#i pity her

[helenvader]

My brain has turned to goo (harmonizing with baby Halbrand), and my thoughts are becoming increasingly unhinged.

I have just realized that of course Annatar has a bow in his hair. He is a gift. He wrapped himself with a ribbon. 🤣

Even those golden parts of his robe look like he's a wrapped gift.

[exit last braincell]

[heartshaped-cookies]

sometimes i forget that even though my father demeans and literally emotionally abuses my mother (by the looks of it anyway) she still loves him and i can't fathom it. yeah he does a lot for this family but so does she and he keeps fucking undermining her efforts it pisses me off

[alinalal-art]

miku.

[strawberri-draws]

Manifesting boothill and robin next event 🙏

[froog-water]

that rabbit lady? yeah she's pretty chill

[raviollies]

I love putting her in funny little outfits

[frodo-a-gogo]

also final word on this probably- I *like* Joyce Messier a great deal as a character. I think she's cool and interesting. I find it fascinating that she tends to approach things very bluntly. the words she uses and the manner in which she analyzes things, this is sort of an instance of a character who knows exactly *what she is* and articulates it in a manner congruent with the writers of the game. she is, as she says wryly but honestly, "a bourgeois woman". i cant think of too many rich people who would without prompting and prodding, self identify with marxist social taxonomies in this way, even with a thin veil of ironic self deprecation. She's educated. she knows the words and the motivating logics of class analysis. and shes *cool*. harry picks that up. honesty is cool. bluntness is cool. cynicism is cool. she is quite open about her place in the world and how she conceives of it. unlike a lot of other powerful figures in the game, i dont think shes completely swallowed by self justifying rhetoric the way, say, sunday friend is. or she is up to a point. she knows about countercultural movements and she has affinities for them and is also aware that they inevitably are consumed by capital. (this, by the way, is kind of complex in that like. ok its a depressing reality but also i think if the de team was fully bought into that line of thinking, they would not make this game. it is telling that joyce of all people would critique cindy on the basis of capital subsuming revolutionary art. I dont think joyce is wrong per se, but i think she is drawn to that line of thinking because it is *very comforting for someone of her class position to dismiss the value and power of revolutionary art and critique of capital* just a thought) She's disgusting in that her power is not rightfully hers. her position is not rightfully hers. she is actively repressing and oppressing others in service of disgusting, semi-fascistic, hypercapitalist forces. shes enjoying the comforts and benefits that such a role allows her. shes disgusting shes frustrating shes profoundly arrogant (as her clash with evrart claire proves definitively). Her self satisfied idiocy is what allows her to play with fire and foolishly assume she cannot be burned. She's smart but her comfortable position puts the blinders on her and so she's also pretty fucking stupid. and shes also deeply deeply sad. I empathize. I pity her. She's so fucking sad. I don't think she is drawn to self medication and self destruction through constant pale exposure or all that rueful nostalgic rumination for no reason. She knows what she is to the world and she knows what she's doing and she's too cowardly and comfortable and self interested to change, but she's too self-aware to ignore it completely. I think she probably dislikes herself to some degree and i think its destroying her. Like most of the cast of the game, she's complex and deeply human. She's hateful, but I also think she is too well realized to hate, at least not for me.

[bruciemilf]

I wonder how many times Clark and the batkids + Alfred revived Bruce with the Lazarus Pit and just never told him abt it

[chalkrub]

mockley time it's mockley time will you have some mockleys of mine

[backjustforberena]

Rhaenys + her slight smirk Steve Toussaint: What she does [...] there's always a slight smile playing on [Rhaenys's] face in scenes that I always find interesting. Like a sense of being amused at the situation. If you go back and look at Season One, it's quite a consistent thing.

[cheesomancer]

C for Cyclop! 👁 Full art: twitter, bsky

[scifur]

hi3 doodles

[serpentface]

Wardin provincial tax magistrate on the annual Apomalo Tlinya (phrase close in meaning to 'journey of the late (autumn) sun'), which is a tax collection tour.

His station is marked by his white cloak, royal blue belt, gullfeather khattanocuy, the ability to bear a sword, and a scroll containing documents stamped with the Usoma's seal confirming his identity and authority. He does not travel alone, but is accompanied by a large retinue of scribes, soldiers, advisors, and servants.

All citizens have tax obligations regardless of class, and these are owed primarily in grain and livestock. This is based in this internal economy being predominantly a barter system (with its coin currency having direct value as precious metals and serving as a means of establishing fixed values for various trade goods) and heavily reliant on agricultural goods. It is significantly more difficult to evade or cheat on taxes when what you owe can be established by sight, measured in hard to miss livestock and fields of crops.

As such, taxes are collected via annual tours in which these magistrates (personally appointed by the Usoma and collecting in his name) tour their lands in person. The Apomalo Tlinya serves multiple purposes. It is primarily a method of collecting tax, but also doubles as a way to assess a province's agricultural wealth and well-being as a whole and to take an official census of the population.

This routine act of taxation has been integrated into official religious practice, being looped in with the bounty of the harvest season and thanksgiving to the face Inyamache for having provided the necessary long summer sunlight as the days grow shorter. The actual Apomalo Tlinya begins upon the official celebrations of the New Maize day in each capital city (usually observed on a separate day at the actual end of the harvest for each village), where the festival ends with the tax party leaving the city in procession. The magistrate always ceremonially rides a red bull khait, bearing a solar disk framed by royal dual-viper insignia on its horns. The bull's journey is compared to the ideal seasonal behavior of the sun, generating new life out of rain-fertile earth and then 'dying' after the harvest to allow for the rains to come. Villages who host the Apomalo Tlinya entourage each night experience a fringe benefit via permission to introduce any receptive mares to the bull and possibly get some (very valuable) calves out of it. The bull will be sacrificed at the end of the journey in a final act of thanksgiving, in hopes this offering will help ensure the next year is bountiful.

The attempted veneer of solar thanksgiving and harvest cheer aside, the Apomalo Tlinya visit is enjoyed by just about no one (except for perhaps the people lucky enough to get a pretty khait calf out of it), as it entails the personal loss of some of this aforementioned harvest. Nobility owe SUBSTANTIALLY higher taxes than commoners (given that they are considered to Own the majority of the crops/livestock, which is only Tended by their land's peasants), though the actual tax burden is proportionately steeper on the peasantry (whose tax obligations will come primarily out of their allotted share of the harvest, and/or any livestock they raise on the side). Taxes don't tend to be outright devastating in years with average crop yields, but an already bad year can be made ruinous by this visit. The timing also coincides with seasonal harvest festivities. A few unlucky villages every year may have their New Maize feast day interrupted by the sound of horns and a small legion of white-clad taxmen bearing down to collect.

Each province has only one tax magistrate, making this a lengthy and logistically complicated undertaking. It begins at the end of the harvest season (late summer), and the rounds may not finish until early winter. While it might be easier to divide these duties among a greater number of less-powerful officials, this allows taxation to remain Relatively centralized and performed by trusted appointees (often friends or relatives of the Usoma himself). This has had side effects of these officials becoming especially powerful individuals within each province, with very little checks in place to prevent corruption (beyond hope for sustained loyalty, often reinforced with special privileges and favors). Flagrant abuse of this system is rare, but more unpopular magistrates are commonly suspected to leverage additional off-the-books taxes for their own personal gain.

[devxoid]

my head says pull for ruan mei but my dick says pull for sam 😫😫

[mangeur-detoiles]

YASMINE AL-BUSTAMI | The Chosen 4x03 Aftershow

[lobotomy-lady]

I don't care how many times the rich & famous talk about how being rich & famous is the worst fate humanly possible I will never ever ever believe them for one milisecond lol