#i really do think it is about the collapse of romanticization

[ilynpilled]

i think the thing with me and how i see jc is that i think it is a brilliant dynamic for not what it “is”, or what a lot of people think it is bc of the show’s version, but what it “isn’t.” like it is a deconstruction of the tragic forbidden lovers destined to be together for eternity, from birth to death, with love and devotion that cannot be ended despite society’s taboos. nothing else matters, only them. they were born entangled!!! jaime was born holding her foot!!(rip to that hand 🫡)but then like. u see the actual relationship. and it is so… cringe. it is so not this. so many other things matter to them both. so many personal desires that are incompatible with the desires of the other. in some ways they are the same, in others they are polar opposites. and they both end up choosing those other desires in the end. it is all based on lies and illusions and a desperate need for self affirmation from a broken and distorted mirror. it is a need to be able to love yourself in some form despite how broken you are. but it is false as fool’s gold. and that is so rich

[irndad]

won't you be my sunshine-a.h.

a/n: runner!hotch x sunshine!reader !! sooooo fluffy, first hotch fic of mine so be gentle with me! lots of pining and happy end <3 happy to continue with these two in an au!

Aaron Hotchner is not a particularly emotive man. 

This is a skill he has honed, a cherished quality that was not born of luck or of natural ability, but a skill that he has honed down to a fine tip point. He needs to be, in this job. It’s cost him things, of course, but for the most part, Aaron is happy with his choices. He takes a firm line with people he works with, and does not always let up in his personal life.

The only time this sometimes causes a hitch, is in his romantic life.

Which isn’t to say that he has one. 

There is a woman who reads in the park every morning. Aaron affectionately thinks of this bench as her bench, as it is marked by wisterias and hyacinths on either end of it. It’s something of a ritual, after his runs, that they talk. 

It’s fun. He doesn’t have a lot of space for fun. He’d collapsed on the bench one day after siphoning his anger at a particular case into a difficult run. He’d crashed onto the bench, sweaty and exhausted and hadn’t even seen her there. Which is a bit impressive, as she’s hard to miss the sight of. It is also in equal measure embarrassing. It’s not every day you collapse in front of a gorgeous woman, disturbing her from what is likely a lovely afternoon in the park.

That’s how it started, anyway. She doesn’t run, so each break is punctuated by her company. He’s actually not sure if they’re flirting. He’s not very good at that- the last time he has to he was 17 and so full of unearned confidence, he lucked into a partnership. 

Now, he’s a bit older and a lot more scarred. She’s younger than him, not by much. She laughs with her whole chest at his dry, glib humor- and this is something Aaron had forgotten. The joy of a beautiful, wonderful woman’s company beside you. 

He feels a little out of place next to her. Romance is not something he does. Ever thought he’d do again, really. That’s not to say that this is romance. Their romance is almost entirely hypothetical. He thinks of her at work, which is a monumental development in and of itself. 

“So, how was the paperwork? I know you’ve been taking a little more on since your colleague had a baby. It’s so kind of you to do it.” She asks him on a beautiful August morning. 

He fights off a blush that she remembers what he’s done for JJ. He’s not big on mentioning his own good deeds. Aaron believes that this would cancel it out. Still, her praise is a warm balm to the exhaustion that plagues him. It’s hedonistic, the way he wants her to say more about him. He wonders absentmindedly if she knew everything about him that’s hard to love, she’d still paint him with such a light and warm glance. She’s bright enough, he’s tempted to tell her everything about him just because she asks. 

“It was…alright. My team is excellent. I’m lucky to work with people like them, it makes the process better. I couldn’t ask for more.”

She giggles a little at this, and there’s that roar of affection. 

He feels a sense of ease around her, one that is suspicious for him. He tries not to romanticize, but this connection is hard not to. She’s beautiful- this is obvious to anyone who meets her, a simple truth of her. But Aaron is trained to notice things little factors that show the truth of someone. 

He likes to watch her- it’s a pleasant thing, getting to be in her presence. It’s a little addicting, the way she looks at him. It makes him feel like all of the things he knows to be true of himself- his relative failures, the closed-off nature of his demeanor- are things that not only can be overlooked, but don’t seem to be in her line of sight at all. It’s an honor, to have her doe eyes rake over the sight of him, to meet him with gentle conversation. 

He tries not to notice that she is gorgeous. Aaron has been around beautiful women, of course- this is not something that should surprise him. But there’s something effervescent about her, something that his him wondering if it’s possible that she might feel the same way about him. He knows that he used to be a more attractive man, but now. Well, he’s a bit bruised, both metaphorically and physically. 

It feels odd to even think of this happening. She’s just got a warm, sweet tone and he replays what it’s like when she greets him. She smiles her brilliant grin and sometimes hugs him. It’s embarrassing how much he likes the feeling of it- soft curves against hard muscle and scarred skin. She always smells wonderful, and he wonders how nice it would be to have more of this. 

“I like your new shirt, by the way.” She smiles at him, and his heart jumps. It feels juvenile, but- she’s wearing a new lipstick, it seems. Her beautiful pout looks awfully tempting. 

“I like the lip color,” he tries to compliment back amenably, but that doesn’t stick. Instead, it comes out too earnest. He’s hyper aware of the fact that she’s right by him. She flushes, and Aaron feels a surge of pride. 

“Thank you,” she says, voice softer and flattered, and isn’t that a pretty sound? He’d love to do that for her, make her feel seen, make her feel like she’s as beautiful as she is, “I thought you might like it.”

It’s her directiveness that breaks the seal, he supposes looking back. Because she wore the lipstick for him. That’s just about the only thing it can mean, and he is struck with a particularly sensory fantasy of what it would be like to slot his mouth against hers- he gets the feeling it might be worth it even if he gets the color on his mouth. 

He’s a gentleman, though, he decides after a decidedly ungentlemanly amount of time spend staring at the gorgeous curve of her lips. 

“Would you want to get dinner with me?” He hears himself say it before he’s processed it, and then it’s out into the world. His heart is hammering and he’s blaming on the run, when god, it’s absolutely about how breathtaking she looks, the sunlight reflecting off her hair like a halo. When she beams back at him, she looks particularly angelic. 

It’s then, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek. 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

(Months later, when she is sitting on his kitchen counter and he is standing between her legs, gazing down at her with unabated fondness because he is entitled to that, he reflects on this moment and thinks god, how lucky am I, that I ran past that bench?) 

[fumifooms]

"Marchil? I guess I can see it on Chilchuck’s end, but what about Marcille’s? What makes you think she could develop feelings for him?" I’m glad you asked!

The first thing to note is that she does think highly of him

In the page on the right, literally defending his virtues and literally comparing him to Dalclan. And oh…

She does love a brooding mysterious guy who closes himself to love. But surely, Chilchuck isn’t her type at all, right? He’s not princely or knightly at all. In apperances certainly not, both looks wise and demeanor wise, but then that’s why she seeks to know him on a deeper level, to not only look shallowly.

And hmm. Chilchuck really is quite selfless isn’t he? Always looking out for others, and saving specifically her often, always making sure himself and, staying in or even running towards danger for her sometimes. Modesty is often considered heroic…

And can we talk about that drowning one… You can definitely frame the special attention as him knowing she tends to hesitate or be clumsy, and then his insistance on pulling her out of danger that she’s the healer aka the most important to keep alive, but. From the one who says that he just keeps his ass out of fights and won’t help this is a lot of risk to take, and he does die trying to pull her to safety in the dungeon rabbits chapter. And the drowning bit??? That’s when the dungeon collapses. The only reason they DON’T die of drowning here is that the water then gives way to outside. There was NO hope of pulling her to safety here and resurrections would likely not work either, he truly preferred to die with her than try to survive himself.

Sit your ass back DOWN you are in no state, self-sacrifical hero much damn

And Marcille definitely noticed this imo, after all she loves learning all she can about him, remembering things like how he hates waiting on people too. She pays attention to him and what he does and what he says. This to say that it’s notable, whatever reason for it you may think (though we know by this point at least she was already aware he was an adult though it wasn’t internalized), out of everyone it’s Chilchuck’s bed that she wants to sleep in during the Golden Kingdom stay. He’s safe and comforting to her: dependable, the defining trait in her view of him as is shown by the relationship chart in the Adventurer’s Bible.

^ Lending handkerchiefs is a romance trope btw and handkerchiefs have irl history of being used for courting. Especially in old English literature and plays like Shakespeare’s Othello, and personally I do see a lot of Shakespeare in Dalclan (nobility political drama with some romance). There’s how his cowl is a dearly beloved souvenir from his family too, there’s a lot of aesthetic tropes you can apply to him.

All this to say you can 100% romanticize Chilchuck into a princely noble guy if you try and that’s exactly what Marcille does with the wife roleplay. She doesn’t need much in the first place, she latches onto crumbs and makes aesthetic narratives out of details, give her an inch she’ll take a mile.

But what’s interesting about the shift throughout the arc of her and his relationship is that she starts out idealizing him into a little angel of a kid (shapeshifter), and she ends it idealizing him as a virtuous husband and family man instead.

And what’s doubly interesting is that in the former, she’s actively warping who he is personality and demeanor wise to fit the aesthetic, he doesn’t have that bitter pride of not asking for help and the edges have been smoothened. But what she does during the wife roleplay is something else, she acknowledges the flaws and just… Accepts them, rolls with them. She’s aware of his flaws and implements them into the narrative, but the reason why his wife left doesn’t capitalize on them even, rather Chil is chilblivious and his wife loves him very much still, she’s just testing him after having had a night of feeling out of place at his side.

And this is what separates the idealization vs romanticization, she’s not twisting him into someone else she’s just uplifting what he is and focusing on the good sides.

Marcille: "he has a shitty personality sometimes but if he was my husband I’d still cherish him" "If I were your wife I’d be overjoyed to go out with you and would get myself prettied up while you complain about me taking a long time, your friends would tell me that I’m nice and that’d make me happy, but I’d also be sad because you wouldn’t tell me that you love me enough"

He’s angry and his wife left him, he’s *flawed*, but he’s still worth hyping up, still worth having his own romance story, still has a shot of winning back his beloved. She sees him for what he is, human and real and not a carefully scripted character that fits an aesthetic, and she thinks it’s still worthy of love and admiration and fighting for

And what’s funny too is that you might expect her to cool down on him once she learns more about him but actually she only gets increasingly into his business. You tell her your age and next thing you know you promise to introduce her to your family. Give her an inch she takes a mile. And too the thing is, Senshi is equally mysterious but she doesn’t pester him like at all, asks him ONCE about his succubus and he doesn’t even answer and that’s like… It. With Chilchuck it starts off innocently enough with her wanting to know his age, hometown, the stuff she mentions having asked pre-canon. But it just keeps and keeps going and escalating. Think she’ll be satisfied now knowing you have a wife and kids, maybe she’s disillusioned now? Wrong! She wants to know their names and ages and occupations and hey how did you propose to your wife? Do you think she’ll stop after meeting them? What’s next? What will she want to know next????

She’s… Like it’s not a reach that Marcille is all over him. Like it doesn’t mean it’s romantic but she just is. She is not normal about him idk. Can you not ask him about what tongue technique he used when first kissing his wife, give the man breathing room

Marcille could literally go "if I was Chilchuck’s wife" having deeply pondered and thought out the hypothetical and people would still ask where anyone sees any romantic potential between them. Oh wait

There’s a platonic explanation for everything (almost?) in Dungeon Meshi don’t say I’m saying otherwise, but it’s definitely not like there’s nothing here to read into lol

Going off a bit more under read bc it’s my fave topic

Marcille has a whole theme with the charming prince trope with her idealization and storybook motif and Chil is kinda the "Well someone perfect like that isn’t very realistic and romance is usually more complex and that’s ok and good and flawed people can still be ✨virtuous✨" catalyst

Do you see do you see she starts canon thinking the most romantic thing is a prince charming but her arc in the end has her romanticizing an average, flawed, real and realistic family man, who’s on the poorer side and is on the verge of divorce. And that’s what he needed, too, seeing the positive of himself and the situation instead of focusing on the negative is explicitly what inspires him to hope that he might be able to reconcile with his wife, gives him the courage and self-esteem to shoot his shot.

He IS a prince figure instead that now it’s not about idealizing the grand and overt it’s about romanticizing the small things in real life!! About finding joy and beauty in things that seem normal or mundane and uplifting them to make the world feel kinder!!!!

He’s the devoted virtuous man that she wantsss not the storybook prince that’s unrealistic and could crumble like a script at any time. He’s the perfect example of a flawed realistic but virtuous & devoted & loving man. Far from a prince charming, but not fully detached from it either. Something worth fighting for despite the flawed cracks. Like literally, flawed romance being worth fighting for is literally the finale of Chilchuck and Marcille’s arc on the matter, where their separate arcs and issues intersect at the most crucial moment.

Marcille is important to Chil’s arc not only because of her optimism, but also because of her interest and knowledge in romance & matters of the heart, and that’s what he needs to both open his heart up to hope and to try to reconcile with his wife, like idk sounds gay

Their arc together is literally learning to 1) see each other for how they are and not undermining their qualities capacities etc etc while still not leaving flaws unchecked either and 2) opening up to people. Marcille LITERALLY makes Chil open his heart up to hope like idk man. What do you want from me. He’s literally the guy helping her through deconstructing novels and fantasy and rose tinted glasses and like. Deconstructing the prince charming figure into something more real but still romantically beautiful like KUI KUI STOOOOP STOP I’M ALREADY HOOKED I’M ALREADY-

 Ok fine that’s me reading into the tropes too much forgive me for being storybook brained but like. Speaking his heart out to a lone woman on a balcony, Romeo and Juliette shit, asking if she, too, doesn’t want to meet his family, madly blushing. And like she’s learned with Chilchuck it’s all in the little things, all the implications he cannot speak aloud. She does reciprocate, does blush madly back, and the first thing she does is shower him in flowers and jewelry and what in her heart is coded as romantic gifts

A lady, stashed away in a high tower by her lonesome, waiting for someone to call out to her from below… Romeo courting type shit with an offer, a heartfelt spiel, implicit confession from underneath her balcony. Offering him flowers because he succeeded in calling out to her heart…….. And they have to climb to her too…. Crazy

Doesn’t it sound like a proposal. One that’s both so storybook-like and not, contrastedly real and grounded, all about the implications rather than in your face grand gestures, "Don’t you want to meet my family?". They literally have an arc about the topic of romance and this is the climax/pinnacle of it like god?? This is @ the woman who said "Chilchuck is a shy/bashful man so I know he wouldn’t tell me he loves me, but…" btw

To quote a friend, truly the shiny secret unlockable dating sim capture target : THE DUNGEON LORD BIT WAS SO FUNNY BECAUSE HE KNEW SHE'D TAKE IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER HES THE ONE WHO GOT HER TO TURN AROUND COMPLETELY SHES LIKE. WIDE EYED FLAG RAISED???? FLAG RAISED WITH CHILCHUCK 👀👀👀‼️👀👀‼️👀

And the way that this is the culmination of their arc together… Like people are not ready for the ‘Chil calling out to dunlord Marcille on the balcony has Romeo and Juliette romance novels imagery’ take. Or the ‘their arc is about growing to see beauty even in the non-idealized, in the flawed and in the real’ take which makes it so so perfect if she were to lower her ideal from a charming elven prince to a virtuous halfling man (which she does end up romanticizing)

So there, you got to witness in real time what happens when I think about marchil for longer than 2 minutes, there are so many layers it’s a deranged rabbithole. I saw the necronomicon of subtext and it’s driving me to madness with forbidden knowledge that no one else sees

……. Like what if I told you she implicitly picked Chilchuck over a "unrealistic prince charming who’s actually disingenuous" much earlier in the story already. If she was given the choice to think through going with a guy that seems perfect and chivalrous like her succubus she’d pick Chilchuck over the other actually. If I sound insane rn tune in for my full analysis on them coming this month hopefully thank youu. Interwoven arcs of fantasy vs reality and idealization vs pessimism I love youuu

So now you know the general thesis of my planned analysis about the importance of the prince charming figure in Marcille and Chilchuck’s arc, where she romanticizes things to a sometimes worrying degree or idealize people into something easy and digestible and poetic (like Chil being a kid, and then him being a virtuous ✨✨✨husband), and how she needs to value aesthetics less and actual acts and facts more, be more grounded (like seeing people for what they are flaws and all, and accepting that people need money and not pulling through on principles of honor or unity shouldn’t get Namari shamed) and a part of that is accepting that Chilchuck is BOTH flawed and virtuous, a loving husband that still has shitty moods and fumbled his marriage so bad etc etc. So it’s like, her image of perfect prince charming that will whisk you away on an ethereal romance -> realistic flawed middle aged dad with personality issues and a failing marriage but he still is worthy of love and having his cute grand romance story and his happy ending. Ik I keep repeating the same point through this but I need it to be burned into everyone’s brains it has its grip on me I can’t do this. They are so special……

[elvishdemigod]

Firstly, a note: This is NOT an MPreg fetish post. Not a pregnancy fetish post. It's actually kind of the opposite I repeat, THIS ISN'T AN MPREG OR PREGNANCY FETISH POST.

IT'S A SPECULATION ON DIVISION, SEXUALIZATION & FETISHIZATION, DEHUMANISATION, AND HUMAN RIGHTS BASED ON HOW WE CURRENTLY ARE AND ON WHAT REALLY WOULD HAPPEN IF A MAN GOT PREGNANT AND ALL THE SHIT HE WOULD HAVE TO FACE FROM PEOPLE.

I feel like MPreg could actually throw out the whole structure of civilization if it actually started happening for whatever reason. Like, the first man to get pregnant.

Think about it

Cisgender man gets pregnant from his boyfriend.

There will be the usual pro-choicers and pro-lifers Think about all the leaders of different states and countries and such who have the opinions of either.

But then there would be people thinking he should abort because "it's unnatural."

Then there would be the opposite end, where people think he should keep the baby as cis male pregnancy has never happened before and is a scientific wonder.

Then there'll be the religious whose whole thing against homosexuality was not just because of whatever stories they have, but also because queer relationships can't procreate without help.

But with a man getting pregnant, they would start becoming divided. There's the homophobes who just don't like gay people, and then there's the homophobes who justified it by saying it's because queers couldn't procreate together but now can and it's all part of whoever higher beings plan

We already know what a foothold religions in general have in different parts of the world. Imagine it all collapsing because one man ended up getting pregnant and wanting to abort.

And then there would be the sexists who originally believed in woman being birth machines also becoming divided.

People would think he's some alien, or some lizard person. Or it's all acted and there isn't really a pregnant man.

And then there would be A/B/O and fujoshi enthusiasts who are sexualizing and romanticizing the whole ordeal as if the guy isn't a real person. And then those who are also just more regularly interested in a tame way as any human would.

People would wonder if it's human evolution, or if he'll be the only (known) man to get pregnant ever.

And then imagine how terrified the guy would be. He would the first cis man to ever get pregnant (as far as I could find). Meaning when the time to give birth comes, which is already painful enough for women, no one would know what to do with the first guy to get pregnant as there would be so many questions (Does the baby come out the back or front, can he handle the epidural, would there need to be any extra support, would the baby even survive, etc)

And it would be him that would have all eyes on him. The homophobes, the gays, the sexists, the equal-rights people, the religious, the non believers, the fetishizers. And they would all be divided with each other on whether or not what's happening with him should be considered a miracle or a disaster.

Then both he and the baby would be experimented and kept an eye on, how sort of dehumanized they would both be. How different is the baby from women born? How has the pregnancy affected him and his body and hormones? Could he get pregnant again? What makes him so different from other men and what should be considered indicators that other men can get pregnant? Are they both weird mutations?

Like, think of how divided we are already. A cis man getting pregnant could collapse everything (I'd be all for it, honestly).

[licorice-and-rum]

On Fascism, DEs and Dumbledore - the actual essay lol

Hey, guys! Sorry it took me so long to write this one, I really had some themes to mature before I could put all of my thoughts in writing but I finally feel like I’m ready to talk about what I want to. Before I begin, however, I want to point out a few things:

First of all, I ask all of you to enter this with an open mind because not everything I’ll say here is exactly popular opinion in the HP fandom. And, although I recognize that my perceptions and interpretations are frayed by my own background and way of thinking, my literary analysis is still based off, on some level, of academical knowledge. It doesn’t make it true, of course, but I believe it’s a solid base to have.

Second, this is, in no way, an attack on people who like the Death Eaters (Barty, Regulus, Rosier, Draco, and so on). These people are not the problem I’m talking about here because, to begin with, the characters they like are not exactly the Canon version of them, and then, because a work of fiction doesn’t determine a person’s character.

It's completely normal for popular works of fiction — and that’s especially true in Literature — to have their characters remodeled to fit a better narrative to the time they are inserted in. It happens with Fairytales, it happens with classical books — Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest examples I can give —, it just happens. And the new interpretations are an attempt to almost self-insert: is a mirroring of our interpretations and experiences in those characters we like so much.

That said, I still have a problem with how normalized it has become in our society to make a sad backstory to fascist-like villains and that’s where I would like to start this rant/analysis. This issue is not focused on the Harry Potter characters, however: it has happened in Star Wars (both with Anakin and more recently with The Acolyte), in The Hunger Games (with Snow, although it wasn’t the intention) and many other big films/books/series in the industry.

It has a reason: we’re living through late-stage capitalism, which means capitalism is in shambles and it needs a “emergency button” of sorts, something it can use to establish some kind of control back. That’s why we’ve seen so many far-right parties win elections lately: it’s a normal thing for people to be attracted to fast and simple solutions when things are bad, even though they might not be solutions at all.

Anyway, I digress: the point is, when fascism (capitalism’s emergency button) arises, it needs to have a cultural support so that people can assimilate it better, accept it better so it can maintain itself. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not, by all means, saying that a bunch of men sat down on a white room and decided that now they would start creating Art that endorses/romanticizes fascist narratives, of course not.

This is a natural process, it happens because we, as a general rule, already lean into right wing theorical thinking by living into a capitalist mode of production. So, when capitalism collapses, many of us pull our values farthest into capitalistic mindset because that’s what we understand as secure, as stable. And this translates into art through some favored tropes or classical narratives, such as the Chosen One or the “the system is not corrupted, the people running it are” narrative.

Both of those tropes fit into the Harry Potter series in obvious ways, of course. But lately, I’ve been noticing a really particular characteristic of these narratives/tropes that are used to endorse fascism, which I believe has to do with the time period we’re at right now and who the target-audience is, and that is what I called the “individualization of narratives”.

I’m not gonna be arrogant here and say that I’m the only one who noticed this, of course not, but I haven’t found any works on that, so I’m gonna describe, in my own words, what I think this phenomenon is:

The individualization of narratives, as I call it, refers to the details some characters’ backgrounds have when they are into the “dark side”, the side that is supposed to be the fictional version of fascist-like groups. And those details — or lack thereof — are done in a way the reader can fill in the gaps in such a way to identify and empathize with them.

Again, that’s is not the problem, this happens to every character ever, it even happens with celebrities. Our brains are wired to fill in gaps in a person’s personality or character when we don’t have all the information, it’s a natural reaction. Problem is that, as it’s becoming popular to write a villain with a purpose, a “morally gray” character if you will (although I take issue with how that’s portrayed, which I’ll treat more carefully when I talk about Dumbledore), the fascist-like narratives that became so popular with post-war people, gain a new meaning.

That’s not the doing of the Art itself, it’s just a reflection of political issues that are already here but that are also perpetrated and continued by Art and material cultural production, just like anti-socialism dystopian books were in the Cold War scenario, for example. However, it’s undeniable that this movement serves a purpose, a political purpose, and that is to endorse fascism and fascist narrative. Let’s not get over ourselves here: again, this is not the evil doing of some unknown entity, it’s just a natural process of the current political climate reflecting in cultural production.

But it still serves a purpose, and what I aim to do with this essay is to demystify a bit this movement in Harry Potter. But first, we have to understand what fascism is:

Capitalism, which begun more or less in the 1600s, is a mode of production (a mold to which our society fit to work within capitalism’s needs of existence). It is based on profit, which means our society is shaped to produce that profit, everything in a society is shaped to serve this purpose, from the industry to our perception of reality — it’s all a capitalism-based ideology.

Again, reminding: that’s not a secret plot to convince people, it’s a natural process of building identity within reality. It happened in feudalism, and before that with Ancient Empires, and so on and on. There’s nothing inheritedly evil in this process.

However, capitalism is a mode of production that demands, in order to continuing to exist, more than society can provide, so it collapses from time to time. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression is one of the most striking examples of capitalism collapsing, and it’s not by happenstance that fascism arose right after this collapse.

As I said before, fascism is capitalism’s emergency button: when systems collapse, that’s where they get more vulnerable to radical change, and the extreme hardships the masses had to endure after its collapse in the 1930s could easily signify a chance for a change in the modes of production throughout the occidental countries of Europe — something that couldn’t happen if capitalism was to survive.

What I mean by bringing all this to the essay is that I want to be very clear with what fascism defends and what it means: it’s the supremacy of not only a country, or exaggerated nationalism, it is also the management and upkeeping of a society’s very structure. And, to be even clearer: that society is white, rich, and patriarchal-based.

There’s a reason why fascism is considered a white-supremacy political movement: because it defends capitalism. And capitalism was built over the need of cheap work force.

Many of you may have thought slavery when I said that, and you’d be correct.

However, with the times progression, that changed into a new form of exploration: because of the past with slavery and exploration of resources of colonized countries, it became easier — and also a natural progression from the dehumanizing of non-white communities to justify slavery — to just cheapen the work force by making non-white communities poorer, more vulnerable and more desperate to fulfill their needs.

That forces those communities — and third world countries as a whole — to accept the money and the exploration of not only first-world countries (colonizer countries) but also big corporations. I could go on and on about all the effects this policy has in non-white communities, from police brutality until the banalization of the violence in large scale (such as the Palestinian genocide) but I want to stay within the scope here.

This justification of slavery, the dehumanization of non-white peoples, is one of the main pillars of capitalism, and as such, it’s the main pillar of fascism. In Harry Potter, the intention is that those characteristics don’t present themselves in race but in blood — not that Rowling is very successful with this, considering the amount of veiled and not-so-veiled racism in her books but whatever.

Now, as I see it, Harry Potter is not a good portrayal of fascism and that has a very clear cause: Rowling’s lack of understanding of what fascism is to begin with, or how the root causes of it affect the system of the wizarding society.

As someone who have studied it, I can say that the blood purity issue wouldn’t be present only in some rich people’s minds, it would be structural to the wizarding world, in a way that would present itself in hardship for muggleborns to get jobs, in jokes that are not funny, in opinions that are degrading, in isolation and discrimination in a day to day level. And of course, there is some of it in the HP books, but it’s not treated as a structural issue — it’s treated as an individual problem.

And that’s where the real problem begins: if we treat fascism as a problem that stems from a person’s own choices instead of a political and collective movement that elevates to a highest level the structural issues that are already there, we fall into the trap of minimizing the problem because, if someone is a fascist because they’re evil, the next question to make is: why are they evil?

Currently, what we’re doing with our villains becomes a problem in these situations: in an attempt to individualize our villains, we make them human. Human in the sense that we can empathize with them, we can understand them. And, for a fascist-like narrative, that’s extremely dangerous because it makes us unconsciously start to endorse their trajectories and choices when we absolutely shouldn’t.

Fascism is not equivalent to rebelliousness.

“Oh, the good side is not so good because they treated this character bad and now he had to turn to a fascist group and decimate people because he’s traumatized.”

See how, when I say it like that, it sounds ridiculous?

But of course, you probably know that. Again, I’m not accusing people who like those characters of endorsing fascism, what I am saying, however, is that the political climate of today is doing it and it’s reflecting on our art production. What I am calling for is for people to recognize that their view of those characters as they really would be if they were anywhere near reality is not only flawed, it’s entirely wrong.

Snape, Barty Crouch Jr, Evan Rosier, Draco, Bellatrix, the Blacks as a whole — they are not the abused little teenagers who had no choice but to join the Death Eaters. They are fascists, they have always been fascists, even when they suffered. And sure, to some of them, there is more to their characters than this but the truth remains that they, in some capacity, not only endorsed a fascist narrative, they actively perpetuated it to the detriment and the suffering of marginalized peoples.

And none of them had a good, believable, and more importantly, complete redeeming arc.

Our interpretations of them are cool, I love it, I prefer them to many HP characters, to be honest. But that doesn’t change the fact that, if HP was a little bit more real, a little bit closer to reality, those characters wouldn’t be bullied teenagers forced into fascism as a means to become powerful enough to escape their abuse — as if that makes it so much better —, they’d be incels, they’d be bullies themselves.

And that’s not an opinion: we, as a fandom, tend to forget that the DEs are the ones with real societal power in the wizarding world. Most of them are purebloods, most of them are rich, most of them are friends with rich and pureblooded wizards, and they are privileged. They are not ostracized as we like to imagine, they are royalty.

For them, to fight for blood purity is to fight for their own benefit, is to fight to maintain the pillars that keep them unaccountable for their behaviors and privilege whilst at the same time, pushing marginalized people — muggleborns, fantastical creatures, even half-bloods — to a dehumanizing condition. And they don’t feel sorry for this.

Now, the truth is that this is partially Rowling’s fault: her lack of understanding of how deep the issues she’s portraying really run makes it possible for her to interpret her own characters as redeemable because they somehow exchange sides when it fits them.

That’s mostly seen with the Malfoys: neither Draco, Narcissa, nor Lucius ever change sides because they see the suffering of others and think of it as wrong. They change sides when Voldemort’s cruelty starts to weigh on them — their change of loyalties are not coming from empathy for marginalized peoples or decency, it comes from self-preservation.

Kind of the same thing with Snape (I wrote some essays focused on Snape, so if anyone is interested, here’s the first, then the second).

Now, of course, that’s not to say those characters weren’t abused on someway or suffered but that’s the thing: no abuse in the world justifies the persecution, torture and killing of innocent people. To offer a counterpoint, the marginalized peoples the Death Eaters persecuted are also traumatized in some, they also can have had abusive parents and/or families but that is not taken into account when we talk about the Death Eater’s own traumas.

The narrative that the Death Eaters were abused their whole childhoods is so strong today in fandom that most people don’t stop to think that those teenagers probably were horrible people. Yes, maybe horrible because some of them were abused, I’m not denying that, but still horrible, which means they wouldn’t accept help. To hold them responsible for their own doings and their own privileges would seem for them as a persecution against them — just like fascist-like narratives often portray pro-LGBTQ+ or non-white policies and/or narratives.

It is also one of the reasons I take issue with the Slytherin portrayal of abused kids ostracized by the rest of the school. It’s really just isolating fascist narrative and only partially based on truth but I don’t think I want to stretch this conversation now (I can write more about it later if you want though).

So no, respectfully, I refuse to accept that those people — mostly men and rich people, I am forced to point out — would be anything but disgusting, and that’s where I take issue with some behaviors within the HP fandom. Because we’re being influenced by almost two decades of fan fiction and the current political climate, it’s very often that I find people who are sincerely incapable of dissociating fandom to canon.

Hence, the actually infuriating villainization of Albus Dumbledore.

Now, that’s a topic that makes me impatient AF. Not only because it is based on a strong fetishization of who Dumbledore really was, and what he could and couldn’t do, but also because it is a clear example of most people’s inability to differentiate between what they’re reading for fun and what they are internalizing from that media.

Let’s begin with that: Dumbledore is not some evil mastermind, and he is not equivalent to Voldemort. He is a flawed character, that’s true, but he is not a villain. And to think so is to play into the narrative that, because the “good side” fails, or makes wrong decisions, or even actively makes bad decisions, or immoral decisions in times of war, that is somehow equivalent to the “bad side”.

It is not.

That narrative is the same narrative that allows Israel to build an equivalence between Hamas’ violent acts and their own when in truth, as reproachable as some Hamas’ decisions may be according to various perspectives, their violence is a reaction to heavy and even more violent oppression.

What I mean is, even if Dumbledore failed in some of his decision-making in the Harry Potter books, even if we may believe we could do better, Dumbledore is a true morally gray character. But first, to make the point I want to make, we have to understand him:

For this, I will first separate his two identities as they appear throughout Harry Potter: as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Dumbledore plays a role as a leader and role model, but he is also a person with flaws and mistakes like anyone else. These are the two main “faces” of Albus Dumbledore for this defense post, so now let's analyze them more closely:

The first "face" we see of Dumbledore is that of the leader, and this is primarily because of Harry who, at eleven years old, sees Dumbledore as the kind of man he would like to emulate. This also happens with many other wizards throughout the story: it's clear to anyone that most of the people within Harry’s personal circle like and admire Dumbledore, while those who despise him are often the “bad” characters (Lucius Malfoy is probably one of the earliest examples of this).

Although that doesn’t mean they are somehow starstruck by the headmaster: Sirius, Snape, the Weasley parents, Moody, even James and Lily, they all question Dumbledore and his decision making at some point in the books. They end up following through more times than not, that’s true, but trust in someone is different than blind-faith. Those characters accept Dumbledore’s leadership because they trust him, not because they think he’s some type of a god.

However, we see things through Harry’s point of view, and Harry is a child who has no parents, no model figures, no one who really supports that role to him until his eleventh year. It's easy, then, to see how the leader face Dumbledore presents is one of someone the characters (and readers) can trust not to fail, and even easier to view him as someone with great power. This is the fandom’s biggest mistake in viewing him.

Shall we now remember a bit of Dumbledore’s history and delve into his personal side?

As a young man, he met Grindelwald and, according to J.K. Rowling, fell in love with him, as well as with his goal of seeking the Deathly Hallows and becoming the most powerful wizards of all time. 

In the last Harry Potter book, in the King's Cross chapter, Dumbledore himself confesses to Harry how the desire for power blinded him to what was truly important, how power was his greatest weakness, and therefore what made him unworthy of it. This is why Dumbledore remained as the headmaster of Hogwarts when he could have so easily become more important in the wizarding community (besides, of course, his love for the students): to keep himself away from power.

Here's the quote (It might be a bit different in the original, considering I’m translating it from Portuguese):

“‘I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory... Invincible Masters of Death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore!... The years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had obtained a wand of immense power. Meanwhile, I was offered the position of Minister for Magic, not once, but several times. Naturally, I refused. I learned that I could not be trusted with power.’

‘But you'd have been better than Fudge or Scrimgeour!’ said Harry.

‘Would I?’ asked Dumbledore heavily. ‘I am not so sure. I proved as a very young man that power was my weakness and my temptation. It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.’”

This is what the fandom most fails to understand: the admiration of wizards for Dumbledore makes him influential, but not powerful, and this becomes especially clear during the end of The Goblet of Fire and throughout The Order of the Phoenix.

One of the first signs of this in the fourth book is when Fudge refuses to believe Dumbledore about Voldemort’s return: let's remember that, until that point, Fudge sought Dumbledore’s advice for his decisions as Minister of Magic precisely because the headmaster had the respect of much of the wizarding population. But when Fudge, who has the actual power, puts his foot down and says that Dumbledore no longer has influence over the Ministry’s choices, Dumbledore lacks the power to deny it, to stop it.

If he did, it would be safe to say that he would have used his power over the Ministry to convince everyone that Voldemort had indeed returned, and more, to mobilize the Ministry against Voldemort. But none of this happens simply because Dumbledore does not have that power.

Thus, it becomes easier to differentiate power from influence.

It’s Fudge’s power that causes the Ministry as an organization and the wizarding media to turn against the Headmaster, and Dumbledore doesn’t have the power to stop it, but he has enough influence to still be heard by part of the wizarding population. It’s Fudge’s power that leads to Harry’s expulsion from Hogwarts at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, but it’s Dumbledore’s influence that convinces the Ministry to agree to a trial, and it’s his influence that moves the people present to listen to his defense of Harry during that trial. If Dumbledore had power over these events, Harry wouldn’t even have had a trial — something the Headmaster categorically calls an absurdity.

Therefore, Dumbledore doesn’t have power; he has influence, and there’s a difference between what he can actually do and what the fandom seems to believe he can do. Dumbledore has no power over the Ministry; he can’t boss anyone around except, perhaps, the Hogwarts staff and the Order of the Phoenix, a group whose members agreed to make him leader.

What he really has are people willing to listen to his advice and thoughts, as well as inclined to follow him, but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily do everything Dumbledore says (Sirius, anyone?).

It’s important to separate these two concepts for this analysis to continue because it will make Dumbledore’s actions make much more sense in this discussion. That said, let’s now begin to analyze “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore”:

The main criticisms I see regarding Dumbledore revolve around Harry’s life and the decisions the Headmaster made concerning him.

Before I begin, however, I want to point out that, despite Dumbledore’s flaws, he is still a leader (just like Harry), and as a leader, he bears responsibility for the lives of the people he has chosen to protect (just like Harry). It’s important to keep this in mind so that I can highlight a few things later.

So, let’s start with when the prophecy is heard and Voldemort begins hunting Harry instead of Neville. It’s important to emphasize here that, once a prophecy is made in the Harry Potter universe and the people the prophecy is about start acting according it, it’s going to happen; there’s no way around it, or at least that’s what we’re told as canon. That’s why, as soon as the prophecy is made and Voldemort actively choses to hunt them down, everyone knows that Harry (or Neville) will be the one to face Voldemort, and one of them will die — hopefully Voldemort.

Although he’s the one to whom the prophecy was made, Dumbledore has no control over it: there’s no way to avoid the fact that Harry (or Neville) would face Voldemort at some point in their lives once Snape overhears it and tells Voldemort. All he — and everyone else — can do is give the Chosen One the tools and knowledge necessary to face Voldemort with the best possible chance of winning — which he does later on by becoming Harry’s primary mentor.

Then the Potters are “chosen” and go into hiding in Godric’s Hollow, making Peter the Secret Keeper. Some more information on this choice: Dumbledore offered to be the Secret Keeper, but James and Lily refused and preferred to choose Sirius. However, they switched to Peter without telling anyone, not even Dumbledore. This is another thing I see the fandom complaining about a lot, but it’s explicitly canon that no one besides Sirius, James, Lily, and Peter knew about the switch.

This wasn’t because they didn’t trust Dumbledore, but because Albus was in the middle of the storm as one of Voldemort’s biggest targets. The Potters didn’t reject Dumbledore as their Secret Keeper because they didn’t trust him (they wouldn’t even be in the Order if that were the case, don’t you think?), but because they were thinking primarily of Harry’s safety, and placing their family’s safety in the hands of the second biggest target of Voldemort in that war simply doesn’t seem like a wise move.

So, there’s no reason, even up to the third book, for Dumbledore to suspect that Sirius is innocent and try to intervene to get him some kind of trial or chance to explain himself. There’s no indication that Dumbledore had contact with Sirius before he was sent to Azkaban, so how could the Headmaster be blamed for that?

Again, it’s important to emphasize that Dumbledore has influence.

Even if he wanted Sirius to have a trial, there’s no evidence that he could make it happen, since everything pointed to Sirius as the culprit — remembering that there’s a big difference between a trial for underage magic and the murder of thirteen Muggles, plus the whole Secret Keeper and high-profile situation. In fact, it’s also good to remember that as soon as Dumbledore learns the truth, he does everything in his power — even sending Harry and Hermione back in time — to save Sirius from being kissed by the Dementors.

But going back a bit, a week after Peter becomes the Secret Keeper, he reveals the Potters’ location to Voldemort, and on Halloween night in 1981, Voldemort goes to Godric’s Hollow and kills James, then Lily, then tries to kill Harry but fails.

This event needs to be broken down into two parts. The first is about Lily’s protection: when she chooses to die even though Voldemort gave her a chance to live, Lily protects Harry, and that’s the reason he survives that encounter with the Dark Lord, who also “dies.”

Since the fourth book, there’s a very specific characteristic of this protection that’s seen many times but never explicitly stated, which is the fact that Lily’s protection has a blood-related nature. In other words, Lily’s protection is especially tied to blood, which is why Voldemort chose Harry’s blood to resurrect himself: because in that way, he also “has” Lily’s blood and, consequently, her protection, which frees him to harm Harry in a way he couldn’t before.

And this is the point I want to reach: Dumbledore chooses the Dursleys to raise Harry not because he wants him to suffer, but because Petunia is the only one who carries Lily’s blood and, therefore, the only one who can ensure that Lily’s protection — the thing for which her sister died — continues to work. The blood Petunia shares with Lily even prevents Voldemort, even after the resurrection ritual, because her blood makes Lily’s protection even stronger.

And it’s good to remember that this measure ends up saving Harry in The Philosopher’s Stone — Quirrell and Voldemort couldn’t touch him because of Lily’s protection, guaranteed by his living in the same house as Petunia — and keeps him safe in the Dursleys’ house for sixteen years, until Harry turns seventeen and the protection finally stops working, even though he still lived with Petunia.

Once again, people overestimate Dumbledore’s ability to act: he had no control over the nature of Lily’s protection; he acted to keep Harry as safe as possible within what he could actually control.

Unfortunately, the choices presented in that situation were either to leave him protected from Voldemort’s assassination attempts or spare him the suffering of growing up with the Dursleys.

Neither choice was ideal, but this is where Dumbledore’s leadership character comes in: Harry’s responsibility to face Voldemort was no longer a choice, even though he was only a year old, because of the prophecy. So, it makes much more sense for him to protect Harry from the greater threat (Voldemort) while ensuring that Harry would have more time to develop and grow before having to face him again.

Dumbledore didn’t make the choice to give Harry to the Dursleys joyfully, wanting him to suffer, but thinking about giving him more time and more opportunities to be a child than he would have had if Lily’s protection weren’t ensured. Obviously, this doesn’t work out very well because the Dursleys are especially cruel to Harry in a way that Dumbledore hadn’t really foreseen, something he himself admits in The Half-Blood Prince:

“‘[...] Harry, whom Lord Voldemort has already tried to kill on several occasions, is in much more danger than on the day I left him on your doorstep, fifteen years ago, with a letter explaining that his parents had been murdered and expressing the hope that you would care for him as a son.’

Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and did not betray his anger, Harry felt a certain coldness emanating from him. He also noticed that the Dursleys huddled together almost imperceptibly.

‘You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. In your care, he has only known neglect and often cruelty...’”

But it’s important to note that Dumbledore didn’t have good options regarding Harry’s custody; he didn’t have the power to change how Lily’s protection worked; he was working with what he had, which wasn’t much.

The second part of this event focuses more on Voldemort and Harry and is probably the most controversial regarding Dumbledore: the creation of the Horcrux inside Harry and how this is somehow seen as Dumbledore’s fault — hence the famous phrase about being “raised like a pig for slaughter,” but... let’s be honest? What, exactly, could Dumbledore have done against the fact that Harry became a Horcrux?

Once again, here’s the exaggerated view of Dumbledore’s power that the fandom seems to have: he had no control over what happened to the Potters in Godric’s Hollow on Halloween night in 1981. He had no power over Lily’s protection or the Horcrux in Harry. He has no power over Lily’s protection, nor over the Horcrux in Harry. The only thing he has the power to do is to act in a way that ensures his plan guarantees Voldemort’s ultimate defeat and thus saves the entire wizarding world.

I hate it when people say Dumbledore “raised Harry like a pig for slaughter” simply because he knew that Harry would have to die for the Horcrux to be destroyed, as if he had any other option in the matter. Harry’s fate was sealed as soon as Lily’s protection saved him and a part of Voldemort’s soul entered him; Dumbledore bears no responsibility for what happened that night.

So what Dumbledore can do regarding Harry having to die is exactly… nothing. He literally has no power to change this fact, no matter how much he wants to — and he does, because he loves Harry, as he himself says in Order of the Phoenix. But Dumbledore is still a leader, and he still needs to think about the best plan of action to ensure that people continue to have hope and that they can truly see that hope — of being free from Voldemort and his reign of terror — come true. And if that meant Harry had to die to destroy the Horcrux, then that was it. Period.

But it’s also important to point out that Dumbledore didn’t force Harry into anything: by the time Harry receives the information that he needs to die to ensure the salvation of everyone and Voldemort’s mortality, all the people who know this — Dumbledore and Snape, in this case — are dead and unable to do anything if Harry decided to simply run away and leave everyone to fend for themselves because he didn’t want to die.

But, as I pointed out before, Harry is a leader. And he fully accepts the responsibility of this role the moment he decides to face death: he goes to Voldemort willing to die by his own choice, wanting to save those who matter to him, those who trust him to end Voldemort. Not because Dumbledore ordered him, but because he — Harry — is a leader, and a leader sacrifices himself for his cause when necessary.

Saying that Dumbledore was the “cause” of Harry’s death, besides being wrong, also takes away from the greatness of Harry’s choice in that situation. Harry is the protagonist of his own story, and he is always making decisions based on his own mind and beliefs (going after the Philosopher’s Stone, entering the Chamber of Secrets, sparing Pettigrew, going after Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, pursuing the Horcruxes, etc.), so it’s completely unfair for people to place the responsibility for his choice to die on Dumbledore’s shoulders just because the Headmaster gave him the information that Harry was a Horcrux. Harry always acted according to his own mind based on the information he had been given — why would it be any different with the Horcrux inside him?

It simply wouldn’t be. Dumbledore gave the information, but it was Harry who decided what to do with it.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry about having to die to destroy the Horcrux inside him earlier because (a) Harry was a child, and (b) Dumbledore didn’t want to take away Harry’s hope. Additionally, after the fourth book, there was still the possibility that Harry could survive because, by performing the resurrection ritual, Voldemort intertwined his life with Harry’s, thus giving Harry a chance not to die when allowing the Horcrux to be destroyed. So why would Dumbledore tell a teenager that he would have to die at some point in the future… if there was a chance Harry might come back? It seems (to me, at least) like an unnecessary cruelty to place that burden on someone for so long.

So the biggest issue I see with the fandom in relation to Dumbledore is the belief that he had power over things that were completely beyond his reach. Dumbledore was a leader doing the best he could with what he had, within the limitations presented to him and his own experience.

Moreover, it’s admirable that Dumbledore had such a dark and flawed past and acknowledged each of his mistakes, always acting to ensure that he wouldn’t repeat them. It was the events of his adolescence that led him to always remember to value what truly mattered: love and people. He grew through his own pain, through the consequences of his own mistakes; he never forgot or repressed what happened to Ariana — which would certainly have been much easier — but instead, he used that painful event to become a better person.

That’s a morally gray character, that’s someone who had been stuck between a rock and a hard place and did what he thought was best, that’s a character who did the best he could with what he was given. And I really don’t like how fascist-like characters are more often than not considered more complex because of trauma than characters like Dumbledore.

But I guess that’s a bit because we can actually empathize with them better by being convinced that they didn’t have a choice, or that they were somehow forced into those choices even if they really didn’t want to and that might be the case, but to be honest, after seeing what fascist narratives do to marginalized people, I can’t say I care much about it. Anyway, be my guest to comment on my analysis but please be kind, I won’t engage in rage baits nor Zionists, Free Palestine loves <3

[lulu2992]

Hello! I was wondering something. In Vaas: Insanity there are six visions that occur in the hotel, five of which happen in numbered rooms: 1991, 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2012. So I was thinking, what if those numbers correlate to a specific year? Personally I think that it's kinda confusing, because that would imply that for example, Vaas rebelled against Hoyt in 2012. What are your thoughts? Thanks for reading!

Hello! I don’t think I’d even realized the room numbers could be years, but that makes total sense! I’ve just watched a video of the mission and there are two rooms with the number 2012: the one in which we see the Pirate meeting you’re referring to, and the one in which we see Jason kill Vaas. The second event did happen in 2012 so I agree: the room numbers must be years!

Now, about the Pirates wanting to rebel against Hoyt… While it’s true there were tensions between them and the Privateers in Far Cry 3, what we see in that vision is strange to me for several reasons. Firstly, why is there another “Pirate Leader”? Wasn’t Vaas their only leader, especially in 2012? Has there ever even been another leader? Who is this guy he’s listening to as a pupil listening to a teacher?

Secondly, what he’s upset about is the fact they want to “take the land from the natives”. That’s an inherently infuriating concept, sure, but in the context of the story, why would Vaas be surprised and angry about that? He knows what he signed up for when Hoyt recruited him, he knows his boss hates the Rakyat, and I even believe he started working for him in the first place partly because he felt betrayed and wanted revenge. The way I see it, Vaas becoming Hoyt’s right hand and leading the Pirates is his ultimate “Fuck you” to Citra and, by extension, the Rakyat. He wouldn’t complain about their land being stolen.

Thirdly, in the vision, when he asks where the men are from, they all (except the “Leader” who’s just been shot in the leg) say they were born “here”. The problem is that, in Far Cry 3, the in-game description said the Pirates “came to the island”, implying they’re all foreigners. Also, they have nothing but contempt for the Rakyat and their accent is not the same, so I’m not sure why Insanity implies most of the Pirates are native Rook Islanders. As far as I know, Vaas is the only Rakyat among them.

I also think it’s a bit weird to imagine they have wives, children, and “normal” family lives... but maybe some of them do, who knows?

So, in my opinion, the idea that Vaas himself asked the Pirates to rebel, especially for the reasons cited in the DLC, doesn’t make sense. On the contrary, it was he who maintained the fragile balance of power between his men and Hoyt’s, and it was precisely when he died that the Pirates, without a leader, started attacking the Privateers to try to get control of the island. I think it would have been strange for Vaas to “start a war with Hoyt” in Far Cry 3.

That said, it seems the DLC’s writers believed Vaas felt guilty for not becoming Citra’s “Ultimate Warrior”, leaving the Rakyat, and convincing others to follow him. I don’t really agree with this interpretation (and Insanity isn’t canon to me anyway) because he chose not to complete the ritual, still clearly resents the tribe, and I don’t think other Rakyat became Pirates, but maybe that’s why the devs thought the rebellion against Hoyt was Vaas’ idea.

Also, because Vaas, Pagan, and Joseph are unreliable narrators in Insanity, Control, and Collapse, some of the “visions” they experience, for various reasons, either never happened or show a distorted version of reality, so maybe this scene isn’t a memory but a fantasy, a romanticization of his past and a way for him to “correct” it in his mind. It’s possible Vaas never actually started a war on Hoyt but (at least in the DLC) wishes he had done it.

Again, I doubt this meeting happened or even could have happened in Far Cry 3, but I suppose that’s why the scene exists in Insanity.

[tater-tot-jr]

Hazbin Hotel’s: Poison, an analysis. Part 9, the finale.

We jump to Angel in his dressing room, panicking while some of Valentino’s pink saliva drips out of his mouth. His glamorous makeup is gone and his hair is a mess.

The show puts incredible emphasis on him locking the door behind him, it completely takes up the screen and we even audibly hear the lock click.

Despite the lock Angel doesn’t take his eyes off the door until he’s out at the balcony. His room has the same chain design that one of the sets did, which is an interesting touch. I think it’s supposed to represent how he can never really stop preforming but maybe Val just likes everything to be cohesive. His room is also a mess. There’s sex toys on the couch, clothes everywhere, a broken coat hanger. Angel doesn’t seem bothered by this though, but I’m willing to bet he was too distressed to even notice.

Angel nervously slicks back his hair and looks at the saliva he wiped off his face and mouth. His back is still turned to the studio below him but he casts a glance over his shoulder and who does he see but Valentino and Vox.

Valentino also has this weird pink saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth, and I’ll be honest I’m fucking stumped on the meaning. He’s holding Valentino’s hand in a very gentlemanly way before he notices Angel and casts him a look of disdain. It’s not a secret he doesn’t like Angel very much but we can’t know why. He could be jealous or it could be some other issue. Who knows?

This causes Angel to start sobbing while he collapses to the group. I like the framing of this shot making the balcony bars look like a cage. The imagery is so obviously I doubt it requires explanation but it hit me right in the feels so I definitely had to include it.

Last but not least we zoom out and see Angel collapsed and sobbing “wish I had something to live for tomorrow” while being carefully observed by a VoxTech camera. Just another layer to add to how trapped Angel is.

—

Okay. I did it. I’m done. Here’s some final thoughts about the scene.

I fucking love this scene, Poison is my favorite song and this scene certainly does it justice. Considering it’s meant to be more pop than musical theater it’s very pleasing to listen to repeatedly, which is something I value a lot in music. You’ve probably noticed that I didn’t have very many deep connections to make, and that’s because A. I’m a little dumb and B. Poison is not subtle. It’s very upfront with Valentino’s actions and the way they affect Angel, there are a couple little details here and there but everything you need to know about this song can be understood when you just slow it down and think about it, which makes the hate it gets completely ridiculous. If my dumbass can take the time to understand this then anyone who believes this song “fetishized” or “romanticized” abuse can do the same. Abusive people are not one note monolithic monsters, they feign kindness and care all the time. That’s why people stay with them. It would be a disservice to victims of abuses to simplify their lived experiences into something palatable for TV.

[fantasyinvader]

I was watching a video on why Japanese media is so focused on youth, especially high school. The TLDR is that for the Japanese, high school is romanticized as their last experience with freedom before they enter adulthood. The last time they can just hang with their friends at their own leisure, back before they enter a career and the dreaded Japanese work environment. Rather than looking back at high school as a sucky place, it's viewed as something to long for afterwards resulting in a lot of media romanticizing it in order to cash in on the appeal.

But this just ignores the fact that Japan is a meritocracy, and even during high school there's focus on studying in order to get into a good school, because getting into a good school can result in getting a good job and enjoying financial success. But that's not really the case of what's going on in Japan, as those high paying positions are already filled by people who got to them first. Likewise, in companies people are expected to work not for their own sake but the sake of the company, which can be abused in people required to work unpaid overtime, go to afterhours parties, hell people are criticized for being the first person to leave at the end of their shift while others are doing that unpaid overtime in order to look good. People are meant to follow their elders/superiors, even if those leaders have made mistakes and problems worse, because that's how Japan follows tradition. It's led to problems like Japan's missing generation, how the Japanese economy burst in the late 80's and still really hasn't recovered, and the infamous black companies.

In terms of anime and manga, people just want to escape from modern Japanese society. Not just in using stories set in a high school as a form of escapism, but isekai stories or stuff like Zom 100 where Japanese society collapses and rather than viewing it as hell the protagonists view it as a means to be free and pursue the dreams they've given up on. Or you get slow life stories about people moving from the city to a more relaxing life in the country, as well as all manner of power fantasies where you can just brute force the world into making sense.

In modern Japanese, the word hadou is used to refer to bosses who abuse their power. And at the same time, the devs of Houses believed that people would focus more on the school section of the story. And this got me thinking.

Think about it like this, Edelgard is supposed to represent hadou. She talks a lot about merit, and like a significant proportion of Japanese society doesn't believe in social safety nets. The Japanese text has her state that she's going to put the world back to the way it was, a return to tradition. Likewise, like Japanese society she also believes that change has to come from the top, namely her remaking society the way she believes it should be run. She's also an Imperialist who has been fed historical revisionism, which she never questions despite knowing her real source and their intentions.

Edelgard represents the worst aspects of Japanese society.

Now, go back to that romanticization of the high school experience and how the devs thought people would focus more on the Academy portion of the game. Time passing is a motif of the game, with the Japanese name for the game invoking the passage of the seasons. Time is always going forward (minus the odd divine pulse), it waits for no man and once passed you can't go back. Mechanically, we get the game's calendar system limiting how much grinding we can do in contrast to past FE games with grinding. The story isn't going to stop just because you want to grind EXP or supports. And with the passage of time comes maturity.

Going back to what the devs have said, Edelgard being a villain is meant to be a twist. Supporting her means cementing Fodlan as a meritocracy, a place where people are expected to look after themselves and not rely on others according to her solo ending which shows that her big speech against Rhea was just BS. She'll even admit to walking the path of hadou up until that point, and despite her words that's not longer the case her victory is still supposed to lead to hadou. All this happens because when her mask came off and she was revealed as the Flame Emperor, the player didn't see her for what she was. They saw her as the romanticized school girl she had pretended to be up until that point.

Supporting the system that is most like Japanese society leads to tyranny.

The flipside is oudou. Dimitri's ending was written in direct opposition to Edelgard's and is seen as radical in Japan. Rather than consolidating power on himself, he gives it to the masses so that societal change comes from them, all while he also works to support those in need rather than leaving them to fend for themselves. It's also present in Claude's ending, as he makes a point to bring up stopping Edelgard's hadou. His route sees him mature, realize he was wrong about things, and as a result changes his stance. He also opens up, working with others to accomplish his goals while also realizing that simply erasing lines won't bring people together. His ending sees Fodlan reset and rebuilt in contrast to Edelgard's restoration of the Empire. Finally, it's also present in SS (through the Japanese name for the Sword of the Creator invoking Heaven's Mandate) where Byleth and the Black Eagles don't side with Edelgard after all she's done. Doing the right thing is not always easy, and SS is meant to be the hardest route simply because it means fighting someone that you may been close with. But the alternative is just blindly following your house leader, whose route repeatedly makes her out to be a liar manipulating others for her own gain and again it leads to tyranny. Instead, Byleth takes over as the leader of the Church and their former students.

SS, AM and VW are all supposed to lead to better societies. Lessons that could lead to better a Japan, all tied to the idea of growing up into being a responsible adult rather than expecting the person on top to magically solve everything. If anything, it makes this obsession with the freedom of youth and high school Japan out to be an issue holding it back. Japanese society has plenty of problems and whatever your poison escapism isn't going to solve them. People stepping up and taking control of their own lives rather than just having blind faith in their leaders, supporting and empowering each other rather than believing that people only get what they earn, adopting new points of view rather than regressing to tradition, even taking in the perspective of outsiders, all of those things can help make things better. This longing for high school, conversely, only leads to how Hideaki Anno once described Japan: A nation of children.

And, really, the fact people make up elaborate headcanons in order to say Edelgard is the real hero despite what the game's creators say? That's just people revealing how childish they really are. After all, Houses had a CERO rating of B, rated ages 12 and up. This game is something that is supposed to be understood by middle-schoolers, yet some folks can't accept that their favorite is a villain who does bad things

[maxbegone]

gonna say a thing under the cut. tw for death and grief. it's gonna be long.

hard but necessary therapy session today. the question of "have i actually grieved my dad?" comes up quite often — either said by myself or my therapist, sometimes others. today, knowing i write a lot, she asked if i have ever written him a goodbye letter.

of course i teared up and stared at the ceiling until i was able to process the answer i already knew into words: no, and i never would.

here's the thing: "goodbye" and my dad don't exist in the same context. i can't say goodbye to him because i never will, and i never will because it all feels too finite. i still talk about him in the present-tense ("My dad loves making ____!'), and I'm in no way, shape, or form in denial about his death that was now almost two and a half years ago (my therapist also told me today that there's something about the two and a half year mark that tends to bring up a lot of emotion in people, but i'm not sure what that reasoning is. the only guess i could hazard is that it sneaks up on you).

so while i'll never say goodbye, my "homework" this week is to write to him. get things off my chest and try to do it daily. i bought a notebook just for those letters. i filled up five pages front and back this afternoon.

and re: grieving, no. i don't think i ever fully grieved my dad because i don't think i let myself. the subsequent six months following his death involved selling my house, digging through all the stuff we'd accumulated in his nearly thirty years in my childhood home, and paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. i had several breakdowns, tried to stall as much as possible, hold on to what i knew i would be losing soon. i'm still like that today.

i can't let him go because that's just not possible as a whole. but i can grow with this grief.

i told my therapist that i imagine myself breaking rather...romantically? that i'd be on a solo long weekend somewhere upstate, finally taking the time to really, really write, and while on a break, maybe i'd find a hiking trail, look out at the valley or town or forest below me and i'd just completely fall apart. i'd cry until i was exhausted, i'd collapse. and she asked, "what's so wrong about that?"

and i replied, "nothing."

outside of it being, again, romanticized a bit and certainly cliched and thought out in the way i do best, there's nothing wrong with breaking. breaking in nature might be peaceful.

i've broken on the subway, i've broken in the middle of a crowded museum, i've broken in public and in private. but truly breaking? i think it would wind up being somewhere as stated above, an intensity coming over me that i can't get away from.

and maybe i'll accept it or maybe i won't. i'll figure that out some day.

it's true heartbreak. all the things my dad will never see me accomplish, the things i can't share with him, the fact that i finally figured out what i want to write about because he's gone — it feels performative and guilt-inducing, but also necessary.

i'll never say goodbye to my dad because he doesn't deserve a goodbye, he deserves a continuation. and that's up to me.

[pendulum-sonata]

It never ceases to amaze me how uninspired some people are with their opinions on the enemies to lovers (and viceversa) dynamic - which half of the time people didn't even ask them lol - and how invariably shows that they think nothing is possible about this beyond some sort shallow and lite version of it, that's not even actually enemies to lovers, or they just think it's nothing but a trashy or crack trope that romanticizes toxic or abusive relationships. And even if some portrayals are like that, that's not the problem and those are more valid than the shallow ones tbh.

This isn't even me trying to talk about antis, this is about people who are generally nice and civil about almost any sort of shipping, but when you mention this particular trope, they just can't seem to visualize anything than the above mentioned examples, and don't understand why anyone could ever like the more "extreme" examples.

And this is just my opinion, of course, but I feel like at least part of the problem comes that they conceptualize the idea of characters being enemies, as nothing but wanting to kill or otherwise hurt each other for no other reason than personal grudges, misunderstanding or just plain toxicity, and don't see the full-blown version, they miss on the whole scenario beyond that dynamic, because in fact, a huge part of the tension comes precisely because the personal desires of the characters, which end going against their goals, their duty, or a promise they can't abandon, and really if there isn't at least a level of opposing goals or ideologies, then I don't count it as enemies to lovers, period.

On the other group that thinks this is all about indulging in toxicity and unhealthy relationships, something that even if it was all there was to enemies to lovers, it still wouldn't be a problem, because yeah, the yearning turned into obsession, the curiosity turned into attraction, the hatred that easily slips into passion, but it's only one of the stages of it, usually the early ones, then it evolves into a relationship that's more stable and reciprocal, but the conflict remains, AND this is where my first point becomes important, because the relationship evolves, but the board in which the story develops, the conflict that makes this, an enemies to lovers scenario is still there, they can't be together, because of that. And when a well-developed enemies to lovers story does this well and reaches this point, the so-called "toxicity" that some people love to denounce, takes in a new form, which form you ask? Well, that's the fun part, there are many possibilities on how this ends up resolved, and I have some examples that I'll summarize here, that, by the way, are ALL original media, I clarify this because I rather not spoil anyone from anything they may be working their way through, and because, there are also people who believe this plot-line only works in fanworks:

"Why can't you abandon them and stay with me?" "Are you willing to abandon the promise to your people for me?" Said by the main couple, on opposing sides of an upcoming war, after laying the cards on their situation, not hatred but also no concession, neither can give up on their respective sides.

"I do not wish to survive when my home is collapsed." Said by one character after the other tries to save only them from a disaster they're helping to bring, also, no hatred or even animosity, just a constant tip-toeing game of 'I know you know what I know' until the unavoidable happens.

"Didn't you say before today that you trusted me? That you liked me?" "Because I'm naive, I like you, but now I've seen through you, and even if I still like you I don't believe you anymore, and thus, I'll slowly, little by little, not like you anymore..." exchange after an important reveal from the love interest's real goals, this one is interesting because the former wants to hate the other, but they can't, not yet, and the other is still in a weird denial of having their cake and eating it too.

"I don't care if you did or not, I just care that you enjoyed it." "And why shouldn't I delight to see you squirm? You tricked me, played me for a fool," Exchange while dancing and humiliating the other but also in the middle of having to figure out how not to get one of them killed.

"You're the one I love, but how do you feel?" "We're married of cou-" "I'm not talking about marital duty, but I understand, love doesn't come easy, I'll wait" Very sweet exchange right? Except that the loved one thinks to themselves, that this is the only thing they can't grant and one day they'll be able to tell the truth, but for now they have to lie, why? Because they'll have to kill the other one day.

[ethereousdelirious]

CW // IRL/SELF OBS

I either have demon allergies from hell or some sort of unspecified respiratory virus, so in acknowledgement of that, here's that fever obs I promised y'all last month and never delivered on

The backstory:

I was a very healthy adolescent/young adult so I had no real experience with any sort of prolonged fever. Then I managed to catch the flu last month (tested positive for Influenza A 💀) and came down with an Actual Fever, and figured I'd dump my observations here for fic reference (or whacking off, if that's more your cup of tea)

Here's my account. I tried to lock in on the interesting, sickfic-y details

The good shit:

-I had a scratchy throat and a cough for 2 days beforehand that I thought was laryngitis from talking too much (my friend had been visiting so I was YAPPING)

-Then the reckoning began

Fever 102-103°F

-I woke up on Day 3 with a fever. I had never had a fever before. I knew exactly what was wrong with me. My skin felt wrong and I was cold even though I could tell, somehow, that my apartment was warm. There was some sort of perception-reality mismatch that I was deeply aware of.

-I really could not get warm. I was shivering under piles of blankets, and I remember thinking, "If anyone tried to snuggle me warm, sickfic style rn I think i would Actually Kill Them." When I tell you I did not want to be bothered.

-I even tried to romanticize it like "teehee, if I was in a sickfic right now, I would want my Caretaker to... to, um... uh..." I honestly just wanted to be left the hell alone so I could sleep.

-I was SO fucking tired?? When I got up for like food or whatever, I started not letting myself sit down because I knew I would start to fall asleep, and then I'd have to haul myself back up to go to bed. I swear I've never used so much willpower and self-discipline in my LIFE, but it took so much determination to stand up and go to bed. It didn't matter if I was in the middle of eating or making coffee, if I got tired, it was either go to bed or collapse.

-The only time I ever felt too hot was when I tried to drink coffee for my caffeine addiction. I lasted about two sips before I started burning up and falling asleep and reckoned I had about 60 seconds to decide if I was gonna go to bed or let it happen in an armchair with a mug of hot coffee in my hand. (I went to bed).

-Overall, I was very able to do things for myself. I was slow and tired, but I felt like my mental energy was fine enough. I managed to take care of my dog and eat (sort of) and all that

-My focus felt very narrow. I could really only focus on one thought or task at a time, with no room for planning. (So no "I'll eat something, then have some water, take my dog out, and go back to bed." It was one thought at a time.)

-Speaking of eating...

-I had NO appetite, so I started forcing myself to drink milk every time I woke up. I can easily see how a character could become dehydrated or forget to eat when feverish. I had 0 hunger cues. All I wanted was popsicles for my sore throat.

-Because I have sickfic brainrot, I was constantly asking myself: "Could I push through this? What tasks could I perform if I absolutely had to?"

-I decided that driving was a definite no. Curiously, I also couldn't stand up straight, like I was too tired. However, I estimated that, with sufficient adrenaline, I could probably perform cardiovascular exercises if needed (so yes running, no weightlifting). And, though I think it really would have hindered my recovery, I probably could have forced myself to stay awake and do computer or paper tasks that required no creativity. (So clerical tasks, filling out paperwork, basic math, etc)

Fever in the 100s

-Day 4 was the day I got the Sickfic Cough

-We're talking like choking, desperate, "something in my chest needs OUT!" kinda coughs. A couple times it even got so bad it triggered my gag reflex, but thankfully nothing came of that

-I was still tired, but I finally had the presence of mind to talk to text people instead of just scrolling on Tumblr

-For some reason I got a craving for Asian pears that I was tragically unable to fulfill. If I'd had a lovely sickfic Caretaker to fetch me Asian pears I swear I would have married them.

-SO. FUCKING. COLD. This was really the day I started longing for a "Character B," if you will. I wanted somebody to hold me sooo badly. But alas I had to make do with extra blankets.

-Then I started waking up absolutely DRENCHED in sweat, aware that my internal temperature was too high but absolutely FREEZING. Again, I would have loved for someone to help me wash my bedding and get new pajamas and run me a bath, but it was just me. So the sheets went unchanged and I started having to cycle through pajamas and it was fine.

-^This apparently had nothing to do with my fever "breaking," because it happened many times with my temperature sort of bouncing around the 100-102 zone with no particular pattern to speak of

Brief Interlude on Physical Appearance

-Both days I had a fever, I honestly thought I looked lovely. I've had a few stomach bugs before and turned so pale I was basically green, but this kind of had me a yellowish pale? I have a golden undertone so I think that had something to do with it. I didn't notice any "fever glaze" to my eyes, nor any red cheeks, but my eyelids looked darker? It was really very flattering. If my hair hadn't been so fucked up I would have taken some selfies, but alas, I looked like a bog creature.

-I can kinda see what the Victorians/menhera girlies are on about....

Recovering

-Day 5 was uneventful. I woke up without a fever and had to drag my ass to urgent care to get a return-to-work note because I never bothered to link up with a PCP (I know, I know)

-Here's a bonus scenario for you all: I arrived at the urgent care a little after opening only to find a sign on the door that the staff was having a meeting and the urgent care was opening an hour late. So I had the choice of spending 20 minutes standing out in the cold. while recovering from the flu. or to walk back to my car. neither of which I particularly wanted to do.

-I waited in my car. When I finally saw the a provider, she was so unconcerned about me that I was almost offended

-(Not in a bad way, just that I felt awful and had spent the last day wanting someone to "Oh poor baby" me, but in the medical field, an otherwise healthy, polite 20-something with no other health concerns than "recovering from the flu" is not even remotely a big deal)

The symptoms stuff is done now, but I figured I'd include the medical system details in case anyone wants them, or for me to reference later:

-For the medical details: An MA (medical assistant) took me back and asked me the routine questions (symptoms, when did they start, any major concerns, date of last period— they didn't give me a pregnancy test, which I appreciated, but afaik policy on that varies from location to location), and took my temperature and blood pressure. This was done with me in one of the normal chairs on the floor.

-The MA also verified I had tested negative for COVID at home, and swabbed my nose for a flu test

-The NP (nurse practitioner) who came in later had me hop up on the exam table, verified my answers about my symptoms, and listened to my lungs with a stethoscope. She was the one who gave me the results of the flu test. She skimmed over educating me on recovery, presumably because I'm young, healthy, and seemed very comfortable and familiar with everything that was going on (I was— both my parents worked in the medical field, my sister is a nurse, and I work in medical records). She prescribed me something to help with my cough and sent me on my way with some printouts detailing what I symptoms I could expect as I recovered, my return-to-work note, and (for some reason) my name and blood pressure

-And that was that

That's all! I hope this was, if not informative, sexy, or helpful, at least mildly interesting :)

[nobuverse]

( I was finally able to play through Okita's interlude and I have - mixed feelings about it? )

Because on one hand I really loved her interactions with the kids. The conclusion of finding her 'makoto' was really solid. I adored the way she still kept trying to train even though she could barely swing her sword properly

But, not going to lie, I feel like romanticizing and overall making the death scene so soft was not the right direction to take.

Now, I understand that in literature we tend to overlook certain things for the sake of making a good story - we all do it. But there's no way on earth you're going to convince me that a person who died of tuberculous ( or so the legend goes, a lot of debate on that in some places ) lived the last few bits of their life happily in the warm sunlight.

It just...didn't portray her as a fighter very well, I think? The way I always visualized Okita's death was tragic with the records I read, as the legend of the original tell of him growing delirious and crying out to know what became of Kondou, with everyone telling him he was fine ( a lie, he'd already been executed ).

So they way they just have her smile and collapse when she's been told she looks really health that day - I'm not a fan.

Death by TB is not quiet and calm - it's spent gasping for air, your entire body having crumbled away bit by bit as time as gone bad. It's a devastating, hideous disease - specifically when we didnt have the treatments for it.

I think not portraying Okita as fighting against it to desperately try and get back on the battlefield was such a missed opportunity.

[tintysun]

My Demon └ Moments

EPISODE 1 • So happy to see Madam Ju here. I never get tired of that parental archetype! Makes me teary-eyed. While the Sunwol Foundation supporting artists and superb art makes me starry-eyed! • I found it funny how this fight basically consisted of how he's able to trap his opponents inside a newspaper with peculiar headlines and/or captions. • Wondering why she couldn't sell her soul or he wasn't able to buy it when she was desperate and willing...

EPISODE 2 • They irritated each other so much at the beginning. I don't romanticize that, as life and much in it irritates me plenty already, but I like how they do it less and less so instead of going in circles with it as if it's comical or adorable. • TBH, that guy (the cousin), gave me a bad feeling since the first moment I saw him. A peculiar discomfort whenever he's around, too. But of course, I gotta give the benefit of the doubt and gather evidence before reaching any conclusion. Sigh...

EPISODE 3 • It's not gonna be shown in excruciating detail how much she had to mentally and emotionally adjust to the situation. But suddenly hanging out with a demon isn't something that can be taken casually. Being abruptly teleported to high places and all of that. • There's some emphasis on the name 'Salvation' and maybe that's their theme. I like it. In a time when so many insist on repeating the lines "save yourself" and "nobody's coming to save you", it's soothing. Do Do-hee might be particularly inclined to value that due to her past, though, despite being quite independent too.

EPISODE 4 • "You're treating me like a wireless charger." "And you treat me like a Pokemon." That about sums it up. 😄 • That tango fight was soooo unnecessary (since he can just snap his fingers), but I guess he likes to dance (and I'll never get over how often background music saves the day). 😝

EPISODE 5 • “The world was never an easy place to begin with. You get trampled on and eaten up without power.” A person with this as their modus operandi? It’s more common than you’d think. Among the most insufferable to me (admittedly, unbearable). I definitely would not want to live in a world ruled by them. And though there’s some truth to this statement, “There’s only one way the powerless can survive. Siding with the most powerful.” It rests on a fundamentally flawed assumption, and it’s that THEY are the most powerful. It takes more power to lift and alleviate others than to corner and/or crush them.

EPISODE 6 • I take that moment of Jeong Gu-won falling with yet saving Do Do-hee from being dropped from the heights as something symbolic too. • Choosing to marry Jeong Gu-won instead of Joo Seok-hun, the best decision ever. I don't know how much it really bothered Joo Seok-hun, but I don't even want to imagine how boring (or worse) Do Do-hee's life would be next to that guy. Sounds horrible on my part, but where's the lie? They're just not a good match, IMO.

EPISODE 7 • I tried, but I don't see the point of Joo Seok-hun being on screen so often and for so long. He's supposed to be the skeptical, inquisitive, and concerned character there? But I fail to see any instance in which he did anything more than interrupting and delaying progress to satisfy his curiosity and secure his repose. That and occasionally saying things that are deeply unnerving to me. "I admit that I'm not a scary person. But I can certainly be a nuisance. I'm quite persistent. I'll disturb and bother you so persistently that you can no longer maintain the peace and happiness that you enjoy in your daily life. You see, one termite can slowly eat away at the wood to the point that the whole house collapses." But sure, have him around. This is literally what he does to my enjoyment of this show. (And I've played enough WoW to know that DoTs can kill you if you let them be.) • Frankly, I do not at all find them to be too harsh towards streamers spreading dis/misinformation for clicks, views, subscribers, and tips. These people have zero regard for the lives they fuck over doing this shit.

EPISODE 8 • "Do what's best for you. Because that's what's best for me." The epitome of symbiotic relationships. But even if he's reckless enough to not care what negative consequences could affect him for loving her, I root for her to help make him even more hardcore and badass, powerful too. Rather than "insignificant and weak", become even more epic and iconic. Gotta have breaks to relax and enjoy too, though, 'cause that's not everything either.

EPISODE 9 • My dried, shrunk, and hardened heart cannot handle all this cuteness. OMG!!! 😆 • Someone get these drunks clear water and real food!! 😵 • A-ha! The homeless person living within boxes and occasionally spewing insightful and thought-provoking lines finally shows their true nature! This entire part sent shivers down my spine. 😮

EPISODE 10 • So he sacrificed his life to save hers like she did for him at the beginning and the tattoo got transferred back, so all his powers returned? Good! I was going to be mad if they both ended up as weak mortals with some cliche about being human. 😫 • Man, Jin Ga-yeong deserved waaay better. I'm amazed she didn't go full psycho-villain after all that neglect and dismissal she endured over this ordeal.

EPISODE 11 • PLOT TWIST! This pair went through EVERYTHING.

EPISODE 12 • I'm not crying. You're crying. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 • For what it's worth, a reminder that escapegoaters gonna escapegoat. Sooner or later, no matter what. When someone's not quite fitting in.

EPISODE 13 • The concept of happiness being potentially poisonous is something to write essays on, but I do appreciate Jeong Gu-won's insistence on joy. Letting people get swallowed up by sadness isn't better. It's adorable that he humors her with festivities, too. • I... could rant forever about how much I despise men like Noh Seok-min. But I shouldn't. I kind of wish Jeong Gu-won would give him what he deserves. But looks like his hell has already started. Still, tragic that that's the kind of "family" Do Do-hee has to deal with. With the blatant fake polite BS just to get what he wants and the taking offense when called out on it and more.

EPISODE 14 • This is such a load of fiction but I can't stop watching. • Beyond that, this episode was... "So you wanted a demon husband, huh? Can you even handle the reality of that?" And a "Who has the worst baggage/skeletons in the closet?" contest type of episode. • Jeong Gu-won, DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE HER ALONE!!! Being all, "Wuwuwu, I'm bad for her... ):" HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT MEN ARE LIKE THESE DAYS? YOU'RE GOOD. GREAT, ACTUALLY.

EPISODE 15 • Do Do-hee is such a heavy sleeper. Jeong Gu-won goes around, doing all sorts of things, while she's contently snoring and drooling on a pillow. • She finally got to see more of how it all began. Not to get too idealistic and romantic, but it is astonishing to see how intertwined they are. Sometimes you bond with another and forget exactly why and how, but the ties remain - keeping you together or coming back to each other, if not just making it harder for you to walk away over petty/trivial reasons.

EPISODE 16 • Bawling my eyes out seeing kindness passed around now. I'm not even religious but the angel part got me so bad. T-T ♥ • I almost, almost... feel bad for Noh Seok-min. He's getting what he deserves, though. • I don't know if it's bad casting or acting, but Joo Seok-hun is still very suspicious to me. They don't usually make more seasons of 16-episode Korean series like this one, from what I've heard. But I could bet he's the hook for a potential next one. He did say at one point something along the line that he was good at looking innocent - and he spent the entire show meddling and prying while looking innocent. But who knows. Maybe this just wasn't the time for such a character to shine as the villain.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

“Renowned Egyptologist says it’s time to stop romanticizing ancient Egypt 

In ‘The Good Kings,’ UCLA’s Kara Cooney draws parallels between pharaohs and present-day authoritarians

In her latest book, Kara Cooney draws parallels between the rulers of 3,000 years ago and the authoritarian leaders of today.

Alison Hewitt | December 6, 2021

Pyramids, pharaohs and ancient Egyptian gods have entranced many, but it’s time we stopped romanticizing the trappings of authoritarianism, according to UCLA’s Kara Cooney.

Cooney is a UCLA professor of Egyptology and archaeology and already a bestselling author (“The Woman Who Would Be King,” 2014, and “When Women Ruled the World,” 2019). In her latest book, she admits that her fascination with ancient Egypt has soured — so much so that she now describes herself as a “recovering Egyptologist.” The uncritical admiration of the pharaohs that has continued to the present day, she writes, is a legacy of the ancient rulers’ efforts to manipulate how they were perceived, and has even served as a narrative and cultural foundation propping up modern authoritarianism.

“How many of us have had deep obsessions with the ancient world — I just love Egyptian temples! I adore Greek mythology! — that are really symptoms of an ongoing addiction to male power that we just can’t kick?” Cooney writes.

“The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World,” published by National Geographic, draws direct parallels between the rulers of 3,000 years ago and modern tyrants. In it, Cooney describes how the pharaohs created a compelling moral argument for power that continues to mislead people today, and which is linked directly to the current rise of authoritarianism.

Cooney explores the pitfalls of patriarchal systems that harm women and men alike, and she convincingly argues that society is duplicating the historical patterns that have repeatedly led to power collapses. Only this time, she notes, climate change has altered the rules of recovery.

Cooney is chair of UCLA’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. In an interview with UCLA Newsroom, she talks about what lessons ancient Egyptian narratives might offer in light of the societal and social challenges the world faces in 2021.

Why are the pharaohs of ancient Egypt still so relevant thousands of years later?

Pharaohs open themselves up to social justice discussions. The hard thing is that the pharaohs were arguably the best ever at presenting an authoritarian regime as good and pure and moral. That’s the underlying idea that needs to be popped first, because we still buy into it today. Concepts of patriarchal society, extraction of natural resources for profit, exploitation, overwork, misogyny and more all came pouring out of the Egyptian narrative.

Kara Cooney at work. “Pharaohs were arguably the best ever at presenting an authoritarian regime as good and pure and moral. That’s the underlying idea that needs to be popped first, because we still buy into it today.

We’re still living in those narratives. We may tell ourselves we’re too smart to be fooled, but the idea of modern exceptionalism is a fake-out. We’re still just as prone to the fears of an early death or a lack of prosperity. We’re just as superstitious and god fearing.

All those vulnerabilities make us very, very easy marks for authoritarian regimes if we don’t think critically and understand the tools they are wielding over us.

What do you hope people take away from the book?

I wanted to give readers a playbook, in a sense, for what could come next from a historian’s perspective, and why the patriarchy is not the only way of running a system. The patriarchy is destroying itself. It’s happening. And we need to be there, anti-patriarchically, to rebuild something that better protects us all from the abuses of power.

You write that you see signs that the patriarchy is leading society toward a collapse, repeating a pattern that has occurred throughout history. But you also note that climate change will interrupt the cycle in a big way. What can we learn about what comes next by studying the rise and fall of ancient Egyptian regimes?

The patriarchy rises and falls in cycles, collapsing and rebuilding. But the thing that’s haunting authoritarian regimes now is that the Earth is not allowing that cycle anymore. The Earth is not allowing the ongoing extractive, consumptive, unequal hoarding that defines those regimes, because it’s unsustainable, and that unsustainability is now the undoing of the patriarchy.

We’ve had smaller-scale climate change for thousands of years; think of cities wiped away by deforestation that led to mudslides. The difference now is the scale. Now it’s global. The patriarchy sows the seeds for its own destruction again and again before coming back in a vicious cycle, but the difference this time is global climate change threatens to make this the final cycle.

I’m not a soothsayer, but from my 10,000-year view of history, I see two paths. It could be more patriarchy for another 500 years until the planet is truly dead, and then that’s it; that’s the end of the story. But I think we will flirt with patriarchy and mess with it for another 200-some years, and then we will find our way through to something sustainable and different.’

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/egyptologist-kara-cooney-good-kings-book

Pr. Cooney is a distinguished Egyptologist and I sympathize totally with her effort to present the authoritarian and exploitative aspects of ancient Egypt, aspects that many tend to forget today, preferring to devote an uncritical admiration to the Pharaonic political, social, and economic system (I liked as very telling her humorisitc self-description in her interview above as “recovering Egyptologist’!). On the other hand, I find more doubtful her notion that the ancient Egyptian socio-economic system and our modern societies could be seen as just instances of the same patriarchal essence. I say this because there are in the last centuries some obvious historical developments, like the adoption of the principles of democracy, freedom, and equality, including equality between the sexes and the races. Not of course that the official adoption of these principles means that they are implemented absolutely or even satisfactorily, let alone that they are implemented in their most developed and meaningful forms. It remains however that with the constitutional adoption of these principles we live in an intellectual, political, and social world very different from that of ancient Egypt. But I agree of course that climate change and environmental crisis are major challenges. Moreover, I believe that the danger exists even today that the overconcentration of economic and social power in few hands and the widening of social and economic inequalities could lead to the appearance of new forms of authoritorianism even in societies with strong democratic and liberal traditions. If such oligarchic tendencies prevail, the combination of political authoritarianism in the service of egoistic wealthy elites with the environmental crisis could lead to disasters and even to a danger of collapse of the human civilization itself, as Pr. Cooney describes. Anyway, as far as I can judge from what I read about it, I think that the book of Pr. Cooney is welcome, because it contains a refreshing and balanced critical view on some fundamental characteristics of the ancient Egyptian civilization, but also a personal and serious reflection of a historian on what the past can tell us about our urgent problems today.

[hiriajuu-suffering]

I still have no idea if you're worth the choice

Steph. Oh I didn't think 2 weeks later after we lost any method of communication I'd still be pulling my hair out over a missed opportunity in my thirties, but here we are.

Intrigued. That's the word that always gets me. I can get a woman's intrigue but then I repulse her just as easily, like I did you. Intersectionality is always a difficult thing to be tasteful about when it invites dissent.

I thought you were better. You were so quick to sacrifice your ideals when something looked promising, that it would allow you to grasp at a strand of happiness when, without principle, those manifestations are, at best, fleeting. I'm not sure what I began resenting you for first - that you gave up your ideals on romanticizing against them or you were quick to see me as hostile when you knew you compromised our potential for it.

I never thought I'd say it, since we barely had more than a conversation or two, but

I miss you.

I didn't think it would happen to me. I wanted to do everything in my power to let the place you made for yourself in my heart fade away and eventually be gentrified, but it's not going away.

But this one's different. Different because we never met, did we? Our hearts connected then our minds clashed, but we never actually got to see each other eye-to-eye. You're the only reason I was even considering trying to break into Anime Boston, just Gatsby my polyamory panel hoping for a reinvigoration in your intrigue over me.

Maybe I didn't want to be right, but that's why the one means of connection we had left collapsed. I also know you'll never really see that. The minute an ugly, straight, cisgendered man says things provocative enough to garner hostility towards a few women, that was enough, wasn't it?

It wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth losing the tiny sparks we had despite never directly interacting meaningfully. I hate that I let myself watch and even be creepy at all, see you through some highs and lows not to stalk you but just to feel alright that you were doing okay. And you weren't a lot of the time. I wish you I could say for certain you're better off without me, because you certainly believe it.

I don't even need you to apologize for demonizing me, I'd still take you back in a heartbeat. I saw enough beauty behind your intentions that you burning a bridge means I'd just have to climb and swim.

The last thing I learned in undergrad was Goetheing my missed opportunities just led me down a path of envy and resentment. I look at my past self with a bit of disgust with just how much I denied myself on self-righteousness alone. I find myself making the same mistake again. With you. So as much as I'm apologizing to you, I'm apologizing to myself, as well.

If Steph is to slip me by - like Ash, like Fari, like Z.C., like L.L., like H.B., like J.P., like K.S., like N.V., like A.J., like V.E., like A.T., like B.R., like S.S., like S.V. - that's 15 lives I could've had: a slew of possibilities I refused to acknowledge until I actually let my personality disorder(s) fester in their energy.

Living the same regret, the fifteenth time, it's tough to bear. Even if they would pick the bear.

I don't want to let tokki represent that for me because I didn't give her the kind of shot I gave the last four: one of kindness and vulnerability. I decided to boast and flex, not put something out to show her she was a priority. Letting this go without taking every potshot I can feels wrong.

Maybe I'll find a way to reach her, one day. Until that day, another amazing and wonderful soul to drink over how I failed her. To spend moments alone on how it should be us keeping up.

I'm an idiot. If only because my anger over the normative ethics in the world forces my mind to wallow in melancholy instead of see just that many more steps ahead. I'm guarded to a fault.

But, for her, I wanted to let myself go again.

I can always romanticize the idea

but I know she'll never care to look that far into my heart.

That's the sadness I'll be feeling.

I really started searching for a convention girlfriend 2 years ago?

Fuck, does polyamory have its ways of humbling you.

Delta H Con, AnimeFest, Colossalcon Texas, San Japan

I got four more straws

Surely they can't all be duds...

aha..

:/

[cosmicrot]

Talking to my therapist today, she was asking me random questions.. just to kind of get a peek into my brain. Things like what i’d consider a good life, my opinion on certain selfcare stuff, how I feel about this or that, things of that nature.

but the thing that really got me was when she asked what is the toughest decision i think i’ve ever had to make. 

I kind of told her that most tough decisions are often the toughest decision i’ve ever had to make.. that they’re either equal to or tougher than the decision before it. That it’s kind of hard to compare tough decisions unless they’re similar so in that moment, and sometimes long after [until the next tough decision] it is probably the toughest decision i’ve ever made. And I continue to make decisions every single day that people don’t even think about needing to make decisions about, things people don’t realize that they choose or that *anyone* would ever have to or want to choose. 

when I boiled it down, I said in recent years the absolute toughest thing i’ve probably ever had to decide on... is the choice to just continue getting help and getting ‘better’. 

She said she found that interesting [and kind of sad but she didn’t mention it until later] that for a disabled queer fumbling through life and constantly in pain, that the hardest thing I have to do, is decide every single day, that I will continue to try, and continue to get help. Every day I choose to get out of bed and go to my appointments, choose to eat despite it being scary sometimes, choose what i can or want to deal with that day and what must wait. I have to choose over and over and over again to keep going, cause as much as I want to curl up and do nothing for a week[or a month] I’m at a point where doing nothing causes my body to collapse and my mental and physical health to get worse.

so everyday I make that hard decision to just, keep trying. 

She said she never thought of that.. Never thought that someone would have to do that. That it was interesting, and a little sad. Tiring.  And it is, but we decided to romanticize it a little cause god knows I need that in my life lmao.

That every day when I make that choice I’m choosing to survive, in the same way you choose to love and care for someone even when things are annoying or difficult. In that way I choose to care for myself, in the hopes that one day instead of choosing these things out of survival, i might choose them out of love.