#destroy the oligarchy

[freyan2973]

[mikkeneko]

"The contemporary sovereignty movement remains splintered regarding statehood. Some, who argue that the U.S. has illegally occupied the islands, have advocated for a restoration of land, along with compensation. Others, who believe a complete restoration is impossible, have sought federal recognition of Hawaiians as Native people—with some lands returned. Some have argued against the kingdom’s restoration and national recognition; instead, they’ve sought the decolonization of Hawaii under the International Trusteeship System created by the United Nations for territories under the control of foreign powers.

"In 1993, the federal government issued a formal apology for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy—and acknowledged that the Hawaiian people never formally relinquished their lands. In 2009, a bill seeking federal recognition of Native Hawaiians as an Indigenous tribal group passed the U.S. House but has since stalled. Known as the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, a.k.a. the Akaka bill, it would allow Native Hawaiians to form their own government on par with that of the federal government. If passed, it would provide their first self-determination since America overthrew the monarchy in 1893."

I don't think it's a radical ideal for the want of Hawai'i to become their own independent country. It should have never been taken over by the US in the first place. For a country whose entire foundation is based upon "separation from a colonial country" it's laughable that they made an entire population that was self governed into a state. It's insulting. It's already blatantly obvious that this whole country was based on lies and blood, and it only continues to perpetuate that. I'm shocked that the Hawai'ian sovereignty movement isn't mainstream even though they have been fighting for it since 1997. Fuck the American government.

[forgetriestowrite]

Allura got me thinking about M9 again

she said they have a "resilience to [the weave mind's] strengths" which is true but I haven't truly thought about HOW true it is, I was too busy screaming MIGHTY NEIN VOX MACHINA over and over in my head

but like... they really are the best people to take down a hostile hive mind

not only have they literally done that before, but Beau fought off the mind-controlling hold of a demon that had kept her wife captive for years

Then Yasha broke that hold on herself

Jester literally believed so hard in an archfae that she turned him into a deity, and she made friends with an ACTUAL HAG in order to get her friend's curse broken, and it WORKED

Fjord started the campaign in a soul-eating pact with a demigod and ended it as a champion of the Wildmother, which was jumpstarted by him doing the most insane thing he could have done to break Ukotoa's control

Caleb's whole journey was self-love and healing and learning to accept the dark parts of his past and use them for good

Veth not only helped him with that, but also spent the whole campaign working on herself so she could be the person her husband and son knew her to be

Caduceus found a way to bring Kingsley back even though it should have been impossible, because he saw how much his friends wanted it, and he knew what happened to Molly and Lucien was unfair

And to top it all off, they found out one of their own had been manipulated and abused his entire teenage and technically also his adult life, and proceeded to find the person responsible and bully him relentlessly ("I hope someone will mourn you when you are gone" is still the rawest line in cr history), then beat his ass and eventually kill him

these people have shown time and time again that they will not tolerate any kind of authoritative control, especially if it hurts one of them. They refuse to buy into it, and they will destroy anyone who even tries to manipulate someone else.

There is no one else who can go to the moon and completely dismantle their oligarchy. I don't know if there is anyone else who would be willing to do it.

[renfaires]

Quick note about Biden’s FAA Chief pick (Phil Washington).

In the not even two years that he’s been at DIA, the man has personally allowed rampant homophobic and transphobic biases to pervade DIA’s ops department (the primary group of people responsible for keeping you safe at the airport).

I’m not saying he’s a transphobe, but I do know he was personally aware of the discrimination going on with ops, and decided to intimidate those with complaints by bringing in Denver’s “expert” defense attorney against discrimination charges (Wild the city has an expert like that on retainer), who proceeded to gaslight victims and try to get one trans person to admit they were mentally handicapped (rather than, idk, listen to them or address their concerns about what’s going on in that dept.). He’s someone who’s clearly motivated by money rather than service to the people, and in that regard, he might be perfect for the job (incompetent with aviation, sure, but honestly you don’t need to run an airport to know how run a “corporation,” which is how the govt. would like the FAA to be operated)

[balteus]

actually re: fromsoftware politics. i do think it's very interesting that the anti-colonialist RLF, ostensibly considered the 'good guys' of the game, were initially explicitly called the communist faction. armored core always has been a series critical of oligarchies and hyper-capitalism, but it's... very interesting to see just how blatant that is in ac6 specifically

you'd think that fromsoftware would eventually drop the ball on the "the ruling class will kill you and cannibalise itself in order to stay alive" considering that they're considered elite AAA devs rn, but thinking about elden ring and ac6's narratives, they've really only gotten more obvious about it - the horrors of colonialism and genocide and the sympathy given to the rage of its victims is something that's actually insane to see, to me, from such a big studio - fromsoft doesn't even attempt to be centrist about it.

for example, the frenzy flame ending. the only thing melina can tell you to dissuade you from pursuing it, ie literally destroying the world forever, is that there's still beauty in the world, apart from the suffering the golden order had caused. at no point however is the sheer despair of the people that the flame represents villanized. if anything, it's portrayed as a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is a tragedy. the only villain is the order who slaughtered all of these people, the flame of despair is something that emerged in them as they were buried alive. and the flame isn't even intended as a revenge upon the world, it's simply a means to end the pain they feel for being subjected to this.

their grief isn't something for the player to judge, it isn't something they're forced to overcome, it's simply a physical manifestation of the reality that was forced upon them. and these people, the merchants, are still kind to us, even knowing the order that we pursue. (in fact, the true, considered best ending of elden ring, is literally just sacrificing yourself in order to achieve complete anarchism. and getting a cool wife to endure the loneliness of space along the way)

in ac6 then, ayre is so terribly forgiving towards us, knowing what we are, knowing what made us, knowing what we participate in. some of this undoubtedly is because of her narrative role, she has to be a sympathetic character. but we do get to see her rage at the end, her grief for her species being seen as nothing more than a resource to be exploited or burned fully vocalized. but the RLF is sympathetic too as resistance fighters who want their home back. the only criticism the game ever leverages towards the RLF is that they're actually not radical enough in their pursuit of freedom, and that criticism is made by a villain.

it's so... i almost want to say optimistic? other games would have tried to pull a "ooh but what if the good guys did bad things (poor attempt at moral grayness)" but no, the RLF is justified at every step of the way. idk it makes me feel things. i dont particularly want to portray fromsoftware as these bastions of political correctness or sth - they're not perfect and i don't expect that ever lmao, but it's so fucking weird that their games are this progressive and have been for a long ass time.

[scottguy]

Fight sociopathic oligarchs and their henchmen like Alito, Thomas, and speaker Mike Johnson.

They are destroying America just to benefit the rich!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The GOP is not the party of workers

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/13/occupy-the-democrats/#manchin-synematic-universe

The GOP says it's the "party of the working class" and indeed, they have promoted numerous policies that attack select groups within the American ruling class. But just because the party of unlimited power for billionaires is attacking a few of their own, it doesn't make them friends to the working people.

The best way to understand the GOP's relationship to worker is through "boss politics" – that's where one group of elites consolidates its power by crushing rival elites. All elites are bad for working people, so any attack on any elite is, in some narrow sense, "pro-worker." What's more, all elites cheat the system, so any attack on any elite is, again, "pro-fairness."

In other words, if you want to prosecute a company for hurting workers, customers, neighbors and the environment, you have a target-rich environment. But just because you crush a corrupt enterprise that's hurting workers, it doesn't mean you did it for the workers, and – most importantly – it doesn't mean that you will take workers' side next time.

Autocrats do this all the time. Xi Jinping engaged in a massive purge of corrupt officials, who were indeed corrupt – but he only targeted the corrupt officials that made up his rivals' power-base. His own corrupt officials were unscathed:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

Putin did this, too. Russia's oligarchs are, to a one, monsters. When Putin defenestrates a rival – confiscates their fortune and sends them to prison – he acts against a genuinely corrupt criminal and brings some small measure of justice to that criminal's victims. But he only does this to the criminals who don't support him:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy

The Trump camp – notably JD Vance and Josh Hawley – have vowed to keep up the work of the FTC under Lina Khan, the generationally brilliant FTC Chair who accomplished more in four years than her predecessors have in 40. Trump just announced that he would replace Khan with Andrew Ferguson, who sounds like an LLM's bad approximation of Khan, promising to deal with "woke Big Tech" but also to end the FTC's "war on mergers." Ferguson may well plow ahead with the giant, important tech antitrust cases that Khan brought, but he'll do so because this is good grievance politics for Trump's base, and not because Trump or Ferguson are committed to protecting the American people from corporate predation itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Writing in his newsletter today, Hamilton Nolan describes all the ways that the GOP plans to destroy workers' lives while claiming to be a workers' party, and also all the ways the Dems failed to protect workers and so allowed the GOP to outlandishly claim to be for workers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/you-cant-rebrand-a-class-war

For example, if Ferguson limits his merger enforcement to "woke Big Tech" companies while ending the "war on mergers," he won't stop the next Albertson's/Kroger merger, a giant supermarket consolidation that just collapsed because Khan's FTC fought it. The Albertson's/Kroger merger had two goals: raising food prices and slashing workers' wages, primarily by eliminating union jobs. Fighting "woke Big Tech" while waving through mergers between giant companies seeking to price-gouge and screw workers does not make you the party of the little guy, even if smashing Big Tech is the right thing to do.

Trump's hatred of Big Tech is highly selective. He's not proposing to do anything about Elon Musk, of course, except to make Musk even richer. Musk's net worth has hit $447b because the market is buying stock in his companies, which stand to make billions from cozy, no-bid federal contracts. Musk is a billionaire welfare queen who hates workers and unions and has a long rap-sheet of cheating, maiming and tormenting his workforce. A pro-worker Trump administration could add labor conditions to every federal contract, disqualifying businesses that cheat workers and union-bust from getting government contracts.

Instead, Trump is getting set to blow up the NLRB, an agency that Reagan put into a coma 40 years ago, until the Sanders/Warren wing of the party forced Biden to install some genuinely excellent people, like general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who – like Khan – did more for workers in four years than her predecessors did in 40. Abruzzo and her colleagues could have remained in office for years to come, if Democratic Senators had been able to confirm board member Lauren McFerran (or if two of those "pro-labor" Republican Senators had voted for her). Instead, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema rushed to the Senate chamber at the last minute in order to vote McFerran down and give Trump total control over the NLRB:

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/11/schumer-nlrb-vote-manchin-sinema

This latest installment in the Manchin Synematic Universe is a reminder that the GOP's ability to rebrand as the party of workers is largely the fault of Democrats, whose corporate wing has been at war with workers since the Clinton years (NAFTA, welfare reform, etc). Today, that same corporate wing claims that the reason Dems were wiped out in the 2024 election is that they were too left, insisting that the path to victory in the midterms and 2028 is to fuck workers even worse and suck up to big business even more.

We have to take the party back from billionaires. No Dem presidential candidate should ever again have "proxies" who campaign to fire anti-corporate watchdogs like Lina Khan. The path to a successful Democratic Party runs through worker power, and the only reliable path to worker power runs through unions.

Nolan's written frequently about how bad many union leaders are today. It's not just that union leaders are sitting on historically unprecedented piles of cash while doing less organizing than ever, at a moment when unions are more popular than they've been in a century with workers clamoring to join unions, even as union membership declines. It's also that union leaders have actually endorsed Trump – even as the rank and file get ready to strike:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yz_Z08KwKgFt3QvnV8nEETSgTXM5eZw5ujT4BmQXEWk/edit?link_id=0&can_id=9481ac35a2682a1d6047230e43d76be8&source=email-invitation-to-cover-amazon-labor-union-contract-fight-rally-cookout-on-monday-october-14-2024-2&email_referrer=email_2559107&email_subject=invitation-to-cover-jfk8-workers-authorize-amazon-labor-union-ibt-local-1-to-call-ulp-strike&tab=t.0

The GOP is going to do everything it can to help a tiny number of billionaires defeat hundreds of millions of workers in the class war. A future Democratic Party victory will come from taking a side in that class war – the workers' side. As Nolan writes:

If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise.

Nolan's remedy for the Democratic Party is simple and straightforward, if not easy:

The answer is spend every last dollar we have to organize and organize and strike and strike. Women are workers. Immigrants are workers. The poor are workers. A party that is banning abortion and violently deporting immigrants and economically assaulting the poor is not a friend to the labor movement, ever. (An opposition party that cannot rouse itself to participate on the correct side of the ongoing class war is not our friend, either—the difference is that the fascists will always try to actively destroy unions, while the Democrats will just not do enough to help us, a distinction that is important to understand.)

Cosigned.

[progressivepower]

Elon is out to destroy democracy and create an oligarchy autocracy. Get a spine and #DeleteX

[shartletswritings]

You've Dug Your Own Grave

CHAPTER 5: New Normal

TW: Violence, Smexual Content ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Yet again, I'm up too late writing. I don't think I'll ever be 100% satisfied with this chapter, but I need to get it out so I don't rip my skin off in an attempt to make it perfect. Please enjoy!!!

            You didn’t speak the next morning. Actually, you haven’t spoken to Scar in the past twelve days, not that you’re counting or anything. In his defense, he tried. You just… can’t bear it. And besides, there is nothing to talk about. You have lived your whole life without him, and you see no reason why that should have to change.

            You woke up the next morning with a skull-splitting headache and only a distant memory of what happened the previous night. It took a cold shower, fresh clothes, and meeting Scar’s eyes from where he sat in the corner of the mess hall for the events to come rushing right back to your mind. To say it was mortifying would be the understatement of the century.

            If you had just been drunk in front of him, you would have been fine. But the fact he had to carry you back to your room? Not to mention him seeing your branding. Sure, you didn’t tell him what it meant, but it would take some special kinda idiot to not recognize the markings of the Hush Company.

            When you saw him the next morning, the blood in your veins turned to ice. You could hardly handle looking at him and the thought of having a conversation about what had transpired the previous night made your stomach roll worse than it already had been thanks to your hangover. It was honestly a miracle you didn’t throw up when he stood to talk to you. Instead of handling the situation like an adult probably would, you ran. And that is exactly how you have spent the last twelve days: doing exactly everything besides speaking to that annoying, brooding man who seems to possess the uncanny ability to be exactly where you need to be.

            It’s not like you’ve sat around and done nothing, of course. You’ve been busy. Busier than you think you have been in your whole life. Since that night you’ve been on two more raids, spent four nights on guard duty with Malia, had only two more panic attacks, and even helped out in the kitchen: which turned out to be a lot more fun than you expected. You’re doing just fine, thank you very much. You have no need to bare your soul or fight your demons. Not even Ekko pressures you again, although you don’t think it’s because Scar told him not too, he just knows better than to push you by now.

            Really, besides the complete lack of a problem that is Scar, things have been going well. You get along with the other Firelights, they respect your ability to get things done and you respect their ability to—for the most part—stay out of your business; it’s a pretty good deal. Both raids you went on proved to be incredibly successful, a large part thanks to your ability to get intel without getting caught. Chross would probably be impressed if you weren’t actively destroying a major pillar of the oligarchy he runs.

            The first job was nowhere near as easy as your first, but you completed it with far less hiccups. The documents you swiped out of the office of both the warehouse and the factory led to your third raid; a caravan with a shipment full of shimmer headed out of Zaun. Even Eve was willing to sing your praise after the shipment went up in flames; there was no denying your asset to the Firelights. And what do you do with all of this fame and glory? You… hang out with Jess and the kids in the nursery.

            You would probably never admit it to anyone, but you fucking love those kids. Even when they’re snotty or whiney or sticky or smelly; something about them brings you more joy than any dose of shimmer or shot of stupidly expensive booze ever could. It also helps that Jess, to her absolute unending credit, makes no snide remarks about your ability to fight and she never asks you about your past.

            And that is exactly how you find yourself, surrounded by a gaggle of toddlers who are completely enamored by the fairytale you are reading. It’s a story of a princess reuniting with her long-lost family. Pretty boring, and not nearly enough dragon slaying as far as you’re concerned. “Tell us about your mommy, Pip,” a voice interrupts. You look down at her with a pathetic lack of authority.

            “Sorry kiddo, I don’t think there’s much to talk about.” Actually, there is nothing to talk about; you were given to the company before you were old enough to remember your parents.

            “Pleaseeee?” You roll your eyes playfully so as not to hurt her feelings.

            “My mommy lives very far away, so I don’t get to see her that often.” Why do they have to ask you things? Can’t they just listen to the damn story?

            Mercifully, they seem to be satisfied with your lackluster answer. “So you’re like the princess?”

            You smile, processing the question. “Yeah… I guess I am,” you finally say. A wave of ooohs reverberates from the crowd. You continue the book.

It ends happily, the princess marries a handsome prince or something, you aren’t really paying attention. And from the drooping eyelids surrounding you, neither are they. It’s amazing how fast they get sleepy, just five minutes ago they were bouncing off the walls.

            Jess walks over, Aster in hand, to put them down for a nap. The two of you have developed a routine of sorts. You come in around lunch time, play with the toddlers for a bit, and then when Jess goes to get them down for their nap, you get to spend time with Aster—probably the real reason you are willing to suffer through all the sticky fingers and redundant questions.

            She coos up at you from your arms and it takes everything in you not to melt into a puddle on the floor. You wouldn’t exactly call yourself a baby expert, but you have certainly gotten more confident in holding her, although she helped a lot on that front. Ever vocal despite her lack of words, Aster is the first to tell you if she’s uncomfortable or hungry or tired, and you love her for it. Honestly, everyone should try to be a bit more like her. Just say what you want and get on with it, I should probably heed my own advice. Nope! The list. That’s the other thing keeping you sane, the two things you can’t let yourself think about: Scar and the Hush Company.

            “You are a goddamn angel, and I don’t know where you get it from,” you say to the small chirean in your arms. She smiles at you, big ears twitching. You put a finger down to touch her perfectly pink nose when she surprises you with a bite to the finger. “Motherfucker!” You yelp before you can remind yourself to be quiet. Jess shoots you a look from over by the kids and you mouth a silent apology. You turn your head back down to Aster, “What the hell was that for, girl?” She laughs like she’s mocking you. Maybe she is her dad’s kid after all. Damn, it’s hard to stay mad at a face that cute.

            “She’s started teething,” Jess says once she’s returned from toddler-land, “and her teeth are sharp. Aren’t they?” Her voice turns to a sing-songy coo and scoops Aster back out of your arms. It doesn’t get easier, letting her go. “He’ll be back soon,” she says, looking back to you.

            “Right.” You haven’t told Jess any specifics, but she picked up pretty quick that you have no interest in seeing Scar. “Thanks for letting me crash again, Jess, I really appreciate it.”

            She waves her hand as if dismissing the notion entirely, “Oh please, the kids love seeing you. You’re basically a routine now.”

            It’s nice, you think as you leave the nursery and make your way to the training room, to be in a good mood for once. Maybe a boring, routine life was what you needed this whole time. Not that burning down shimmer factories was the most banal thing you could be doing, but by undercity standards you may as well be a nun.

            You do find out, however, that a workout with the intent of training is a hell of a lot more boring than a workout to blow off steam. But at least you can focus on your form, which has improved drastically. Maybe I couldn’t take down Scar in a fi- “NO!” You verbally cut off that train of thought because it so incredibly doesn’t matter. Focus on your movements, you remind yourself and soon enough, the only thought crossing your mind is the ritualized, prescribed movements of boxing. That’s a good thought. It’s safe, it doesn’t change. Left-right-left, hook, kick. You could do this all day.

            And you probably would have too, if that fucking door hadn’t opened. Honestly, it’s like he wakes up every morning with the sole purpose of making you as miserable as possible. “If you’re going to critique my form again, you might as well fuck off now. I’m not in the mood.” You don’t even need to turn to know it’s Scar.

            He ignores you. “How long are you planning on avoiding me? Avoiding your problems?”

            You don’t turn from the punching bag, determined to not let him ruin your workout again. “I’m not avoiding you and I don’t have any problems.” The punches are beginning to hurt but you’ll be damned if you stop now. The sharp thuds echo through the small, concrete room and Scar is so silent you could almost pretend he isn’t here. Almost.

            “Bullshit,” he finally says, “I know what the branding means.”

            “Good for you.” I’m not engaging I’m not engaging I’m not engaging. Every thought is punctuated with another punch. You’re going to bruise tomorrow.

            “I should have told Ekko the second I saw it,” his tone is serious, but you doubt he would.

            “Sounds like that’s your fault. It’s none of your business anyways.”

            “Kirr-” he starts. You cut him off before he can finish.

            “That’s not my fucking name.” To his credit, he does shut up for a moment. You picture his face as you hit the bag in front of you.

            “You can’t live like this.” He almost sounds concerned, but it does nothing to douse the rage burning in your gut. Sweat sings as it drips down into your eyes, but you can’t be bothered to wipe it away. You think that if you stop moving for even a moment you’ll combust.

            “You don’t get to tell me how to live my life, Scar. Fuck you.” You send the bag careening on your final hit. The chain makes an awful screech and you leave before you do something you regret—not that you could realistically hurt him in your current state but hey, a girl can dream. So much for not engaging.

            You walk straight into Ekko as you storm out of the training room. He puts a hand on your shoulder to steady you. “Woah, you okay?” His eyes search yours.

            The metallic taste of blood fills your mouth as you physically bite down on your tongue to keep from cursing the man in front of you out. Ekko has done nothing wrong. I am the problem here. “Y-yeah. I’m fine.”

            He looks unconvinced. “Right… Well, we just got word of a huge shipment leaving tonight and we gotta act fast. I need you there, okay?” Ever polite, he phrases it as a question which would probably be endearing if you weren’t seconds away from ripping out your hair.

            “’Course”

            You move to continue walking back towards your room when he calls your name, “Whatever is going on between you and Scar, the two of you need to fix it. It’s becoming a problem.”

You nod but refuse to turn around—unable to handle the shame of meeting his eyes again. He’s right, of course, but you hate having to be told it in the first place.

            Waiting for the shower to heat up, you stand in front of the mirror. How has one man reduced you into such a fucking child? You are a godsdamned adult, you have been through hell and back and survived, and yet one stupid crush has turned you into a wet blanket. Not a crush.

            “You are better than this. Pull. Yourself. Together.” You say into the mirror as you stare at your red, sweaty face. It doesn’t really work but it does snap you out of the spell of all consuming anger.

            After a shower you feel marginally better, and the rage has simmered down to a much more manageable bitterness. Yes, Scar is a dick for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, but he clearly hasn’t told anyone anything and there is no real reason why he should. That also means that you have no reason to do anything besides your one job for today: stop that shipment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            The sun is well set by the time you meet in the courtyard with the small group handpicked by Ekko to go with him on tonight’s job. You’re right in the middle of psyching yourself up for what’s to come when Ekko finally arrives with Scar. Of course he’s coming tonight.

            Actually, you’re quite impressed with yourself that you don’t even glance in his direction as Ekko lays out the plan for the night. You couldn’t even say if he looks at you, that’s how little you care.

            “Thing’s might go south tonight,” he explains as your group walks down the now familiar tunnels out of the hideout, “if that happens, don’t come back here immediately, we can’t risk anyone following us back. Malia is waiting in the safehouse near the market on the wharf, so if anything happens, go there, okay?”

            It concerns you slightly that Ekko seems so worried. From what you can tell, this job sounds pretty easy. Get in, burn the shimmer, get out. Maybe take down a few of Silco’s thugs while you’re at it. It all sounds very standard, but no one voices a concern, so you keep your mouth shut. Once you exit the tunnel, the five of you mount your hoverboards and take off towards the far end of the wharf.

            The waiting is always your least favorite part and being near the water only makes it worse. The stench of rotting fish and muddy silt assaults your nostrils as you sit crouched behind a stack of boxes—your mask does absolutely nothing to minimize the smell, unfortunately. You glance at the soldier keeping a look out from a nearby building and adjust yourself slightly to try and soothe a cramping leg. Maybe putting all of your strength into your workout this morning wasn’t the best idea, but it isn’t like you were expecting this job.

            Suddenly, a high whistle grabs your attention and you peek over the boxes and towards the dock. Sure enough, a small barge cresting with shimmer barrels creeps slowly over the water. Ekko nods and you step into your boards before zipping silently towards the ship.

            A man sitting near the bow calls as soon as he sees the green and soon several guards rush up from below deck. There’s a lot more that you were expecting. It must be at least twelve of them and you fight back the terror bubbling up in your veins.

            Scar is the first to land, throwing his board over his back and going straight towards the biggest man, spear in hand. Fucking show off. The man lasts about thirty seconds to the chirean before he collapses onto the deck. You suppose it isn’t really showing off if he gets the job done as quick as he does.

            You land next to Ekko and take out your knife as soon as your feet hit the wood. Sure, maybe your pistol would be a stronger choice, but in the fog of the night, you don’t trust your aim as much as usual.

            A tall, lanky man whips around as soon as he hears you and holds a shotgun wildly in front of himself, but you’ve run out of his field of vision before he can get a good look at you. Creeping onto a barrel, you wait until he’s fully turned the other way to jump onto his back. He doesn’t get the chance to buck you off before your blade slices across his neck. If your position had been a bit better, maybe you could have avoided getting blood on your shirt, but you suppose that it’s been through worse than some goon’s blood, so you wipe the blade on your opposite sleeve and look around you at the commotion on the ship.

            Ekko has already begun sloshing fuel around the ship and most of the guards are disposed of in one way or another. You decide to do one quick survey of the ship to see if there is anything worth taking when you notice the entrance leading below deck. It sounds silent under there and you can’t imagine someone would have stayed under after hearing all the fighting up top. Still, you creep down the wooden steps, keeping your back against the wall and your profile low.

            A lantern swings from the ceiling of the small room, illuminating it with a soft orange glow. There isn’t much to see, however, besides a couple of tables set up with cards and a chest off in the corner. You kneel down in front of the chest and start working at the lock, but it’s nearly rusted shut. Realistically, you should probably let it go and get the hell off the ship before they light the whole thing on fire, but you let your curiosity get the better of you.

            The lock finally snaps open and you push the heavy lid up. So invested in discovering what’s inside, you don’t hear the woman come up behind you until she has already fired her gun. Without thinking, you whip around and pull your own pistol out of the holster, not hesitating even for a moment before pulling the trigger. She stumbles back, a hand going to her stomach, before collapsing to the floor, her breath coming out in shallow heaves. You look down at yourself, amazed she didn’t hit you when you notice the blood seeping through your pants. You stare at your leg in disbelief, shouldn’t you feel that?

            Footsteps clatter down the stairs and you shoot your gaze up, holding your pistol ready. You look up to see Eve’s mask. “We need to go.” She holds a lighter in her hand and you nod, running after her. The first steps you take feel no different than usual, but by the time you’ve made it back to the deck of the ship, pain begins to radiate from the wound on your leg.

            You have no choice but to grit your teeth and bare it because as soon as you are out of the small hold, Eve is flicking her lighter open. You scramble for your discarded hoverboard and take off after the other green lights you see flitting through the haze of the fog. It is a lot harder to balance with a fucked-up leg, you quickly find, and you nearly careen into a building several times before you manage to right yourself. No one says anything about your lack of coordination, but they’re all a bit more focused on fleeing the scene themselves.

            A small huddle of soldiers forms in the air a few blocks from the wharf and you have to throw your arms out for balance to keep from tipping directly off of your board. Your leg screams at you, but you ignore it.

            “Everyone okay?” Ekko’s modulated voice asks. A round of nods from your group. “Good. I think we’re done here. Eve, go get Malia from the safe house and the rest of you, go back to the base. I don’t think there is anyone left to follow us back but take separate routes just in case.”

            You sure as shit don’t need to be told twice. By the time he finishes his words, you’re already zipping off, determined to get back to the hideout without fainting, thank you very much.

            And considering the circumstances, you do pretty well. After a circuitous route through the undercity, you make it all the way to the entrance of the tunnel before your leg finally gives out. Despite the extra time it took to go separately, you’re glad no one is there to see you slump against the wall beside the opening.

            You hiss as your back hits the cold stone and you slowly lower yourself to the ground as you press one hand against the bleeding section of your leg. In the green light of the sumps you take in the damage. It looks like a graze from a bullet. A bad one, sure, but you thank the gods the lead didn’t manage to imbed itself into the flesh of your thigh.

            You push stuck on hair away from your sweaty forehead and tear a sleeve from your jacket. Biting down on your lip, you tie the fabric around the wound, just tight enough to stop the bleeding until you can get back to your room. Yeah, maybe you should take a little more care into treating the weeping laceration on your thigh, but you sure as hell aren’t going to do it on the muddy, stinking ground of the sumps. So you hop back onto your board—careful to put as much weight as you reasonably can on your good leg without crashing—and continue down the tunnel.

            It takes longer than it should to get back, sure, but you get back alive and in mostly one piece. The hideout is quiet once you shove open the heavy stone door blocking the entrance and lay your hoverboard against the wall. Green lights zip around you from the firelights and nearly every lantern is lit: the courtyard looks like something out of the fantasy books in the nursery. Wish I could appreciate it for once, you grumble to yourself as you start the trek from the entrance to your quarters.

            You almost make it all the way to the door built into the wall when Scar calls your name, “What happened?”

            You stand up straight, careful to put an equal amount of weight on both legs despite the spasms of pain that blur the edges of your vision. “Nothing.”

            He takes a couple steps closer. “You’re bleeding.” His voice is sharp, and he cuts you off before you can protest, “Don’t lie to me. You’re limping and you have your jacket tied around your leg,” he snarls

            “I’m fine,” you bite back. The door opens with a squeak, and you continue limping down the hallway to your room. The thump of his boots follows you. “I don’t need your help.”

            He, as usual, says nothing and keeps walking behind you.

            You make it to your door before you finally turn to look at him. “Okay, I’m bleeding. But I’m fine, just fucking drop it, Scar.” He meets your gaze down his nose with cold, green eyes and continues to say absolutely nothing. You scowl and open your door, throwing your mask on the bed. In a burst of rage, you go to slam the door shut but his toe blocks the doorway. “I don’t need you to save me,” you hiss, leaning your weight against the door.

            Claws wrap around the door, “I’m not going to save you, idiot. No one here wants to save you. Let me in, or I’m going to break down this fucking door.” His voice is dangerously low.

            “Why?”

            “Because you’re fucking bleeding. I could smell it the second you walked in the hideout.” What the fuck? “A wound like that’ll get infected in a second. Now, let. Me. In.”

            “Yeah, and I can handle it!” Your voice is rising, too loud for the cramped hallways. With a loud sigh you take your weight off of the door and let it fly open, revealing a very angry Scar. “Fine, just shut up.”

            He closes the door behind himself. Which is what anyone would do. This is fine. You do your absolute best to not let your nerves show. “Well? You can see I’m not dying, ready to leave yet?” You look down at your throbbing leg, the sleeve tied around it has turned from a light gray to a deep black. Scar doesn’t move, he only gazes down at you with crossed arms and a stern look on his face.

            “Let me see it.” With a roll of your eyes, you untie the shitty field bandage to reveal the rip in your pants that only barely covers the graze wound.

            Getting impatient at his lack of reaction, you stumble into the bathroom and yank your first-aid kit from the shelf above the toilet and begin ripping supplies out. You see Scar looming in the bathroom doorway from the small mirror and shoot him a scowl. “Look, I have everything I need, you can go now.”

            “I’m not leaving till you’re patched up.” Gods, he’s fucking impossible. You let out an exasperated noise and hop onto the counter, a bottle of alcohol in hand.

            You uncap the bottle and tip it slowly over the wound, a cry of pain escaping your lips at the sting despite your best efforts. You can’t clean a wound like this, but you are not about to ta-

            “Take them off.” You whip your head up, a ferocious snarl on your face. This bastard. He just looks at you. “Take them off or I’ll cut them off.”

            “You could at least buy me dinner first,” you quip, earning a glare from Scar. This is not fine, I can’t keep pretending this is normal and fine.

            You know he’s right, that’s the worst part about it. You slide off the counter and undo your belt, slowly rolling your blood-stained pants down your leg, trying desperately not to think about the man standing in front of you. The fabric pulls away from the wound and it is with an excruciating amount of self-control that you don’t scream at the feeling. You let the fabric drop to the floor—leaving you in nothing but your half-torn shirt and panties—and sit back on the counter, keeping your eyes trained on the wound and not on Scar.

            It’s actually a lot worse than you thought it was, the angry, red gash stretches at least three inches across your leg and is easily half that in width. Blood seeps from the wound in a steady trickle and you wipe at it with your remaining sleeve. You pick the bottle of alcohol back up and tip it enough for a drop to come out and fall onto the bloodied skin. FUCK. You bite down on your hand to keep from crying out and you nearly knock the bottle onto the floor, the other hand hovering uselessly over your leg.

            With a huff, Scar picks it up and pushes your hand out of the way. “Let me do it,” he mumbles before sloshing the evil, burning liquid onto your thigh. You can’t even think about his proximity to your half naked form because as soon as the alcohol hits your skin, your vision goes white and you dig your nails into the opposite leg. “I know it hurts, I’m sorry,” comes his voice, soft and gentle over your pathetic whimpering. If you were in any less pain, the uncanny gentleness in his voice would probably send heat straight to your cheeks. Unfortunately, you’re a bit more focused on the blinding pain.

            Your fingers begin to cramp, and you pull them away from your leg, leaving small, red welts in the flesh. Like the bullet wound wasn’t enough. Scar says nothing as he wets a clean cloth and begins wiping away the blood from the surrounding skin, his fingers surprisingly gentle. You can’t take this much longer, and in desperation you take the bottle and swallow the remaining alcohol, much preferring the burn in your throat to the lingering burn on your leg. He sighs, “You don’t need stitches,” thank the gods, “but you were stupid to let this happen and even stupider to wait this long to deal with it.”

            He starts to wrap a clean bandage around your leg, one hand cupped under your knee to hold it over above the counter. “Right, I’m so sorry. I should have stripped in the middle of the sumps and begged a shimmer addict for some booze. I’ll do better next time,” you spit back sarcastically, fixing your eyes on his dark hair.

            He glares up at you for a second. “You know that isn’t what I meant. You should have told someone that you were fucking shot. It doesn’t make you weak to ask for help, it makes you stupid to say nothing.”

            You rest your head against the mirror with a thud. “I didn’t need help.”

            “For gods sake, Kirranari, you can’t keep doing that. People don’t want to watch you suffer.” He finishes wrapping your leg and begins tying a knot, tightening the bandage to the point of pain. You wince despite yourself.

            “I didn’t ask to be the Firelight’s charity case.”

            A fist slams down on the counter, and you jump. “Is that what you think this is? You think Ekko took you in because we felt bad?” He meets your eyes finally and you can see the rage burning just below the surface. “Get over yourself, we wanted you because you would be an asset.” His words sting almost as badly as the alcohol. You blink and look away, desperate to not let the tears forming in the corner of your eyes fall. “You aren’t a basket case, and you aren’t property anymore,” his hand grips the branding on your wrist, “you’re a fucking firelight, start acting like it.”

            “Why are you here, then. Why not send Malia or Ekko or anyone else?” Your voice is scarcely above a whisper.

            His hand grips your chin and forces you to meet his eyes, you force yourself to glare because the alternative is crying like a godsdamn child. The rage is still there but muted by something else… something you haven’t seen since that night he carried you back to your bed. “Because I care,” his grip turns bruising and his tone is still just as harsh.

            “Why?” You bite back.

            He just… stares, dark green eyes searching yours and claws still curled around your chin, distorting your lips as they press into your cheek. He is silent for so long; you actually begin to worry you’ve offended him somehow. And then he crushes his lips into yours.

            You think your brain actually short-circuits, not expecting the kiss even in the slightest. As much as you hate to admit it, it feels right. The urgency of his lips pressing into your plush, unexpecting ones. The hand on your chin begins to creep up until it is cupping against your cheek. Your own hand raises up to tangle itself in his hair. He moans almost imperceptibly.

            Despite every fiber of your being telling you not to, you pull away, just enough to look at him. His eyes search yours again but this time they look almost… nervous? “Why?” You repeat.

            His brows furrow slightly, “Because your strong and stubborn and even though you drive me fucking crazy with how stupid you are, I can’t seem to keep myself away.”

            That’s enough for me, you think, and you press your lips into his once more. A second hand moves to wrap around your waist and you arch into him, spreading your legs on the counter enough so he can stand between them. Sharp teeth nip into your lower lip and you have to surpress the shiver running down your spine. With a sigh, you open your lips, letting him slip his tongue into the wet heat of your mouth.

            A wanton moan erupts from your chest at the taste of him; it is everything that is so intoxicating about his smell, multiplied by 1000. I could get used to this.

            Breaking the kiss, he begins to trail a line of nips and kisses down your neck, earning soft, horribly embarrassing noises from your mouth. You feel him smile against your neck, asshole. Carding the fingers of your other hand through his hair, you pull, hard. His breath stutters and he dips his head to look up at you. You smirk down at him and he responds with his own, devilish smile, the pupils in his eyes blown wide with lust.

            You realize, through the haze of desire, that he is slowly making his way to his knees in front of you. “Mmm no-” you call and he stops, immediately, looking up at you. “I need a shower or somethin’” You can’t imagine you smell even close to appetizing after all the bleeding and sweating from the day.

            His hands dig into your hips and shakes his head, “No. I need to taste you… to smell you. Just like this. Please?”

            If you weren’t already sitting, you probably would have fallen over at the sight of Scar, on his knees in front of you, begging for a chance to taste you on his tongue. You nod at him, jaw going slack already. He doesn’t wait another moment before ripping your panties down and pulling your ass closer to the edge of the counter.

            He doesn’t begin immediately, like you expected him to with how desperate he was. Instead, he buries his face directly at your slit, nose pressing against the short curls, and inhales. “Wha-” you look down at him in horror.

            “Fuck. You smell…” another inhale, “do you know how badly I wanted to fuck you on the floor of the gym that day? Your smell, I couldn’t hold myself back…” Your mouth goes dry, and it physically hurts to part your lips.

            You think back to the day in the gym, when he let you win… he had… wanted you? And I thought I had disgusted him. Just before you can say something witty—which you totally could have, for the record—his tongue flattens against your clit and every single thought leaves your mind.

            He consumes you like a dying man offered a last meal. It barely even feels like he’s doing it for your pleasure, even if it feels better than anything you have ever experienced. The nips and licks and sucks, it’s for him, you realize. You don’t even feel the need to mute yourself with how fucking loud Scar is being. With the reverence he holds for you and the skill in which he tastes you, it isn’t long until that coil deep in your core begins to tighten. “’m close,” you moan breathlessly.

            Your hands in his hair tighten as you feel yourself nearing your peak and he only doubles his efforts. Tongue diving into your cunt with reckless abandon. You don’t even realize that his hand left your waist until you feel his thumb pressed against your clit. You last about twenty more seconds before you come apart completely, vision going white and cunt squeezing desperately around his tongue. His own muffled groan of pleasure nearly drowning out your soft mewls.

            By the time your vision returns, he is cupping your face tenderly, brows furrowed in concern. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

            Your mouth opens and closes several times dumbly, but you honest to goodness have no words for what you just experienced. “I…” you finally choak out, voice hoarse, “I need more.” It’s not entirely true, you could probably die happy just from the feeling of him feasting on your cunt, but you’ll be damned if you can’t at least try and reduce him to a similar state of fuck-drunk.

            He grins like a shark and kisses you again. You groan at your taste on his tongue. Gently, his large hands come around to cup under the swell of your ass, lifting you gently and pressing you against his body. He is immensely careful of your leg, but you don’t think you could care even if the whole fucking thing fell off.

            He lays you down on your bed and you prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him, deciding immediately that he has far too much clothing on his body. He seems to notice the hunger in your eyes and begins unfastening the clips of his vest, tossing it to the side once it is off. The rest of his—and your own—clothing soon follows, leaving him in nothing but a pair of boxers and you completely naked before him. He stands, drinking you in for much longer than you’d like. He chuckles darkly as you squirm under his gaze before eventually relenting and lowering himself on top of you.

            Immediately, you reach behind his back and pull his body flush to yours and you’re honestly surprised his skin isn’t fucking steaming with how hot it is. As his hips begin to settle down onto your uninjured thigh you freeze when you feel a heavy weight rest on your skin, separated only through a thin layer of fabric; all the blood that had been rushing to your head redirecting itself towards your core. Is that him?

            A hand snaked between your bodies and a gentle but firm squeeze confirms that it is him. It wasn’t visible in the low light of your room, but Scar is fucking massive. Your breath hitches in time with his and you worry for a second that he won’t even fit in you, but his hot breath against your ear zaps all ability to form coherent thought. “You gonna let me fuck you? Or do I have to beg again?”

            You bite at a lip to stifle your moan, “Mmm, I wouldn’t complain to hear you beg again.” He laughs and captures your lips once more in his own, tongue pressing into yours with the same feverish urgency. “Fuck me,” you moan into his mouth. He smiles against your lips.

            “Well, since you asked so nicely,” his boxers are off in an instant, leaving him completely bare over you. He begins to bite into your neck again.

            “’s not fair. I can barely see you,” you whine ungracefully; you barely got a chance to see him.

            “I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs against your skin. A hand appears in front of your face, “Lick it,” he says. You comply immediately. The lewd sounds of him working your spit over his cock fill the room and you squirm again, clenching around nothing and desperate to be filled.

            “Hurry up,” you are almost completely breathless under him.

            “So impatient,” he muses, eyes shining green despite the lack of light in the room. He lines the tip of his cock against your wet, hungry slit, a breath escaping from his softly parted lips.

            Slowly, painfully slowly, he begins to enter you and… holy fuck. You feel like you’re being split open beneath him, and you bite down against the skin of his shoulder to keep from crying out and waking the whole floor of soldiers. His breathing is ragged once he sheaths himself completely in you, a hand landing next to your head to keep himself propped up. “Shit, you’re so fucking tight.” You clench unconsciously around him; he nearly chokes, “Uh… fuck…” a breathless, almost pained laugh erupts from his chest, “I won’t be able to hold myself back much longer if you keep doing that, Kir.”

            You dig your nails into his back in an effort to tell him to fuck me as hard and as fast as you want because words aren’t the easiest to form right now. He gets the message, thank the gods.

            He pulls nearly all of the way out of you before ramming back in, filling you farther than you thought possible. You hook your heels behind his back and hold on desperately as he begins to fuck into you so quickly you can scarcely breathe. Desperate cries begin to spill from your lips and he clamps a hand over your mouth, never once breaking the rhythm of his thrusts. “You want the whole hallway to hear me fucking you?” He bites into your ear and you moan his name against his hands.

            Everything begins to get overwhelming and you can do nothing but sit there and take it, the jackhammer of his dick into the back wall of your cunt, his smell filling the room, the weight of his hand on your mouth, his taste mixed with yours still on your tongue. Every inch of your being consists of Scar and you fucking love it. That same coil begins to tighten in your gut and you curl your toes, bearing down on him again as he continues to fuck into you. His breath is ragged and heavy in your ear. Fuck, what you wouldn’t give to be able to scream his name like he deserves.

            His own rhythm begins to stutter and you can tell from the way his breath becomes hotter in your ear that he’s just as close as you are. Suddenly, his hand is ripped away from your mouth. “K-kir, mmm not gonna- ah – last much longer. Where?” It’s clear how much it strains him just to ask the question, but the movement of his hips doesn’t stop; you understand that it can’t stop, if he feels anything close to how you feel.

            “Inside. Safe.” You blurt out before kissing him hard. His thrusts speed up and the sound of it is obscene. While he is being very respectful to your neighbors by keeping you quiet, the sound of wet skin slapping echos through the room at a volume that makes his attempt to keep quiet laughable.

            He bites into your neck as he comes, moaning your name—your real name—against your skin. At the first pulse of his dick, your own coil snaps, and you dig your nails into his back and shake uncontrollably against his body, unable to do anything but feel him.

            You sit like that for several minutes, his dick still buried deep inside you, and your cunt pulsing lazily around him, as if in an attempt to milk out whatever last drops of cum he has left. Finally, he pulls out of you with a hiss and flops onto his back next to you. Before you can even more to face him, his arms wrap around your waist and pull you into his chest to lay on top of him.

            “I still think you’re an ass, just so you know,” you say quietly into the silence of the room.

            His chest shakes softly as he chuckles. “And I still think you’re stubborn and stupid most of the time.”

            “But I guess it wouldn’t kill me to accept a bit of help. Every now and then. And only from you.” You twist your body so your head is tucked under his chin and he angles himself to kiss the top of your head.

            He sighs but you feel him smile against your hair. “I know you’ve been seeing Aster,” he says after a moment of silence.

            You sit up, straddling his chest, “What?”

            He looks up at your wild, fucked out hair and laughs, “You aren’t nearly as sneaky as you think you are.”

            You look at him incredulously, “But… Jess told me she wouldn’t tell…”

            He rolls his eyes, “She told me after the first day you went over. You think I’d be willing to put her with someone that wouldn’t tell me exactly what she did all day?” He cocks an eyebrow.

            You twist your lips, suddenly embarrassed. “I just…”

            He laughs softly, “I told her to let you see her every day because I wanted you to see her every day. It was cute.”

            You scoff at him, pressing your hands into his shoulders to push him into the bed, “It wasn’t cute! I was pissed at you, and you were basically stalking me,” you scowl in mock irritation.

            He sits up, gripping your ass to adjust you more comfortably against his lap, “You talk a big game for someone who’s leaking my cum all over her bedsheets.”

            You glare at him and stomp off to the bathroom to clean up. Your reflection in the mirror nearly scares you into a scream. He found you hot while you looked like this? You run a quick brush through your hair and then turn the shower on. Scar’s voice carries into the bathroom, “Don’t you dare shower.”

            You peek your head out of the bathroom to look at him sprawled on your bed, still damp with sweat. “I stink and I’m covered in blood, Scar.”

            “I know. Come back to bed.”

            You roll your eyes. As much as you want to shower, the undeniable call of exhaustion pulls you back to bed and into his arms. He seems much too satisfied with himself as he wraps his body around your smaller frame, tucking your head under his chin.

            Sleep captures you much faster than you were anticipating, and you are awake just long enough to hear him say, “We still need to talk tomorrow,” before passing out, safely cocooned in his presence.

They boned!!! Oh Em GEE This chapter took me wayyyy too long to write and I would like to thank Massive Attack's entire discography for getting me though it. LMK what yall think! Also, on a real note, it makes my heart so full to see all of your comments, I have never had this much support for a fic and it makes me so unbelievably happy. Thank you guys for always making my day <333 TAG LIST: @honeym0chi @radflapkidsludge @bearinthesnow @mcaats @ariwolfsstuff @bakugokatsuki18-blog @calciferthelivingfire @kiannaf @veggiesoupdumpling @awenthealchemist

[crushingthebroken]

the fact ryan condal keeps hitting with the villain bat anyone who has a problem with rhaenyra and daemon's absolutely destructive behavior is beyond me

he turned corlys and rhaenys into simps who don't give a fuck that rhaenyra and daemon conspired to murder their son & daemon executed corlys's brother in the middle of the throne room for standing up for his family's blood right to driftmark to not pass to bastards who were being passed off as trueborn(a literal crime in westeros)

he removed all of rhaenyra's negative traits and made her out to be this tragic righteous angel who everyone should cheer for no matter what

no one cares about the random person daemon murdered to use as laenor's body double but we get 50 scenes of the serving girl aegon SA'd and she's coming back for season 2 - a character who does not exist in the books

vaemond is portrayed as a greedy and grasping fool instead of a man desperate to keep his family's seat in his family - westeros's world means blood is everything

daemon's crimes of murdering his first wife, grooming his niece/wife, being the westerosi equivalent of a neo nazi(except with valyria, a eugenicist oligarchy built on slavery and slaughter) are all brushed under the rug for "YAS MALEWIFE" (do you honestly think he would allow his wife's bastards to inherit ahead of his kids with her? nope)

meanwhile criston cole has his honor violated by rhaenyra who uses him like a glorified dildo - a sacred vow of the kingsguard that means death or castration for any who break it - and calls her a cunt one time and he's the worst man alive

corlys pimped out his 12 year old daughter to viserys and no one cares, but otto does it with alicent and he's somehow the most evil man alive next to criston cole

corlys in 1x10 was fucking hilarious

"rhaenyra was complicit in our son's death. that girl destroys everything she touches."

-minutes later-

"you have the full support of my fleet and house"

condal says the show isn't biased. and i'm the empress of austria.

[freyan2973]

[bleedingseeds]

The problem with the Gale-Mystra situation is bigger than you probably realize.

In Forgotten Realms lore/cosmology, people that worship gods only for lipservice go to endlessly wander the fugue plane (no gods come get them) until they are found and ripped to the hells by raiding demons, or the god of death, Kelemvor, chains them and makes them serve him for lack of a better option/because he can.

Atheists, agnostics, or people who actively scorn the gods have a worse fate. They become the brick and mortar of The Wall of the Faithless and their souls are decayed and destroyed over a long period of anguish and sufferring.

So, regardless of Mystra's B.S. , if Gale doesn't find another god fast, he is going to have one of these fates when he dies.

Not that Mystra isn't being a bitch, because she IS... but there is also the possibility that she has forgotten what it was like to be mortal (because again, FR lore: she was once a mortal woman named Midnight, just as Kelemvor was once a mortal man of the same name)... If from her perspective, she sees a mortal trying to become a god like she became a god and thinks that it is through killing her he was trying to do it (it happened before to the last Mystral. But it wasnt Midnight who killed Mystral, it was someone else ), it would be very bad for the Realms (SEE ALSO : THE SPELL PLAGUE that ravaged not only the mortal Realms but the actual god planes. When Midnight-Mystra was murdered in the future relative to BG3, it was catastrophic.)

So if , from her perspective, she is trying to not let something like that happen, and she got very spooked when a mortal wizard found something that could kill her... MAYBE she's not just saying he should kill himself to be a royally petty bitch (still could be though), because when Gale dies with the Favor and regained trust of Mystra, she would ideally bring him to her god-plane where he could be happy and live forever in the afterlife. The dream of any wizard. Even if they never get back together, his soul would be immortal and potentially happy instead of enslaved or destroyed.

Now-- That all being said. All the options are not great. The pantheon of Gods in the Forgotten Realms are basically an oligarchy and the anarchist in me, and the pissed-off teenage me who played Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer is like "OK. We gotta join Kaelyn's Crusade against Kelemvor and tear down the Wall of the Faithless.

Play Neverwinter Nights 2 and NWN2: MoTB.

Let's replace some shitty gods. Who's with me?

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

Since one anon talked about MudWing parenting culture I'd also like to say that I don't really like how Glory fully changed the RainWings' family system either.

I would have liked it better if she just made it so that everyone knew who their bio families were and the eggs were tracked but that RainWings were still raised communally.

Actually, I really don't like a lot of the culture changes imposed on the tribes. Snowfall destroying IceWing artifacts, Glory taking over the RainWings and remaking their government to be an oligarchy now... Clearsight (albeit, unintentionally) getting rid of Pantala's original language and culture. It just makes each tribe less interesting, IMO.

.

[truthdogg]

Even in a healthy society, the right and left approach politics from different starting points.

The right fears change initiated by marginalized or minority groups. They see these groups as a determined threat to their culture. For most on the right, democracy’s purpose is for the dominant largest groups to continue controlling society. There must always be an in-group and an out-group, and they intend to remain the former.

If they believe the US is a meritocracy, which many do, then government simply gets in the way of our brightest & best minds. They see the left as wanting to punish the successful by limiting their power.

The left is more concerned about keeping power in check, & fears abuses by the wealthy & corporations. They see democratic govt as the people’s main way to limit abuse & provide opportunity.

If they believe the US has become an oligarchy, which many do, then democratic government is insurance against exploitation. The see the right as wanting to benefit from that exploitation.

They are generally unworried about losing their culture, because they rarely fear marginalized groups, OR they’re from one of those groups.

Therefore, elections have different emotional effects.

When the left loses elections, they see it as a loss for everyone except the most powerful, & are flummoxed that all of the middle & lower classes don’t see it the same way. They see the right voting to put the most ruthless & exploitative people in charge. They see immoral disrespect of human rights and a step toward fascist control.

The right, on the other hand, sees election losses as a threat to destroy their way of life and a step toward anarchy. They see the left voting to empower the riff-raff, the poor, the immigrants, the non-Christians & the outcasts. They claim the left wants to end everything from cul-de-sacs & churches to gas stoves & meat.

Ideally there can be a balance between these perspectives, and each side can understand the other’s view, perhaps even see merit in it. We used to have that. I think that’s what we’ve lost in recent decades, and why debate has entirely broken down.

Each side logically believes the other is evil.

I’ll admit it, I’m one of those people on the left. I see a vote for a conman who brags about public sexual assault, attacks immigrants and targets vulnerable people, as fundamentally supporting evil. Frankly I don’t see any marginal groups with enough power to threaten anyone, and yet the right continues to attack and demonize groups of decent people. Any threats to the existing dominant culture are coming from the top, while those at the top scapegoat the disadvantaged.

I can see the divide but I don’t think I’m someone who can actually bridge it. I can’t take the concerns of the right seriously except as manipulations for more power. They already have too much.

[pharma-tard]

Share thoughts!!!!

I'm hungry so this won't be the most eloquent explanation, but basically I think it's more likely for Trump to win than Kamala. Normally that's "who gives a shit" territory for me, because a pro-war and (by nowhere but America's standards) "anti-war" president both have to deal with their country's geopolitical reality/tragectory and (more importantly) what their oligarchy wants.

But this one is meaningful mostly because of what Trump represents on the world-stage -- which is a shift to East Asia away from Europe (whereas Kamala represents the current policy). "Away" is the keyword here. Before, the US could, in the analogy of a boxing match, just change who they're swinging at with their right vs their left. They can't anymore, they can try to dodge the guy who'd get their left normally, but they have to focus on one of them at a time.

I don't think the US elite wanted to admit that, a lot of them still don't. They have a lot invested in neocolonialism in the former Warsaw Pact/Yugoslavia, but as the mode of control has increasingly become the EU (vs directly), that vassalage-autonomy has come at the price of being more expendable in extreme cases such as we live in now.

Chinese disruption to US financial hegemony is more troubling to them than the EU taking L's and it fucking up their investments in the larger region, by a lot. Their elite want to (keep) own(ing) Ukraine, for example, but they need the world to run on dollars. Right now, China is the primary country enabling dedollarization, which means China is now the majority-accepted primary threat according to the American elite.

So what I predict happening is the EU will be left to deal with Europe on their own, and the EU establishment won't have nearly as much American support to keep them in power. NATO will still be there, and the US will still try to exert influence, but mostly within the "secured" areas and ones that are more directly chained to Washington than chained through Brussels. It's clear that the EU as a junior partner is seen as a mistake to the US, as well, so in a way everything since the end of 2021 can be spun advantageously for US geopolitics.

Meanwhile, the US' focus is going to be on China, with increasing diplomatic pressure on India & trying to further inflame their situation with Pakistan. Australia, Japan, Thailand, and New Zealand will become less autonomous within the American sphere, or at least that'll be the goal, while the main geopolitical battlegrounds will be around Taiwan*, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Korean peninsula, and Burma. Maybe Bangladesh also. I think the inevitable loss to Russia in Ukraine will solidify Mongolia in the Russian/Chinese sphere of influence though.

The Middle East situation won't fundamentally change, or at least its tragectory will continue in the way it has been since the failed attempt to destroy Syria.

Anyway, they know all this and that's why media coverage around Trump has become more in the tone of him winning next, even if it is in a "oh God oh fuck" tone. All of its about marketing, manufacturing consent, and reducing shock.

[tobiasdrake]

I've never liked Hypocrisy Gotchas in political discourse. First, because it doesn't really matter. "He said we should kick all the illegal immigrants out but his company employs undocumented migrant labor!" Uh. Yeah. He's a fascist who hates minority races but enjoys slave labor. There may be a semantic contradiction between his words and his actions but there is no contradiction with his values.

The thing about the Right is that they don't really care about integrity of values or whatever. They're just making sound bytes. They want to cut taxes for the rich, restrict voting rights to the oligarchy, control women, reduce minorities to a slave labor class, etc. and they do not care what they have to say or do to make that happen.

They do not care if you catch them being inconsistent with their words. Because the words are just marketing. Their words are the juicy hamburger on the billboard that looks 10x better than what they're serving in the diner. Cool, you pointed out the hypocrisy. They're still gonna say it anyway.

But what really gets me about hypocrisy gotchas is that. Like.

So much of the Right's platform exists in opposition to the Left. Much of what they want is to claw back the victories that the Left has won. What we like, they hate. What we seek to create, they want to destroy. So on a certain level, trying to catch them in a Gotcha is, itself, a Gotcha back at us.

Because when we point and jeer at them for saying one thing and doing another, we're pointing and jeering at something we're supposed to be for.

"Republicans hate sex work but they routinely hire prostitutes! SHAAAAME!"

Uh. We're supposed to be pro-sex worker. Why are you shaming people for hiring sex work?

"Republicans want to kill abortions but this Republican got three abortions! SHAAAAME!!!"

Uh. We're supposed to be pro-abortion. Why are you shaming people for getting abortions?

"Republicans want to destroy LGBT rights but this Republican had an affair with a man! SHAAAAME!!!"

Uh. We're supposed to be pro-LGBT. Why are you shaming people for being gay?

Trying to score zingers off of Republican failures to uphold conservative values is not just politically inconsequential, it also necessarily accepts the premise that conservative values should be upheld. Shaming them for doing things they speak against casts those things they are doing as shameful.

I don't believe in going high when they go low. The Right is up to a lot of shady shit, and they should be called on it. But being gay or indulging in sex work or getting abortions, this stuff isn't shady. And we shouldn't treat it like it is, because then we're accepting their premise as a foundational belief for our argument.

In my opinion, speaking out against the very people we're supposed to support, potentially making people feel unsafe or unwelcome within the party, for the sake of scoring zingers against the enemy side? That's as much of a Hypocrisy Gotcha against us as it is against them.

And we're supposed to be the ones who actually mean what we say.