#down with the status quo

[embraceyourdestiny]

People are waiting for things to be history while it’s happening so they can say “oh why couldn’t we do anything to stop it?”

You can do something to stop it.

Murder is happening right now. People are being killed right now. Starved out. Infected with disease from manufactured conditions. Their homes and community being torn apart because of sickening and disgusting wishes from the people in power above us assuring it happens.

Stand up. Do something.

Don’t wait and say we should’ve done something to help when we could’ve. You’re complacent if you aren’t helping now.

[mohntilyet]

rook being such a nobody and surrounded by more influential companions right after the obviously well known inquisitor could be really cool actually. that conversation w solas 'what will they call you after this is done' <- NO FUCKING CLUE LOL!! the idea that this millennia long, world-ending story of gods and a herald being controlled for a moment by a nobody is incredible. they start as an irritant and end having saved the world. nobody thanks them. they go back home. maybe they're literally wiped off the face of the world when they're trapped in the fade with the dread wolf! and most of all, their name is not remembered. literally, because they become a 'rook' to the inquisitor's king.

like i’m actually really liking the idea that the inquisitor and rook get conflated into the same person by the public and by history, and what little agency they had is taken away. you were never in control of this story. your narrative will be written by other people, just like every figurehead that came before you. you are not the chosen one. the choice to have faded out and see the irrelevancy as a boon, or struggle to make your name known (not rook, not the nickname, not the title) would have been so. interesting.

veilguard is a heroic story (and the game doesn’t even let you be rude most of the time) that has to end heroically (the evanuris are defeated in some way, the last archdemon dies, and most rooks climb down from minrathous to literal cheers and applause) but the hero themself is forgettable. narratively that could have been so funnnn. but it wasn’t on purpose so it just feels hollow.

[halenhusky309]

Transformers : One spoiler

I dread for the day that most people watched Transformers : One, because of the amount of takes that basically put the blame on Orion Pax for pushing D-16/Megatron to snap (And then sneakily calling Orion Pax as someone wanted to protect status quo and didn't want to tear down the system simply because he didn't have that need to violently put the oppressors down like some types of common low-lives and force everyone to follow his crusade to screw the system).

Very spoiler!!!!! Warning

Orion Pax tried to stop D-16/Megatron from killing Sentinel has nothing to do with "we became as bad as him if we murder that cunt". It's more like "You're being unhealthy with your hatred and I don't think you should continue with this train of thoughts". And I promise you that Orion didn't that much fuck about Sentinel's well-being. He's afraid for D-16 and whatever direction his friend would become.

Orion Pax noticed how his dear friend began to go down to a very dark part, and he would never stop to spiral down further, even if he murdered Sentinel and his lackies brutally. And D-16 hasn't expressed any contigent plans to change the system into sth better, and all he cared about was how to punish and humiliate Sentinel in a most terrible way possible. And the way he acted toward Starscream and the High guards is peak red flag for potential dictatorship and oppression that use fear, violence, and hatred, which is parallel to Sentinel's own brand of opression that filled with lies, manipulation and exploitation.

And sorry to burst this bubble, but D-16/Megatron isn't the one who is revolutionary. That's Orion Pax's thing. Orion was the only one noticing And it will be funny to see the take "Orion wants to maintain the system" when this little shit first thought when learning about the truth is to expose Sentinel's fake-ass to the mass and rally the oppressed folks to rise up against Sentinel and the system. But I guess it's not violence or brutal enough for some people to acknowledge that Orion is going for the least destructive route to tear down the system because he valued life more.

This is not saying Orion Pax's solution for dismantling the system is the best and only way to go, and sometimes violence can be the best answer in certain circumstances. But if your the whole revolution is based solely on violences, killings and basically tearing down everything to satisfy your hatred/grievances without any considerations for the casualties, consequences, and priorities to rebuild the system, it become a pointless and selfish movement that will actually never bring any substantial changes besides sufferings and tragedies.

[naivety]

So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.

[...]

Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities. What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us? This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land? We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it. We seek nothing but total liberation.

Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The fans: Ugh Sonic was just so preachy. I mean obviously he's supposed to be the good guy, so any uncomfortableness I feel here and any way I feel like Sonic's choices are framed as being why some other people have shitty lives is just bad writing because he is obviously supposed to be right always, but this characterization makes no sense. Isn't he right for the things he did?

Ian Flynn, using Kitsunami to say the (barely even at this point) quiet part even louder: Hey it's almost like ever since the Mr. Tinker event we've been purposely running with the critique of Sonic as being more selfish than he appears. Sonic is upholding a system of Eggman v Sonic that currently benefits him and shuts down talk of how to improve the current system because he likes his own personal enjoyment and he's attached enough to Eggman that he'd rather Eggman pretend to be a good person than be stuck in prison for life. He doesn't even quite practice what he preaches. We are trying to show that the current hero v villain system and Sonic's recklessness currently affects some people poorly and that Sonic isn't a perfect hero.

[jerreeeeeee]

i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?

[rookflower]

i know the knowledge is Not Secret and Pretty Damn Obvious but remembering the fact the wc writing team changed between oots and avos makes so much sense. like ohhh that's why mothwing is Like That now despite her previous characterisation being far less bitter and aggressive, along with other personality shifts or new directions for characters. that's why onestar's SE zeroed in on the darktail thing they came up with instead of older key scenes or points about his character that they may not remember as well if at all. that's why each arc is structured more episodically, repetitively, and self-contained now rather than having a lot of wee overarching character arcs and plot threads or messing much with the status quo. sometimes i wonder and then i remember the obvious answer. like. to both improvements and its degradations it explains a lot of writing switch ups between then and now doesnt it

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Fanfics in which Marcy and Sasha idealize Anne as this angelic being filled with kindness and light are so sweet but also so funny. It's always abt how they feel like they don't deserve her because of all the harm they caused her but also. Lmao you can tell they weren't around Wartwood in S1. Anne was such a little piece of shit back then.

[foolsocracy]

never write a directionless fic. cause why is pete having a breakdown over the shop that gave him cheap ass egg foo young closing . How’d we get here

[whatudottu]

Sketchy sequel to this little thing I drew on an 8 hour plane trip without references because no wifi :(

Shockwave's logic tree of 'only breakdown's brave/stupid enough to call him breastie' and 'breakdown saying "hey breastie" is in reference to him' meets Breakdown's rarely seen mischievous side like a downball piffed against a wall-

[manfredthewarden]

i think solavellan appeals to me as an aromantic person because i tend to be drawn to more fantastical, larger than life love stories that aren't realistic. lavellan falls in love with her own god without knowing it. that's so cool. they don't get a traditional happy ending where they settle down somewhere in the status quo. they do get a bittersweet kind of happy ending with a million possibilities. they go together to an impossible place where time doesn't exist and yeah it might all go horribly but i find it so appealing.

[thewardenisonthecase]

honestly, maybe it's a hot take or whatever, but I think that tearing down the veil and *potentially* bringing back the immortality to the elves would not have helped them a lot

[sort-of-a-hero-that-way]

Dennis shielding Dee whether it's physical harm or a verbal confrontation. And thinking about ada's tag alongside the gifs

They're both of equal threat to him...

[fluffydice]

I think one day I’d like to write something about Kusuke and Kusuo trying to have an actual sibling relationship, but I also think it would be painful. There’s a degree of bittersweetness in any universe that Kusuke mistreated Kusuo surrounding them making up, whether from Kusuo trying to learn to recover from it all (or at least not be in survival mode around him) or Kusuke being forced to learn things about himself while trying to connect with his brother/become a better person.

[bhaalstemple]

when Some People say "solas is genocidal!" is like... omfg yall are so fucking boring 😭

[om000o]

imagine if westley rlly betrayed wander n sylvia n stayed in the hater empire jk jk unless