#betrayed by one of our own

[silentauthor96]

"police said an employee at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, recognized Mangione from photos made public by police and called local authorities"

how could you, fellow laborer???

Literally it costs 0 dollars to not narc. You didn't have to do this 😭😭

[i-upset-to-dead-65]

My digital art professor mentioned he used AI in photos hoping and you could hear a pin drop. Bro we were all Gen-Zers looking at each other like "fuck what is he gonna say" in fear. Then he elaborated the use of AI as a tool (the example he used was covering a window partially with an AI curtain in a reference image that would later be drawn from reference) and that he doesn't even allow tracing in digital art.

[rexonalapis]

People relegating Sige to being 'Wrio and Neuvi's daughter' miss out on the awkwardness and comedy of Wrio trying to get close to what is technically his Matron's kind of an uncle/old friend of family. Who is also old.

fellas is it gay to rizz your mother figure's mother figure? asking for a friend.

[luciuscodedswedeboy]

Taika et al really committing to the “Ed is Jesus, Izzy is Judas” bit huh

[petrichoraline]

you guys would blorbo-fy the fuck out of these characters, i'm telling you go watch this show now im going crazy

[moongothic]

We all know how a lot of Luffy's opponents have been in some ways premonitions of the type of person Luffy could end up as if something went wrong in his life. For example Moria is what Luffy could've become had he truly lost his entire crew at Sabaody if Kuma had not saved them

And we know Crocodile is what Luffy maybe could've become had Luffy given up on his dreams and become jaded after losing to him. But like, when you think about it, that's not the only dark reflection of Luffy in Crocodile, is it

'Cause Crocodile, despite employing people for Baroque Works, did not trust anyone around him and did not considder anyone to be anything else but an employee to him. And we know he had been planning on taking over Alabasta for like 14 years (at the very least), BW being a thing for only the past four (pre-timeskip)

So like. Did Crocodile spend the last 14 years alone

Like yes he had his workers at the Casino and Robin etc, so he was like, around people, he wasn't like Brook who was in Total Isolation. But on an emotional level, has he not spent the last 14 years all by himself, completely detached from anyone, unable to trust or rely on anyone else?

That is sad as fucking shit, holy hell

'Cause then you compare him to like Luffy and like

Our sweet baby boy was so afraid of being alone that Luffy literally went through hell just to gain Ace's approval despite Ace trying to signal to him he wasn't interested befriending him

And through out the whole series Luffy reiterates time and time again how he needs and wants his friends around because he literally can't live without them, both on a literal "he can't cook or navigate or have fun by himself" level but also on that emotional level

And Crocodile just. Spent 14 years of his life, if not longer, alone.

Sweet jesus what happened to this man

And that just makes me further wonder, what the absolute fuck were Crocodile's Rookie Pirate days like?? Like did he have a crew or was he just yolo'ing it by himself???

Like. Mihawk's never been on a crew as far as we know. Kuma was a Revolutionary, not a pirate, but he wasn't like alone still. Doflaming, Hancock, Jinbei and Moria however have/had crews of their own. So what was Crocodile's deal? Did he have a crew before? Was he a captain or was he on someone else's ship? (Although surely the Government wouldn't offer the position of a Shichibukai to a cabin boy or the first mate, right)

And if he did have a crew, the hell happened to them??

Like we know Crocodile got his ass kicked by Whitebeard, I just find it unlikely Whitebeard would've pulled a Kaidou on Crocodile's crew and slaughtered them, that's not a very Whitebeard-y thing do, right?? ...Unless Whitebeard was just different 20+ years ago and was willing to annihilate entire crews. We don't know. Or maybe Crocodile and his entire crew were like Turbo Rotten from the beginning and Whitebeard figured they deserved to get wiped out, much like how we saw Shanks wipe out Kid's crew at Elbaf. Or maybe Whitebeard saw no reason to have mercy on someone affiliated with the World Government.

That all said, if we wanted to assume Crocodile had somekind of trauma that lead to him viewing people not only as disposable but also untrustworthy, then maybe losing people dear to him like that wouldn't lead to that mindset. Like Moria witnessed his beloved crew die and that caused him to want to create a crew he couldn't die, so he wouldn't go through that emotional trauma again.

Which leaves me to wonder. If something caused him to lose his ability to (emotionally) trust people, and if Whitebeard broke his dreams... Maybe Crocodile had a crew. And maybe they abandoned him when he lost to Whitebeard. Figuring they didn't need a weak captain who was probably going to bleed to death anyways. Or maybe the crew tried to take his head (after Whitebeard kicked his ass), after all, he was already a Shichibukai, anybody who took Crocodile's head could maybe attempt to take that title for themselves if the Government allowed it, and if not, at least gain more fame for themselves.

Either of these scenarios would certainly result in you losing your ability to rely on others. And leave you willing to spend the rest of your life alone. Who would have in them to go through that again.

Or maybe he came out of the womb unable to trust people and he was just yolo'ing it by himself like Mihawk right from the begining, who knows

Regardless I'm just

[outlying-hyppocrate]

i have officially returned. ask me anything.

[miyuskye]

you just don't get it oden they are in LOVE

[fadewalking]

Bellara lowkey pissing me off with all this feeling guilty bs

[the-descolada]

.

[snekdood]

Some of yall deeply underestimate how much some cis men are threatened by trans men and our masculinity. How theres so many cis dudes out there that want to rape us, thinking that will make us detransition. How many incels out there are mad at us for betraying womanhood and not sucking their dick. How much they want to force us to detransition, how much they want to kill us and force us into hiding which, to me, minus well be killing us since theyre smothering who we are for the sake of a status quo. We shake their fundamental understanding of the world. Its one thing for a GIRL to be a tomboy to them. They think its cute, like a baby pretending to be an adult. Its a whole other thing for someone percieved as a woman to try to actually be a man to them. They think thw fact we have the gal to assume we can escape their grasp, to escape the kitchen or whatever tf, means we're disrespecting them and trying to "destroy" them, rather than what it really is, us trying to be independent. We're the exact thing these types of cis men hate. Sometimes they tolerate (emphasis here bc im not saying they accept yall. Dont twist my words)trans women bc they fetishize them but they want to completely eradicate us becayse we threaten the patriarchy by virtue of deciding we dont need a man to take care of us, we want to be the man that takes care of ourselves.

[teecupangel]

idk if this was asked already but have you watched/read Red, White & Royal Blue? The movie surprised me bc it was actually well done. But consider this!!! son of the first american female president Desmond Miles meet-disasters prince Altair, second son of the british princess Maud and syrian dignitary(?) Umar. Malik is Altair's older brother bc he has the energy : D Connor is Desmond's cousin bc i love him. its difficult for Desmond as ppl expect him to live up to Altair's reputation as the prodigious but aloof prince or whatever. In the books Alex Clairemont-Diaz has a sister who pretends to date Prince Henry when rumors of their relationship was going around, Desmond needs a big sister we should give him a sister. You know what just make the whole family big and add the Auditores in the mix, they could be more Miles cousins or idk maybe Italian royalty. You can run with it however you like tho!!!

I haven’t watched it yet but it is in my watchlist XD

Okay, so let’s set up the backstory for this one!

For this one, how about Desmond is the son of Jennifer Scott, the first American female president (sidebar: in this one, the Kenways have been in America for centuries so they’re an American family coming from ‘old money’).

This would make Ratonhnhaké:ton his cousin while Haytham suffers as the the little brother of the president XD

Of course, Edward is the best grandfather who may or may not be helping any shenanigans Desmond gets into. Ratonhnhaké:ton swears he’s there to keep an eye on his cousin but ends up helping him instead.

As for the Auditores… hhhhmmmm. Perhaps they’re Desmond’s cousins from his father’s side (William Auditore Scott being the youngest brother of Giovanni Auditore) and he grew up with them so they’re more like siblings than cousins?

To Altaïr’s side…

Altaïr would be the second son of the British Princess Maud after she remarried the Syrian dignitary Umar (and it was a huuuggee scandal) who already had two sons, Malik and Kadar. This means that Malik and Kadar would be older than Altaïr (with Kadar being a year older maybe?) and would be his half brothers.

Who were Maud’s first son?

Jacob Fyre who has an older twin, the crown princess Evie Frye.

That’s right! We’re making Altaïr have a complicated big family in this one!

Also, we can change up the whole ‘sister pretends to date the prince’ and have Evie pretend-date Desmond instead, doing it as a favor to Altaïr and also because she does care for her younger brother.

So, in this case, Altaïr is torn between two families, the royal family who are pushing so much expectations and duties to him which he’s able to meet and his father’s family who worries about him and thinks all that royal ‘power’ is getting in his head (they’re worried about his arrogance as well as this problem of his of believing he has to be the best at everything). His accomplishments are also driving a wedge between him and his older siblings, especially with Evie who is supposed to be the crown princess but is always compared to her younger half-brother while Jacob ignores it the way he always does (so yeah, Altaïr’s royal family is screwed up… oh, did I mention we’ll have Minerva as Maud’s mother and reigning queen to add more drama in the royal family? I didn’t? Well, now you know XD)

And then we have Desmond Scott, the charming oldest son of the president of the United State, who always act like everything is okay and he’s having a great time, even when he has heard and read all the comparisons being ‘whispered’ behind his back comparing him to Altaïr’s reputation, not knowing that Altaïr is annoyed by Desmond’s friendly ‘laziness’ (he gets along with Jacob sooo well it’s scary) and it took him a while to realize that he was actually jealous of Desmond because he makes it look like living with such powerful parents was… easy.

Enjoyable even.

And the more they spend time together, the more they realize that their jealousy was transforming into something much more deeper…

… and more dangerous.

(I know you wanted Desmond to get a big sister but I was thinking who we could add and it was either Layla or Lucy (or Rebecca or Bishop???) in my mind but it felt like that wouldn’t work for some reason so, instead, Altaïr gets the Frye twins as his older siblings XD Desmond instead gets to have two younger siblings. One of them is Arno, of course, because Arno deserves a happy childhood and maybe… Lucy? idk)

[necrophcge]

.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I keep thinking of that reply in my Odysseus/Agamemnon post about how I regard differently Odysseus' and Agamemnon's actions, while acknowledging that at times Agamemnon is written as a sweet man and Odysseus is always straight up shitty, and how it was taken as some sort of defense for Agamemnon and as a form of pointing out the double standard; and that wasn't at all what the post was about for me, even though I can see where they were coming from. To be honest, given I didn't imagine it would spread anywhere other than my own blog, I didn't explain myself very well (or at all).

The fact is that when I talked about Odysseus not caring about hurting someone else's child to start and end a war I was indeed comparing his actions to Agamemnon's, but my words about supporting Odysseus' wrongs and cheering him in his terrible actions, while in a joking tone, weren't entirely a joke. I do think that Odysseus does some very shitty acts, and some quite terrible ones depending on the sources. That's a fact, that he does is at the core of his characterisation and it's what makes him so much fun; but not even when he is at his most cruel does he harm his family, his own son. Agamemnon, while sweet and loving at times in some texts, at his worst is willing to sacrifice Iphigenia. When readers regard with more sympathy Odysseus over Agamemnon despite both being responsible for children dying, I don't think there's a double standard in this aspect at all considering it's never his own kid Odysseus harms. And that's the key, I think.

Odysseus and Agamemnon have very different priorities, a very different view on loyalty and duty. It could be said that Agamemnon acts out of selfishness, but it could also be read in a kinder light, saying that Agamemnon is ruled by the gods first, and by his role as head of the achaeans; Agamemnon is not entirely himself. In opposition we see Odysseus acting perhaps mainly for himself and his own family and men; yes, he is a king, but he has not the role Agamemnon has. As a consequence, Agamemnon submits his family's wellbeing to the war, to the gods, while Odysseus stops the plow before hurting Telemachus but is (depending on the source) the cause of Iphigenia's sacrifice and Astyanax's death.

Both Odysseus and Agamemnon have reasons to support their actions, and both can be sympathised with; it's fiction after all. When it comes to fiction, at the end of the day which character a reader is drawn to or sympathises with is mainly an issue of personal taste, but I suppose it also implies a certain level of one's own views or preferences on morals, what makes us find certain actions more justifiable, or tasteful (perhaps that's a more accurate word), than others. Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, no matter how sympathetic or understandable the reason, generally sits worse on people than Odysseus doing the same with someone else's kids, because they're someone else's. This different emotional reaction they provoke has place not just metanarratively, but also inside the very story; it is narratively significant, given it determines how their arrival home plays out, how their wives react to them, and thus their futures. Ultimately it determines whether they live or die.

I think both terrible acts go in line wonderfully with each characterisation, showcasing the role they hold in their world, what they value, what they care for, what they're willing to sacrifice for themselves and the others, how much of their own they're willing to give and bend. While looking at the wider picture it could perhaps be drawn that Agamemnon is the better person out of the two, but Odysseus' selfish actions are perhaps easier to empathise with, especially from a modern viewpoint. Odysseus is treacherous and prone to betrayal, but not against his own; Agamemnon follows the rules of the gods. How fitting in that context that Odysseus doesn't die at the end of his story, that he cheats the death heroes so often are fated to, almost as if cheating the narrative itself, bending the rules of the world he is ascribed to; how fitting in the context of those texts that point towards Sisyphus being his father. But that's another topic, and I've already talked a lot.

[aaaaatillathenun]

God just had a terrible body snatching dream. I hate it here

[crookedfandomquill]

This is very situational, and sadly may not be realistic for everyone, but I need y’all to understand that a very important part of political activism is fucking talking to your conservative or moderate friends and family.

My dad voted for Trump in 2016. He’s a middle class white evangelical from Arkansas. He raised me with conservative Christian values, just like his parents raised him. When he voted Trump, he was holding his nose, but he didn’t feel too bad about it, and went on to vote red down the ticket in the 2018 midterms, as well.

But I started college in 2017. Higher education and independence changed everything for me, and I went home over holidays and summers with fire in my belly and a thousand arguments ready at the drop of a hat, to my father’s dismay.

I remember crying in my room after emotional, intense arguments with him. I told him over and over that I felt betrayed by his choice to vote for a man who admitted to sexually assaulting women, who built his platform on dehumanizing immigrants and the disabled, who spread overtly-racist rhetoric, who flouted the values of kindness and self-discipline that I’d been raised on. And my dad always had some justification about the “greater good”: fighting against abortion, bolstering the economy, getting other Christian politicians into office.

But over time, as we grew further apart and I lost my will to discuss anything with him at all, he softened. He started asking me why I thought the way I did about the things we disagreed about. He would listen to my answers without interruption, and mull them over afterward instead of expressing his own opinion. And all the while, he watched the Trump presidency become cruel and absurd and devastating.

The first time he openly expressed regret to me, I had come home for a weekend after Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS. My dad realized he had helped elect a man who preyed on women… and that man had opened the door to more predators. I can’t tell you what it felt like for him to admit that he’d made a mistake, not just in voting for Trump but in defending him for so long. We kept arguing, but it was more debating than fighting. I knew he was capable of seeing my side of things, even if it took a while, and he knew I wasn’t just a sensitive college student with shallow new ideas about the world.

And then 2020 hit. Specifically, George Floyd was murdered, and the events that followed played out on the national stage. My dad was incredibly shaken by it. He asked me if I had any books from college about racial issues. I loaned him The New Jim Crow, one of the required readings for my Race and the Law class. Then I gave him Just Mercy. Then he watched the documentary 13th. Then he joined a racial harmony group he learned about through one of the few Black families at our church and insisted our whole family come. He held up signs at a protest against Confederate monuments in our conservative southern town. In three years, he went from defending Trump’s comments about “Black-on-Black crime” to publicly advocating for racial justice and opposing the death penalty.

We went together to vote in the 2020 primaries. I couldn’t help asking who he’d voted for; I didn’t even know if he’d asked for the Republican or Democratic ticket. He admitted he’d voted for Bernie. fucking. Sanders, then made me promise not to tell my grandma he’d voted liberal. When the election rolled around in November, he voted Biden. I’m sure he held his nose to do it, just like he held his nose voting in 2016. But I know he doesn’t regret it.

I am, of course, unbelievably lucky to have a parent who loved me enough, and was empathetic enough, to choose his relationship with me over his strongly-held opinions. He kept searching for truth because, as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a very smart and curious person. No degree of intelligence or curiosity makes you immune to propaganda, especially if you were raised not to question the party line. It’s easy to dismiss our conservative, conspiracy-pilled loved ones as stupid, hypocritical, and cruel. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they will bend to keep their relationships from breaking. Sometimes, if they can be made to understand that their beliefs and actions are harming someone they love, they will make concessions. And sometimes they just need one person in their life to put a foot down, to be vulnerable and assertive and argumentative, to bring the impact of their politics close to home.

As the most important election of our lifetimes approaches, do not put peace over progress. If you have someone like my dad, someone who is good-willed and smart and loves you more than their own opinions, tell them how you feel. Tell them what their choices will mean for you, for your friends, for your community. Tell them what they could lose: your trust, your affection, your respect. Don’t avoid conflict if it could be productive. Because my conflict with my dad didn’t just win him over–it won over my moderate mom and one of my conservative brothers. And it put us in community with other like-minded people and led my parents to a healthier and kinder faith.

All of this to say, there is hope in conflict. There is hope in our relationships with people who think differently from us. There is hope in exposing your fear and anger and pain to people you love. And hope is a form of activism.