforehand) like did he just forget asahi also made a promise to not move away? honestly from the content they gave us, i’d argue that asahi and ikuya were actually closer than how ikuya and haru were, since i feel like most of the latter relationship was based on ikuya admiring harus swimming.

second of all, hiyori was another character i found so unnecessary and just weirdly protective over ikuya. he repeatedly gets in the way between them and ikuya when ikuya never said he didn’t want to talk to them (and it’s not like talking to them is gonna give him a health relapse) and so he just seemed to be there to prolong the conflict between them which was irritating. not even natsuya, ikuya’s actual brother, was that obsessive over him so i really don’t get hiyori. even sousuke, who was actually friends with rin before haru and the others were was not that possessive over rin, and there was actually pretty good reasoning why he had a grudge against haru (he didn’t see haru taking swimming as seriously as rin and thought that would cause him to hold back rin who looked up to haru, and was jealous that haru who had the talent to swim the world stage with rin wasn’t taking advantage of it when sousuke wanted to but couldnt bc of his injury) and like what right did he have to say to haru that his swimming hurts others when it didn’t even affect ikuya negatively (instead it inspired him and led to him wanting to swim like haru) like how haru originally thought it did to rin and how it did to asahi in high speed 2?

third of all, like i said before the way they solved the conflict between ikuya and the rest made little sense. like yes harus swimming is magical but i don’t get how swimming IM with him could instantly solve all the problems between them. (ik that it was based on the promise they made to race each other but i’ll get into that part and how shallow it felt later) if anything, i think what would’ve been more impactful was something happening to ikuya that made him realize that he can/should rely on/trust others, (maybe a more serious accident?) and enjoy swimming with a team and not just alone since his personal conflict was that he thought swimming alone was better than swimming with others when actually he was lonely (at least it was in starting days). and that wouldn’t even have to be with haru and the others that he learns that lesson. it could be with his own university team and hiyori, which would give hiyori a much better purpose of being there. (or they could’ve just not had him exist) if they were so inclined to have closure between ikuya and the other boys by having them resolve ikuyas personal conflict, i feel like it should’ve been at least haru AND asahi (maybe even makoto too but idk how thatd work when he’s no longer competing) racing him in the same race (if not them doing a relay but i guess they didn’t want to make it too obvious than they already were that they were just recycling the plot of s1 (lol)) if anything i think they could’ve even waited for them to reconcile while they were on the olympic team, but ig kyoani didn’t want to wait that long to reintroduce ikuya and wanted to use s3 to warm ppl up to the idea of ikuya being on the olympic team which they didn’t do very well considering how bad the development was

also what was with ikuya saying he swims his own way while obviously taking sm inspiration fron the way haru swam? it was so contradictory and even as kids haru told ikuya to swim his own way when ikuya told him that he wanted to be like haru and he understood that obviously but didn’t apply that to his actions at all? and i’m surprised haru was ok with ikuya blatantly copying him when i vaguely rmb that he’s been shown to get annoyed with even makoto when he seemed to be doing that?

another fault in having all these characters was that haru’s actual personality seemed to be taken away for the sake of these characters.

they wanted to establish a deeper relationship between ikuya and haru, but it just seemed so off the way they went about it in free! haru promising ikuya to race him just felt so ooc to me and had little emotional impact tbh bc of the lack of reasoning i felt haru had to agree to such a thing besides him promising ikuya that just bc he asked rather than bc he actually wanted to race ikuya. (while it took rin weeks to get haru to warm up to him and then agree to the relay, and seeing the process of haru getting used to the idea then openly enjoying swimming with the others was really touching) i think they just added that to make harus quitting have more impact on ikuya but i don’t think it was necessary at all when they already made plans with the rest to swim the relay again and win. if they wanted to make it seem like ikuya and haru had more of a one on one relationship with each other they should’ve gone into more about how haru saw the same darkness in ikuya that he did in himself like in high speed 2. make them bond over their similarities since i’m pretty sure ikuyas purpose as a character is to give haru a rival that is like how sousuke is to rin is; which is being rivals while being two of the same person. (in contrast to haru and rin who are very different and are rivals that inspire each other) but the way they try to establish the relationship between ikuya and haru pales sm in comparison to sousuke and rin that it’s a bit laughable, even more so in those occasional moments where they try to act like ikuya can measure up to rin’s impact on haru

another much more obvious event where haru’s character is forced to act ooc for the sake of the establishment of another character is with albert. yes, haru has grown a lot from the beginning of the series and has gotten a lot more open, expressive, and friendly, but that’s mostly just to the friends around him, but that’s not even to all of them (he still seems to find kisumi irritating and in TYM tries to leave at the sight of him lol) so him noticing, randomly approaching a stranger he doesn’t know a single thing about to help them order food and then even going far as to have lunch with him was the most blatantly ooc thing in the season. i think he may be polite enough to help him order his food but i don’t get why he even noticed albert in the first place. they should’ve just left him noticing albert to be at the practice race. like i said that scene was just there to emphasize albert’s skill with the chopstick thing but i think saying he was the world record holder and also being way ahead of haru in the race was already enough

besides haru’s character, another character i felt they did wrong was makoto. besides the plot of s1 being recycled, s3 makoto seemed to just repeat the development he went through in s2. by the end of s2, he already establishes that he wants to coach swimmers. and at the end of s3 he comes to that same realization but acts like it’s something completely new to him introduced by nao that he never thought of before?? the only difference was that he said in s2 he wanted to help kids realize how great swimming is, which was sweet and suited his personality, but in s3 he says he wants to do it for athletes on the world stage. tbh i like either way, and the latter one would help him be able to stand with rin and haru who in s2 he was afraid of being left behind by (hence why he swam the free against haru in s2) but saying that being an olympic trainer can also help him inspire kids and show them swimming is fun makes no sense. choose a path you want for the character already and make it consistent does he want to help athletes in the world stage or does he want to help kids fall in love with swimming? bc i doubt any kids pay attention to the coach or trainers in the olympics rather than the actual athletes so that reasoning like i said didn’t make sense.

and after haru lost what i think was the 200m (?) free at the All Japan Invitational, i found it weird that they had makoto there after to talk with haru and rin about the race? idk to me it just feels like it’s tradition for it to end up just being rin and haru talking when they’re struggling with swimming (in s1 was their fight in front of the tree that looked like the one by their elementary, in s2 it was the australia trip) his presence didn’t even feel necessary either, he just randomly interrupted the moment by saying his future plans after haru had that angst yell lol. it felt like just an appeal to mh shippers which is not a good enough reason at all

the last point i can remember at the moment is that the ending was so underwhelming. i don’t understand why they couldn’t have shown the ending to rin and harus 100m free race when the movie trailer already confirms that they’re going to the olympics. why cut to albert watching them on the tv?? all this build up to not even show the results of it? I think this ending really just confirmed that s3 was so unnecessary and just there to warm ppl up to the olympic movie but not actually give us anything good or plot moving

anyways sorry for this dump. besides all these criticisms, i want to say there were parts of it that i enjoyed, i just didn’t go into it bc this post is already so long, and me bagging on ikuya was not hate; i actually like him and the only time i teared up in s3 was in his race with natsuya lol. i’m afraid that at some parts i may have not expressed my thoughts exactly so please don’t be too harsh if you engage, but i’d love to hear other ppl’s analysis of s3 and the characters as well !!

[theprocrastinatingredkitty]

Y’all, what strikes me as odd is this panel

We see that this is the kisaeng later on, the very one who had raised Na-Kyum, as shown back in c46

And here she is at the last panel

SHE’S SO PRETTY UwU

Okay back on topic. I have never heard nor watched anything about a kisaeng having a male bodyguard. A maid to guide her, yes, but a MALE BODYGUARD? It is unheard of to me. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the outfit for a kisaeng guard should be regular clothes with no weapons whatsoever. The fact that the very woman who raised Nakyum has a bodyguard seems sus to me. It screams noblewoman, tbh. Yes, they’re kisaeng and are protected by the government, but not to the point that they should have a bodyguard.

Even head kisaengs from the capital are accompanied only by women and never a man 👀

Something’s more to this, and I stg if the widespread theory that Na-Kyum belongs to a part of nobility, everyone’s going to lose their shit 😂

Theories are popping up in my head and now I think the head kisaeng actually protected Na-Kyum’s origins bc of his actual heritage

If you’re reading Sweetener series, there’s an A/N I put in back in the last chapter of Wildflower’s Thorn. It goes as this:

If history serves that Na-Kyum had been delivered on the courtesan house at being one month old (since Joseon’s babies have their heads shaved at one month. The practice originated in China and was believed that if a baby’s head was shaved, they’re born into a new life and cut off from the past life since hair was connected to family), this might mean that the courtesan house knows of Nakyum’s true origins and hides it from anyone trying to seek him out. Sure, in history, the Baeks became merchants and middle-class men in later Joseon after their fall from royalty and nobility, but what are the chances that BD-nim might also use it as a blueprint for the story even if she says that she doesn’t have a concrete timeline for historical accuracy?

The timeline is now pushed to 19th century, btw, as my clue was the usage of the term ‘nyang’ coin back in the special episode. 17th century coins were called in a different term, and only ‘nyang’ was used in 19th century, so I’m sticking with this timeline from now on, which is a tumultuous part in history, as this was nearing the end of Joseon dynasty, with the mounting Opium wars in Xing and invasion of Japan looming, I am quite sure that somehow, these historical events might be tied up in connection with the mentioned purge of the Yoons

And seeing as historically, kisaengs were an abundant source of information as they have noble clientele, the head kisaeng will be a vital part of the story from here on out. She may know too much of certain aspects of certain deeds that might be buried by the nobility, and is being kept in check by the government--which is probably why she has a guard, an unusual thing back in Joseon

[mithliya]

Is there any widespread info on that nekromu blog? A while back, I'd reblogged one of their posts and was then was sent an ask informing me that nekro was a terf. Today, nekro reblogged the ask and said they weren't, but their blog is... very suspicious. Nazi calling cards, for one. The whole thing is just really strange to me, they seem so weird

basically she used to be nekrom and yeah from what ive seen she’s a white supremacist. also recall her basically stating she hates jewish ppl. and she always had “88” in her title which is a neo-nazi dogwhistle. here this is not everything bc some of the shit i saw was on her old blog. also it’s usually a pretty big confirmation for me when i see this blogs follow the out & proud Literal white supremacist fentakneeeel or whatever his url is

[aerltarg]

2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 26, 27 from ask game

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

oh, it's actually hard to answer bc pretty often my otps can work as brotps for me as well. it also means that when i can't ship some characters they don't work for me as friends either. not to mention that in asoiaf i'm open to many ships, and if i'm not very passionate about some it's not a sign i can't see them in romantic light.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

may i say any sansa ship? 😭 as well as sansa herself lmao. idk generally i can't ship characters i don't like because i'm just not interested. and it's not to say i don't like book!sansa (show!sansa is another case 💀), i just don't find her arc as intriguing and epic as arcs of some other characters. however, it's absolutely her obnoxious fandom's fault that i don't want to touch anything about her now, pairings including. sansaery? pass. sansan? i used to have a soft spot for them in my heart but now? nah. sansa x anyone? pls have mercy, she's already a fandom bicycle.

and jonsa ofc. i would never mind some crack ship as i do this one if not for their obnoxious stans that did way too much to list there right now. but this burning desire to persuade every rock on the street that your crack ship is canon will never stop being ridiculous lmao

also braime. tbh i used to low-key like them but some of their stans weirded my away lol. i get that not all of them are like that but still. it's generally my great pain when i see braime/brienne/jaime stans who are also dany/targ antis. every time i see them i cackle and run away as fast as i can crying from disappointment lmao. it's really a pity because i'm either very neutral or like in my own way all three of them.

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

jonrya it is! i never hated them, you know, but they never were more than siblings and brotp to me. however, later i encountered the deluded crack ship fandom that shall not be named and understood that if there is any possible romance for jon with any of his sisters-cousins we all know which one it will be lmao. also their stans are very sweet and i really like many of their takes on arya and jon! i generally love relationships of jon and arya very much so it wasn't that difficult in practice to see them in a quite different light.

7. Is there anything you used to like but can't stand now?

meta culture lmao. reading different analysis and interpretations of the text used to be very interesting to me (and still is tbh but in other fandoms) though asoiaf is a different case. imo many people aren't honest in their so called theories and analyses. i get that all of us are biased but some "meta writers'" denial of their own biases influence fandom in a bad way. it looks like too many people run to them to get answers to their questions about any minor detail as if they were grrm himself. yk instead of using their own reading comprehension lmao. you see how this meta culture ruined fandom just looking at the most delusional stans and shippers who spread their agenda by writing endless text posts full of nonsense and bullshit but styled as oh so intellectual and thoughtful analysis. it's insane how many people actually buy it and don't check canon accuracy of such claims themselves. it got to the ridiculous point when random people try to argue with you with some far-fetched embarrassing "theories" as if they were canon facts or quotes straight up from a fanfic because they read somewhere some other confused soul's post and got from a context that this quote is canon (despite the fact that it wasn't written in grrm's style at all but some people can't use their brains even if their lives depended on it it seems).

anyway it's become too long and rambly already so tldr. because of such "neutral unbiased" analyses i got the habit of fact checking almost everything i see in such posts. there's only a small amount of meta writers from targ/dany/jon/arya stans that i trust because i know by practice and following them for some time that they don't pull anything out of nowhere, back up everything they say with canon quotes, don't decontextualize anything and (that is the most important thing to me) are reasonable and open to discussion unlike so many bnfs nowadays.

8. Have you received anon hate? What about?

ah, not in this fandom yet, god bless! i think i'm not loud enough for the needed amount of time to deserve it lol. but since i'm not going anywhere soon maybe one day i will 😂

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

robert baratheon and tywin lannister, obviously. tbh it's pretty hard for me to hate any characters because you know. they're fictional lmao. just lines on paper, they can't hurt you. and even such dudes as tywin or robert don't get real distaste from me if they're written well enough. my problem with them lies not only in their canon crimes and shitty consequences of those but in fandom's (or at least some parts of it) unwillingness to acknowledge that they're canonically written as shitty, not as stan/pity/worship material. tywin isn't as clever as some think and robert is a coward outside of battlefield, not to mention some absolutely disgusting denial of his nature from targ antis only because the man happened to be the most vocal targ hater in-universe so these folks feel like he is their main book representative and whitewash him completely lmao

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

uugh idk even. i'm either low-key interested (or used to be at least so i can stay pretty neutral for the sake of nostalgia lol) or too indifferent to really care.

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn't? Why?

all my faves have their own crowd of haters i'm afraid 😭 but let me say rhaegar. even among some dany/targ stans my man is so misunderstood lmao. it's not even his fault i dare say it's fanon about his half-imagined crimes that somehow got widespread to the unbelievable degree. and when i say they're half-imagined i'm being very generous actually. ofc he isn't perfect, no one in asoiaf is. and yes, he's a pre-series dead minor character but almost all little information about him is actually positive, not to mention the narrative itself that doesn't paint him as a villain or just a shitty dude. on the contrary, he's an idealized to some degree dead prince who could've been a good king (like some other historical targaryens, jacaerys, baelor breakspear, aemon son of jaehaerys, etc.), a mysterious yet tragic figure. i have much to say about why it's so popular to shit on him in fandom but yeah. his haters should send their complaints to grrm instead, no one forced the man to write him like that lol. and i mean that no one has to like him ofc. but it's misinterpretation of the text to claim he was intentionally written as a villain or smth by grrm.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn't? Why?

i don't know if it counts as unpopular but i would say tyrion's arc as a whole because i enjoy his character and like in my own way. i can get why some people don't like him but this man will always have his own place in my heart i must admit.

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

is this unpopular tho?.. ok but renly wouldn't make a terrible king. i dare say he would be better than both robert and stannis. yes, he wasn't shown as perfect and i don't claim this. he wouldn't be the best or the most brilliant or the most just or noble. yet still better than his brothers. his flaws weren't anything other high lords didn't have, his mistakes weren't anything other lords and kings didn't do. in many ways he would make a better job than robert or stannis, too bad he died so early, even though i get why it was important for the narrative.

26. Most shippable character?

well generally for me it's the ones i love the most lol. jonerys/snowstorm is my never dying otp but i admit my sins, sometimes i just see dany with other characters (often from other fandoms pls don't @ me). however, since dany is THE fave of mine it means i would rather twist the other guy or girl to fit into the good match for her than twist her for another character in my new born crack ship lol. and i never stay for too long with the ships with which i feel they don't really fit and don't do justice for each other lol. maybe that's the reason i'm not much of a rare shipper / crack shipper afshdjdb

27. Least shippable character?

everyone i don't like? 😭 as i've said sansa for the reasons above lol. you can insert many others in her place lmao

[yukipri]

It‘s really fcked up that people repost your art. How does anyone think thats okay???? I‘m really sorry some people are so awful. Love your art, your stories and your cats - basically everything you put out. You deserve better! Hope you have a nice day anyway! Again sorry that happened to you :(

Most people unfortunately don’t think of it as “art theft.” They think of it as a cool picture they saw on the internet, and want to share with their friends. They think that if they get likes/follows as a result of sharing it, well that’s great, because that means other people who like the same thing are following them! It feels good, so they do more.

They don’t see art as something that someone created. Even if they do on some level know that the art didn’t magically pop into existence out of nowhere, to them it’s the same as an official art, or a stock image, or anything else. They don’t realize it’s the work of another desperate fan, who spent hours and days on the single piece, and months and years on their craft, who put that work out on the internet in the tiniest hope that maybe someone will like it, maybe someone will let them know they liked it, and maybe they can feel encouraged to create more. That encouragement could lead to them further investing in their craft, people supporting them through sites like Patreon, maybe even leading to an industry job, or if not at least creating more quality content for others to enjoy.

I put on my profile “do not repost,” i put directly on my art ITSELF “do not repost,” and yet people can bypass all of that, even intentionally crop or edit out my watermark, and still feel they are doing no harm because they only see it as “a picture on the internet.”

I understand that people who are sharing it mean no harm and are also fans. I don’t hate them, and I don’t want to hurt them. But that doesn’t undo the fact that their actions deeply and repeatedly hurt me, damage my motivation and self-esteem, make me feel miserable and make me doubt continuing to share my content on the internet every time.

It’s an internet culture thing, and one that I really wish would change, but it can only do so through widespread understanding and awareness that using artwork that you did not create without permission is not okay. This can only be done by EVERYONE, not just creators themselves, politely, gently, but firmly informing others why it’s not okay. 

But in fact, it’s not just about the blogs, individuals, and communities that repeatedly steal art, but also people who consume it. That means people in those communities, or who follow or like those blogs. If everyone in that 50K facebook community commented on every art theft post, “hey that’s not okay,” and didn’t give it a like, would the mods not realize hey, this isn’t a good way of making an audience happy, we should change our behavior? Would not all the silent lurkers see the comment, and the change in the mods, and realize ok, i’ll make sure not to do that either?

I KNOW it’s a pain to have to look up every artist, when it’s so convenient to follow blogs that seem to have everyone’s art. I know not everyone wants to think of us as people, they just want pretty pictures. But please, PLEASE, please I beg everyone reading this, don’t like, positively comment, follow, or otherwise reward blogs that steal art.

Sorry this response got so long, but yeah. Art theft’s draining. And I really wish it wasn’t so rampant, bc communities could be so much more encouraging of creators, and yet so few people leave comments on creator content or reblog, disproportionate to the amount often left on art theft blogs. I just wish more people would think about who that effects and how, and what happens when content creators decide to just....stop.

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

[duskdragonxiii]

with elitist angels trying to kick humans out of heaven because theyre assholes who dont want to share, premadeath being a real and honestly likely outcome in purgatory, and im going to guess a pretty brutal mortality rate in hell- how dwindling are mortals? are they even expected to stick around very long? side not, what happens when angels realize heaven runs out of humans?

You got it! The amount of humans in hell is at an all time low bc the ones that survive thier sentence there (hell functions more like a mortal prison or dungeon than an actual world where ur free to exist) either go back to purgatory to wait in hope of one day getting to paradise. OR theyre like lucifer bro what if i become a demon too like yall sure seem to have a party down here n if he likes u he’ll be like hell yeah bro ur still gonna get the shit kicked out of u daily bc hells primary purpose is torture and penance but hey it’ll be less if u lick my floors clean or smth. The thing w being a demon tho is Lucifer gets bored of ur company and ur dead at least being a prisonder and serving ur sentance ur likely to get out. Believe it or not Lucifer is actually quite merciful if u stay on his good side that is

ANYWAY since bte takes place 800 years after the end of the world most peoples sentances have been served and there has been very very few souls coming down unless they are sent as for punishment by heaven, which is rare, angels may not like people but they dont make a point of giving severe punishments for minor transgressions. Hell these days is pretty boring. demons just go about thier lives and with no mortal realm to make mischief in they just have to entertain  themselves among eachother. Unlike heaven, Hell doesnt have a regulatd system which appoints tasks and responsibility to its divine residents so its very informal and lazy but when it gets chaotic it gets chaotic.

contrary to popular belief though, the majority of people are good. genuine and average people with genuine and average vices. its only those with an exceptional good or evil sway that get into heaven and hell. Most people reside peacefully and happily in purgatory. Which is why Purgatory is so huge and has so many zones- which shift on occasion to keep life interesting. Resident areas are only so widespread in purg because its so infinite. There are just as many if not more mortals in purgatory than there are purgatorians. 

Death is pretty bored out his tights these days which is why he has so much time to mess around but most of the work he gets these days is from hell SO

[caroloftheshells]

so i’ve decided this “watching horror movies” thing is going to be a thing for me now, or at least during this month of october. super looking forward to it tbh, october is always a wonky month for me and right now in particular i can see this being a sort of cathartic thing.

on the subject of catharsis though... (cw - discussion of sexual assault, death, violence - also spoilers for midsommar)

i saw midsommar a couple days ago and it was fairly screwy but actually not too bad on the horror front..... though i’m now pretty appalled at how people (ok, make that white women) talk about it on here. thankfully doesthedogdie is my best friend so i went into it semi informed, but the fact that i’ve seen Nobody mention the fact that a character is sexually assaulted and then burned alive for having been sexually assaulted, and that people have framed this series of events as like a Feminist Victory or something, seems a little extremely weird! the fact that that lots-of-women-crying-together scene is 1) after connie (a woc, and The Only woc) is murdered, and 2) orchestrated to cover up the fact that the aforementioned character is being sexually assaulted in the adjacent room..... that is not something i would have guessed by all the “female bonding” commentary i have seen! and now i’m mad because i think the movie does a decent job at portraying all that as a source of horror-- really at portraying all the white characters as a source of horror-- but what’s the point if people are going to take it the wrong way, you know?

i think what gets to me is i’d only seen that scene referred to as a “sex scene” or an “orgy scene” previously. and, relatedly, i’d only seen unanimous agreement that x character “got what he deserved” by the end of the movie. & regardless of him being an awful person i can only imagine one of two possibilities; either people think it wasn’t “really” sexual assault for some reason or they think it’s possible for a character(/person) to be bad enough that they “deserve” sexual assault. both are pretty awful ideas and i’m honestly shocked by how widespread they are-- especially with the fact that male viewers feeling uncomfortable abt how the r*pe scene was framed as “cheating,” and not believing he deserved to die for it, are being painted as unreasonable or even dangerous themselves.

& finally i think it is.... at the very least rude... to viewers, that we can’t even have a cathartic moment with this abusive man facing consequences for his actions (not just to dani but to josh too!), because none of the “consequences” are actually related to his actions (or should be framed as consequences in the first place). i mean, it was likely meant to be that way (?) as sort of a commentary on the futility of “justice” in issues of abuse (ie-- dani gets rid of her abuser but at the price of joining a murderous, racist cult; the cult members continue to abuse dani but completely get away with it; and obviously the sexual abuse that happens also has no consequences for the perpetrator(s) and the victim dies a horrible death). and i guess it was meant to be that way but it really sucks.

this isn’t even getting into the beginning where we have like Scary Mental Illness stuff happening and mental illness is portrayed as being violent! or the weird thing later with the like “savant” kid with a “clear head” or whatever they said it was, that whole ableist trope. yeah ok there are really a lot of issues here

pretty colors though? good soundtrack? built a nice tense atmosphere? i’m gonna give hereditary a try still i think because most of the issues here were plot issues rather than aesthetic ones. i already know part of it’s gonna be dumb bc nobody knows how to write food allergies and given this dude’s track record i don’t expect that to be any different, but w/e, might be fun.

[fefeman]

See, this is why I hate tumblr and it's habit to reblog something without thinking. Like nobody question anything or do the tiniest amount of research and start parroting whatever feel cool.

First, the whole "All that knowledge lost" thing is INCREDIBLY idiotic, because the post itself explain why NO BOOK IN THE LIBRARY WAS UNIQUE! They all had at least one copy. If it got burned (I'll get back to it), there was at least some roman or greek that had a copy of some of the books. So it wasn't lost forever. It was harder to find and gather, yes, but this wasn't the "humanity crippling" loss that some try to paint it as.

And that diagram is hilariously dumb. It's clearly bullshit, made with the very precise data of "I feel this should be like that...". Impressive, very informative. Like, just the Era distinction make no sense. This is on the same level as a PragerU diagram. Just the use of "Christian dark age" is idiotic. Peoples didn't suddenly becomes idiot and stop researching things, nor did they instantly forget previous knowledges. The whole concept of of "Christian dark age" was classicist (the same peoples who removed the paint of Greek and roman statues) trying to justify the middle age as a "degradation" of society so they could go back at aping the romans. Yes, there were knowledges lost (although not that much because of the loss of the library), but also new gained. Everybody that try to tell you "after antiquity humanity lost a lot of knowledges and became backward morons" is trying to sell you something about or from antiquity.

I mean, the whole idea that humanity as a whole would be impacted by the destructions of the library of Alexandria is a fantasy, a very eurocentric fantasy that aim to claim that greek & roman culture was the only thing important, and that only the cultures of the Mediterranean sea could bring humanity forward . There were scientist and erudites in the east too, and many other places. The Library wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

Beyond that... Look, I'll just let wikipedia speak:

"Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning from his position and exiling himself to Cyprus. Many other scholars, including Dionysius Thrax and Apollodorus of Athens, fled to other cities, where they continued teaching and conducting scholarship. The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar during his civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter;"

So no, the Library of Alexandria wasn't destroy in one single hellfire that collapsed western society. Yes, Julius Caesar was involved in one of the many fire, but this was consequences of the civil war and not intended (Why would he intend to do that? He was allied with Cleopatra, and Romans would never even DREAM of burning greek books.), and since the building was still standing at 260AD, I'm pretty sure he didn't destroy it.

Please don't trust everything that it told to you, even if it make you feel smart and good to be angry at a dead dictator from 2000 year ago.

Source For more facts follow Ultrafacts

[urfavmurtad]

Hi! in one of your posts u said: "infanticide, either female or otherwise, was not a common practice in pre-Islamic Arabia." can you please link me to some sources for that? i'd be forever grateful xxx

Anon I just finished one of my final papers and now I’m in a ranting mood and what a GREAT topic for ranting you have brought up. It’s a perfect example of how pre-Islamic Arabia has gotten shat upon for the better part of 1400 years because people, mostly their own descendants, have decided that they were all evil savages. Ask anyone who was raised Muslim, even if they’re no longer practicing, for a fact about “Jahiliyya” and you’ll be told “they buried their daughters”. I think pretty much everyone with even a month of Islamic education, myself included, has been taught that this was a routine and widespread occurrence that Islam stopped. Even non-Muslim people have probably heard of this.

It’s repeated so frequently that few people ever bother to look up where the accusation comes from and what evidence supports it, outside of Islamic texts. Let’s see. There wasn’t a ton of writing before the 7th century, but are there any surviving fragments that mention it? Hm… nope. Maybe it was mentioned in the works of some travelers or foreign writers? Not there, either. How about references to it from neighboring literate peoples, like the Byzantines and Persians, who saw the Arabs south of the Ghassanid/Lakhmid lands as backwards anyway and surely wouldn’t have minded reporting on such a practice? Or even the Christian Arabs to the immediate north? Nope. Well, the gender ratio must’ve been screwed up, isn’t there at least evidence of that? No? Fine, but surely there is at least some archaeological evidence of this? There must be lots of bones of female infants that people have uncovered, right? Uh… no.

I mean… okay, but there must be something, somewhere in the peninsula, from some time before Islam that mentions this, right?! Well, in fact there is one piece of pre-Islamic historical evidence that may concern this subject in the Arabian Peninsula. From between the fifth and the second century BC. In Yemen. It was not written in Arabic, as at the time Yemenis still spoke their own South Arabian language (called Sabaean). Nonetheless, let’s look at what the devious people of Jahiliyya were up to. It was codified that:

It is unlawful for anyone of the people of Matarat to kill his daughter.

…that, uh, it was illegal for people kill their daughters. Over 700 years before Mohammed was born. The linked article points out that the word can also be used to mean female relatives of any age, not only infant daughters, so it seems to have been a general prohibition against killing any female members of one’s family. There are fatwas throughout Islamic history that say the same thing, so we can’t even be generous and say “maybe the fact that this exists means it was socially acceptable beforehand?”.

So the only pre-Islamic evidence we have relating to any form of female-targeted killings comes from hundreds of years before Mohammed’s time, in a different part of Arabia, and it explicitly outlaws the practice. Now look, I’m not saying that infanticide didn’t happen at all, as it certainly did both in pre- and post-Islamic Arabia, in times of great hardship. But for such a supposedly widespread practice afflicting the entire race before Islam miraculously invented feminism and stopped it overnight, is it not a tad strange that no one of any civilization over the span of a thousand years bothered to mention it before Mohammed? And isn’t it kind of weird how there isn’t any record of even a single named person engaging in this practice outside of Islamic texts written in the 800s AD onwards, long after polytheism was no longer practiced? (And as I’ll show later, barely anyone is named even in those texts…)

At any rate, given that every single accusation about Arabs practicing widespread and specifically female infanticide comes from Islamic sources, I suppose we should look at what they actually say on this matter, even though Mohammed’s views of his contemporary polytheists were not exactly, shall we say, neutral and unbiased. I’ll explain why I find them unconvincing in terms of evidence that this was a common practice. This is going to be long! I’m putting this under a cut bc I think probably… five people in total on this entire site care??

Let’s deal with the Quran first. Infanticide is mentioned in four places: 81:8-9, 6:151, 17:31, and 16:58-59. 6:151 (it’s also mentioned a bit before that in surah 6 too but that one just says that it’s Allah’s will, so :|) and 17:31 do not mention daughters specifically and simply tell people not to kill their children because they are poor and starving and don’t have enough food to go around (which was the context of most cases of infanticide throughout world history).

So let’s take a look at the two that are actually about girls. The context of 16:58-59 is Mohammed complaining that the polytheists say that Allah has daughters (the trio of sister-goddesses popular in the Hijaz at the time). 16:58 has Mohammed saying that when one of the polytheists themselves finds out his newborn is a girl, he gets angry, and in 16:59 he has the imaginary polytheist wondering if he should bury the newborn “in the dust”. This is meant to convey that the polytheists disgrace Allah by giving him daughters when they don’t even want them themselves. It’s similar to 43:16-19, which does not mention infanticide but does complain that the polytheists claim that angels are female while being displeased with their own daughters.

(I feel like I’ve repeated this a thousand times, but Islamic sources themselves describe literate women, highly-revered female medics, successful female business owners, women in monogamous marriages, female clan leaders, women who inherited and distributed property, women who chose their own husbands, widows and single mothers working in respected professions, women who were on battlefields, and women leading thousands of troops in this era. The idea that non-Muslim Arabs in Mohammed’s time uniformly loathed women and routinely buried their own daughters is completely nonsensical even judging by solely Islamic sources and it’s absolutely bizarre that this perception still stands. Y’all they were a polygamous society and women seemed to outnumber men, not the other way around. I know some people think “if the Quran says it, it must be true!” but lookit, Alexander the Great did not have horns on his head and pre-Islamic Arabs were not all baby-killing savages, them’s the facts.)

In any case, the ayah actually just says the evildoing polytheists think of doing it because they want sons… not that they do it. Nor does it say that Mohammed has ever seen it happen. It seems highly unlikely that he ever personally witnessed such a thing in Mecca, as even the guys the Quran calls evil by name like Crazy Uncle Abu Lahab had daughters. I’ll also add that some noted Quranic commentators say the phrase “bury [her] in the dust” could be a metaphor meaning “to hide [her] out of sight”, because the first word can also mean “conceal”. But let me talk about the other verses now.

Hold on because the next one’s got a plot twist. Surah 81, At-Takwir, is one of those poetic ones about the end of the world, about the stars falling and seas being set on fire etc. 81:8-9 is part of this poem and says “And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked/For what sin she was killed”.

The phrase translated as “the girl [who was] buried alive” is all one word, l-mawuda, stemming from a root used only in this ayah. It is evidently meant to refer to one killed via “wad”, meaning (in this case apparently) infanticide. So the word would mean, as literally as possible, “infant (girl) who was killed”. However!!

This verse is mentioned in one sahih hadith, which is… not actually about infanticide at all, but is instead about the practice of “azl”, which is the pull-out method, inexplicably called a form of infanticide (wad al-khafi–hidden infanticide, or “secret (way of) burying alive” as this translation puts it).

Then they asked him about ‘azl, whereupon he said “That is the secret (way of) burying alive”, and Ubaidullah has made this addition in the hadith transmitted by al-Muqri and that is: “When the one buried alive is asked[…] (81:8)”

Where might Mohammed have gotten such an idea? Why, I do believe this other sahih hadith has the answer. Someone informs Mohammed that Jews say that Every Sperm is Sacred (they call it mawudat al-sughra, minor infanticide. While the translation of mawuda as “girl buried alive” is standard now, it is clearly meant more in a general infanticide sense here… it’s not implying the dudes are literally burying their semen in the ground). Mohammed, who does not like Ze Jews, declares them liars. Despite the fact that they are saying literally exactly what he said in that other hadith.

The Jews say that withdrawing the penis (azl) is burying the living girls on a small scale. He (the Prophet) said: The Jews told a lie.

This blatant contradiction in two sahih ahadith has puzzled scholars throughout history and has largely been completely brushed over despite the former (from Sahih Muslim) coming from the most conservative of all the ahadith collections and being repeated by other collectors.Many scholars throughout history have just said “yeah, well, that can’t be right because that’d mean that the prophet contradicted himself!”. Which…  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s what I think happened. As with many things in his Mecca days, Mohammed based his understanding on azl on what the Jews said (see: the qiblah switch). Then he got to Medina and realized, oh, the Jews are actually garbage and we should stop imitating them. So when Muslims ask him whether he agrees with the Jews on the subject of azl, he forcefully declares that he does not, despite the fact that… he did. This is, in fact, an accepted explanation for the contradiction: the one where he calls azl infanticide is early, based on what the Jews believed, and was abrogated later once Allah “revealed” that it wasn’t true. And surah 81 is a Meccan surah, meaning it was from the period before he started loathing Jews, and his own followers connected his view on azl with the verse in question!

Anyway… that’s it for the Quran on this subject. I think I’ve explained why I find it pretty much impossible to believe that Arabs commonly murdered their infant daughters based solely on those verses. But of course, we have other sources that mention infanticide. So let’s do some other ahadith learnin’. For the sake of brevity (lol…) I am going to mainly focus on the sahih collections and will not go into any ahadith with da’if/weak narrators or traditions that appear out of nowhere in like the 10th century+ bc what’s even the point.

I think many Muslims would be surprised by how rarely this subject is mentioned in the sahih collections. There is only one hadith within them alleging any infanticide in Mecca itself, and it is this one narrated by Abu Bakr’s daughter Asma (through her son Urwa and his son Hisham).

I saw Zaid bin Amr bin Nufail standing with his back against the Ka'ba and saying, “O people of Quraish! By Allah, none amongst you is on the religion of Abraham except me.” He used to preserve the lives of little girls: If somebody wanted to kill his daughter he would say to him, “Do not kill her for I will feed her on your behalf.” So he would take her, and when she grew up nicely, he would say to her father, “Now if you want her, I will give her to you, and if you wish, I will feed her on your behalf.”

I’ll be straight with you: I do not believe this. Not in the sense that I don’t believe Asma said it, but in the sense that I don’t believe her actual words.

Zayd ibn Amr, for those of you who don’t know, was a man of Mecca (he was Umar’s cousin on one side and Umar’s uncle on the other–don’t practice incest, kids!) who died a bit before Mohammed became a “prophet”. Because he eschewed polytheism, Christianity, and Judaism in favor of some vague Abrahamic tradition, he was sort of retroactively declared a Muslim and all sorts of legends about his life were made up to portray him as a pious and righteous proto-Muslim. Mohammed claimed that he met him by chance at some point and discovered that Zayd happened to follow the same dietary rules that “Allah” would later instruct Mohammed to follow. I guess he is vaguely comparable to John the Baptist in the Christian tradition? Like a predecessor pious guy (who is killed… not because of persecution, though, robbers just shanked him).

Anyway, Asma was like… 10 years old at most when Zayd died, and he had been away on trading business at the time of his death, so it’s a bit unclear what the timeline is here, if it did happen. She would have been 5-8, I guess. And so here is my question: where, exactly, are these girls that he “saved”? She says that he raised multiple young girls, keeping some with him and later returning others to their families. These girls would have been between Asma and Aisha in age and, presumably, some would have been older than Asma.

So what happened to them? Where are they? Why are they never mentioned again?

Not a single one of these girls he supposedly cared for is ever named or referenced. This happened in Mecca, in a well-known family. Zayd’s own children, Saeed and Atiqa, were Muslims quoted in various ahadith. (Saeed was married to Umar’s sister, incidentally, and was part of Umar’s whole anime-ass backstory. Atiqa was a wife of Umar himself and had a rather scandalous personal history, but that’s irrelevant. Point is, neither had anything to say about their father rescuing or raising any kids of either gender.)

Given how young Asma was and how no one, not even Zayd’s own kids, corroborates her account, I tend to look at her words here with some skepticism. If they existed, the women who were “saved” by Zayd as infants would have become Muslims by or before the conquest of Mecca, and at least one of them would have been quoted or just mentioned in some hadith, somewhere. But they weren’t, and imo it’s because this is not something that really happened and is instead just a demonstration of early Islamic myth-making. The same trope is repeated in later and weaker sources, like some poetry attributed to al-Farazdaq claims that his grandfather raised 66 (!!!) girls he “saved”, who would presumably have been the same age as his parents, but does he name a single damn one of them or name the individuals who he “saved” them from? Nope. Just like Zayd’s mysterious disappearing foster daughters, the girls disappear from the story right after they stop being needed to prove a point. Hm.

There are no other recorded instances of specific people in Mecca either practicing or stopping infanticide. In the interest of fairness, despite my loathing for the guy, I must note that a semi-popular story about Umar burying his daughters is fabricated. Umar obviously had many daughters, his eldest being one of Mohammed’s own wives, who was not only not killed but even received an education and was literate.

The only other sahih hadith on this subject is this one, which just lists various bad things and is similar to 6:151. Again, no specific incidents are mentioned. The term used here is “wad al-banat”, meaning presumably the infanticide (wad) of daughters (banat).

Verity Allah, the Glorious and Majestic, has forbidden for you: disobedience to mothers, and burying alive daughters … (etc)

Nothing further is said of this supposedly common practice in any other sahih hadith. Zero people are accused of partaking in this practice, zero people confess to having done it, no one mentions having a murdered sister or aunt or daughter. And judging by the marriage practices of early Islam, there sure doesn’t seem to have been a gender ratio issue.

With this total dearth of evidence in mind, some Islamic scholars over the centuries have relented on the polytheists somewhat, proposing that female infanticide was a rarer practice than some claim in settled areas, but was still practiced somewhere by some tribe. (This is not just a modern practice: they were in the minority, but there were some 9th century scholars like al-Mubarrad who were explicitly skeptical of the baby-killing days of Jahiliyya.) Usually the Bedouin living outside the Hijaz are blamed because, you know, lol silly desert nomads. Even this requires relying on weaker traditions, though. So hey since this is turning into a goddamn dissertation, let’s dive into them!!

First, let me get this one out of the way: Qays ibn Asim, evidently a leader of the Banu Tamim tribe. If you’ve heard any specific person identified with the practice of female infanticide, it’s probably him. There are all sorts of versions of his story, though most of them go like this.

That story says that his tribe was raided by a Lakhmid (Iraqi) king, who took the women as slaves. Eventually the women were returned once peace was negotiated between the parties, but one of them, the daughter of Qays, refused to come home because she wanted to stay with her Lakhmid husband. After that, Qays buried all girls born to his wife, to avoid such a dishonorable thing happening again in the future. Sometimes it’s said there were 8 girls, other times it’s said there were 12. After he converted to Islam, he confessed and repented by sacrificing some of his camels. (Often this is presented as the first case of female infanticide among Arabs, which does… not… make much sense, timeline-wise?)

I suppose it goes without saying that while the Banu Tamim are mentioned (sometimes in a derogatory way, other times in a nice or neutral way) in the six main ahadith collections, this story is not found in any of them… in fact, Qays himself narrates some sahih ahadith and never bothers to mention that he’s apparently killed a dozen babies. Hmmm. Where does the story come from, then?

As far as I can tell, the bare bones of it come from al-Tabarani (he was of the generation of ahadith collectors after Bukhari et al; this book in particular has tens of thousands of ahadith of varying levels of authenticity, many of which are clearly weak), apparently quoting from Nouman ibn Bashir, who says he heard it from Umar (thus the confusion over Umar supposedly killing one of his children).

All that hadith says is that he buried 8 daughters; the other details about his tribe being attacked etc come from weaker/fabricated sources. There’s a variant of the story in which Qays’ wife saves one girl and (somehow??) brings her up on her own and Qays is devastated and shamed of his deeds when he sees her, which appears to be pulled from a fabricated account about some other guy named Awf ibn Muhallam. Neither account is considered sahih or even credible. The same is true of a ridiculous story from Sunan al-Darimi (Google Translate is shit at Arabic but I can’t find an English version, you can at least get the general idea, the unnamed guy says he kicked his daughter down a well as she screamed out for him!) that some people may have heard which is, again, never stated to be authentic and not found in any other collections; the details in that last one are quite clearly meant to demonize polytheists as shockingly as possible.

I searched and searched for the most credible possible account mentioning a specific incident of infanticide, and I think this one here comes closest. It is a hasan hadith from one of Bukhari’s commentaries. This is not Sahih Bukhari–this commentary has ahadith ranging from daif to sahih (weak to strong, hasan is pretty much “okay”). The guy evidently says he killed a daughter (“wadt mawudatan”, translate that as you will) in pre-Islamic times and asks Abu Dhar if he can repent. Abu Dhar says it’s fine because Allah forgives what has been done before Islam… then starts arguing with his wife about food and this hadith is classified under the chapter about giving guests food… the apparent infanticide being totally forgotten for the remainder of the hadith. Weird.

There’s a variant of this story with different wording in one of Imam Ahmed’s collections (#20376), with a different narration chain. The word mawudatan is not present–“wadt” وأدت is in fact without an object there. It’s possible it’s not talking about infanticide at all but rather using the word with a different definition to indicate being a leading participant in polytheistic practices. But… uh. That’s the best I can do here. One guy, and not from a source that’s considered super authentic.

There are no other even sort-of-reputable sources mentioning female infanticide. That’s it. In the entire history of pre-Islamic Arabia, that is the extent of the evidence for “Arabs always used to bury their daughters alive!!”. As you can see, the evidence that this was a common practice is… not convincing in the least, and the conflation between infanticide and splooging outside a vagina is confusing and not helping matters. In summary, please leave our ancestors alone!! They went through enough shit without ppl painting them as baby-killing monsters based on zero non-Islamic sources and barely any Islamic sources either. I’m just asking y’all to evaluate claims of them being evil with the same skepticism you’d grant claims of pagan Europeans being called evil by Christian sources. The fact that we’ve all been taught this “fact” is unfortunate but I hope I’ve convinced you that the practice at least wasn’t as common as it’s presented in the modern era.

I guess we may follow the prophet’s example and blame the Jews for this confusion. And Allah knows best.

[concernedfriend]

i made an au of my ocs where theyre all mythological creatures, so here’s a vampire ancient enough to control a city-state in ancient greece during the collapse of the bronze age.

in this au he is about 50k years old from india, 20k years after the peopling of india. i could not find information about whether a phenotype that we would consider “indian” would have existed back then, so honestly i just made it up. he basically looks like a south indian would today. he is not similar to an andaman islander though. I did not research his ethnicity too much i was lazy sorry. He’s from an ancient lost tribe that he killed in modern day Kerala in the western Ghats anyway thats all i have. he is a mutated freak with blue eyes, way before that mutation is thought to have arisen lmao.

ill give you a nice background bc i actually wrote 2000 words on this

just like he was in my original universe, hes a batshit sadistic psychopath. this is not conducive to survival in the paleolithic, of course, but he is practical and its mostly kept on the downlow. it actually helps him, despite his antisocial tendencies he can provide during hunts very well. the tribe and surrounding tribes also practice ritualistic fighting games and war. he was also great at that. the tribe had these rituals and believed in the spirits of things, a very simplistic animism, but no true religion. they had no deities and did not sacrifice anything. they merely respected the world around them.

his parents were killed when he was young, i dont have anything to add to that. when he is a young adult, about 19, another kid is orphaned in his tribe. he is treated poorly, like sai was when he was young. at that age, sai had proven himself to the tribe and was respected. if he was anyone else, he would be high up in the hierarchy. however, people were wary of him due to him being completely psycho. the tribe treats this child badly as well. It is not a common thing to treat orphans badly, but he was orphaned in a shameful way. no elaboration sorry.

Sai kind of adopts this kid, because he has low empathy, not no empathy and feels for him since he went through the same thing. he raises this kid to be pretty successful. he is 10 years old at this point.

at this point in time, we see rituals and religion arising. centralized deities are appearing. in this au, gods and deities are basically pixie hollow fairies/tulpas and are created through belief and belief and need for gods is beginning. in the  historical record, religion is first specifically found in the middle east. deities do not appear widespread until the neolithic revolution, as until this time humans are not too reliant on random forces of nature (harvest, rain, natural disasters). just go with it pls. its not any sort of noble savage idea, humans are still bitches, its just they are bitches on their own, not just because of a supernatural creature who consolidates control over them. anyway this tribe is beginning to find a belief in a deity. I want to make a parallel to the lion man sculpture, so i will say it is a man with a lions head that they began to believe in and worship as like, a deity of war. this deity is demanding human sacrifice

and who to kill but someone they wont miss! the kid is only 10 years old, does not contribute anything to the tribe yet. they know they have to get sai away to do this, so they ask him to act as either a messenger or on some bullshit task. the kid knows whats going to happen and so he begs sai to not go, but sai has no clue whats going on and leaves and promises to come back and keep him safe. the tribesmen then take him and begin a child sacrifice.

sai has to turn back at some point and comes upon the sacrificial scene. the child is already dead and cannot be saved. so sai turns his rage upon the tribespeople and the deity who had asked for this. he slaughters them all, including the young god. after this, he wanders the land until hes about 24. he meets a man who does not seem human, nor like the few other deities he has slaughtered. he exudes a sense of evil, which sai is too psychopathic to actually tell. he offers sai immortality and infinite power, but that it comes at a price. sai is a power hungry bitch and has been ostracized since forever and terrorizes the surrounding tribes with his presence. so he is not exactly attached to his humanity. he readily agrees. and so, the fallen angel/demon azazel creates one of the first vampires. the undead are one of the first supernatural creatures that are not natural spirits(jinn) nor angels/demons.

azazel creates 12 initial vampires. 11 of them spread vampirism throughout the world, slowly at first  but the supernatural population begins to explode during the neolithic. most of them die, eventually. during this time, sai turns no one and thralls no one. he discovers his latent magic, which was telepathic in nature (all beings have a capacity for magic). he travels throughout the world a million times over, bored and never attaching himself to anyone or anything. he watches the rise of agriculture and organized religion. this organizaiton of religion causes the emergence of the supernatural, based on human belief allowing them access to this world, especially the fae (whole other story). human history is becoming more interesting, stratified large societies are forming making it easier for him to travel unnoticed. Around 6000 bce he travels to the british isles and terrorizes small societies and villages by first gaining their trust.

he begins the same routine one day at another village, like any other. he asks a couple if he can stay at their house. they agree as long as he helps out. he obviously cannot help during the day, of course. so he stays at this village. he is sure the wife knows he isn’t human. that hes something wrong, not belonging to society. he can’t imagine that the husband doesn’t know.

of course, he gets hungry and begins his plan of terrorizing the village. in the town square, he is stalking his planned victim. a voice comes from behind him.

“why don’t you just feed off me”

mans a feared creature of the night for nearly 40k years at this point and he jumps and yelps as this human just sneaks up on him.

its the husband, chad daniel jackson. hated by his parents, with that name, obviously.

sai is intrigued, and accepts this arrangement, putting off his plan of terrorizing the village. he has never had a human offer themself to him as a sacrifice.

it makes him understand how gods must feel.

sai takes a little more than he needs each feeding, drunk on this feeling of power or trust with another’s life. he wonders if a futile attempt to save their village is why this family is doing this.

he can’t imagine was possessed these humans to invite a vampire into their home.

the truth is, only danny was on board. the others live in complete, paralyzing fear. sai doesn’t notice. he becomes fascinated and obsessed with danny, eventually thralling him and taking him away from the village.

so maybe it wasn’t futile.

the village stands, with only one person missing. no one grieves for him, he chose his fate. he chose to betray his people, his family.

anyway afterwards, they travel together through the developing great civilizations of antiquity, and danny becomes a feared warrior and leader. sai decides to establish a city state that builds its influence from 3000 bce until the collapse of the bronze age. this should roughly correlate to the greek heroic age, the time where heros and gods and magic were commonplace. the civilizations during this time were controlled by their patron deities and panetheons, with palaces and temples dedicated to them. there were sacrifices and various other acts of worship. the supernatural beings ruled the world

the collapse of the bronze age is often credited to the sea peoples. in this universe they were a group of humans rebelling against the beings who ruled over them. sai had never much cared for the supernaturals who tried to kill his child, but he had never cared for the humans either. However, the human advancement in technology from the beginning of civilization was picking up, and he was interested to see where it could go, so he harbored the leader of the rebellion in his palatial center for a while. after, he and danny abandoned the small empire they had built. the bronze age collapse ended complete dominance of gods and magic, and allowed human reason and power to flourish in the societies that filled the void.

this was a faster history than sai was used to. he could be in for some exciting times.

human influence solidified itself after the 5th century BC, after the old testament (ish) supernatural beings were common and known, but were less of religious figures and more of folkloric and superstitious.

sai survives until the modern day.

his real age is unknown to those in the modern day, thinking he is from the advent of agriculture rather than being older.

[lilboppaloola]

Hello anon! I am slightly more equipped to inform you why Phase 2 is a shit show.

Main Over-Arching Reason is money. I know I personally don't buy the whole "I planned more books halfway through phase 1" spiel.

As a result of this being a money grab and therefore (imo) an unplanned second phase, the big successful fave characters got killed off/tidied away by the end of phase one. So now there's a bunch of randomers with limited development, thrown together in a quick attempt to fill the hole he made for himself at the end of phase one.

I am completely with you on SPX being good and there being a bunch of valdug. I was never a huge fan of the Omen chapters throughout, but they were about readable because i was so excited for more skug.

Not a lot of people were buzzing off SPX, unlike you and I, but as soon as we all read Midnight, everyone realized it was the best we were going to get for a while, maybe ever. It was just,,, there. It dragged, and it was slightly iconic albeit confusing at the end with Alice being hilarious, but mostly Val's trauma and depression were getting far too heavy for most of the audience to read.

Many people have said they come to this series for escapism from their own depression etc. which is very valid. I like Val's trauma symptoms being explored in depth, but it started to become very triggering for me pretty quickly, and for a series that's supposed to be for children? Perhaps a poor move on his part.

Another big thing that went wrong was the Martin Flannery storyline. It was all planned as a three book arc during the Trump/Clinton election campaign, as parody and humour because Daffodil Looneytunes expected Trump to lose. He said after the election results that he no longer felt comfortable using the planned storyline because it was now too close to reality, which, tbh, fair enough.

However, this forced him to push Flannery into the background as a minor character to be written out asap. So what was he going to do in that gap??? Flail, clearly.

Bedlam, for me, was atrocious. I read it once, I think, or maybe again as prep for SoW. Spoilers, but Val basically turned into a magical drug addict losing her life to a soothing music box. Not to mention the absolute general turnaround of China's characterisation after the end of Phase 1, plus whatever was going on with Tanith.

The third, big, thing is this push for representation by the old white guy in an attempt to stay relevant.

I'm queer, disabled, and genderfluid myself. We meet Never in SPX. Their whole identity is that they're Omen's genderfluid sidekick, which is not great but I guess forgiveable. I have a big issue with the fact that their pronouns switch between she/her and he/him every damn line. That is not how it works. Stick to she for one scene, then he for the next if you absolutely must. Or much better, use they/them!! Queer people are trying to normalise the widespread use of gender-neutral pronouns like they/them (and neopronouns, although they would likely confuse some people so I understand avoiding them here), and Detective Levonorgestrel over here decides to use this opportunity to once again not listen to the LGBT community.

Various people have spoken out in the past about his generalisations around "every sorcerer is bisexual eventually" (excuse me?) and him mansplaining Val's sexuality as "homoromantic" in completely the wrong context. He historically has not listened, which invalidates his attempts at being inclusive, because he's a cishet man ignoring the community he's using for clout.

Don't even get me started on Val suddenly being bisexual. You need to suddenly be so inclusive that you turn your protagonist into a lesbian, basically, bc she sure doesn't seem interested in men any more (normally I'd agree with her on that one lol, but it's such a weird twist away from her character throughout all of phase 1).

Furthermore, the way she acts with Militsa, calling her sweetheart and all sorts of disgustingly fluffy names?? Totally ooc. I'd adore some good LGBT rep, like giving Tanith a girlfriend, seeing as she was already canonically into girls too. Make it actually believable, not just a desperate attempt to swerve away from the slippery slope of valduggery after the end of phase 1 where he left it close enough for people to get excited but ambiguous enough not to stir up shit for himself. If you don't want valdug sir, that's fine, but if you're going to replace it, at least put some effort in rather than cramming Militsa World's Flattest Lesbian Character Gnosis in its place.

Ok hi, the last sp book i read was resurrection, valdug is almost canon life is good im just over here sipping tea but what the fuck is dick langly doing?? i just read the drama and what?? why is he like this?? and apparently phase 2 is garbage?? literally what happened? when/why did it all go wrong? id really appreciate it if you could explain it to me!! lots of love i hope you a happy day free from dick langly💗💗💗💗

sorry anon, you’re gonna have to do some digging. I’m generally not in a good place mentally rn and I don’t have the patience or the energy to go over why I hate dirty laundry/phase 2 in any detail whatsoever again, it will make me so angry and i’m not willing to do that to myself. it’s...somewhere in my sp tag, or the “derek landy hate blog” tag. you could also just read his twitter or whatever, every single thing that comes out of his mouth or off his keyboard makes it clear what a shameless and unapologetic wanker he is