#is going to die imminently

[hyperfocusthusly]

Fighting the horrors of life one pair of straight leg jeans at a time

[serpentface]

What’s the Janeys/Brakul death scenario?

So like upon review I mostly just was going to kill them off for Couya + Faiza + Hibrides’ character development (#FEMINIST WIN!!!!!!!).

The background situation of their death scenario is something that will happen either way:

Throughout the story, the pilgrimage requests tribute from the towns it passes through (mainly food and other supplies). This is a common practice for pilgrimages and the travels of royalty, and Imperial Wardi civilians are used to the concept (just not so much during a famine). Some people give fully willingly (a lot of people believe in the pilgrimage's goals/and or the necessity to keep its high status participants fed), most are at least partly coerced (usually not via direct threats, but the pilgrimage contains a couple hundred soldiers, the Usoma, and Odonii leadership. The threat is implied), some are Fully coerced via threats.

In the latter third of the story things are not going well. There’s been a lot of internal struggles among the soldiers and dissatisfaction with pilgrimage leadership (mostly Stavis), men are starting to defect and a large body are getting outright mutinous. The group has also lost much of their food supplies and things are getting desperate (they've been starting to eat their own pack khait and oxen)

With this going on, the pilgrimage sends three soldiers to exact tribute from a farming village in the province Lobera. They meet a group of men acting as representatives for the village, who flat out refuse to give tribute. Things escalate into an outright fight, the soldiers are better armed but few in number and are killed.

One of the village elders finds out that this happens and panics, knowing that the men who killed three of the Usoma’s soldiers (one of which is her son) have signed their own death sentences, and possibly that of others. She attempts to persuade the families to preemptively flee, and then takes the village's one remaining skinny old plow ox to carry the bodies of the dead soldiers back to where the pilgrimage is camped. She supplicates herself before Stavis Amanti and begs for mercy, saying they don't even have enough food stored to feed themselves, much less to give, and that the men thus considered the killings righteous self defense. She shows that she’s returned the bodies for rites as an act of goodwill, and offers the ox in tribute, the most valuable thing she can provide. She begs that the Usoma accepts this as tribute and spares the men's lives, and that the pilgrimage moves on without taking anything else.

Stavis bids her safe passage away from the camp (without confirming or denying that he's accepted her plea), and the heads of pilgrimage confer on what to do. The killing of the soldiers is a violation punishable by death, but this would be like, a notably bad PR move. Meanwhile a contingent of soldiers (including some major side characters I haven’t introduced) break off and lead a raid on the village to avenge their fallen brothers and loot supplies. Others get drawn into the fighting, and it devolves into a full on massacre.

A couple families had fled at the elder’s suggestion, but most refused to leave their homes. Some of the villagers believed they would be left unharmed if the killers were given up, others had been preparing for a reprisal and armed themselves with everything available. But they have few actual weapons and none are trained combatants. All of the remaining men and adolescent boys get killed, one woman manages to take out a soldier using a shovel but is killed, most of the other women and girls are spared murder but several are assaulted. The village is looted for supplies and kindling for funeral pyres.

Stavis Amanti has no fucking idea what to do. The soldiers defied orders and killed Imperial Wardi civilians, but the current climate amid the pilgrimage would make it EXTREMELY Bad for him if he demanded their punishment (but also potentially very bad if he didn't- not all the soldiers participated in the massacre and many were horrified). Faiza encourages him to exert authority in a measured response by having the ringleader of the mutineers killed but sparing the rest, and offers to publicly back him in hopes of avoiding full on mutiny.

The raid reveals that the villagers had been hiding more grain than they claimed they had (as in like, enough to feed their people on starvation level rations for a few weeks). Stavis takes this as an opportunity to justify not punishing the mutineers (as the villagers DID technically have something to give, and execution IS technically the punishment for refusing the order of tribute (though not execution of the entire community)), but insists that their Galenii bless the village dead and their men build pyres for the civilians as is honorable conduct. (This attempt to make amends is not particularly appreciated by the survivors.)

The pilgrimage holds a funeral for their own dead soldiers. The village ox that was given in tribute is killed and butchered for the funerary feast.

----

In the Bury Your Gays route, Brakul is one of the three that gets killed during the tribute extraction. Janeys loses his fucking mind when his body is brought back, and tries to slit his own throat on the spot. Couya stops him by wrestling him to the ground while Janeys screams threats at her and the old woman in a very pathetic public spectacle. He is deprived of all sharp objects.

While the pilgrimage leaders are conferring, he hovers miserably around Hibrides (who is also not feeling so great about all this). He's suddenly very interested in her pregnancy for the first time ever, asks to feel the baby (which has been just starting to kick). She's like "fuck off", but he strongly implies he's planning to commit suicide asap and she concedes and then is like Okay I Let You Feel The Goddamn Baby Now Leave Me Alone Holy FUCK.

Janeys turns his attention to fucking murdering anyone tangentially involved in this happening. He’s among the initial raid party, plays a major hand in it turning from its ostensible 'find and execute the ones responsible, subdue the rest, steal their food' directive to a full massacre by directing his men to immediately attack the first man he sees. He and his group capture three young men as prisoners and demand that they be slain at the soldier's funerals as is wartime custom (this isn't wartime). Janeys additionally demands that he should get to do it, as the only kin of any of the dead men. Once that's done he immediately cuts his own throat and bleeds out. They wind up getting cremated at the same time so things work out how Janeys wanted it.

At one point I realized that this is kind of just The Iliad?

----

So like obviously whether they die here or not has little impact on THESE events, but a lot of the endgame revolves around Couya Faiza and Hibrides and these deaths would be very significant to THEM in varying capacities. It affects the trajectory of the final stretch of their arcs and adds a lot of layers to the ultimate Couya/Faiza conflict. I also liked their deaths being kind of random and shitty and meaningless because that in of itself is kinda ~thematically resonant~ with the story. (A lot of tension between the lack of intrinsic meaning to events and the profound levels of meaning ascribed to them).

I'm almost definitely not going with this version of events though. Janeys and Brakul don't have much active involvement in the endgame and don't Really need to be alive for it as it stands, but I think the version where every main character (except Faiza she's doomed) survives to see What Has Been Wrought and living to experience the fallout ultimately works better.

[inkykeiji]

bnha manga spoilers!!!!!

EEEEEEEEE I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!

his hair!!!!!!!!!!!!! his fucking HAIR!!!!!!!!! i just AAAAH i cannot get over it because !!!!! that is exactly how i picture touya-nii’s hair to look 🥹🥹🥹 just down/undone n fluffy n shaggy n soft <333

anyway i am sickly in love with him, i’m not surprised to see what he actually looks like after the war, but the fact that he’s still got his eyes makes me think that his blue irises must be so stark and vivid and just pop against the rest of his injured body—which makes me both swoon and sad, because goddamn you’d recognize those eyes anywhere, the very moment your gaze meets his…but enji still didn’t, not even when he first came face to face with them, not until they were thrust in his face and screaming at him ._.

[throwawayblog-thrwaway]

I don’t like Kamala either, but if Trump wins I may very well die.

I take medication every day that prevents my cancer from returning.

That medication is paid for by medicaid. A program that Trump plans on gutting.

I am far from the only person in this position— nearly 90 million people are in the same boat.

If you’re really convinced there will be no difference between Kamala and Trump on Palestine, then fine— consider the lives that will be lost here if Trump takes office.

If you really think “making a statement” is worth the lives of poor and disabled Americans, I genuinely do not know what to say to you. Though let’s be real- “punishing democrats” by not voting or voting third party did fuck all with Clinton, and it’ll do fuck all now. Hell, in 2016 it actually led to countless more COVID deaths when the pandemic broke out

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

damn... kinda mad i didn't die in my dream last night... could've added another method to the list

[shadow-usagi]

Tang Shen as an angry ghost.

Activated by the imminent murder of her grandchild Leonardo. She was murdered before she could marry Hamato Yoshi, and she will not let a fate like that befall one of her turtles...

That it would be murder before a wedding is what lets her spirit act -- she'd have ripped apart the Shredder herself if she'd been able to.

Hair covering her face. Water dripping down, the rain from the night Yukio Mashimi killed her. The sound of a thousand angry rats in the walls, even though that's impossible. Static and old pop music. A pink anemone left as a warning. Wide eyes. When she attacks with a knife, she uses it just like Master Splinter...

(Unfortunately, Miyamoto Usagi is used to onryō being the obvious enemy, not an admittedly rather scary-looking ally.)

(It does not help that to Leonardo, she looks like a young woman in her twenties, wearing an oversized t-shirt and colourful plastic bracelets.)

(He's the only one who sees that.)

[haveyouseenmyhonor]

so much discourse over the 'dawn will come' scene

Regardless of intent to be a symbol, you have become one. You have become an item to which the people will look to. Religiously, systematically, even just hypothetically.

There is a damn hole in the sky with demons spewing forth every other minute - how are you supposed to raise an army? How are you supposed to keep the few military trained from abandoning? How are you meant to keep peace anywhere, let alone create a resistance to stop Gods and God Like Destruction?

Skipping it would be like skipping Ostagar. Many die in both and a new stage is created, one where the player has to take a mantel and play the part.

[kateis-cakeis]

rewatching bbc merlin really has me like buzzing in my mind with so many thoughts. Like I'm kinda watching it backwards atm going from S5 to S4, I think I will jump around 3, 2, and 1 but just,,,, there is so much especially in S5 that makes me !!!!!!!

Honestly, I feel like this fandom has to give the writers more credit. Like they did a damn good job, and to me, it's such a good tragedy. Especially how S5 plays out, it takes everything and just tears you down, and down, and down. It's perfect, perfect with flaws! But still perfect

[mymarifae]

so does anyone else want to talk about the big ass clue about march 7th's past dropped in the clockie movie saga side quest of all places or

because like i'm sorry girl What Did You Just Fucking Say

[hacksawboy]

my sawtism is p much gone but the other day my irl did randomly dm me out of the absolute fucking blue the phrase "do you think they're gonna make saw y and saw z" and that's been marinating on the brain

[pianotrees]

As a flaming homosexual myself, please help me, it burns. I am in unbearable pain.

[whatareyoudoingwithamaserati]

I could fix jepexx. Someone get his cringefail ass over here right now I need to lock him in a room and make him listen to electric callboy and dangerkids and architects until he repents for his sins and starts a pair of patch pants

[lindenattic]

l.s. dunes playing bombsquad at sad summer fest, jacksonville FL, july 6 2023. from @xtakemyfcknhand on twitter

[eileennatural]

so what if most of the songs on my carl grimes playlist are about having a complicated yet overwhelmingly negative relationship with your physical body or dying. that's it that's his character sorry

[mejomonster]

I'm so stressed I need an off button

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

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