#he risked his life to defeat the “racist” side

[halfblood-princes-crown]

I saw the supernatural post you made and I couldn't help but think that Snape would hate the Winchesters. The way they hunt down anything that isn't like them in nature to kill it would remind him of Voldemort. Thoughts?

Anon, you just started me on my bullshit

Ok ok!

That’s a good comparison! I like where your heads at. I was thinking more along the lines of he’d notice how different they were

Right off the bat of meeting, think about first impressions: Dean is shoot first ask questions later. A wizard? Time to die mf. Sam on the other hand is like “Wait, he hasn’t done anything! Let’s just talk to him and figure out what’s going on”

Right off the bat, Dean is not in Snapes favor, but Snape isn’t up Sams ass either. It takes a lot more than patience to impress our bat bitch

When Dean finally does agree to talk, what do we all know comes next? A self righteous, snarky remark. Strike mf two. Meanwhile Sam looks annoyed or mildly uncomfortable with whatever Dean said because they are, in fact, standing in front of someone who could kill them in one word. Literally. Now he’s trying to change the subject and ask what’s going on and the standard “making sure you aren’t a threat” questions. Snape is a double spy, he can read body language. Sam does not approve of his brothers behavior…but he hasn’t said anything about it either

Give or take 30 minutes to an hour, what’s the next thing Snape is gonna notice? Deans attitude towards Sam

Do you see where I’m going with this?

He’s going to compare Dean to Sirius black (derogatory). I said what I said.

One would think “Sam is Regulus then?” Nope. He’s Remus.

THINK ABOUT IT!

Sam has demon blood in his veins and is outcasted and shamed for it, even by people who are close to him. Sam has been putting up with Deans sideways remarks and straight up abuse for how long? He makes excuses for Dean and when he DOES stand up for himself, he always apologizes or feels guilty about it. Remus and his lycanthropy! We saw in the books how they made sideways jokes about it. Joking about the full moon and shit. Then we have to remember “The Prank”

Sam sees how overly violent Dean is about hunting, he also sees how unfair and cruel he is. He ALSO sees how that unfairness and cruelty extends to friends. And while Sam actually does say something, he never says enough, and usually makes at least one excuse for Dean…Remus “Bystander” Lupin!

Sam was told that he was someone’s weapon at least twice in the show (Yellow eyes and Lucifer). I mean that sounds a lot like how werewolf!Remus was used as a weapon to almost kill Severus in “The Prank”. Just saying.

Severus knows all too well that a person’s intentions don’t always match their actions, so I don’t think he’d judge them for hunting, but he will notice the INTENTIONS. Dean hunts for sport and Sam hunts to save people. Difference.

Dean Winchester would trigger the fuck out of Severus Snape

[allegra-writes]

"Teething troubles"

Lestat De Lioncourt x Louis De Pointe Du Lac

General Audiences, fluff.

Warnings: None. Lestat’s questionable parenting, toddler on toddler violence, Karen character.

Baby Claudia likes to bite people

SERIES MASTERLIST | MY MASTERLIST

Little Claudia had anger issues, there was no way around it. Lestat liked to joke she had inherited his temper, but truth be told, Louis did not find it funny. He did not find it funny when he got called from Claudia’s daycare because she had destroyed a toy in a fit of rage, he did not find it funny when the cat ran away scared because Claudia had screamed at him in reply to his hiss, and he did not find it funny when he had to rush her to the ER because she had banged the cupboard door with her tiny fists in frustration when it refused to open for her.

Lestat, of course, was of no use. He loved Claudia so much she was absolutely perfect in his eyes. His little princess could do no wrong, so why would he feel the need to correct her behavior? 

“I just don’t see what the big deal is" He expressed, sprawled on the park bench as if he owned the place, while they watched with vigilant eyes as Claudia frolicked around the playground. 

"Lestat, she bit Miss Lily!" Louis explained, clearly mortified, "Miss Bricks was aghast!" 

"Who's Miss Bricks?"

"The daycare's director"

Lestat was trying, and failing, to suppress a smirk.

"The director of Claudia’s daycare is called Miss Bricks?" 

"She also bit Armand"

That was too much for Lestat, who could not stop the giggles from rising up his throat, risking Louis' wrath. 

But far from getting mad, he seemed to be fighting a smile of his own.

"Don't-... Don't laugh" He protested, the corners of his mouth curving up despite himself. Luckily, he was saved by Claudia’s disgruntled noises of discontent as she attempted unsuccessfully to climb up the slide the same way she had slid down, instead of using the ladder like she was supposed to.

Lestat finally let himself go, laughing loud and boisterous, with his heart full of mirth but also of happiness, as he watched his little family. His Claudia, his daughter , the little spitfire of a baby he loved more than life itself, huffing and puffing and stomping her wee little feet, looking mortally offended the slide refused to cooperate with her; and his husband, the most beautiful man to walk the earth, as he tried to reason with her, using words as "frictional force" and "momentum" that she had no hope to understand. 

Baby Claudia, of course, remained unconvinced. 

"The problem," Louis sighed, as Claudia let out a pterodactyl screech after once again slipping down the slide she was trying to climb, "is that you set goals for yourself that are unattainable by both man and baby" 

Lestat was still giggling when Louis, defeated, came back to his side.

“I’m afraid she’s still a bit young for physics, mon amour”

Louis shrugged.

“She doesn’t like to be condescended at. Besides, she will understand one day. She’ll learn about physics and Sisyphus, look back at this moment, and start making a lot of connections…”

“Looks like that might not be the only connection she’ll be making” Lestat commented, nose scrunching in distaste as he watched a blonde little boy around Claudia’s age making his way to their daughter, probably wanting to see what the ruckus was all about.

The encounter, however, did not seem to be going well, as the kid raised his hand, reaching for one of Claudia’s piggy tails, and tugged hard. 

Twin yells of “Hey!” resonated through the park as Louis and Lestat jumped to their feet to rush to their daughter’s defense, but were stopped by a blonde woman, clearly the aggressive child’s mom. 

“Oh, don’t worry!” She chuckled, her high-pitched cackles nowhere nearly as cute as Lestat’s laugh to Louis’ ears, “It just means he likes her!”

Louis De Pointe Du Lac had never been a violent man. In fact, he proud himself on being a master of his instincts. There was nothing he hated more than those racist stereotypes that painted people of color as being hot-tempered and belligerent. But the moment he saw his baby girl’s eyes well up with tears, he knew he could have torn that chauvinistic nincompoop of a woman and her rude spawn to pieces. He was already advancing, on auto-pilot, his body moving forward before his mind could authorize the movement, when he felt Lestat’s grounding hand on his chest.

“Oh, look!” He commented, casually, his tone deceivingly sweet as Claudia threw herself at the boy, tackling him to the ground. “It seems our little Claudia likes him back!”

“Tommy!” Screamed the horrified woman, no longer cheerful, running to help his brat, whose cheek was currently between Claudia’s small but sharp teeth. 

Neither he nor Lestat made a single move to help the blonde pair. And, honestly, Louis didn’t even think of reprimanding his husband as he took their daughter in his arms, praising her for “sticking up for herself” and “a job well done”. How could he, when Claudia was beaming, waving the handful of blonde curls she had plucked off her would-be harasser's head around triumphally for her papas to see?

Yeah, there would come a time, probably soon, when they’d have to address Claudia’s temper problem. But that day wasn’t it. 

Next part

[bmblboop]

What are your thoughts on the scene of Weiss tossing that guy in the trash can?

Personally I say more power to her, I wish she’d kept that prepensity for on’y ducal violence when she saw Jacques

But doesn’t it kind of gone again the idea that “bad guys suffering isn’t a good thing”? Because it was clear weiss hurting this guy for no other reason then because he was being a dick,

You are giving me V7C1 Discourse Flashbacks.

The Purpose of the "Weiss dumps a Racist guy in a Trashcan" scene was threefold:

1. Reveal how blatant and common Anti-Faunus racism is in Mantle/Atlas

2. Showcase Weiss' character development by having a former racist stand up to racism

3. Slapstick comedy

She could, and probably would, throw Jacques into a trashcan under similar 'slapstick comedy' circumstances, but not in the more serious tone that most of their scenes hold in Volume 7. She doesn't have authority over Jacques, she couldn't 'get away with' something like that. The guy she dumpster'd was a stranger - someone she could risk upsetting because he didn't know who she was.

Jacques, on the other hand, is her father. Everyone on this site says you gotta punch Nazis, but what if the Nazi in your life is your Mom? You aren't going to slap your own mother unless you are incredibly comfortable cutting them out of your life indefinitely.

The events of Volume 5 happen over 1-2 months, and the events of V6 happen over 1 week. It's unclear how long the Atlas upgrades took, but it's safe to assume the time difference between Weiss Sneaking out of the Mansion and seeing her father again in V7C4 was 3 months or less. Even though she is in a better place with her team now, she is still intimidated by him. She freezes up when they lock eyes. She heaves a sigh of relief when he leaves. She might know deep down that he isn't a fighter on par with her skill, but he has 'beaten' her in other fights that don't use swords or semblances. She isn't going to risk getting 'beaten' again when she knows how big his influence is, and what he can do at the drop of a hat.

--

This Part got Long.

TL;DR - Dumpster Guy didn't Suffer and Suffering isn't Justice.

--

What I mean by "bad guys suffering" doesn't mean humiliation or slapstick or fight scenes. Getting tossed in the trash did not injure him or cause him significant physical pain, and we see this character in the background of several later shots. The only thing that scene gave him was a bump on the head and some really stinky clothes.

Tyrian getting punched in the jaw isn't 'suffering', it's slapstick. It's funny because he wasn't expecting Qrow to go fisticuffs. Any villain taking a hard hit isn't 'suffering' in the context of a fight, when both sides are taking and dishing damage.

In a similar vein, I thoroughly enjoy watching that scene in As Above So Below when Jacques' plan is revealed, and tries to weasel his way out of irrefutable evidence, but that's not "suffering", that's humiliation; that's the classic Ace Attorney pulling-of-receipts as they realize they have nowhere left to run.

What I mean by "suffering" is fans calling for Ruby or Jaune to tear Cinder limb from limb while screaming vengeance for Pyrrha/Penny. What I mean by "suffering" is theorizing the only way for Salem to be defeated is to lock her somewhere she can't escape - like space or an abyss or cut up into tiny pieces and buried in every corner of the planet. She'd still be alive because she immortal, thus in constant agony, but hey! At least she'll be out of the way and the heroes get to win, right? /s

This show doesn't do gratuitous suffering. Adam's death was victorious sure, but Blake, who you think would be happiest about this outcome, breaks down crying because she had to take a life. The life of someone she once believed in, a life that caused her so much pain.

So no. I don't believe Jacques getting what's coming to him, in the form of a horde of vengeful Faunus, would be fitting end to his story.

(Unless you meant "thousands of Faunus" figuratively, in the form of a legal sentence that punishes him on behalf of all his victims. That would have been nice, but we already know that never came to be; truly unfortunate.)

[rainofaugustsith]

One more thing: please spare me this “all Sith are evil and self-serving and only care about themselves” nonsense. In the pre-Darth Bane era that’s ridiculous, as much as it is to say all Jedi are good.  This is the Sith code. There's nothing here about being selfish, racist or not caring about others. Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. It’s notable that there seems to be some leave in Sith society for Sith to interpret the Code as they will - there is a scene in the Inquisitor story where Ashara Zavros is frustrated with that lack of a unified philosophy. This isn’t “self serving,” in real-world religions there are often those who question, study and interpret differently.  This is the Jedi code. There's nothing here about being selfless, being nice or caring for others. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force

From what is said, there’s less leave for Jedi to question and interpret the Code as they will, and more of a unified message. We see this in major world religions too.  Neither one is wrong.  We meet plenty of Sith who are horrible people, but the stories also show us numerous examples of Sith busting their asses to protect the Empire or the galaxy.

- Satele Shan accuses Scourge of helping defeat Vitiate for "selfish reasons." She never gives any indication what these reasons are, of course. Scourge sacrificed everything to help defeat Vitiate. He had a position of extreme power in the Empire - not even the Dark Council could stop him, and he answered only to Vitiate. He gave that up to help the Jedi that wanted his people dead, made himself a traitor to his own faction, and was risking his own immortality. That doesn't seem at all selfish to me.   - Darth Marr volunteers his own resources defeat Revan in a Coalition with the Republic to save the galaxy. He later leads another coalition into Wild Space with the same goal. And when the ship goes down he doesn’t save his own ass, he’s running around literally trying to put out the fires himself.     - Lana Beniko risks her neck multiple times to save the Empire and later to save the Alliance, to the point of literally jumping in front of the player to take a blaster shot in the stomach. There are several occasions in KOTFE and KOTET where she offers to sacrifice herself so the PC can get away.  -  The Sith Empire led by Acina puts themselves on the line to support the Alliance against Zakuul, when they could have easily sat back like the Republic. Defying Zakuul could have brought the Eternal Fleet down on their heads, and they did it anyway.   - Khem Val, while technically not a Sith but still 'dark sided' literally sacrfices himself to stop Darth Zash from hollowing out the Sith Inquisitor and taking their body. If the Inquisitor died, he would have been free.   - Darth Silthar on Tatooine doesn't send his men out into the dangerous field, he does it himself, and uses his last breath to utter a warning to the PC.   - When the Sith Empire realizes that releasing the Dread Masters was actually a very, VERY bad idea, they clean up their own mess and devote their own troops to it. The Sith commander on Oricon is on the surface, doing everything he can to shield everyone else, even at his own expense.   So where is this "all Sith are selfish and care only for themselves" thing coming from? Maybe the answer isn't in the Sith, but with the Jedi and how they operate.   The Jedi serve the Republic for life. In SWTOR you are told that they serve the Republic even if they don't agree. They are not given a choice. In the newest update there is talk from General Daerunn of tracking down Jedi and making them come back to fight for the Republic even if they don't want to. The Jedis' duty is to serve, without question. The Sixth Line even puts this ethos into their modified code: There is no contemplation, but duty. The Jedi hammer this philosophy into their recruits from a young age: they are there to serve unquestionably. The Jedi's duty is to do the Republic's bidding. They are expected to forego love, relationships, families or their own personal lives to fulfill this mandate, and it is seen as noble and good.   What about anyone who doesn't want to do that? What about anyone who wants to have some life of their own? Easy! You make emotions and dissent "the dark side." You make the dark side evil. You make it a Very Bad Thing for a Force sensitive to have any other goal in life than to unquestioningly serve their government. There's no other way to preserve the status quo of the Jedi as the Republic's eternal unpaid servants. If they go off and do what they want, or get to think about it, they might leave!   Hammering this point home, the Jedi consider any other Force creed to be dark-sided, which isn't unlike some evangelical religions that think that they are the only ones going to Heaven. For example, there are a few exchanges in the Jedi class stories where Satele makes this claim about the Voss. The Voss, who use their Force sensitives to heal others through self-sacrifice in the Shrine of Healing (watch the Sith Warrior story - the Mystic takes her own strength and gives it to a sick person, and it's painful enough to make her cry), have precognitive visions and interpret them to help their people. There really doesn't seem much that is evil about that.  Satele Shan says nothing about the Voss's practice of apartheid against the Gormak, but she's concerned about their use of the Force.  And the Jedi Consular and Sith Warrior are asked to make the exact same sacrifice on Voss- to give their own strength to heal the sick in order to progress their mission somehow. Each can volunteer a companion to go in their place. But only for the Sith Warrior is that seen as dark sided and evil. Only for the Jedi Consular is it seen as selfless for the PC to step up on their own, when they are doing the exact same thing. 

Point being, claiming that every action taken by a Sith is for their own benefit is as silly as saying that every action taken by a Jedi is out of the goodness of their own heart or free will. 

[itsclydebitches]

This thing that gets me about RWBY (and the FNDM) is the generational aspect of the show. Ozpin is immortal, there are adults with decades of experience with this war...but the kids act like everything has to be solved now. Specifically in their lifetime, preferably by next month. Any adult who has sacrificed to get us to this point is evil because they haven't finished this. Any adult with a plan either isn't trying hard enough to accommodate the kids' feelings (Jaune to Qrow) (1/?)

This precisely. It would be one thing if RWBY had written a story where the majority of the adults involved were a part of a corrupt system that refuses to enact change, thereby leaving it to the next generation to step up (The Hunger Games), or a situation where external influences require that someone who happens to be young take on the role of savior (prophecy in Harry Potter), but RWBY gave us a story where the adults are doing everything in their power, the lack of success isn’t their fault, they’re legitimately good people facing shit circumstances... and the takeaway is still, “Look how horrible they are.” It’s a popular theme - younger generation does what the previous can’t - mapped onto a webseries that never bothered to introduce the foundation of that conflict in the first place. Instead RWBY gave us: 

Three volumes where our protagonists are students and, importantly, go to a school where their instructors are both knowledgeable and competent. This sets up the understanding that they exist in a world where adults are actually doing their jobs - i.e. protecting kids and working to make the world a better place.

We’re given a plotline with Blake where she must come to the realization that she, as an individual, can’t fix a systematic problem. The discrimination against faunus is a problem that goes beyond her ability to solve after graduation. It’s not a grimm she can just go out and kill. Rather, she must become a part of the larger whole working to enact slow but steady change. 

That is then reflected in the Salem conflict: no one has been able to come up with a way to beat her but the adults have made significant progress in slowing her down and crafting a world that people can live peacefully in. The change is slow, but there. It’s significant. 

Despite this knowledge as well as the fact that Ozpin has been fighting Salem for generations, our group is written as thinking that they’ll just pop on over and kill her sometime next week. Where did all their knowledge and basic common sense go? Instead of acknowledging that they were foolish to think they could immediately solve a thousand year problem just because they want to, the writing makes Ozpin out as a bad person for “stringing them along.” 

We’re likewise given a lore dump that proves once in for all that Ozpin didn’t get the world into this mess in the first place, nor is he refusing to take some necessary step to defeat Salem. No one knows how to circumvent her immortality yet and he kept going despite that. 

Ozpin is nevertheless condemned for failing to come up with a plan. This could have been a mark against him if the group had come up with one quickly afterwards. That is, “See, Ozpin. If you’d shared this knowledge with others you would have realized that they can see the situation in a way you can’t. Ruby realized the key to defeating Salem hours after she had all the pieces! Maybe someone else could have done the same if you hadn’t tried to do it all on your own...” But we didn’t get that. The group has no more plans for defeating Salem than Ozpin does, despite still criticizing him for that. They won’t even talk about it. We’re supposed to believe that the group is intrinsically the better fighters in this battle, yet their actions are to ignore the Salem situation while Ozpin and Ironwood desperately try ways to improve it. 

This segues into the “We don’t need adults” speech which not only flies in the face of everything we’ve seen recently but is also a straight up lie. No one calls Ruby out on this perspective. It is, in fact, upheld as she stands in front of Cordovin, the writing painting her narrow-minded stubbornness as heroic; the Good Guy Teen against the Evil Racist Elder. 

(As a side note, f you want an example of how to actually write a discriminatory elder whose discrimination is integral to the conflict at hand as well as a teen who is morally in the right yet cannot solve the problem at hand via brute force - in fact the point (because our protagonist is brilliant!) isn’t even to fix the whole situation but merely to prove the discrimination invalid by demonstrating great skill - ...Katara vs. Master Paku is right there.) 

We see moving forward how "great” the group’s plans are when they’re made not just without adult input but flying in the face of adult criticism (Qrow’s) and prioritizing their personal desires over the mission’s needs. That is, they decide to risk war between kingdoms and endanger a city rather than just... sending Weiss. Or waiting for Ironwood to get his letter. 

They go to Atlas where Ironwood does have a plan. An adult! With a plan! Doing the thing that he, as an adult in this war, is meant to be doing! Yet that likewise gets twisted into something horrible. Unlike Blake, Ironwood is expected to fix all of Mantle’s systematic problems as one individual. Like Ozpin, Ironwood is condemned for not having a plan that will fix everything this minute with absolutely no downsides attached. Unlike Ozpin, Ironwood’s plan is based on information that the group knows is inaccurate, yet they decide to keep that to themselves for weeks on end. They likewise help enact his plan even while they continually criticize him for it.

Salem arrives. Does the group have a plan to beat her? No. They just criticize more and dismantle the one plan Ironwood comes up with that might save lives. Now they’re charging into what we currently know to be an impossible battle exhausted, aura low, down five of their most powerful allies, under arrest, while the city still freezes to death. 

RWBYJNOR wants a plan this instant despite others’ inability to come up with one in a thousand years. They don’t want to have to suffer through a hard life of keeping Salem at bay like others have before. They likewise want a plan with absolutely no downsides. If it requires sacrificing resources or sacrificing people then it’s immediately off the table. They want a plan and they want it now and they want it perfect... but they’re not doing the work to come up with one themselves. Nor are they acknowledging that if they can’t come up with one... maybe they shouldn’t expect others to. 

These wants on their own are not bad things. Striving for that perfection is, in fact, heroic. The problem lies in their insistence on damning others for failure while they likewise fail to come up with anything better, as well as their instance on a perfect plan/outcome blinding them to what options they have. When the plot inevitably bends to adhere to those wants - like Argus magically not suffering a single casualty because that would paint RWBYJNR’s actions as, you know, reckless and foolhardy - that’s not satisfying for the viewer. We want to see heroes succeed despite the challenges, not watch the challenges illogically disappear in order to make room for the heroes’ victory. RWBY has a perfect theme here of, “Inexperienced and traumatized teens think they can save the world with brute force but need to learn how to compromise, take advice, slow down, accept help, forgive others, etc. etc. in order to become people who can, in fact, save the world”.... and the creators either don’t realize that’s what’s going on or simply refuse to engage with it. 

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of February 5th, 2020

Best of this Week: Miles Morales: Spider-Man #15 (Legacy #255) - Saladin Ahmed, Javier Garrón, David Curiel and Cory Petit 

I had a really difficult time choosing between this and X-Men/Fantastic Four #1.

Both stories were great this week and I was tempted to choose the latter because up to this point, I hadn't really been enjoying this Spider-Man run very much. Of course, here we are though. There was just something about how this issue pulled everything together that made me appreciate the story that Saladin Ahmed set out to tell and how Miles is finally growing into the hero that fans always knew he was. Everything just felt so right amidst this roller coaster of an “Ultimatum” arc.  Even in the face of tremendous adversity Miles overcomes.

Throughout this series, Ahmed has been sprinkling small bits of an arc to readers with Miles constantly being late for class, tired and even being placed on academic probation by his Principal, Mr. Dutcher. Of course it's easy to paint Dutcher as potentially a racist due to how much he's had it in for Miles throughout the story, almost to very ludicrous points in his attempts to kick Miles out of the school. Things seek to finally take a turn when we find out that Dutcher found the notebook that Miles had been writing in with all of his Spider-Man adventure thoughts.

Garrón makes sure to draw Dutcher with the worst, "I've got your ass now" looks I've ever seen with one hand placed in his underarm while he taunts Miles with his journal. Curiel colors things ominously with light shadows going over most of his face as he prepares to ream Miles, but suddenly Brooklyn Visions, Miles' school, is attacked by a horde of new Green Goblins. Garrón makes them look threatening as hell as they terrorize the student body and the teachers with destroyed cars and fire in the background.

Without hesitation, Miles tries to swoop in and save them, but the Goblins find him and Dutcher, rounding them up with the rest of the hostages. The leader Goblin demands that the school hand over Spider-Man while threatening the staff. Garrón and Curiel sell this by portraying the Goblin as a towering beast with one green foot planted on the head of one of the teachers, his grey toenails curling over him. They’re certainly not as intimidating as the Main Green Goblin of the Ultimate Universe, but their numbers and power do cast as at least mildly formidable foes, at least for this issue.

One of the black teachers steps up and offers to remain the only hostage if they let the kids and other teachers go. I really like this character as I think he's the one that assigned the journal project and he's been acting as something of a mentor to Miles throughout. He really cares about his students and colleagues even though he's terrified and he's the first of many to inspire courage in this issue.

Just as the Goblin is about to absolutely RIP the teacher's head off, Dutcher steps up and says that his colleague doesn't know where Spider-Man is and says that he does. Everyone remembers that moment in the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie where J. Jonah Jameson risks his life for Peter so that he can escape - well, after giving a telling look to Miles, Dutcher claims that he himself Spider-Man before getting smacked into a wall. This is an amazing turning point for the character as we’ve only seen him be annoying and antagonistic to Miles the entire time that we’ve known him. With one small act of courage, he kinda reverses it all when he could have just given into his worse thoughts.

Garrón and Curiel frame this scene excellently with one shot of Miles looking at Dutcher, with a light shining on his face, almost wondering what the right decision is. He may not like Miles too much, but he couldn't forgive himself if he gave the boy up. We get another shot over Dutcher's shoulder, shadows covering the other side of his face and Miles looking at him, afraid that he could have his identity exposed and die right there. With no dialogue these two panels say more than any word balloons could.

Ganke, Miles' best friend, decides to launch another distraction for Miles to suit up and our hero swings in with an amazing splash page by Garrón and Curiel. The students cheer, the Goblins grit their teeth in anger and Miles takes a dynamic pose as his webs make an excellent line for the our eyes to follow from Miles arms, his heroic symbol and his gymnast legs getting ready to kick the crap out of evil. The black and red suit stands out amongst the mostly greens and browns of the page, putting the focus mainly on him.

For the most part, the rest of the issue is Garrón and Curiel showcasing Spider-Man's Goblin Slaying skill while they try to take him down. He crashes through the wall of the school and Garrón emphasizes the weight and speed of the fight with debris and skid marks as Miles knocks two of the Goblins out, making them revert to human form. There's also a really good shot of the leader Goblin chucking dumbbells and gymnast posts at Spider-Man.

Curiel does an amazing job of coloring the action as things move from the brown of the basketball court, to the blues of the indoor pool in which Garrón draws an amazing few panels of them fighting in the water. As per Curiel's coloring style the water is fluid and beautiful and then gets excellent lighting as Spider-Man Venom Blasts the Goblin in the middle of it all. 

Cory Petit deserves heaps of credit for giving this entire book life with his incredible lettering and even more so this fight sequence. His transparent CRASHes and ZZZZZTs sell both the intensity of Miles and the Goblin going through walls and the power of Spider-Man’s Venom Blasts respectively. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the SPLASH as the Goblin falls into the pool or the transparent SLOSH that curves down the villain’s arm as he tries to punch at Miles in the water. 

The fight reaches its conclusion after Miles repeatedly kicks the Goblin in the face and finishes with an uppercut (Shoryuken!) over a red, pop-art background that could only have been made better with a POW sound effect. The Goblin, knowing he’s been defeated, jumps away and leaves Spider-Man until their next confrontation. Later on Miles and Mr. Dutcher resume their conversation from earlier and it is a far more tense situation, especially after all of the damage that occured to the school.

Surrounded by Curiel’s dim oranges from the fires raging in the background, Miles tries to explain all the things that he says in his Journal, but Mr. Dutcher calmly hands his student his journal back. Dutcher tells Miles that he “should report students engaging in dangerous activities to the administration,” but all that he read was a “fictional story.” For a moment, Dutcher gives Miles a look like he sees the fear on the young man’s face, but he rationalizes that if Miles hadn’t done what he did, there’s no telling if any of them would be alive.

Mr. Dutcher proves himself to be a trustworthy person because of the bravery that Miles showed him. Miles has saved Brooklyn, if not the whole of the world, many a time and he’s actually one of the more well liked Spider-People. Miles serves as an inspiration to the rest of Brooklyn Visions and the borough as a whole, but there’s also the downside of his presence. Somehow the Goblins were able to find out what school Spider-Man attended and that puts everyone in grave danger, so the question is… what will Miles do now? He did save the day and got taken off of academic probation, but the school is mostly in ruin. Much like Peter’s best victories, this one is pyrrhic.

Saladin Ahmed really knocked it out of the park with this issue. He does a really good job at scripting Miles and his supporting cast, making each of them seem courageous and sympathetic. Javier Garron and David Curiel’s art and colors have been some of the best parts of this run and they continue to stun with amazing visuals, making sure readers get really invested in the art and the story it tells along with the script.

I do also wonder if this story will play into the upcoming “Outlawed” event which sees teenaged superheroes getting banned from active operation after something terrible happens to Spider-Man friend, Kamala Khan aka. Ms. Marvel. The destruction of Brooklyn Visions could act as more fuel to the fire following this issue and it would be interesting to see how this could possibly contribute to that event. Maybe we’ll even see Miles unmask to the world? (Nah, it’s probably gonna be her, but who knows?) But I am excited at the very least for the rest of Ahmed’s run if the issues continue being this awesome.

[thehappyspaceman]

Assorted Thoughts on The Dragon Prince Book Three

Hey guys, TheHappySpaceman here. The Dragon Prince. What more do I need to say about it other than what I’ve already covered in my first two reviews? Well, a lot actually.

I was impressed with the show’s improvement from Book One to Book Two and was super excited for where it was set to go in the future. Since then, I have joined the TDP fanbase and supported the show by making memes, reactions, AMVs, oneshots, and plenty of fanart. However, when info dropped last month about Aaron Ehasz and the workplace environment at Wonderstorm potentially not being so good, I didn’t know what to make of it, and as more and more info came out, I became even more confused. Though the fanbase was becoming incredibly toxic due to the near-constant infighting, I promised myself that I would still stick around for Book Three, seeing how excited I had been for it before the controversy, but I almost wondered if it would be worth it.

So, after so many accusations and hollow words thrown around, and after nine months of anticipation… how does it hold up?

…Oh! Okay, wow, this season was a ton of fun. And yes, it’s exactly as good as I figured it would be after seeing Book Two. Everything I could have hoped for from this series really goes full-force here and it rarely if ever lets off the brakes.

The Story

After a brief intro as exposition, the plot starts immediately after the events of the Book Two finale where Callum and Rayla have entered Xadia and have to face many challenges along the way, including archdragon Sol Regem, Rayla’s hometown, and a rogueish elf thief. All the while, Ezran arrives back to Katolis and has to face the challenges of dealing with being king of a country that he finds in chaos, being pressured to enter war and be the king that Harrow was, while Soren and Claudia are confronted with the decision between helping their own father wage war against Xadia or joining their friends.

The Characters

This season introduced a number of interesting new characters. We got to meet some more dragons, for one thing, and while hearing them speak was pretty jarring at first (they talk normal English, which is strange since we’ve never heard them speak before), it turned out to be pretty awesome in establishing the characters. Most notably, we meet Sol Regem, the dragon who appeared in the opening of the series and was on many of the posters, and I’m surprised how he kind of turns out to be a major dick. Since was on so much of the promo materials for the show, I wasn’t figuring this, but he wound up being a racist jackass who was willing to kill our protagonists, including the young dragon prince Zym, all because of his hatred of humans.

He’s not the only dragon we meet. We also meet Avizandum, otherwise known as Thunder, the late King of the dragons, in flashbacks, and we get to see just how he died. As well, we get Zubeia, Zym’s mom, and Pyrrha, a dragon who Ezran had met in the prior season and befriends. My favorite one might be a nameless dragon who is unchained by Soren and nuzzles him. That’s a really cute scene.

We also meet a lot of new elves this season. Of particular note is Ethari, the Moonshadow elf blacksmith who had been seen in the end credits for Book One and had previously been given the fan name “Tinker.” There was a lot of fan speculation that Ethari was Runaan’s boyfriend and that the two of them raised Rayla together while her parents were gone. Well, this season proves that theory entirely false. No, Ethari is Runaan’s husband. Again, way to go with LGBT+ rep, Wonderstorm (especially since the episode that introduces Ethari was written by a woman in the LGBT+ community)! Ethari’s dynamic with Rayla is also very interesting and shows that he truly does care about her even after her town essentially banished her.

This season officially introduces us to Janai, the Sunfire elf that Amaya was battling in Book Two. I find it interesting how, in many ways, the two characters perfectly mirror each other: Both women are highly dedicated to their duty of their respective countries, and both of them are sisters of royalty, with Janai’s elder sister being the Sunfire Queen. This gives them an interesting dynamic with their interactions. Also of note is Kazi, Amaya’s translator this season who kind of gives off C-3PO vibes. Every scene with them is very funny.

Additionally, this season introduces us to a whole new race of elf: Skywing elves! It only makes sense, since we’ve already met Moonshadow, Sunfire, and Startouch elves; that only leaves two more to go. The two Skywing elves we meet are Ibis, a mage who works directly for the dragon queen Zubeia; and my personal favorite, Nyx, a loveable rogue type of character who our heroes meet when crossing the midnight desert. Man, I love Nyx, and yet, I feel like this season doesn’t do enough with her. I mean, they introduce her in episode four, and then she just kind of disappears after episode six. I was hoping that she’d play a bigger role, especially seeing how hyped up she was in the trailers for this season. Still, maybe she’ll appear again. She played an interesting part as an antagonist and I’d like to see her come back.

Speaking of antagonists, how about this guy? Prince Kasef. Man, the writers wanted to make a real jerk type of character and they succeeded. He’s the warmongering son of King Ahling who takes over after his dad’s injuries from last season. Outside of a cool design, there is nothing redeemable about this character. I’m not faulting the show for this, for the record. It seems like it was the writers’ intention to make him a complete asshole, very comparable to Viren in a lot of ways. Kasef is taken down in a pretty spectacular way, for the record, and it’s hard to say he’ll be missed.

But of all the new characters introduced, to me the real standout character of the season is one of the main leads from all the way back in Book One. Man… Soren is just great this season. After breaking his spine in Book Two, we get to see him go through so much character development beyond just being the dumb comic relief. He starts to question what is right, what side he should be on, and he is put through so much hell in the process, but he comes out better for it in the end. Leave it to the head writer of Avatar: The Last Airbender to make me feel sympathetic for a character like this.

The Animation

Holy crap, the animation in this season is so damn impressive! Bardel Entertainment already fixed the animation in a major way between Book One and Book Two, but this season gives us some seriously amazing moments that I never would have expected from this show after watching Book One. Everything feels so much more fluid this season, even more improved than Book Two in that respect. The backgrounds are downright stunning, too. They feel so real, like you could actually be there with the characters. One of the major gripes I did have with the first two seasons was the facial animation, and how the mouths kind of looked derpy and unexpressive, perhaps due to the CGI medium the characters were animated in. But here, everyone is so emotive and expressive that you can watch the season without audio and still understand what’s going on. There’s a particular scene with Amaya and Janai that I’ll get into later that perfectly shows this. This isn’t only in the mouths, either; we also see little details like characters’ pupils dilating, or the elves’ ears slumping down or perking up depending on the mood. These were little touches that they didn’t have to include, but the fact that they did makes it so much more of an enjoyable watch, because you notice new little details each time you watch it.

The Relationships

I don’t usually have a separate section in my previous season reviews about this, but this season was heavily based on character relationships as much as individual characters, whether they be relationships between family members, friends, comrades in battle, or romantic partners. Just a warning: This section will get into spoiler territory. If you have not watched the season before reading this, I strongly advise you to stop reading and go do that.

The first relationship I’d like to talk about returns to Soren. During the course of this season, he starts to question the morals of his father, Viren, and Soren has to struggle between his duties to his father and his duties to his country as a member of the crownguard. We get the sense that Claudia has always been Viren’s favorite, and that the abuse and gaslighting Soren has to deal with in this season is nothing new and Viren’s contempt for his son has been building up a long time. Soren’s relationship with Claudia strains in this season until, when not wanting to make his sister choose between him or Viren, Soren cuts ties with her. The scene where he says goodbye and leaves is genuinely a heartbreaking one, and in general, you can feel the emotions all the characters are going through.

With Amaya and Janai, the two form a mutual respect over the course of the season. Amaya defeats Janai at the breach, but when seeing that the Sunfire general is hanging for her life, she ultimately saves Janai from dying. As the days go on and Amaya becomes a prisoner, Janai defends her against the Sunfire queen and they soon form a friendship that hints that it might lead to something more. But the scene that really increases the characters’ development is when Aaravos straight-up murders the Sunfire Queen. This sends Janai into a rage and she runs in, willing to risk her own life to avenge the death of her sister, but Amaya tackles her to the ground and gives her a solemn look of understanding, of knowing how it feels to lose her own sister. This little exchange is very powerful. I’ve always said that a scene is effective if it manages to give you chills without any dialogue, just letting the music and animation speak on its own, and, well, this scene passes that test. (Major shout-out to Frederik Wiedmann’s score, by the way; it really shines in this entire season.)

And… well, okay, there’s no use dodging it anymore. Let’s talk about these two.

Rayla and Callum. Oh boy. So, remember in my last review how I said it was likely that Rayla and Callum were going to get together by the end of the show? Well, since this show has a planned seven-season run, I was expecting it to happen way later, like in Book Six, or more likely for them to pull the Last Minute Hookup thing where they confess their love and finally kiss at the end of the last season. That trope always frustrates me, but it’s a good way of stretching out the romantic tension for as long as possible to keep fans interested, so I figured that’s what was going to happen, right? Well…

Yeah, I went into this season expecting a slow burn, but instead we got a freaking forest fire. Holy crap, I was not expecting them to hook up this early in the show. And it didn’t happen in the last episode, either; no, they shared their first kiss in episode four, smack in the middle of the season. And you know what? I’m all for that. The writers handled their relationship really well and it felt surprisingly believable and not rushed despite happening so soon. It hasn’t been confirmed how long Callum and Rayla have known each other for, but I’ve calculated that it’s been anywhere between 20-30 days since they first met, which is more than enough time to fall in love. Part of why it works is that the dynamic didn’t really change much. They already had a beautiful friendship, and the only thing that has changed between them is that there’s now more kissing. I wouldn’t have depicted their relationship any other way if I had made it canon. This does open up the question of where they’re going to go with it in future seasons, but as usual, I trust the writers not to screw it up. I may honestly dedicate a whole post to why Rayla and Callum’s relationship works, but we’ll see if I have time for that.

Other Stuff (incl. spoilers)

For the most part, the humor in this season is on point. With the exception of an oddly-placed fart joke in episode two, I found myself laughing at most of the scenes where I was supposed to laugh. Highlights include Soren putting stacking three pieces of bread to make a “bread sandwich,” Callum seeing a boomerang and finding it “oddly familiar” (hi, Sokka), and Nyx taking the dragang (Callum, Rayla, and Zym) past a magical forcefield protecting an oasis, saying, “Anyway, here’s the wonderwall.” I had to do a double take with that because I was laughing so hard. Though I think my personal favorite may be when Ibis laughs at Callum because “humans can’t do magic” and Callum does this.

Just, the look on his face. He’s so done and it’s hilarious.

One thing I was surprised by in this season was the sheer amount of violence. This one really does feel like an all-out war. Apparently, the violence was enough to get it rated TV 13 in some countries (though it’s still listed as TV Y-7 here) and honestly, I can see why. There’s an all-out battle scene in the last episode that could be compared to the climax of Return of the King. Everyone is fighting each other; even the Baker from Book One gets a few punches in there! Not only that, but there are a huge number of onscreen deaths in this season. As previously mentioned, we get to see the Sunfire Queen be Thanos’d. Prince Kasef gets a pretty spectacular death when Queen Aanya has a Big Damn Heroes moment and shoots an arrow through his head. Not to mention that we get to see Viren die not once, but twice! Even though Claudia resurrects him using dark magic, it’s still pretty great to see because he’s a turd. (No offense to Jason Simpson, though—love ya.)

By far the hardest death scene to watch, however, is the death of Avizandum, the Dragon King. In the flashbacks, we get to see how Harrow and Viren killed him, and, well… it’s really painful. The death, by way of petrification, is shown to be slow and agonizing, and Avizandum is shown tearing off his wings in a futile attempt to survive just to make it back to Zubeia. Even Harrow is mortified, with a look of “Oh god, what have I done?” on his face. In his last moments, Avizandum sheds a tear knowing that he will never be able to see his son grow up, and we as the audience are given a grim reminder that everyone… is a person. Even our enemies have families they care about. Avizandum may have been a gigantic, powerful dragon who hated humans, but at the end of the day he was still a dad who wanted to protect his son.

My One Complaint

Okay, so I’ve talked about everything I love about this season, and how it has significantly increased the show’s potential. With all that said, why can’t I give this season my full props? Well… I’ll be honest, it’s because of the pacing. Remember how I said this season rarely if ever lets off the brakes? Yeah, that’s both a blessing and a curse. There are a lot of people online who believe that Rayla and Callum’s relationship was rushed, and I somewhat agree with them, but only to the same end that everything in this season felt rushed. Nine episodes just isn’t enough time for each season. This has been a problem I’ve had with previous seasons, too, but here, it felt especially rushed because so much happened in this season that it felt like we couldn’t dedicate enough time to everything. I’m not saying that every season needs to be twenty episodes long like Avatar—especially since, with four more proposed seasons, we’re already supposed to be getting more episodes than Avatar if all goes according to plan—but 10-13 episodes per season would probably be beneficial for future ones, especially since future arcs of the show are overall going to be shorter (only two seasons each instead of three). Or hell, maybe make the episodes longer. Of course, if that’s my biggest gripe with this season, then we still have it pretty good, let’s be honest.

Where Do We Go from Here?

So, the question remains, where does the show go from here? There are supposed to be four more seasons, but the final episode of Book Three, titled “The Final Battle,” honestly feels like a series finale in a lot of ways: There’s a big epic climax, Rayla and Callum are together, Zym is reunited with his mom, and the elves and humans have formed an alliance, if only temporary. It all seems too easy, doesn’t it? My guess is that this was meant as a pseudo-series finale just in case Netflix doesn’t renew the show for a fourth season.

However, as I’ve rewatched the season, I noticed that they still leave a lot of loose ends. Most notably, Aaravos is seeming to metamorphize and grow outside of his mirror. Judging by how Aaravos really let loose in this series, I can’t wait to see more of him as a villain and find out about his backstory. Also, Rayla was ghosted—or banished—from her hometown after failing her mission in Book One. Will she ever be able to go home again? On a related note, what did happen to her parents? Are we to assume they were trapped in coins like Runaan (and speaking of which, will Runaan ever get out)? There are also other unresolved plot points, like Claudia’s path down the road of dark magic, Viren’s ex-wife, and Callum’s dad. The last one is especially interesting to me, since it would be cool to know if Callum is secretly half-elf, which is why he knows how to do primal magic. Oh, and my question from last season about whether Harrow’s soul is in Pip’s body still remains. So it seems like they left enough open-ended so that they could continue with a new season.

I do hope to see how Rayla and Callum’s relationship develops in the future, though that may just be the shipper in me talking. But in all seriousness, this does open up some potential. As far as we know, Rayla and Callum are the first human/elf couple, so how is that received? Will they be judged by others? Will certain problems arise from this? I hope the upcoming seasons explore this and don’t just pull the usual romance clichés, though the writers have been pretty good at avoiding those so far.

I also have to wonder: When interviewed, the creators of The Dragon Prince said that there would be a time skip between Book Three and Book Four, since each of them is part of a separate story arc. How much of a time skip will it be? I can’t imagine that it will be over a year, but if it is, I hope they don’t do one of those things where since the main cast is too old now, they replace all the main characters with new ones and expect the audience to get invested in them. I highly doubt they will do that, though. It would be too jarring.

Conclusion

If you have been sleeping on The Dragon Prince, I highly urge you to check it out. Book Three is everything I had hoped the first two seasons would be, and more. With fantastic animation, likable characters that go through unique development, and a downright beautiful score (seriously, major props to Frederik Wiedmann), it wonderfully wraps up the first major arc of this series. I hope Netflix renews the show for all seven seasons, because this one has left me wanting more.

~Spaceman

[awed-frog]

in which caesar doesn’t do anything much and all the women are named julia

[Hi, this is me stanning Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar. I studied Classics, but not this period, so all I can contribute here are squeals of delight, a few mistakes and the occasional witty comment. If you’d like to know more, please buy the book - it’s really good and a fun read.]

PART 2

The thing is - there’s a lot of boring relevant political stuff going on in this chapter, but I’m mostly fascinated by the glimpses we get into the world of Roman women. 

As I said, this is not really my area, so I know random, unconnected facts about how life was like for them; also it doesn’t make much sense to talk about ‘Roman women’, because, as a reminder, ‘Rome’ stretches from the 14th century BC to the 14th century AD, came to include dozens of very different regions, and obviously was home to an incredibly diverse population. And if we’re talking about the late Republican / imperial aristocracy, there’s a sharp divide anyway: on the one hand, the ‘ideal woman’ is the same old model we’re all used to and heard about (silent, obedient, virtuous, chaste, a perfect mother and so on), but on the other, Roman noblewomen had a lot more freedom than, say, their Greek counterparts, so there was usually some political scheming going on - something that in Greece was reserved to a handful of very well-placed courtesans. 

(In this sense, think about the contrast between Lucretia, the mythological wife of Collatinus, whose fridging created the Republic, and Agrippina, mother of Nero, empress and all-round badass bitch.)

Anyway, this chapter made me think about women because it starts with Caesar being born and getting his name - it’s sort of an urban legend, btw, that every single Roman had three names: that was just for the Moste Noblest - and how Goldsworthy casually mentions that, unlike men, women of noble birth would just take their family surname as first name. In Caesar’s family, for instance, all the women were named Julia.

(As a reminder: his given name was Caius, then ‘Julius’ identified the tribe, and finally ‘Caesar’ was a nickname that was possibly given to his grandfather for something elephant-related. 

People whose grandfathers did not do elephant-related stuff generally never enjoyed the prestige of a funny nickname passed down through the generations.)

So it’s bad enough that twins might be named ‘Peter and Not-Peter’ or ‘Peter and Twin’, but imagine going to the park with your buggy and meeting your old friend Oldest She-Jones (daughter of Ferdinand Jones), now married to George David Taylor, and her five kids - Louis David Taylor, She-Taylor, She-Taylor the Second, She-Taylor the Third and She-Taylor Born on Christmas. So damn cute, and also the reason why the Romans never developed smartphones or social media - how the hell are you supposed to find someone on Vultocodex when every single cousin and aunt has the exact same name?

Poor management, that is.

But anyway - as I said, there’s a dissonance here because women being treated like garbage (like, not given normal names and married off at fourteen) also led to the very peculiar phenomenon: generations of (male) politicians and VIPs being raised by very forceful, strong, and ambitious (widowed) mothers. Because if you count old age, wars, trampolining injuries (let’s be honest, men have always been obsessed with attempting dangerous stunts just for the fun of it) and the general risks of Roman politics, it was very usual for a noble kid to not even remember his father at all.

(Nero is a good example of how weird and all-consuming this boy-mother relationship could become - there’s entire books about it, but I’d point 16-and-over readers to Suetonius’ Life of Nero for details.

Keep in mind 95% of it is propaganda because Suetonius hated Nero, but still. HBO-worthy stuff in there.)

All this to say - we know that Caesar had a very close relationship with his mom (named ‘Aurelia’ because - you guessed it - she came from the Aurelii family), who was a near perfect figure of virtue, intelligence, beauty and common sense. Very powerful in her own right, Aurelia raised Caesar basically on her own, because her (much older) husband was either away at war or dead for most of their marriage.

Aside from drinking in Aurelia’s wisdom, Caesar’s education also included the normal lessons noble Roman boys were required to learn: self-worth, narcissism, delusional manias, rhetoric, martial arts, horse-riding, and writing really bad fanfiction based on Greek myths.

And now for the MEANWHILE part.

(I have no idea why this gif was tagged ‘meanwhile’, but I’m not enough of an idiot to let it go to waste, so.)

Meanwhile, all sort of messes were going on.

As I’m sure you remember, at some point the consul was Marius - Caesar’s uncle and a military genius, but not much of a politician. His negotiation tactic of choice was secretly inviting groups of unconnected people to his house on the same night, serving them dinner in two separate rooms so they wouldn’t see one another and try to work out some kind of agreement between them. Whenever a new point came up, Marius would say he had diarrhoea, pretend to run to the bathroom and instead sit down with the second group and see what they thought about the first group’s proposal.

(Isn’t ancient Rome magnificent?)

A big problem Marius had to deal with was how to grant citizenship to the allied tribes in Italy without pissing off current citizens. Basically no one wanted these other guys to be given new rights, but since they supplied more than half the soldiers of the Roman army and got nothing in return, their patience was running a bit thin. At some point, Roman bureaucrats started to erase foreign-born citizens from their lists claiming they were not actual citizens (something so openly dishonest NO OTHER GOVERNMENT would EVER attempt it again), and next yet another tribune working on a citizenship reform was stabbed to death in the street. 

So the allies went to war. 

(This war, confusingly, is known as the Social War, because ‘socius’ means ‘ally’ in Latin.)

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. Most of the allied communities had been part of the Roman republic for I don’t want to check but let’s say decades, they lived side by side with Roman families and fought in the same wars, so it was more of a civil war than anything else. Some tribes chose to remain faithful to Rome, others didn’t. Lots of people died.

Caesar was too young to be a soldier, but this was Cicero’s first taste of war (bet you never thought of that weaselly weasel as a soldier, uh? appearances can be deceiving, folks!). Marius was also involved, but since he was old as shit and had famously weak and leaky guts (hahahhaha), he mostly stayed out of active combat, which wasn’t all that normal for a Roman general. In the end, the whole of Italy, down to defeated tribes, cows, dogs and random patches of mossy rocks, was granted citizenship and everyone went home. Their votes, however, were inserted in the system in such a way that they didn’t count much. 

On the whole, the one winner of this war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the military commanders, who became a consul soon after.

Another war, because this is Rome and Romans were dicks, but! this one was in the East, which means every single soldier would get super rich and also! wars in the East were considered easy because *insert racist trope here* and! Sulla had been promised that, as the big winner of the Social War, he could go there with his legions and basically enjoy this Disneyland of golden cups and ultraviolence but! at the last moment, Marius, who never liked Sulla much, managed to snatch the commandership from him, which! was completely legal but also *insert outraged emoji* and wait for it! instead of going gentle into the good night, Sulla made a fiery speech to his soldiers all like GUESS WHAT FOLKS WE’RE STUCK HERE SCRATCHING OUR TESTICULI AND THOSE IDIOTS FROM THE 25TH ARE TAKING YOUR GOLD AND YOUR UNWILLING WOMEN and! Sulla’s entire army marched! on! the! city! of! Rome!

It was the first time a Roman army had ever invaded Rome. Nobody was expecting it, and people panicked. Sulla’s men won easily, burned down some buildings, killed some people, generally had a great time; and then Sulla announced a bounty for anyone who’d disembowel his political enemies (including Marius) because he didn’t have time to go to Braavos and learn how to do it himself (remember, he still had his war waiting for him in the East).

(This turned out to be a success, btw. One guy was even killed by his slave - Sulla gave him the promised reward, then shoved him off a mountain because duh, slave and “When I said ‘anyone’, I meant people, not IKEA furniture” and “Honestly”.)

As nobody could have imagined and/or predicted, as soon as Sulla left for Greece Weak Guts Marius came back with an army and took back the city, beheading his way to the Senate and leaving a trail of blood wherever he passed. As soon as he got there, however, he dropped dead - heart attack, trampolining, diarrhoea, who can tell - and the city was taken over by his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

(Man, what a ride.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know what Caesar was doing during this time.

Personally, I like to imagine him in Rome - a well-dressed, grey-eyed 15-year-old, freshly orphaned, horrified and exhilarated by the violence exploding all around him - I see him running down the streets, stopping to watch the corpses float in the dark waters of the Tiber, daring his friends to go and touch the severed heads nailed to the doors of the Senate; recognizing many of those heads as friends and colleagues of his father and uncle (passing a hesitant finger on the cold flesh, remembering how they’d once laughed and frowned and spoken about boring matters from the dais). 

The truth is, Caesar was just a kid. He was supposed to learn about the Republic, and his own role in making it great, by watching his elders. 

God knows what he actually learned, and what he thought, as he was passing through Rome’s paved streets, now shimmering with blood. 

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[theculturedmarxist]

[Reminder that cops are all scum.]

By Sunil Dutta

Sunil Dutta, Ph.D., is a 17-year-veteran police officer in Los Angeles. His book, “Blood Lines: the Imperial Roots of Terrorism in South Asia,” will be released in February, 2015. These are his personal opinions.

August 19, 2014 at 6:00 AM EDT

A teenager is fatally shot by a police officer; the police are accused of being bloodthirsty, trigger-happy murderers; riots erupt. This, we are led to believe, is the way of things in America.

It is also a terrible calumny; cops are not murderers. No officer goes out in the field wishing to shoot anyone, armed or unarmed. And while they’re unlikely to defend it quite as loudly during a time of national angst like this one, people who work in law enforcement know they are legally vested with the authority to detain suspects — an authority that must sometimes be enforced. Regardless of what happened with Mike Brown, in the overwhelming majority of cases it is not the cops, but the people they stop, who can prevent detentions from turning into tragedies.

Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority. In the vast majority of such encounters, I was able to peacefully resolve the situation without using force. Cops deploy their training and their intuition creatively, and I wielded every trick in my arsenal, including verbal judo, humor, warnings and ostentatious displays of the lethal (and nonlethal) hardware resting in my duty belt. One time, for instance, my partner and I faced a belligerent man who had doused his car with gallons of gas and was about to create a firebomb at a busy mall filled with holiday shoppers. The potential for serious harm to the bystanders would have justified deadly force. Instead, I distracted him with a hook about his family and loved ones, and he disengaged without hurting anyone. Every day cops show similar restraint and resolve incidents that could easily end up in serious injuries or worse.

Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that’s when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it’s less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public’s, safety.

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

I know it is scary for people to be stopped by cops. I also understand the anger and frustration if people believe they have been stopped unjustly or without a reason. I am aware that corrupt and bully cops exist. When it comes to police misconduct, I side with the ACLU: Having worked as an internal affairs investigator, I know that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior; sometimes they behave like criminals themselves. I also believe every cop should use a body camera to record interactions with the community at all times. Every police car should have a video recorder. (This will prevent a situation like Mike Brown’s shooting, about which conflicting and self-serving statements allow people to believe what they want.) And you don’t have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there’s no warrant (though a pat-down is still allowed if there is cause for suspicion). Always ask the officer whether you are under detention or are free to leave. Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go. Finally, cops are legally prohibited from using excessive force: The moment a suspect submits and stops resisting, the officers must cease use of force.

But if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment. Worse, initiating a physical confrontation is a sure recipe for getting hurt. Police are legally permitted to use deadly force when they assess a serious threat to their or someone else’s life. Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you. We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don’t challenge a cop during a stop.

An average person cannot comprehend the risks and has no true understanding of a cop’s job. Hollywood and television stereotypes of the police are cartoons in which fearless super cops singlehandedly defeat dozens of thugs, shooting guns out of their hands. Real life is different. An average cop is always concerned with his or her safety and tries to control every encounter. That is how we are trained. While most citizens are courteous and law abiding, the subset of people we generally interact with everyday are not the genteel types. You don’t know what is in my mind when I stop you. Did I just get a radio call of a shooting moments ago? Am I looking for a murderer or an armed fugitive? For you, this might be a “simple” traffic stop, for me each traffic stop is a potentially dangerous encounter. Show some empathy for an officer’s safety concerns. Don’t make our job more difficult than it already is.

Community members deserve courtesy, respect and professionalism from their officers. Every person stopped by a cop should feel safe instead of feeling that their wellbeing is in jeopardy. Shouldn’t the community members extend the same courtesy to their officers and project that the officer’s safety is not threatened by their actions?

[hillnerd]

FIC- a radical brother

The night Sirius decides to run away as a teen, from Regulus's perspective.

rated pg-13 for language    Words: 2336   A03

Their yelling had been going on for weeks, but this was the loudest he had ever heard it. Usually he just closed his door, turned up the wireless, and tried to ignore it; but this time, his curiosity got the better of him. He opened his door and crept up to the banister. From his landing he could see the shadows of his family displayed across the wall, illuminated by the fireplace.

"-and it makes me sick!" he heard Sirius yell.

Father muttered something Regulus couldn't hear. The conversation continued on for a while, and Regulus couldn't hear anything but the occasional "What?" or "No!" thrown in by Sirius. Regulus was not sure if he should risk being seen by climbing down the stairs to listen, but when he saw a small chair crash out of the den into the hallway, he had to know what was happening. He went down two flights, and from there he could hear Sirius yell:

"You're insane, the lot of you! You can't do this! My whole life is at Hogwarts!"

"We can and we will," said Father. He sounded angry. Angrier than Regulus had ever heard before.

"You're always with those blood-traitors and mudbloods. They keep planting immoral thoughts in your mind! They are nothing but filth, and we can not let our eldest son sully the Black name by associating with such fanatics anymore." Mum started crying. "You used to be such a good boy, and now you've become one of those mudblood loving radicals."

"They are not radicals."

"Oh yes they are! They are trying to upset our traditions, and take over our ministry, and destroy everything we pure Wizards and Witches hold dear! It's a war, Sirius, and you are supporting a sect of people that is brainwashing you! They are filth that need to be eradicated!"

"Can you actually hear yourself?"

"These radicals-"

"They're not radicals, you are!” Sirius snarled. “You just keep going on and on about 'purity' this and 'filth' that, but you're just scared because you know those muggleborns and half-bloods are going to be the future. The world is changing and they're part of it. Our 'pure blood’ is all going to be worth nothing and should be! They're here to stay, no matter what you and your lot fucking do!"

"You forget your place, Sirius," Father growled. "We're sending you to Durmstrang! That's all there is to it."

"Fat fucking chance!"

"That language he's using is just more of their filth, Orion!" his mother yelled. "You never spoke like that until you met those muggle-loving heathens! My eldest son-"

"I AM ONE OF THOSE HEATHENS!" Sirius bellowed. "I love muggles! Hell, I might even go bang one tonight so I can have little mudblood progeny to bring you on your birthday. You like that, Mum?"

A sudden 'smack' echoed in the hall. Regulus stifled his gasp as best he could. He heard Mum start crying in great heaving sobs.

"I just w-want my little boy back," she said in between breaths. She must have gone to touch Sirius, because he jerked away into the hallway.

"Don't you touch me. I'm fucking done," Sirius growled in a menacing way, before he turned and started walking up the stairs.

Regulus quickly ran back to his room, hoping no one noticed him eavesdropping. He closed his door, holding the knob so it wouldn't click. He settled down with his back to his door. None of this felt like his family.

Why couldn't Sirius just learn to shut his mouth and stop flying off the handle. Was he happy now? His mother was crying, his father was the angriest he had ever heard, and they were even threatening to send him away, all because of that mouth of his. No wonder he was put in Gryffindor. No Slytherin would be dumb enough to proudly spout off the way Sirius did. He was probably laughing to himself about how he had 'shown them!' What an idiot.

Regulus heard Sirius's footsteps as they reached the landing. Usually after one of their fights he would storm up the stairs, stomping his feet to emphasize how mad he was, and then he would slam his door so hard that the windows in Regulus's room would rattle. This time his footsteps were barely audible, and the door was shut with a small thud.

Regulus went to his desk to pick up his wand and cast a quick spell to overhear Sirius through the wall. He was not muttering to himself, or throwing things, or yelling. Regulus was not sure, but it sounded like Sirius was crying. It felt indecent to listen to his brother cry. He had not seen his brother cry more than a few times and all those times had all been well before Hogwarts or due to severe injury.

He was not sure what to do. Should he leave Sirius alone? Go in there and talk to him? Neither felt very comfortable. It was not like he and Sirius were particularly close.

When they were very young they only had each other for playmates. Well, he had Kreacher as well, but Sirius never much liked the elf so did not deign to play with him. When Kreacher was unavailable, and they were small boys, they would play with each other all the time. His brother would always stick up for him. When their cousin Bella would try to scare him, Sirius was there to defend him- though he usually would end up scaring Regulus too, it never seemed as cruel natured as Bella's taunts.

He remembered how Sirius would show his dumb bravery every time they would get in to trouble. One time Regulus bounced a ball onto the hearth and knocked over a priceless vase. Sirius wouldn't let him get in to trouble, and Sirius was the one who received a paddling, and was sent to bed without supper. Sirius never did rat out Regulus.

Ever since Sirius had gone to Hogwarts, things had begun to change. He had new friends. They were all radicals, who put no stock in being pure-blooded, which was absolute rubbish, as all of them except Lupin were purebloods. They had all the privilege of growing up pureblood, but pretended it didn't matter- the hypocrites. Sirius did not have time for his brother any more. They had barely talked the last year or so. And every time Sirius was home, it seemed all he did was fight with Mum, lately even involving their Father.

He had to admit, Sirius still occasionally looked out for him. When no one was about, a rare feat indeed for the popular Gryffindor, he would deign to talk to Regulus. It was never about anything of consequence, but it felt nice being acknowledged by his older brother. If only he was in Slytherin, then none of this would have happened.

"Come on, James! Are you there? Hello, hello? Dammit!" came Sirius's voice through the wall.

Perhaps his brother had a psychotic break and was talking to himself, but Regulus doubted it. What was he up to? Was James outside on a broom or something? How could Sirius have contacted him so quickly?

His curiosity thoroughly piqued, and his unwelcome sympathy for his brother becoming overwhelming, Regulus decided to tickle two dragons with one spell and see just what his brother was up to.

He gave a perfunctory knock before opening the door. Sirius was on his bed and quickly hid something shiny under a pillow, while wiping at his face with his other hand. His back was to the door.

His room was every bit as gaudy and unappealing as it always had been, with glaring Gryffindor colors, posters of scantily clad Muggle women on the walls, and pictures of Potter and his lot on the wall. Regulus hovered on the other side of the bed, not really wanting to see the tear stained face of his brother.

"What are you doing in here?"

Sirius sounded thoroughly defeated.

"Checking on you," Regulus said stiffly.

"Yeah right. More like satisfying your curiosity. 'What's that crazy muggle-loving brother of mine up to?'" he said with a wet inhale through his nose.

Regulus could never have been a Gryffindor. They were far too keen to say the things you're never meant to say. That, and their colors were nothing short of decadent.

"I don't think Mum or Dad would ever really send you to Durmstrang, if that's what is upsetting you."

"They've already put down a deposit and set up a port key for August, Reg," Sirius said with a snort.

"If you were to just take down this Muggle garbage and shut it for a few weeks, maybe they'd reconsider, then," said Regulus impatiently.

He had never known anyone more stubborn and idiotic than his brother. They had been threatening him with being shipped off to Durmstrang for years, now, and all he had to do was shut his trap and stop baiting them.

"Honestly, Sirius, I know you enjoy rebelling, but this is just out of hand. What's the purpose of all this? You keep antagonizing Mother and Father, and then seem genuinely surprised when they lash back."

Sirius let out a bark of a laugh.

"You honestly don't know shit. You don't get it at all. They support that Voldemort freak, throw benefits for 'the pureblood cause' and are just a bunch of racists, really. How can that not get you even slightly galled, Reg."

"I support the-"

"Pureblood cause. You're completely brainwashed by them, and don't even know it."

"Just because I agree with them doesn't mean I'm brainwashed. I've read plenty of articles from both sides of the argument. I came to this decision on my own."

"Sure you did," said Sirius with a derisive laugh.

"Stop laughing at me! That's your problem. You think everything is just one big joke. Putting up those posters and strutting around like you're proud of being a Gryffindor. It hurts Mum every time you start in with that crap, and you don't even care." Regulus marched up to Sirius and spun him around. He let out a small gasp when he saw Sirius's face. There was a bruise forming on it, and in the center of the bruise was a deep scratch bleeding down the side of his cheek.

"What?" asked Sirius, before going to the mirror. And inspecting his face, wincing as he gently poked his cheek bone. "Shit!"

"Does that hurt?"

"Of course it hurts, you sod," Sirius bit out.

"Maybe I can help."

"Fuck off, Reg" said Sirius, pushing past him and grabbing his school trunk. He started opening drawers and stuffing belongings into it.

"Don't you think it's a little early to pack for Durmstrang? Look, if you just try, I bet you can fool them into thinking you've changed your ways. I can help you."

"I'm not a coward!" Sirius growled nonsensically, slamming the door to his dresser.

"It's not cowardly to make sure you get to stay at Hogwarts no matter how. That's just smart."

"Only a Slytherin needs to make those kind of distinctions... Look, I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not, Reg. I'm through with all of this shit. I'm leaving."

"Don't be daft," Regulus said with an incredulous laugh. Sirius just looked at him with the most somber expression he'd ever seen on his brother's face. A reeling panic settled in his stomach. "You can't mean that. You're just sixteen! You don't have any place to go."

"I'll find a place."

"With what money?"

"I'll get a job."

"Where?"

"I don't know, ok?" said Sirius, his eyes starting to get watery again. "But I can't be around these people any more."

Regulus took a step back, holding his breath. Sirius might as well have cursed him. He felt a hollow grow within in his chest.

“I’m one of ‘these people’ you’re leaving,” said Regulus, his voice a studied calm.

Sirius looked at the floor and gave a shrug.

They stood in front of each other, neither able to find the words to say to each other. Regulus suddenly felt his throat grow tight, and knew if he stayed much longer he might put on an indecorous display of emotions.

“Then… Then go… Stay with Potter or whoever… I don’t care,” Regulus let out, before turning away and slamming the door behind him. He went to his room and curled into himself, his back against the door for the second time that evening.

His eyes burned with tears, but he wiped at his face and stubbornly refused to let them fall of their own accord. If Sirius cared so little about him, he would be damned if he’d care about his brother. He slowly got up, purposefully comported himself to calmness, changed his clothes and went to bed.

The next morning he pointedly avoided Sirius’s bedroom. He had no desire to talk to his brother right now. Maybe they could discuss all this nonsense later. Perhaps he needed a different tactic to change Sirius’s mind, or maybe he could discuss it with their parents and help them see that Hogwarts really was the best place for Sirius to finish his education.

He went downstairs and could smell smoke in the air. He looked around for its source, then saw it wafting from the family tapestry. Where Sirius’s name had once shone alongside his own, there was now a smoldering hole.

Feeling a real of panic, Regulus immediately ran up the stairs, willing it not to be true. Sirius would be there, sleeping in as always, they would have a row about Reg invading his room, and it would all go back to how it always was.

He didn’t bother knocking, before opening Sirius’s door. He hoped to hear brother’s protest, but heard nothing at all. The room was silent. The drawers were empty. The closet was empty. Sirius’s trunk was gone.

His brother was gone, and he’d never be back again.

A/N- If you liked it, let me know :)

[hufflly-puffs]

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 6: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

I really wonder why the Order thinks Voldemort is after a weapon. Is it simply one of Dumbledore’s assumptions, that usually turn out to be right? Is it the information Snape gathered? Does Voldemort himself refer to the prophecy as a weapon, because he thinks it will help him find out how to kill Harry? The whole weapon theory is such a false lead and I wonder where it has its origin.

Fred and George tell Harry that the joke shop is a mail order service so far, and that they put an advertisement in the Daily Prophet, which their mother won’t see as she stopped reading the Prophet. But you would think others still read it, even members of the Order, to keep in touch with what they write, and might tell or ask Molly about it. It is not a very fool-proof plan.

So, let’s talk about Kreacher. It’s been said that he has lived alone in the house for ten years now, ever since Mrs Black died. The only remaining member of his family, Sirius, had been in prison, and so he took instead orders of the portrait of Mrs Black. Hermione is probably right in her assumption that Kreacher thinks they can’t hear what insults he mutters. They can’t set him free because he knows too much about the Order. And his loyalty is clearly to Mrs Black and not Sirius, so he probably would have no problems telling their secrets. (Dobby however never told anyone about the Malfoys’s secrets, and I think it is because part of him is still afraid of his old master.) Kreacher’s case is quite interesting because it is so unique. After Mrs Black’s death he legally belonged to Sirius, but obviously Sirius could not use him as long as he was prison and so Kreacher was forced to stay in Grimmauld Place, waiting for either Sirius’s return or his death. And all this time alone made him mad. Only Hermione and Dumbledore seem to pity him, though Hermione’s suggestion to set him free would be too risky for obvious reasons. Dumbledore tells Sirius to be kind to Kreacher, because he is aware of the power a house-elf has and how Kreacher’s hate for Sirius can backfire (which we see at the end of the book). To Sirius though Kreacher represents everything he hated about his former home and his family, and as he is the only one left he places all his hate on Kreacher.

“‘Is it true? Is it Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, that’s the boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it –’” – Are house-elves political? Obviously they are not allowed to express their opinions but that doesn’t mean they don’t have ones. Dobby disagreed a great deal with his former master and even risked severe punishment in order to warn Harry. We know that Voldemort completely underestimates house-elves (and this will part of his down-fall), that he treats them as objects, and shows no real interest in them. Kreacher is loyal to his old masters, especially Mrs Black, who supported Voldemort and his ideology. But Kreacher, unknown to everyone, has his very own history with Voldemort. And in the end he will lead the house-elves of Hogwarts in the battle against Voldemort. So his question is probably genuine, as Voldemort is also responsible for the death of Regulus.

Harry knows Sirius for a little over a year but only now learns more about his family history because he never bothered before to ask. It is possible that Ron had at least heard about the Black family, as there aren’t many pureblood families left and it is always possible Hermione has read about them. His family and their reputation might also be the reason so many people likely believed Sirius to be a mass murderer (mostly Muggle victims on top of it), and even those who knew the full story about his assumingly betrayal of the Potters might have wondered if perhaps he had never been disloyal to his family in the first place. Harry of course immediately sees the similarities between him and Sirius; both forced to grow up in a family they hate, both found a new family through their best friends who took them in like their own. And Harry of course entertains the idea to live with Sirius again, because in his eyes everything is better than the Dursleys.

I always wonder about the relationship between Sirius and Regulus. Sirius calls him an idiot, but also says he was soft, and after his release of Azkaban Sirius had tried to find out more about his death. I do think that perhaps not everything was lost between them, that a part of Sirius did love Regulus and it hurt him to see what became of him. It always saddens me that Sirius never found out what Regulus did, that he played his part in defeating Voldemort.

“‘No, no, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having pure-bloods in charge. They weren’t alone, either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colours, who thought he had the right idea about things … they got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first.’” – I don’t know if it was actually said in this book or only the movie adaption that you just can’t divide the world into Death Eaters and Others. Because they are still people who are racist, who believe in purity and have a great dislike for everyone slightly non-human, characters like Fudge or Umbridge, who are not Death Eaters, but dangerous in their own right. The Death Eaters are the most extremist group, ready to kill and torture for their ideology, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of other wizards won’t share their ideas to some degree.

“‘No, he was murdered by Voldemort. Or on Voldemort’s orders, more likely; I doubt Regulus was ever important enough to be killed by Voldemort in person. From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out. Well, you don’t just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It’s a lifetime of service or death.’” – Do you see the massive parallel between Regulus and Draco? Both joining the Death Eaters on their own, both terrified by what they have to do, though obviously Regulus in the end gave his life to redeem himself. I always wonder about Draco and how different things could have been, how he perhaps at some point could have changed sides, could have interacted with Sirius and/or Tonks, members of his family who choose a different path. I always hope that after the war he got in contact with his cool aunt Andromeda though.

“‘The pure-blood families are all interrelated,’ said Sirius. ‘If you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry pure-bloods your choice is very limited; there are hardly any of us left.” – It is fair to assume that there is a great deal of incest between the Pureblood families. I think at some point it has been said that wizardkind would have died out if they hadn’t started to marry Muggles. Which is why the American Wizard Society, that has a law that forbids marriage between Muggles and Wizards, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“[…] a heavy locket that none of them could open;[…]” – Well, I wonder what that could be? I did re-read book 1-6 before the release of book 7 and I really didn’t notice this, so respect if you did.

You know when Mrs Weasley says she had ironed Harry’s best clothes I assumed it to be something formal, but we learn the next chapter it is just a T-Shirt and jeans, probably still Dudley’s old clothes, because Harry can’t seem to bother to buy himself some decent clothes.

[citizensaul]

Merrick Garland has come alive,finally

It seems evident that  AG Merrick Garland did not want to be perceived as acting politically towards Trump and his acolytes so he kept on gathering evidence of their wrongdoing. The Trump instigated Insurrection was more than wrongdoing it was Domestic Terrorism by White Supremacists,Neo Nazis and other Racist haters.All of that pales compared to Trump's stealing of Top Secret Intelligence which he had shipped to his private florida entity. Some of those documents are missing after the FBI raid on August 8 at Mar A Lago prompted by it's information of the theft. They found 40 binders marked ,Classified,highly Classified and Top Secret with the documents missing and the question is what did Trump do with them ? The CIA noted that since October 2021, dozens of their covert agents and assets on the ground have been ambushed and killed, is it coincidence that documents with the names of covert agents are part of the missing papers ? Trump has been a  Russian asset for many years cultivated over the years after he married Ivana. They found he could be easily manipulated by stroking his immense ego ,feeding him loads of Rubles and Ladies who ply their trade at night and trained by the KGB now FSB to turn on the cameras in the walls and ceiling as they go to work. Trump has been a loyal comrade for a long time. So good in fact Russia injected it's intelligence operation into our 2016 election to help get him elected as well as to defeat Hillary Clinton who as Secretary of State was a thorn in the side of Trump's handler/puppeteer,Vladimir PUTRID !

Garland has been under loads of pressure to bring Trump to justice so the process is now beginning as he has issued 40 subpoenas to those who worked with Trump to overturn Biden's victory with fake Electors in several so called battleground states. Trump should already be Charged and in the custody of the Justice department to await Trial where he can try to defend himself but he should not be Free since he is a flight risk with aircraft at his disposal to sneak him out to Welcome by Russia !  Trump is a Traitor like no other in the history of our country he held the title of POTUS and if found guilty must be sentenced to Life in ISOLATION to eventually Die alone and penniless !

[ellewoodsharvardvideoessay]

Depending on how Dutton handles this, I honestly hope this could be the beginning of the end of the coalition. maybe Dutton pulls an election victory out of his arse (and it’s a terrifying thought) but:

-The right faction is going right, towards the most racist immigration platform they can get, basically trying for one nation and Katter voters, while supporting interventionist economic policies with coal power. (???) the conservatives are basically throwing a fit at the right to intervene in the economy to support coal mining, when they were cool to let car manufacturing and /holden/ die??

- (Like if we were living a situation similar to what happened in thatcher England with mining being threatened and the right-wing of labor was doing this on behalf of mining unions, it would be big. that it’s coming from the right of the LNP is fucking insane. what the hell does their party stand for ideologically?)

-There are rumours that the moderates in the libs are threatening to quit and call a general election. do these guys like interventionist economic policy? do these guys like conservative social policy? what do they have in common with the right-wing faction of their own party? (Amanda Vanstone, of all people, gave a really good interview yesterday, saying that the same sex marriage vote should have told the conservatives how out of touch they are with the Australian people. I saw another MP saying that opposing SSM eroded their party base in NSW because the base is more moderate there.)

-Nationals MPs are considering sitting on the cross bench, because they think that Dutton is unelectable outside of QLD. (Which, like, what? Nationals MPs don’t want to move further right? Tf are the Nationals even doing now? Who do they represent, free market farmers with left leaning social policy or something??? What the fuck?)

- QLD just re-elected labor at the state level, amid speculation one nation was going to be highly successful. and one nation failed. so for the conservative faction to be taking on Dutton to win QLD at the cost of the south of the country, when this strategy just failed at the state level IN QUEENSLAND is bananas??? also, apparently there are 18 QLD MPs in federal parliament and only 10 of THEM voted for him

- More on the nationals. Is there any actual leadership coming from the guy they put in after Joyce?? I can’t even remember his name. Is that guy gonna keep the nationals in business while the liberals are doing this? Who is signing up to join the nationals with that guy as leader, and the larger coalition partner like this? with the trend of junior party MPs leaving to other parties, they’re probably a risk for that. Also, the nationals have been historically shit at actually delivering for rural areas, so?? what’s their future besides generational party loyalty in those areas, and, like, hating gay people or whatever (but Nationals MPs don’t want to side with Dutton bc they think it’s political suicide?). With other right wing parties springing up, what does their future look like? Why do the nationals want to follow the liberals, if the libs can’t get themselves elected?

- I've heard reporters asking, ‘If Turnbull decides his job is untenable, who would he put his vote behind?’ And the answer they’re saying is...Scott Morrison?? The treasurer who drove the big company tax cuts, and didn’t want to increase Newstart, and didn’t want same sex marriage, who looks like Turnbull lite, and doesn’t speak as well as him. This guy is their electoral saviour? This guy is not going to do better than Turnbull in the inner cities, and isn’t as popular in the conservative faction (because he helped Turnbull knife Abbott). Is he going to win over rural voters? Scomo?

- And Dutton is basically worse than Morrison at everything Morrison is good at, has less experience presenting himself favourably to the public, but he is also a worse speaker. And, see the point about QLD not electing one nation at the state election again. 

- And going back to the party itself. What does it stand for? And would voters back them instead of another party to get it? If they want hardline immigration, they can go for one nation. If they want rural infrastructure, they can go for Katter. If they want more economic support for poor people or the middle class, they can vote labor. If they want progressive social policy, they can go for the Greens. Why are all these groups in a party together? Why is it an advantage for them to work together when it destroys their ability to actually get policies off the ground? 

- And why is there an idea that they even can work together at all? Does a person like Frydenberg (a Jewish guy, who believes in climate change) want to spend three years in power under a Dutton government? Does he want to spend six years in opposition under a Dutton leadership? Why does he want to help Dutton succeed when he doesn’t personally agree with his agenda (as far as I can see)? Because of loyalty to the LNP? Are conservatives kindly going along with the moderates out of party loyalty? Like, the moderates got nothing when a moderate was in charge of the party. Where’s the incentive for the moderates to keep with the conservatives, when the conservatives won’t let them get what they want anyway? Even if a moderate waited in opposition for a shot at the leadership, or beat Dutton for the leadership now, who in the moderates wants to be the next future Malcom Turnbull? Who wants a life as PM where you’re fucked from the moment you take office?

- So you have the conservative faction who want interventionist economic policy (at least sometimes) and right wing social policy, and want to go further right. The Nationals who think this is unelectable outside of QLD (and it’s been recently unelectable IN QLD) and don’t want to run on it (so what the fuck are the Nats even there for?) And then moderates who (at their best) want free market policies, action on climate change, and progressive social policy? (And think that conservative social policy is unelectable and out of touch with their own base.) And the common ground they have is tax cuts to big companies??? (Which is not sitting well with voters, and has also been done, so it’s not like they can all just ask that they band together for a while until it happens.) What is keeping these people together? What do they even want from government at this point? Am I supposed to believe that they genuinely care about lowering power prices for Australians? Do they actually hate Shorten enough that they’re willing to overcome all of these differences to defeat him? I don’t think that they do.

-I know it’s a massive, massive, massive long shot. And it’s a lot of wishful thinking. But I do think that there is a teeny tiny chance that this could be the beginning of the end of the coalition. And I really hope that it happens. 

[lastcenturykindagirl]

All this stuff about Luke being a hero who chose not to become the thing he hated to rebel is great. But in context as an 80s action hero, where rampant, raging violence was the solution to all problems as long as the white hero was doing it.

The Empire deserved to be opposed with whatever force could be mustered. And framing Vader as “not the true villain” is fine, because he’s a powerful henchman, but he’s also a mass murderer several times over. Vader being stirred to see how he had thrown his life away at the end of it is not an act of moral courage, or redemptive. It’s Vader doing the very least. It’s Luke’s story.

The main thing is I don’t want fandom to take MOC characters (Finn in particular) and act like any time they use violence against the enemy they’re risking being Dark Sided, because that’s exactly the message this racist fandom will make. For instance, how they need to learn lessons in TLJ that seem to even roll back their characterization from TFA, and making them entirely reactive without explaining their motivations well.

Meanwhile, genocidal Kylo-Ren gets to blather about his feelings and motivations for a huge chunk of the film, where he’s clearly manipulative and evil, but the fandom goes out of the way to make him into another supposedly redemptive character like Vader.

Because he’s white.

Characters like Poe and Finn should get to be able to be seen defeating an Imperial power driven by supremacist views, and be seen as being right and having better ideas and morals, and as action heroes fighting right alongside Rey.

[casualarsonist]

Wolfenstein II, and the importance of tone.

B.J. Blaskowicz's pregnant lover, Anya, tears her burning shirt from her body as her grenades explode under the feet of the advancing Nazis. She straddles B.J's prone body and brandishes two machine guns aloft as blood showers her naked skin, and I roar with laughter. My girlfriend asks me what the f**k is happening. Hitler pisses into a bucket and vomits on the floor. B.J. rants against bourgeois pacifism in a drunken rage and passes out. And as the sword bites into his flesh, and his head falls into a pyre, only to be collected by a machine and reattached to a synthetic body, I rejoice at the moments wherein Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus has the balls to embrace the absolute madness of its setting and take everything up to 11. 

But something doesn't feel quite right. Its predecessor - The New Order - subverted and exceeded the expectations of everyone that awaited it; I don't think anyone could have imagined what Machine Games would do with the franchise rights of the world's first FPS. As a pitch, the idea of taking the inherently daft premise of a man fighting Nazi-zombie robots in a retro-futuristic 1960's and grounding it all in a real emotional place with characters that understand and communicate the gravity of their situation to one another and to the audience alike...well, it's mental. And yet it worked. It worked really, really well. The action was intense and bombastic, but when it was over and the game asked us to understand what was motivating these people to do what they were doing, the drama felt earned, and every enemy you defeated felt like a cathartic victory rather than an exercise in psychopathy. When a friendly character died, it hurt because you cared, and because the death felt like a genuine loss amongst all the well-written personalities. The New Order was dark and visceral and at times terrifying, but always a joy to play, and in the end, no matter which turn the story took, you were invested. 

So why does The New Colossus feel like such a mistake?

To be fair to the game, as I've already said, there were moments that I was literally rolling in my seat with laughter, and it is certainly at its best when it says 'fuck it' to the concept of restraint and goes mental. It is, at times, incredibly fun, and funny. The aforementioned scene in which an insane, addled, syphilitic Hitler pisses in a bucket whilst auditioning actors for a terrible, terrible film he has written is one of the best in the entire game, not just because it makes an absolute mockery of the long-feared icon of human evil, but also because it is rendered and animated so well that looking into his eyes is genuinely chilling for how lifelike it all appears. But moments like these are few and far between, and it's regrettably rare that, buried amongst long, long cutscenes that have nothing important to say, one feels like they are genuinely being surprised and entertained. 

I suppose it's all about on which end of the crazy scale you heap your content - balance is good, as is committing to one style and tone on either side, but to be indecisive, or to miscalculate and mistime and portion your moments improperly so as to leave your audience confused as to your intention can be fatal, and in the case of Wolfenstein 2, it very nearly is. Whereas The New Order balanced the silliness in its gunplay with sincerity and moments of genuine tenderness in its story, The New Colossus couples inappropriate moodiness and melodrama with the violent actions of its characters, and leaves them looking like hypocrites. After tearing through a gauntlet of soldiers leaving little but a hallway littered with bloody chunks of flesh, B.J. chooses to wax poetic about the loss of a friend's life and the loss of all her experiences with it, in turn completely ignoring the dozens of lives and thousands of experiences he just erased. The moment is timed so perfectly and the recitation of the lines so genuine that the juxtaposition almost feels intentional, as if the game wants you to scoff at his lack of self-awareness, and it might have been a nice subversive moment if this game’s immediate predecessor hadn’t pinned all its integrity on the fact that its characters and narrative were supposed to be relatable. Instead, B.J. comes off psychotic, annoying, and unlikeable, and the writers seem less like they’re in on the joke and more like they just don't know what their doing. 

Which is rather baffling, given that it's the exact same creative team behind the The New Order - the same two writers that created a masterpiece of action storytelling, and somehow married an impossibly absurd premise with a genuine, heartfelt narrative. They created a terrifying villain, complex and likeable sidekicks, and together with the ambitious and intense soundtrack crafted a world that lived and breathed despite exploring all manner of ridiculous scenarios (moonbase FTW). The New Colossus is this, but less well made. It repeats a lot of the same beats of its predecessor, and so they all feel forced, unearned, and inferior. It's as if the setting of Nazi-occupied America wasn't fertile-enough ground for the creative directors, so they needed to borrow directly from their previous game. They delve into B.J's childhood and fill his backstory with caricatures that overstate the point they're there to make, and yet at the same time expect us to invest in a depressing world that is directly at odds with the light-hearted insanity of the rest of the story, and I think moments like this come from a desire to leave the tone of their previous game behind in favour of something a bit more fun, while still feeling like they need to bridge the gap with some kind of drama. Unfortunately, they fail to find the balance, and the attempts at seriousness reek of try-hard melodrama and smash against the humour like two cars travelling opposite directions down a one-lane road.

I could be mistaken of course; perhaps I’m just too thick to ‘get it’ and they were trying to ironically deconstruct their own work, but the drama is so heavy, and heavy-handed, that I just can’t believe that this is the case, which is such a shame because there are all the makings of an amazing game under the hood - fantastic components have been assembled together in a confused and chaotic manner, leaving the follow-up to one of the greatest shooters ever made (and one of the most unexpected underdog releases) feeling like a victim of its own success. And this is exemplified in no better place that at in the ending of the game, which is in almost every way the antithesis of that of The New Order. 

A recap: in The New Order you must fight a super-robot implanted with the brain of one of your former comrades. After defeating it and ending the suffering of your friend, you’re attacked by the main villain - General Deathshead - as you fight amongst an increasingly unstable network of gas pipes and crumbling concrete. When you finish the desperate battle and kill Deathshead from within a conflagration of fire and flames, a short, poignant cutscene activates in which the game implies the end of one of the most important parts of the franchise. It’s a perfect example of why the game did best as a whole, offering the traditional trope of a boss fight with a new coat of paint, and then ending with a no-nonsense but impactful piece of genuine drama. 

So how does The New Colossus conduct itself? Well not only does it unravel the risk of the previous game’s ending within the first few seconds, but it ends by making the player’s last interaction with its Big Bad a single button-press that then triggers a five-minute-long cutscene in which the characters stand around and spout cliche ideological platitudes about America rising up. Then B.J. stares at the corpse of his enemy like a fucking nutcase, before getting down on his knees next to the wrecked carcass and proposing to his girlfriend, which would be funny if this wasn’t the same character we were supposed to be rallying behind and is now clearly insane. It’s anti-climactic, tonally unbalanced, and boring, and worse than all this is that it commits the cardinal sin of second acts in that it ends unsatisfyingly whilst promising a third installment that will be much more interesting. 

Fuck off. 

This could all have been avoided if the creative rudder of the production had steered it directly into the eye of the storm - the setting, its violence, and its cast of characters are all ripe for parody, so why the hell did they feel like they had to spend so much time exploring B.J’s tragic upbringing in which his racist, wife-beating dad makes him kill his own dog? What purpose does that serve in a story that opens with a wheelchair-bound protagonist machine-gunning Nazis in the face? It’s just madness. And in my opinion it ultimately undid a lot of the good will that The New Order worked so hard at creating. Even if the incoming third game commits completely to its craziness, we’re still stuck with this strange Frankenstein’s monster, and the fact that from about the half way mark I was just waiting for it to end is, for me, a nail in the coffin. It’s just...it’s such a shame. The New Colossus is a smooth, beautiful shooter, and also an trainwreck of mismatched tones, confused pacing, regurgitated story beats, and an unsatisfying ending. It tries to vary its gameplay and somehow ends up feeling more of a generic shooter than it’s predecessor - a game that actually set out to reboot the world’s first FPS. It has moments of absolute brilliance that it just fails to perpetuate because it doesn’t let them gather momentum, which leaves it feeling starkly weak specifically in the areas that The New Order excelled, and that makes it a much larger kick in the nuts to me than it ought to otherwise be.

Of course, if you’re not a whiny little baby like me, or are like a friend of mine who’d never played a Wolfenstein game in his life before this one, you might just enjoy it for what it is - a gorgeous, ambitious, and gratuitous FPS set in a strange and fun alternate history, but if you asked me to recommend it as a sequel to it’s fantastic predecessor, I just can’t do it. 

6.5/10

P.S. I think I’m going to remove the qualification titles of my ratings from this point onwards. I’m not 100% certain that I’m going to get rid of them forever, but between my poor attempts at thinking of ‘names’ for half-marked titles and the fact that I’m tied to classifying a 7/10 game as ‘good’ even though my subjective impression of the game might not agree with that, means that the more complex my feelings about a certain title, the harder it is to put a specific label on it. Wolfenstein II is a good example of this conundrum. I don’t think it’s objectively good at a lot of what it’s trying to do, and yet I don’t think it’s objectively ‘just okay’ across the board.   With this in mind, if you refer to my review scoring system you’ll get a better idea of what each ranking means, beyond what a single word can convey. You’ll see that Wolfenstein II gets a 6.5 because I think it is largely unsuccessful in the pursuit of its intentions regarding its narrative and tone for the reasons I’ve detailed above, and yet I can’t at all say that it offers a poor return-on-investment for the average gamer. Hell, you might think it’s an excellent game and disagree with me entirely - this is just my opinion, after all - but given that I will obviously weigh certain aspects of a work’s design more heavily than other aspects, I still think this is the best way to understand what each score means for me (and thus for you), and why I might have come any given conclusion.

[mrneighbourlove]

Snake who Smiles: Finale. Head of the Hydra

Baron Victor Von Zemalocke looked over the crowd of rioters that had gathered. At long last, his destiny was at hand. The Dragmires would pay for their insolence and barbaric nature in tormenting him. All the frustration and humiliation, they'd pay ten fold.

He took a deep breath and addressed the crowd.

"Faithful people of Hyrule, your liberation is at hand!"

The crowd cheered at his voice, weapons and torches raised.

"How long has this beautiful land been under attack by foreign demons? For the longest time Ganondorf and his Gerudo pillaged our lands? Their greed tore us down and made us rebuild our civilization time and time again. NO MORE!!!"

The crowd roared and roared, a wave of hatred rising.

"And now the Gerudo have brought the Lordeidians! Witches of terrible magic. They too selfishly brought a war. A war of darkness and insanity! How many of your family and friends were killed on the wedding day of the Bastard King and Queen!? TOO MANY!!!"

Zemalocke took a sword out and raised it high.

"Are you ready for the Hylian race to take its rightful place?!"

"YES!"

"Then we must FIGHT to defeat our oppressors! I promise you that freedom! We will rise from the ashes and I will lead you as King! Now we will march through the castle, annihilate all the puppets of the Gerudo and Lorliedian scum, and I will bring you the heads of Zarazu and Covarog himself!!!"

The crowd of angry hylian supporters cheered, along with a band of monsters Zemalocke paid off for extra muscle. This lot would prove most effective as his pawns and knights.

Zemalocke waved his sword and the explosives set off. "CHARGE!!!!"

~

"Covarog! Our children!"

"Are with my mother, you can't defend them right now. She's hiding in the hidden tunnels with them and Impa."

"Why are you taking me to the tower?! I need to be with them!"

"We can't move your wheelchair in the tunnels if you need to move! No one even knows where the bloody door is for the tower, just stay up here, and be quiet while I settle this."

Zarazu didn’t like it one damned bit, but she nodded in reluctant acceptance. “Be safe Covarog.”

The King gave his wife a kiss. “Always.”

~

Zizi saw the mob approaching from afar. She just could not run fast enough on her two legs. The Zemlja had called several of the Lorleidians to help their queen, as well as some of the townspeople. The soldiers were waiting for most of the mob at the gate. She could only hope her sister was somewhere safe. Surely Covarog had taken her to a place that was well hidden in the castle. He would not risk Zarazu's life when she could barely defend herself.

"I really hate to bother you in the same week, but I need you again Ve'nusa!" Zizi said in-between breaths for air. "I hope you're hungry!"

~

Malik waited in the main hall. The sounds of yelling and light combat could be heard behind the bared door. The High Commander looked back at the soldiers behind him. He wore the Golden Hybrid Iron Knuckle Armour his wife had given him, a terrifying symbol of power.  "Captain Tulilad, I want you and the men to stay behind me as second wave of defense. I shall stay here and take the brunt of the attack. Any stragglers that get past me I want to be taken down without any mercy or hesitation."

"Lord Malik, with all due respect, there's a ton of them and one of you." Captain Tulilad readied his sword. "You can't possibly hope to defeat them all."

Some soldiers inspected their weapons, praying to the gods to get through the day.

"We're at his side, we'll help him drive the mob back."

"I know, but some of these are civilians as well, we can't hurt them, can we?"

"They're on the edge of treason, of course we can use deadly force."

"Our first priority is to protect the king and queen, and the heirs."

Malik looked down at Tulilad through his visor. His stare was cold and final and his eyes still. "I might not be the undead monster that could tank blows and go head to head with the blows of demons anymore, but I am presently, more protected, more skilled, and more powerful than any man or woman here, even as I am now."

Malik's grip tightens on his battle axe. "And you will remember, Captain, who we face. The man responsible is the mastermind behind all the attacks on the Royal Family. Any those that follow him are traitors plain and simple. Any come through that door, man, woman or child, with their hatred and racist malice, you will kill . Now am I clear Captain?"

"... if you get hurt, then I'm not the one telling your wife. She scares me more than you do." Tulilad muttered under his breath as the troops opened the doors. There were so many in the mob. He could not comprehend how Zemalocke was able to get so many people on his side. Hyrule and its inhabitants thrived under Covarog's and Zarazu's rule. The economy was at its peak and poverty rates were lower than ever. There was no need to worry about hunger or sickness due to the new magic. New homes, buildings, ports, and roads were being built. Why was there still so much hate? Tulilad would never understand how such a simple thing such a race could result in such a primal aspect of fear. So he fought, slicing his way through any foe in his path.

Malik's eyes went cold and dead as he charged forward. With a wide swing of his axe, he removed several men from their torso's in a fountain of blood and carnage. Fighting against momentum and stress on his body he turned the direction of the weapon to cut down more men. He needed to change weapons. The axe was too bulky. Not suitable for so many opponents, and especially with a new body like this. With the snap of his finger in mid swing he changed from his axe to his great sword, cutting down a woman from her neck vertically through her torso.  The next movements he found himself fighting more signal threats, cutting them down one by one. Many were uncoordinated, but few had skill. Many blows harmlessly grazed off his armour, until finally a mercenary got close and hit the more vulnerable chainmail on Malik's hip. He grunted and took a defensive position. It was then he realized he was cut off from the rest of the men.

The rioters charged at him, and Malik went to work, fighting back, cutting down as quickly as he could each person that came close one or two at a time. What he didn't expect were a few creatures outside the angry Hylians fighting for Zemalocke. A Dinoflos tried to attack him with a bladed tail and an armoured Areoflos flew about making a swift strike to take Malik's head off. Perhaps they were paid. Maybe they missed Ganondorf's more tyrannical reign and felt cheated. Or maybe they were just stupid.

Malik ducked and rolled to the left, and with a quick parry, stabbed the Dinoflos through the chest. As he pulled out he was shot by a fire ball from behind by the Areoflos. Before he could strike back more rioters attacked him. Malik was getting sluggish in fighting so many. How many had he killed now. Seventy, eighty? He hated to admit it, but he was getting tired. He had not fought in a large scale battle since the last war, and back then his undead strength gave him unlimited stamina. How much more could he take?....

~

Asakonigei was still on the mends from giving birth, but was doing much better in the past couple of weeks. Revan was growing as the days passed by and was a happy baby as long as his stomach was full. However, the case with Zemalocke was one that kept her up at night. The baron seemed hell bent on making Zarazu suffer to torment the Dragmire family. She worried for her friend's sake as well as her family's. There was no proof yet according to her husband, but if he believed he was the culprit, then she’d believe too. What if his final intention was to drive all the Lorleidians out of Hyrule? Or worse, kill them?

Her answers arrived when she saw the mob outside of the castle door. Somehow, Zemalocke had rallied a force large enough to attack the palace. After ensuring her baby her safe along with Zelda and the Dragmire grandchildren in the tunnels, Asakonigei went back to look upon the betrayers. There was her husband and the guard, trying to hold off the mob from the castle doors. Malik was getting tired, his steps were faltering and his swings were getting chaotic. How long until sloppy? As strong as he was, he was now human and could tire more easily. She had to do something to help him.

Hurrying to her forge, Asakonigei dashed to the very back where all the metals available were stored. There were five towering figures covered with drapes. The Kovina knew it was a long shot, but it would have to do for now. Pulling off the covers, there stood knights. Perhaps her newest creations could help turn the tide of the battle.

~

Malik kept fighting as well as he could. So many tried to cut him down, but he kept pushing them back. Taking in his surroundings he saw that Zemalocke, for all his talk of a pure race, had hired quite the number of other species. Maybe he and his followers thought of them as slaves.

The worst came when the halls shook. Turning around he saw a very large and very angry Hinox rampage through. The large Cyclops roared and through a punch at Malik. If he wasn't so tired he would have rolled. Instead he summoned a shield to protect him and for his troubles was sent flying into a wall. The concrete broke along with a rib. Malik spat some blood, covering the inside of his helmet and rose to his feet as the Hinox stomped over to clobber him more.

"Damn Beast...."

Before the Hinox could land another blow, a blur of gray stood in front of Malik. It blocked the attack and then slammed its own fist into the cyclops. Four thunderous thuds struck the ground, causing the earth to crack. Each knight was different from the other in size and shape, not to mention their weapons were various as well. A sword, a mace, an axe, a scythe, and a halberd were in their clawed hands. It was a rather eerie feeling, seeing no eyes behind those holes in the helmet. With one swoop, the knight with the mace knocked back the mob a good distance to give the guards some time to catch their breath.

Asakonigei stood on the bridge's archway, up high from all the fighting, standing on solid stone. Her hands were spread out with strings of magic attached to the knights. These knights were her puppets and she intended to use them to her best ability. However, the only problem was, it took an immense amount of magic to be able to work them all at once.

"Love..." Asakonigei spoke as she poised her knights for the next wave. "I can't do this for long. It's really..." She grunted, trying to focus her magical energy. She should have trained more with the knights, but she never had the time. With the baby and all the work in the forge, it was so limited. "I'll need you to hurry..."

Malik nodded with gratitude and understanding. With having some breathing time for just a moment of relaxation he took a few breaths to gain his composure, then ran forward towards the Hinox. Channeling his energy he concentrated his magic and launched an energy spear into the eye of the Hinox. The monster roared with pain and stumbled about holding its eye. Malik wasted no time rushing forward and climbed up the Hinox, reaching his head. Summoning his Battle Axe, Malik ground his feet in and threw his arms down with all his might, roaring in ancient Gerudo.

"SLUUR!"

The axe split the skull of the mighty Hinox and with a sad moan it slowly fell onto its back. Malik slid down onto the monster's stomach and gripped the handle with both his hands, shaking the axe above his head in a display of victory and defiance. Some of the rioters grew scared and ran, a few into the jaws of a very hungry plant.

Ve'nusa was hungry and elated at having all this food. The plant seemed to grow in size with each traitor it consumed. Blood dripped down the fanged mouth while the tentacles kept the mob backing into the knights. Zizi hated having to use violence, but when it was against her family members, she would use whatever was necessary.

Asakonigei, on the other hand, was slicing as many intruders as she could. The knights moved as a formation unit, each making sure that the other had another open target. It was getting difficult to keep up such a fast pace. Still, she refused to let anyone touch her husband or the guards. Zizi seemed to be protected by the meat-eating plant of hers and those incredibly thick vines.

Malik looked around. Where was he? Where was Baron Zemalocke? A terrible feeling of dread filled the Commander. The Baron was not foolish to the details of the castle. If that snake could be anywhere, it would be hunting Zarazu. “Asa, I’m going after the Queen!”

Before she could reply he was already running off.

~

Zemalocke went through the hall with his closest guards. The mob would do its job, and more would rise to his aid once Zarazu was dead. Nearing the library he looked around at the book cases on the wall. One of the guards looked around carefully. "Sir, you sure this is it?"

"Yes fool. My son was very clear on what area he played with the bitches offspring."

Carefully sliding a finger along the books he pulled a red one down. A click popped and the shelf slid open. "Ah. There we are."

Walking down the secret hallway Zemalocke smirked upon seeing his final challenge. "Covarog. Fancy meeting you here."

"You won't go another step." Covarog growled at Zemalocke as he held his sword ready. "Whatever you hope to achieve will not work, Zemalocke. Hyrule is united under my rule, my wife's rule." The young king was ready to face whatever the guards had ready for him. Nothing was going to harm his beloved wife as long as he was breathing.

Zemalocke laughed coldly at Covarog. "Your kind brought death upon us. I will FREE the people under my rule. And I think the first thing I'll do is make sure every single Gerudo is wiped out for good. Along with those witches. Honestly if it was your brother I'd stay, but alas, you are nothing to me. Men, if you please." Zemalocke snapped his finger and his guards rushed at Covarog with agility and grace. One had a chain and blade, flipping in the air and throwing it at his head while the second rushed to cut his stomach open with a short blade.

Covarog managed to avoid the blades, however, these guards were dangerously quick. The chain caught on his sword while he managed to stop the other with his arm brace. He would have to get these guys out of the way before he could handle Zemalocke. Yet, the soldiers gave Zemalocke just enough room to sneak by Covarog. The king lunged for Zemalocke's foot but had to block a sword aimed at his head. His wife! He had to protect his wife. Kicking one of the guards in the face, he tumbled backwards down the steps with a loud crack.

Zemalocke simply walked by Covarog without a care in the world. "Goodbye Covarog. May Hell embrace you with open arms."

As he walked away another guard threw a bladed ball and chain at Covarog's kneecap.

The blade nicked Covarog's leg but still he kept fighting. He would not let Zemalocke hurt his wife!

Meanwhile, Zarazu was once again in her wheelchair. She was really beginning to loathe this stupid thing. Once it had served its purpose, she was honestly thinking about asking someone to set it on fire. It would be nice to watch it burn. While her legs would move a little, she still stumbled around like a klutz on them. Hearing noise on the stairs, she perked up.

"Covarog?"

Zemalocke’s foots steps echoed as he walked in. He took his final step at the top of the stairs. He looked at her with a gleeful smile. "Ah, Zarazu. So good to see you. Seems fate has lead me to you one last time."

Zarazu nearly shuddered at that creepy smile. Somehow, Zemalocke had gotten past her husband and she suddenly feared for his sake.

"If you hurt Covarog, I'll freeze you inside out!"

"Then how about we just skip the pretence and correct the term. I 'killed' Covarog." He looks at her furiously. "I don't appreciate the lengths you made me go over the years trying to put and end to you and your barbaric family."

"You're the plague in this society!" Zarazu spat at him venomously, knowing there was no possible way Zemalocke could ever hope to defeat her husband. "My family has done nothing to you! You're so stuck in the past traditions you cannot see how bright the future already is!"

"The future has a dark one that only I can prepare us for. That only MY rule will lead us away from. Honestly I'm glad that the poison hit you instead of its intended target. Maybe I'll keep your youngest son alive just for the sheer entertainment of seeing him grow retarded due to you giving birth to a poisoned rat." Zemalocke laughed cruelly at Zarazu.

"You will never touch my babies." Zarazu hissed at him. "Zahirog is alive and getting better. My twins are already showing signs of being great users of magic. Even if I am no longer on this earth, they have people to look after them. If you even dare to get near them, I'll guarantee you'll be ripped to shreds."

"No. They will die. I will spill their blood. But not before showing them the head of their mother. Show them what vile blood they came from."

Zemalocke draws his rapier. "Time to bleed Zarazu. And die."

If there was ever a time that Zarazu really hated being in a wheelchair, now was that time. She needed a weapon, something to try to hit him or stab him. Kanisa sure left a lot of books in this tower, but where was a damn knife when she needed one? At least there was a glass telescope for her to enjoy the stars during her pregnancy. Wait, that could work. Grabbing the telescope by the hilt, she held it as if she was going to swing a sword.

"You'll have to get through me first, you vile, filthy, two-headed son of a damn Dodongo!"

Zemalocke looked at her dead pan, then laughed hysterically, his accent really breaking loose. "I must say, you are making this far more enjoyable then I thought you would. Was annoyed when your sister failed to be raped, and the tree hugger's farms weren't all destroyed, but at least you've been entertaining.” He brought his hand to his mouth and chukled. “Ho, ho, ho. But oh no, you clearly have the range advantage now, what ever will I do?" Zemalocke keeps chuckling as he pulls a revolver on her and fires a round into her leg. Perhaps some pleasure first. Get one scream in.

The bullet stung horribly, making her leg ache. Yet, that was all she felt for now. Maybe it was not so bad since she could not feel such pain. At least that would give the adrenaline coursing through her system a bit more purpose. Biting her lip, she held back a pained groan. She had to move. With a deep breath, Zarazu managed to stand out of her wheelchair, wobbly leaning on the desk there for leverage. Her feet moved awkwardly as she still held onto the telescope. Well, now it was time for projectiles. Grabbing books as fast as she could, Zarazu mentally told herself she'd get Kanisa another copy later. She hurled them at the baron, doing anything to distract him in hopes she could reach the stairs.

Zemalocke manoeuvred around the books and gave the Queen a swipe across her arm. "Pathetic! This is what the Queen of Hyrule is capable of?" As she ran to the stairs he grabbed her by the hair and threw her back to the centre of the tower.

A yelp escaped her lips as Zemalocke tossed her to the floor. She hit the ground and reacted by pulling the rug underneath his feet, hard. Covarog would come, someone would come, she was NOT going to die by the hands of this maniac! As Zemalocke lost his balance, Zarazu kicked him in the knee, hoping to do some damage and then swung the telescope at his midsection.

Zemalocke grunted in pain at the kick to his knee. Grabbing the telescope he snarled at her. "You DARE lay a fibre of your filth against me?!" He threw the telescope to the side and smacked her to the floor. "Enough of this. First you, then the children you have hidden in those underground tunnels."

"You won't get my children!" Zarazu shot her hand forth and grasped his bare ankle to... what?! The shock was apparent on her face. Her magic... wasn't working?!

Zemalocke smiled like a mad dog seeing her magic not work. The medallion around his neck worked!!! "Foolish witch. Your powers have no effect on me! Superior Hylian Intelligence prepared me." He drives his sword through her palm, and grinds it around. “HAHAHA YOU’VE LOST!!!”

~

Covarog paced himself as two of Zemalocke’s goons prepared to strike. The King parried a few strike then threw a fireball of dark magic at one of them. They kept dodging about with incredible flexibility.

The King was getting tired. One of them lit a fire arrow and prepared to strike, when Ralnor drove his sword through the man’s heart. “No one gets to rough my brothers dashing face.”

Malik came running through and slammed his fist across the last guards head, caving in a part of his skull. He didn’t even stop, gaining a clear lead on the brothers. “Come on!”

Ralnor nodded to his brother, and when they heard Zarazu’s scream of pain, they knew time was running out.

~

Zarazu screamed as the sword pierced her hand. She gritted her teeth and yanked her hand away, the middle and index finger ripped apart from her action. Magic or not, she still had to fight. Scuttling backwards, Zarazu yanked a sharp letter opener from the desk.

"Coward!" She snapped at him. "Using dirty tricks!"

"Alas. Words. Words are all you have." Zemalocke smiles gleefully and draws his gun at her head. "Any last of them?"

"Yeah... you should have never called Malik a filthy undead right to his face when he used to be that way. He really hates it when someone does that."

Zemalocke didn’t catch on right away until Malik threw an energy spear directly at Zemalocke's gun shattering it. Another immediately in range at his head. The magic broke apart when it got too close. The Darknut Commander immediately rammed his blade at Zemalocke.

They each spoke in union as they clashed. "You bastard! How DARE you!!!"

Zarazu made sure to get out of Malik's way. There was no much she could do in this state without magic. Seeing that Zemalocke had some kind of force blocking her use of it in close range, there was no much she could do. Eyes watering, the queen wrapped her bloodied hand in a strip from her dress, securing it tightly. There had to be a way to get out of this mess.

"Zarazu! I'm coming!" Covarog's voice rang from the stairs.

Zemalocke kept his footwork light, dancing around Malik. Malik had taken off his helmet for this one occasion. He wanted Zemalocke to see the man who killed him, to look into the eyes of his superior.

"You tried to wipe my family out!"

"They deserved to be with the devil!"

Malik made quick motions, parrying back and forth with Zemalocke. He had the power, but the Baron had the speed. Zemalocke spun and cut Malik's cheek. "Fool, you can't win!" Drawing a second rapier he charged Malik. The duel bladed style was a fighting technique Malik was uncustomed against. He had to take on more hits. If he dodged, Zemalocke could go after Zarazu.

The way Zemalocke moved allowed the necklace dangling around his neck to come into view. Gasping, Zarazu knew immediately where she had seen a description of such an item. That was what limited her magic. The queen shouted, "The medallion! Malik, crush the medallion!!!"

Zemalocke snarled and kept fighting. "You're kind is over!"

Malik held his blade locked with Zemalocke's. At the stairs he saw Ralnor with his brother. If anyone was skilled with a precise strike it would be the Prince. He nodded at him. One shot at this. Zemalocke might feel threatened by multiple opponents and kill himself if it meet killing Zarazu.

"Kings have tried. Demons have tried. You won't even get a start."

Malik spat in his face, and bashed against the Baron's blades, knocking him off balance.

Ralnor was quick to withdraw a dagger. He had heard Zarazu telling Malik to destroy the necklace around the baron's neck. With absolute precision, it pierced the medallion, causing the ancient token to crack. Shattering to pieces, the item restricting magical energy was no more. Covarog held up his blade to strike Zemalocke, but Zarazu's voice rang out clear.

"NO!" The queen told her husband as the ice traveled from her fingertips to the floor, restricting the baron's movements by his feet. "He's mine. He threatened my children and my family... an easy death is much too merciful."

Zemalocke growled and raised to throw a sword at her. "I WON'T ALLOW-"

Malik cut him off by severing his hand. The Baron screamed in pain. "You dare make me bleed you animals!!!"

"Help me up." Zarazu told her husband, Covarog carefully lifting his wife. Ralnor stood guard, keeping a watchful eye out for any other traitors that may come up the stairs. On shaky legs, the Lorleidian queen had to hold onto her lover to keep upright due to the bullet in her leg and the blood loss from her shredded hand. "I might have spared your life for your son's sake... but you threatened my babies." She stuck a finger into his severed hand, having the ice spread throughout his arm. It stopped at the shoulder and the queen nodded at Malik. "Crush it."

screamed as his arm was frozen up. Malik nodded and snapped his finger, summoning a mace. With one strong swing he shattered the arm. Zemalocke's yell echoed throughout. "Don't you know who you're dealing with?! I am BARON Victor Von Zemalocke! You're master!!!"

"A Lorleidian has no master, a Gerudo has no master, a Hylian has no master, and you, Victor, are master of none." Zarazu froze the other arm, the ice creeping up ever so slowly to the baron's shoulder. "You're just a sad and pathetic man. You use low tactics to manipulate those less fortunate than you and cowardly hide behind others to do your dirty work. You're lower than dragon shit." She didn't have to tell Malik what she intended to do. "The other one."

"Love, is this necessary? Lorleidians do not condone vio-" Covarog was interrupted by his wife.

"The worm threatened my babies, threatened to show them my severed head before killing them." Zarazu silenced him with a look. "You will not deny me this."

"Then we do things the Gerudo way. The Ancient way." Malik spoke to Covarog in their tongue. He shattered the other arm. Zemalocke screamed once more, then started to laugh again. "You still deny your barbarism?! How low you maggots are?!"

"Actually, I think a touch of barbarism is exactly what I need right now." Zarazu traveled lower, starting with a leg. "Lorleidians had a penalty for treason against the crown; death. No arguments or excuses made, just death. However, it had a twist. If found plotting, then the traitor was usually thrown to the dragons. Yet, a failed assassination attempt? The king or queen was able to select their own method of punishment." She narrowed her eyes at him, a crass smile caressing her lips. "Care to guess what mine is? Malik crossed me once and he learned his lesson. It seems to me, you're not learning fast enough." She pointed. "Now that leg."

Malik scowled at Zarazu for bringing that up, and gave Zemalocke a kick to knock him backwards, his legs snapping off and staying in place. The Baron hissed with wrath as he wiggles around. "You'll all BURN! ALL OF YOU!!!"

"Sorry dear, just making a point, at least you got a new arm." Zarazu apologize as she watched as the baron wriggled on his back like a flipped turtle. It was just pitiful. Still, she found a tint of enjoyment for watching him suffer. "You don't get it, do you?" The queen bent down far enough to hold a finger under his chin. "There's always going to be scum like you, not liking changes in the kingdom or others that are difference. The only problem is that you'll gain no loyalties for being a racist asshole. You only gain loyalty and trust when you are kind..." Her eyes glanced to Malik. "And understanding despite what disputes were in the past." As the Baron's head started to freeze, Zarazu told him with a grin, "Don't worry, Victor... I'll see to it that your son is raised properly."

"This isn't over....you....bi-" Zemalocke's face was frozen with fury. His heart stopped beating and all his organs shut down. Malik looked down at the rioters below the tower that were left. Grabbing the body, he took it and threw it down to the people below.

Zemalocke was conscious the whole way as he fell. How could he fail? He was supposed to be King. He was supposed to rule. Immense fear filled him as he neared the ground. Mercy. He wanted Mercy. In his last moment, he tried to scream, but nothing of such magnitude came, instead, a simple hiss as his lungs failed him. He shattered into pieces hitting the ground.

His followers, upon seeing the body of their would be savour, surrendered immediately. Malik sighed thinking over how much devastation that man had brought. “It’s over.”

"You need to get that hand looked at." Ralnor gently touched Zarazu's crudely wrapped palm and she grimaced. "The Dusas can heal such a thing, right?"

"Yes, though, I'll probably earn another scar." Zarazu held onto Covarog heavily before looking at him in the eyes. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, just a few scratches here and there." The king sighed as he held his wife close. "I'm just glad you're safe."

"You should go check on Asa." Ralnor told Malik with a slight frown. "She's been fighting this entire time. She's probably on her last legs using her latest... um... puppet knights."

Malik looked down at all the Hylian traitors silently as they were arrested and round up. At the remains of their leader. How much destruction these people caused. His fist squeezed at his hatred of those people. Would it ever leave him fully?

~

Tulilad was breathing heavily as he walked to see if any of the fallen traitors were still alive. Some were arrested and the others were put out of their misery. Even Kelly was exhausted from fighting off so many enemies. Asakonigei, though, she looked like she was having a fit. Her entire body trembled with effort to keep the knights upright. The metal puppets were shaking, a few on their knees and the others using their swords as a cane to keep upright.

"Is... is that all of them?" Asakonigei asked, sweat drenching her forehead.

"I think so." Tulilad replied. "I hope so."

Kelly wiped the blood from her sword, absolutely drained, physically and emotionally. "You two ok?"

"I will be after I sleep until the end of time." Tulilad chuckled dryly as wiped some dried blood off his cheek. "... but before that a shower."

"It sounds like... Tulilad has the right idea..." Asakonigei slumped to her knees, unable to keep upright as her chest heaved for air. The magic strings connecting to the knights vanished and the puppets were dead still. Her hands shook terribly as she tried to take a moment to gather her bearings.

"Good to hear." Kelly leaned down, and, clearing the blood off his other cheek then down to his lips, kissed him.

Malik slowly walked in, observing the carnage.

"Asa? Are you well?"

"Hrm... I could perhaps be persuaded to wash your back if you ask nicely enough." Tulilad flirted with Kelly. "What do you say to that?"

Kelly smiled and kissed him again. "I'd like that."

"You first." Tulilad teased as he followed Kelly back to the castle. "I'm not cleaning up this mess. We'll let the rookies do it."

Asakonigei looked up at her husband with a sheepish, but tired smile.

"I... I haven't used magic like that since giving birth and..." The Kovina still shivered from the lack of magic in her system. "Well... I'm a bit out of practice. I think I used too much too soon..."

Malik nodded and scooped Asakonigei up. "Let's go to bed. Zelda can return our son later."

"I'm a bit icky, Malik." Asakonigei pulled at the front of her sweaty shirt for emphasize. "Might need to wash up a bit before sleeping. I could sleep for ages... and making Zelda a babysitter for now, hrm?"

"She owes me whatever I want after killing me..." Malik carried her away. At least the battle was won.

~

Alexander meekly looked at the floor as he was brought before the Queen. He wore a black suit for mourning.

The threat to the kingdom was gone yet it still left damage. Little Alexander was now an orphan. His maidservants had been watching after him for the time being. Zarazu felt sorry for the poor boy, yet she knew in her heart that Zemalocke was a traitor. There was nothing she could do or say to comfort him about the terrible stories floating around the castle. The most she could do was offer a safe place to stay.

"Alexander?" Zarazu spoke softly, her hand still wrapped in bandages. It would return to normal within a few days, thanks to the healing from the Dusas. Her leg was healing nicely, the bullet passing clean through her flesh. "I know you must think poorly of my family after all this mess, I wouldn't blame you. However, you have a choice to make for now. You can either stay here and learn at Hyrule Castle under the same tutors that teach Luimaya and Turagor, learning the ways of the royal court. Or, you can seek out a distant family member to go and live with until of age to resume rule of your late father's castle."

Alexander didn't know what to think. "I'm smart enough to rule my father's business Queen Zarazu. I don't HAVE any family left, and I won't let anyone else take hold of my family's property, our.....legacy...."

"I know you are, dear, I know, and no one will take what belongs to you, I promise. Right now, you're just still too young to be on your own." Zarazu tried explaining to him very carefully. "Do you know of anyone would can take care of you? An aunt? An uncle? Someone?"

"House maids."

"I meant blood relation, Alexander." Zarazu told the boy with a small frown. "The laws of our land state that a youngling like you has to have someone to care for him."

"No. They're all dead. I'm an orphan in every sense. Father gave me an education higher then most. I am more then qualified. Hand maids are fine."

Alexander kept his emotions as tight as he could, a little scowl on his face.

"... let us compromise, Alexander." Zarazu hobbled toward the young boy with her sole crutch. Standing in front of him, she gently placed her bandaged hand on his shoulder. "I'll let you go back to you castle if you take one of my caretakers with you. Most of the women have children that are grown and gone, a few are widowed. It would be a good job for them and you'd get the care you needed. You can even pick which lady you like best." She smiled quietly at him. "Though you know, you are always welcome to stay here."

"I..." Alexander tried to stay tough, but then hugged her, snivelling. All that he had been through was too much for him. "O-ok."

"Shh, shh, it's okay to cry." Zarazu bent down on a knee to hug the boy. "I'm here if you need me, no matter what it is. For what it is worth, I'm sorry about your father... but I am glad you are a good soul." She stroked his hair gently. "You'll be a fantastic baron one day and your land will flourish. Just make sure you come and visit once in a while, yes? Knowing Luimaya and Turagor, you'll be missed on our afternoon picnics."

"O-ok. I will." Alexander dried his tears and, letting go, gave Zarazu a bow. "I should choice a caretaker. And for what it's worth, I hope I’m a good Baron too one day. Different then my father."

"You'll be wonderful, Alex." Zarazu gave his head a small pat, smiling at the boy. "We'll all be here for you, cheering you on no matter what. You be safe traveling home and never hesitate to call upon me if you need me."

Zarazu hoped that the boy could be a beacon of hope, and a proper link for her people and Hylians in the future.

   (Glad to finally have finished my second larger collaboration with @ridersoftheapocalypse! Expect more stories from us to continue in the future!)