#it’s literally people whom he abused and oppressed

[victoriadallonfan]

Mistborn Try Not To Excuse Lord “Genocide and Eugenics For All” Ruler Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

[dranosh-haran-of-paleoworld]

Okay, this is my first time doing this, but I need to say this, to the people who claim Sasuke's a bad clan leader, or that Fugaku and Mikoto would've accepted his relationship with Sakura had the clan survived, you're all idiots and I am not sorry for saying that.

I don't watch or read Boruto as I don't consider anything past chapter 695 as canon, but I'm still going to get this out of the way first. Sasuke never wanted to marry that bitch Sakura, he never wanted a kid with her or whatever. This man is the victim of a state-sanctioned genocide, torture, and humiliation at hands of his own brother whom he loved dearly and admired, and it was all done on orders of the state after decades of systemic segregation, oppression, prejudice, and discrimination. Sasuke was forced to relive the massacre over a million times in the Tsukuyomi and went through this twice once when he was 7 and again when he was 12 or 13, with the latter experience putting him in a coma following Itachi breaking his wrist and ribs, and this nearly killed him had Tsunade not helped him (literally the ONLY good thing she did in the series). If anyone here in the real world experienced this, they'd either be dead or in some kind of mental hospital. The point is that they would be mentally destroyed, and they'd barely be able to function in society. Regular depression already fucks people up as is, and Sasuke went something no one should ever have to go through and it's a miracle he's still able to function as is.

Sasuke also repeatedly to Sakura to fuck off and leave him alone. That bitch repeatedly pestered and harassed him for years, emotionally wearing him down until he agreed to hump and dump her ass once. This bitch emotionally abused this poor guy, so it's no surprise he not only didn't want shit to do with her or her sithspawn of a daughter. This guy wasn't emotionally or mentally stable after what Itachi did to him at 7, and he hasn't been since. Hell, it's said in one of the databooks that Sasuke originally wanted a normal life with family and friends, but Itachi ruined it with his torture sessions. Those of you shitting on Sasuke for not being a good clan leader for not communicating with Sakura or Sarada or something, don't use your heads, those two dumbasses aren't even Uchiha.

Now, onto the other part of my argument, neither Fugaku nor Mikoto would've accepted Sakura being in a potential partner for Sasuke had the Uchiha survived, however, before I start this portion let me admit that this will be hard for me to properly articulate and so I apologize in advance so with that said let's get into this.

Putting aside how shitty and lackluster of an individual Sakura herself is, she also offers or brings nothing to the table.

As other people have so beautifully said before, the Uchiha are one of the oldest and strongest clans in the series. Their lineage goes back thousands of years, dating back to the time of Hagoromo, who himself was considered a myth by the public in the present. Because of this, there's a great deal of prestige, honor, pride, and recognition that comes with their bloodlines' age. Not only that, but the Uchiha are more distinct and well-known than any other clan in the series. The Uchiha are the ONLY clan to possess distinctly potent and voluminous chakra, and because of this, they're only ones who possess and wield one of the most powerful and coveted kekkei genkai in the series the sharingan. This stems from them being the ONLY clan to have inherited the potent chakra and dojutsu of the Shinju.

The Uchiha have their own clan specific culture, mores, values, beliefs, and traditions strictly unique to themselves, for example, the clans' crest can only be worn by the members of the clan who've demonstrated mastery over their signature fireball katon jutsu and as Fugaku says to Sasuke it represents the will of those with fans who manipulate fire, use or mastery over this jutsu also makes that Uchiha a fully fledged member of the clan.

The Uchiha were known and feared throughout the world for their strength, prowess, and renown as a battle clan, so much so that other villages had rules when facing off against them. Every time someone saw or confronted Sasuke, they always brought up his lineage with reverence and fear. Two Kumo shinobi saw him and Taka carrying Bee away, and while they considered rescuing Bee, they immediately changed their minds upon seeing the Uchiha crest on Sasuke's back and instead reported to Ae about what happened. A whole crowd of wealthy patrons showed up at the Chunin Exams to see the last Uchiha battle it out, and that's why Sasuke wasn't disqualified for showing up late to his battle with Gaara during the Exams. During the Warring States Period, the Uchiha were virtually unstoppable with only the Senju due to their jutsu variety and their chieftain the freak Hashirama Senju rivaling them.

Taking all of this into account, there's no reason for a distinguished clan/bloodline like the Uchiha to take an outsider like Sakura into their midst and spoil the bloodline. Bloodline purity is a thing in the real world and persists to this very day. It's actually considered to be a huge transgression for members of distinguished clans, families, and lines to bring outsiders in and spoil their bloodlines by marrying them to the point that they're cast out and probably disowned to the highest caliber for doing it.

I wanna briefly talk about Sakura herself and explain why neither Fugaku, Mikoto, or the rest of the clan wouldn't have accepted her into their midst.

As a shinobi, Sakura is a complete nobody. She has no feats, strengths, capabilities, skills, or whatever that her remotely capable.

Her chakra reserves ridiculously tiny, she can't even handle a trickle of biju chakra. Her skillset is a complete copy pasta of Tsunade's, her skills as a medical nin are surpassed by those of Tsunade, Hashirama, Kabuto and even Sasuke during the time he had Orochimaru's white snake abilities in his system and even after he lost that, as Sasuke's self-taught himself to funnel raiton through his body to avoid mortal injury which he's done during his battles against Deidara, Bee, and Danzo. Sakura hasn't improved on, reinvented, or created her own jutsus. Her super strength is just an extension of her byakugo. She's got no talent for genjutsu or handling vast amounts of chakra. Her speed and agility feats are nonexistent, and her intelligence feats are lackluster too.

Sakura also doesn't come from a distinguished clan or bloodline. Neither she nor her parents are civilians. Let me take this time to clarify that the hidden villages house NO civilians within their midst, the hidden villages are MILITARY powers, everyone within them are soldiers, it would be antithetical for these villages to house civilian populations within them as the civilians contribute nothing to the overall prosperity and function of the village as again these are military powers within the countries. Sakura and her parents are from a smaller or minor clan within the series.

Sakura also doesn't train or take her training seriously. Sasuke points this out to her in canon during the earliest chapters of the Chunin Exams arc, and Sakura still did jackshit about it, only finally taking her training seriously after Sasuke left Konoha for good and defected to Orochimaru. And since the Uchiha again are a battle clan and the most elite clan in canon, someone like Sakura ain't being allowed within a hundred feet of them.

As an individual, Sakura, as I said above, is very lackluster and shitty. This girl has petty self-esteem issues. She knows she's lacking in various departments and tries to compensate for this by latching onto others like a leech and using them for her self-worth, Ino was originally this before Sasuke unwittingly came along. She's very shallow and vain, too.

She knows absolutely nothing about Sasuke from minor things like whether or not he wore glasses, to serious things like him being an orphan, which is ridiculous since everyone else at the academy knew these details before they were made genins. She doesn't question or try to understand Sasuke or his motivations.

She's an asshole to pretty much anyone and everyone around her whenever Sasuke's not around in canon, including other women.

She broke off her years' worth of friendship with Ino over a boy who didn't know she existed and wanted nothing to do with her. She's also made numerous attempts to downgrade and put Ino down, despite the fact that Ino was the first person to treat her with kindness, helped her with her bullies, and was the first person to validate her. Ino was also the one to try and mend and patch up their relationship. Hell, Sakura wanted Sai to call Ino ugly and was pissed when he didn't.

During the War Arc, she disrespected Tsunade, her own mentor who turned her from a nobody to a decently capable medical shinobi.

She taped a picture of her in her thirties over a picture of Karin with Sasuke and spreads rumors to Sarada about other women, like Ino trying to take Sasuke away from her.

She frequently insults and assaults Naruto, and it isn't comedy relief as she does this even after he saves her or treats her nicely. She assaulted Sai for calling her ugly despite the poor guy being a slave and Sakura name calling Naruto on a regular basis. She also attacked Konohamaru before calling her an ugly bitch (which was based on his part lol). She was also pissy about his and Naruto's sexy jutsus only to act like a fan girl when he showed her hot naked dudes, like Sasuke. So she's a hypocrite.

And she doesn't care about her own parents, and actually disrespected them, Naruto's parents, and Sasuke's as well. She tried in canon to invalidate the importance and love Sasuke had for his parents and clan, and that's tremendously disrespectful. Hell, in Boruto, she repeatedly chased after Sasuke despite being pregnant with Sarada putting her at risk, discarded the umbilical cord, which is a serious taboo, wrecked her house when Sarada asked her a simple question or two about her father, Karin frequently sends Sarada gifts instead of Sakura.

The Uchiha as a whole care deeply about one another and all within their clan, and someone like Sakura, who's again vain, shallow, petty, selfish, disrespectful, and ignorant would NEVER be considered fit to join them.

Let's play a little game of What if? Because this is something I've thought about for a while.

Following Sasuke's successful usage and mastery of the Uchiha fireball katon in front of Fugaku who himself chooses to make Sasuke his heir, Hiruzen decided to not only personally meet with and apologize to Fugaku and the Uchiha for the false accusations and punishment over the 9-Tails attack, but he also grants the clan the rights and positions of power that they deserved from the beginning, even stepping down as hokage and letting Fugaku become hokage then and there, but Fugaku maintains his decision on Sasuke being the next clan head. If this scenario took place, there's no way in Hell Sakura's going to be anywhere near Sasuke. He would've been even more untouchable for her than he already was in canon. Sasuke was already very clan oriented and duty bound in canon. He was fervently loyal and devoted to his clan and cared deeply about what they and his family thought of him, outsiders be damned. Fugaku isn't allowing any of his children, especially his heir, to marry an outsider like Sakura. The Uchiha clan in its entirety wouldn't have accepted this either. There's no way they would've accepted their future chieftain marrying a non-Uchiha, and if they did accept it, they would've accepted someone of equal standing or prestige as them. Fugaku and Mikoto would've arranged a marriage for Sasuke, and he wouldn't have objected to that. After all, Sasuke was pulling out all the stops in canon to make his father happy, and he was already extremely close with Mikoto and was well liked and respected by the rest of the clan so marrying someone his parents picked out for him is something Sasuke's definitely doing.

Let's also not forget that Sasuke's extraordinary on all fronts, in terms of beauty, skill, strength, talent, and prodigiousness, all of this, and his chakra volume and potency are through the fucking roof even the standards of his own clan. Sasuke's Sharingan is the most powerful and potent within the series since or after Indra’s which is insane as only Indra inherited his fathers chakra.

Orochimaru and Obito both knew and explicitly stated that Sasuke's Sharingan and chakra were more powerful than Itachi's. In canon, Sasuke was supposed to be THE vessel for Orochimaru, the last one he'd EVER need. Obito's entire Infinite Tsukuyomi plan hinged on utilizing Sasuke at EMS and connecting him to the Gedo Statue, something Nagato, Konan, Zetsu, and no doubt Kisame knew all to well. Kabuto knew this, too, and he himself had his own plans for Sasuke. He blackmailed and helped Obito fight a war for Sasuke, and that war was fought to see who between them could get to Sasuke first. Everyone wanted Sasuke for one reason or another, either for his looks (Sasuke's the most good-looking character in the series), his talents and skills, and abilities everything. Madara, Tobirama, Orochimaru, Obito, Zetsu, Gai, Jiraiya, Cee, Darui, Bee, Mei, Hagoromo, Kurama, Karin, Jugo, Suigetsu, Kabuto, Kakashi, Hiruzen, Neji, Tenten, Deidara, Nagato, Konan, Kisame, and Fugaku (when Sasuke performed their clans rite of passage jutsu at the age of 6 only a week after being shown it once) all of them to varying degrees were aware and dumbstruck by Sasuke's gifts and many of them wanted him.

Sasuke's skills with the sharingan, chakra, and Ninjutsu are beyond profound. He's genetically capable of awakening the EMS and the most unique rinnegan in Shinobi history.

In this alternate timeline, Sasuke's going to be trained to hell and back by not only Fugaku and everyone who he deems fit to train him. As he grows and matures Sasuke's parents and clan, ARE going to take notice of all of these aspects and gifts of his, and they're going to be especially picky about who his bride would be, as the next head of the Uchiha clan especially one like Sasuke with his looks, skills, talents, wealth, and prestige can't and won't marry just anyone especially without the consent of his parents and clan.

In this scenario, Sasuke's future wife would either be another Uchiha (the most logical conclusion) or someone else from another distinguished clan or bloodline. I see people mentioning Ino and Karin on this topic since their love for Sasuke while still being in part because of his beauty is still way more genuine than Sakura's. Karin was saved a few times by Sasuke, and he ultimately was the one who allowed to take control over her own future. She knew and understood Sasuke the most, and her relationship with Sasuke is the most erotic in canon.

Ino's love for Sasuke was described as tender by her father, and it was never about herself but how he brought her joy.

Frankly I don't object to either of them being with Sasuke, although I would like someone to help me understand how Ino from a bloodline perspective would be a good match for Sasuke as Karin is an Uzumaki and her clan has been around as long as the Uchiha so I can see why Fugaku and Mikoto would've accepted her as a future daughter-in-law, but Ino I feel like I'm missing something else or I'm just over thinking it in regards to her. Ino and Karin are also better individuals than Sakura and capable shinobi, their skills, abilities, and lives having nothing to do with Sasuke and instead being completely independent of him. Neither of them were pushy and respected Sasuke's boundaries to a better degree than Sakura.

This was a long-winded post, I know, but essentially, Sakura ain't ever hooking up with Sasuke at all, Fugaku and Mikoto ain't letting her anywhere near him.

Before I close this off, I want to ask anyone who reads this. Who else do you think Fugaku and Mikoto would've accepted as Sasuke's bride in the little what if I put above? Let me say I'm not a shipper, and like others, I find the Naruto fandom's obsession with shipping to be incredibly stupid and annoying. I am staunchly in the Pro Uchiha, Sasuke, Madara, Indra, Fugaku, and Mikoto camp, the Uchiha its members and lore, as well as the real world myths and lore used by Kishimoto to create them all capture me. But admittedly, I do agree with some people who agree that Karin and Ino would've been better partners, and that really had me thinking about who else Fugaku and the rest of the clan would've saw as fit to marry Sasuke and join the clan, so yeah I'm curious to know your thoughts and opinions on this topic as well, however, I do not agree with the Sasuke x Hinata ship, I want to shoot that down quickly, that shit ain't happening.

But again, this is a very long first post of mine on Tumblr, so yeah, thanks for reading.

[scaly-freaks]

Also, on a side note/rant about the Aemond grooming discourse. My sister was truly up in arms citing specific episodes of the last season to prove that the woman was secretly “in charge,” and a pedophile, because “she continued to see him.” Idk, that rubs me the wrong way, because it truly sounds no different than like people saying “well, she continued to work in that place even though she was sexually harassed, clearly she wanted it.” Like, as you’ve said, even if he was a kid, he’s still the son of a king and has the equivalent to a nuclear bomb at his beck and call. My sister tried to say “well, she could have given him to another sex worker,” like no?? If he asked for her in particular, she’d have no choice; also, idk how it would be any better if she sent him off to have sex with another fully-grown woman.

I sometimes wonder whether this absolutely insane response is the result of some kind of cognitive dissonance that Aemond fans get from seeing someone whom they’ve imagined as this domineering, sex god character act in a submissive way to someone. Like, I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t have as much of an issue if Aemond were reacting through hypersexuality or rough sex with this woman, even if both were in response to him having/being forced to have sex at a very young age (both of which actually ARE common responses). Like obviously, there is an air of wrongness in the scene, because he very clearly sees her as a type of mother figure, in a way that’s very reminiscent of a son with his mother. That is very alarming, but, again, I don’t think they would have as much of an issue if he were having another common reaction to having sex way too young.

Personally, I never got the “daddy dom” Aemond vibes because literally no aspect of his character would ever scream sex god. From a young age he looked down on Aegon for his drinking and sexual proclivities, his closest confidante is his (until recently) sexually-repressed mother who uses religion as a means of sublimation, he spends all day training, and all night likely reading. So the brothel scenes weren’t shocking to me due to the implications on Aemond’s character (though it was shocking seeing how skinny Ewan Mitchell was). Idk, like you said, it’s just a classic “applying contemporary understandings of power to situations with different contexts of power and oppression than most of us could even comprehend.” And it personally pisses me off to see a woman who had no agency in this scenario be labelled as predatory. Like y’all, Foucauldian power analysis was about the intersectionality of power, aka the ability to hold more power in one context, and far less in a broader context, you can be an abuser in one context, and abused in another. And, in Westeros, there are very, very few contexts that would equate to having more power and agency than the son of a king.

So on one hand, I get annoyed by seeing a woman get shat on by other women as a means to defend their image of a man, an image which I personally find to be entirely inconsistent with his character (so the literary analysis system in me goes berserk like klaxon klaxon does not compute), and also seeing women ignore blatant power imbalances but then invoking them as a means to hate other women. Idk, maybe it’s a trend I’ve noticed, similar to how a “pick me” has morphed from genuine discourse on internalized misogyny to a criticism of any women who don’t necessarily identify with traditionally feminine behaviour (but who are doing so out of genuine interest rather than a desire to appease me). But it does piss me off. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that groomers should be reviled, but rather, that there’s a huge trend of male or white power being ignored in favour of criticizing the actions of those in the more marginalized position.

Anyways, rant over!

I have noticed that even with a so-called liberal approach to sex work, most people still view sex workers with a degree of disgust and a refusal to humanise them (usually subconsciously, but it filters through in how they speak of them). In-verse, Aemond's disregard for Sylvie - a whore is a whore - was especially telling because everyone last season was swearing up, down and sideways he respected women because he "loves" his mother, or "listened" to Criston. None of the men in this show respect women LMAO not even Corlys (he literally dragged Rhaena for not having a dragon and not knowing anything about the "sea" when Rhaenys said she should take the throne of Driftmark).

Rhaenyra was more powerless than Aemond when Daemon left her alone in that brothel with her pants down. She was a young girl, and she was dressed up as a peasant. The things that might have happened to her if a group of drunk men found her and were too conked out to hear her yell that she's the princess? Unfathomable. But I don't see half the amount of bald outrage for her situation than I do for Aemond's.

I fully agree with you on the case of Aemond's "daddy domification" going way too far. I think he has it in him to rough someone up sexually but it wouldn't be pleasant for them. I think he's selfish, and he only considers his own pleasure/pain and not the pain or discomfort of others (minus that one scene where he apparently felt sorry for Jace, but post-eye-removal, they may have scrapped empathy entirely). I also think he's set up on screen to be this "woe is me", poor little white prince who feels sorry for himself more than he ever does for others, but when the fandom takes it at face value, that's when it gets really fucking annoying.

He burns the Riverlands for fuck's sake. He slaughters men, women and children because he cares about his own feelings of anger and betrayal more than how others will suffer because of them. There is very little feeling in him displayed onscreen, but because straight women have turned him into the archetypal "I'll fix him" trope, now we're seeing Frankenstein-headcanons of a man that doesn't actually exist in the story.

The thing about Aemond being set up as Daemon's foil is that Daemon is shown to care, whether it's about his niece or his brother. Aemond appears to care about nothing but himself. He is the ideal foil because he doesn't give a fuck (do not get me started on that stupid scene of him regretting Luke's death, and not the fact that his nephew is dead because of it).

If Alys is having a ball fucking with Daemon's head, she is not falling in love with a petty little prince like Aemond except to fuck with his head even worse.

I am very objective about Aemond and that's why people may accuse me of not liking him, but I can be very harsh on Aegon too so that's really not an issue.

[nrilliree]

tumblr.com/darylandbethfanforever9/751909330175016960/possibility-of-rhaenyra-being-daemons-daughter

The delusion of Rhaenyra being Daemon's daughter amazes me. Because it would “reinforce the Greens tragedy, because it would mean that Aegon II has been the heir all this time.” Look no further for your answer as to why. The person who made this post literally said it themselves. It's simply a fanfiction to give points to their favorite greens. Like it changes everything they've ever done. The joke. Greens are not tragic beings. They are the antagonists and villains of the story.

Plus, the other excuse of "it wouldn't be surprising, Daemon is a depraver"...

Um... why ?

Because he went to prostitutes in his twenties ? (A fairly banal thing for a man of his time) Because he had Mysaria as his mistress for a little over a year ? (So ​​a serious relationship ? Especially since he was never reported to have been with anyone other than her while they were in Dragonstone) He then married Laena, a marriage that lasted 5 years, then Rhaenyra with whom it lasted 10 years before dance changed their lives. Daemon's last two marriages never reported any cheat before the dance began (and which are at best questionable in their contexts and reported by supporters of the other camps in the majority). Then the relationship with Nettles was never proven. So how is Daemon a depraver ?

I remind you that Aemond, their favorite, took Alys as his war prize, therefore he raped her. Contrary to popular belief among green stans, being a prize of war is not the equivalent of being a mistress.

Then we have Aegon II who sexually assaulted and raped servants. Not only that but he is also a pedophile because he slept with a girl (and not a maiden) of at least 11/12 years old. Not to mention that he is generally lazy and an alcoholic. Then he enjoys watching his own illegitimate children fight in arenas and then survive.

Then I'm not going to be made to believe that neither of them has ever gone to prostitutes !

But is Daemon the depraver here ?

Also, the person in the comment referring to Daemon as a villain... RIGHT ?! He is a protagonist. Not an antagonist. Next, he is described as having equal parts light and darkness within him, capable of being the greatest hero and the greatest villain. This is literally a perfect description of the gray character /anti hero.

When is this going to sink into their heads ?!

This is exactly what everyone has written many times: TG just really want to show that they are better. They like to claim that "there are no good and bad people here", "everyone is the same", "we just choose our favorite war criminal" (it's funny that all these slogans say just TG…), and then they start inventing various excuses and stories, to whitewash their favorites and at the same time show that TB are the worse ones. They want to be the good guys.

According to TG, stans team green is a group of victims oppressed by the authorities. Collecting all their fairy tales, the story probably looks like this: Alicent is an innocent little child who was forced first to become Rhaenyra's servant and then to marry her father, whom she faithfully served as his wife. Faithfully, honorably, caring for his well-being while he brutally humiliated her in public (repeatedly!), ridiculed her, beat her, terrorized her and raped her. She was abused many times by him and by Rhaenyra, who terrorized her and her children. Poor Alicent survived at the royal court only thanks to her loving father, who trembled in fear for her life and that of her children, his most beloved grandchildren. When he was completely unjustly dismissed (after being used and abused by the crown for many years), Alicent found only solace in an honorary knight on a white horse. Poor Criston, who came from a poor and smallfolk background, was brutally raped by Rhaenyra, abused, and then she laughed in his face, calling him a whore. She also called poor Alicent a whore because she abused her. She compared poor Aegon, an innocent child, to a pig, and when she murdered the boar, she surely imagined it was her younger brother, because Rhaenyra was so terrible…

And so on, adn so on…

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

This might not be normal but I’m dying to know your opinion on the ship wars. I don’t know why I’m obsessed with your opinion on the matter but I am very interested in your thoughts on it. 🙂

hi anon!!!

(pls note these are my opinions)

i don't have extreme opinions on the ship themselves. like lucien, elain, gwyn, azriel, and morrigan are all very boring characters to me. i feel like all of these pairings would be like watching paint dry. like let's think about it - elain's pov would literally just have to rework and rehash so many events in the story to make her likable (to the general audience). we've already discussed their vague human life and its clear sjm didn't really event that much lore about their lives before the story. elain has no conflicts with any members save for the whole weird and awkward mate / azriel situation. there's no established villain. azriel has no personality. lucien is in limbo and has no personality. the whole thing about lucien being helion son is ultimately useless and doesn't really change anything (the story is also arguing that i should root for helion despite the fact he just is okay with loa being abused). beron is a caricature villain who made his life harder by just reviving his age old enemy whom he dislikes and has since he was born. so how serious am i supposed to take him as a villain?

koschei is just there and is also another villain with no personality. morrigan also has no personality. gwyn is also just there and I mean I wouldn't say there's a lot of build-up for her either. but at the very least she has some inner conflicts to resolve. rhys is obviously not going to be a real barrier. there's literally no appeal to any of these characters IMO.

if the story would handle an illyrian plotline with emerie and azriel at the wing, i'd probably be interested but unfortunately sjm is the writer so it wouldn't be good. but yeah weirdly enough I would enjoy an emerie x az story (not romantic - but I wouldn't mind; I would love an emerie x female illyrian but alas there are no named illyrian females in this entire series besides her). i think the story unironically sets up an interesting dynamic between the illyrians and the night court but the story genuinely doesn't seem them as victims in any capacity - but I've got to admit its an interesting setup. think about it:

illyrians mothers raise these sons who grow up to hate them. women are isolated in these communities and robbed of their ability to fly; but these women are also semi-indoctrinated to sone extent to exalt this system of brutality and violence. mother's send their sons off to the blood rite to die so that they can serve and protect an utopia (velaris) that they have no access to. their high lord passes law - but is naught to enforce them because he recognizes who integral this oppression is to his political and militaristic aspirations. their high lord leaves their burgeoning communities without leadership for almost half a century to join forces with amarantha but then comes back after his tenure and SLAUGHTERS and tortures hordes of people for doing the same thing despite the fact he removed any court protection from them.

its interesting to me! id read that. it also kind of reminds me of the dynamic between paul atreides / jessica and their use of the fremen in dune (please read if you haven't! very fun and surprisingly easy read!)

[wishcamper]

Gone Baby Gone: birth control and the ethics of risky sex

CW: abortion, sexual violence.

Creds: licensed counselor with expertise in addiction, trauma, and gay stuff. Experience with tx exclusively for pregnant people and young parents with addictions.

Okay class! Today we’ll be talking about abortion oh my god don’t run away I’ll make it worth your while I promise.

Firstly, a disclaimer: I’m not interested in debating whether abortion should be legal/allowed/is moral or immoral. The research bears out, unequivocally, that access to comprehensive reproductive and family planning options improves everyone’s lives (1). And again, not actively anti-SJM or any characters, just exploring themes and what they say about us.

It’s so funny to me that NO one liked the pregnancy plot line in ACOSF, whether they love or hate or are indifferent (me) to Rhysand. And I think that’s because we, the largely femme audience engaging with the material, recognize the strings of violence weaved into it, possibly not even consciously but on a deep, bodily, instinctual level.

The 2007 crime drama Gone Baby Gone centers on a conversation about motherhood, parenting fitness, and what society owes to children. Beneath that though, and I believe unintentionally, is another story about pregnancy-capable people’s autonomy and the cycle of oppression around reproductive rights.

I’m going to spoil the movie for you - I don’t want you to watch it because Casey Affleck is a creep, and it’s not that good anyway. There’s a whole mystery plot, but the basics are: drug addict Helene’s daughter Amanda is kidnapped, then later thought to be killed but they never find her body. Casey Affleck, Boy Detective uncovers a scheme by two rogue cops to fake Amanda’s death and kidnap her because they think Helene isn’t a good mom. And they’re kind of right; once Amanda comes home, Helene is an incredibly neglectful mother, and the movie wants you to go woahhh, maybe those murdering unethical cops were right after all!

Sure, Jan.

The movie ends with the lead character wondering if Helene, for whom he’s literally killed people to bring her child back, is even fit to raise Amanda in the first place, even interested. And here’s where I feel complicated, because on one hand - yes, this is your child, and she’s completely innocent in all this and doesn’t deserve abuse and neglect. AND what were this women’s other options? Does anyone ask? Living in deeply Catholic working class Boston, did she have access to birth control? Could she have gotten an abortion? Would her culture (and her internalization of it) even allow her to entertain that option? Could she perhaps be using substances because of the circumstances of her life over which she has no control? (See Nesta, Interrupted for more on that.)

So I ask myself: what does it mean in our culture, as a person who can become pregnant, to have sex with someone who can impregnate you? What happens when your body becomes the battlefield on which larger conflicts are played out?

I’ve been thinking on these question a lot recently because my IUD is about to expire and my doctor recommended a back up method while I wait to get a new one. This has prompted my husband and me go farther into the kids conversation and consider not just what it would mean for me to get pregnant on purpose or accidentally, but what it would mean for me to get pregnant here. Where we live, abortion is technically legal but functionally impossible to find. Even for a wanted pregnancy, if it became life-threatening I might have extremely limited options.

This makes any sex inherently risky for me. IUDs failure rates range from 0.3% to 2.3%, but that still means as few as 3 in 1000 and as many as 2-3 in 100 users still get pregnant. And IUDs significantly raise the likelihood of medically dangerous pregnancies if a fetus is conceived (2). The long odds are somewhat comforting, but if I were to have an ectopic or other life-threatening pregnancy complication, I can’t trust that my local doctors would be able to save my life, legally. 

And we have talked about how we both feel strongly: it’s my life first. My husband says he would rather have me, and he would rather any children of ours have me, too. And there’s this sort of sick sense of gratitude I feel, because that is, to me, the only answer, but it feels like such a kindness nonetheless.

So we get to ACOSF (you forgot this was about ACOTAR, right? Me too.). When they decided to start trying to get pregnant, Rhys had to know the risk was there. My boy, you are half Illyrian. Even without Feyre being Mystique, get out your punnet square and do the math. Your baby always had a 25% chance of having wings. Conception was always risky. I refuse to believe he didn’t know that, and it was irresponsible of him to not inform her, a person who only entered his world like two years ago.

Then they conceive a baby with wings that, as far as they know, she has no way of safely delivering. If that’s true, why couldn’t Feyre have an abortion? I’m serious. They found out very early the baby had wings. It’s not unlike an ectopic pregnancy, or even a very small person becoming pregnant. Adolescent mothers (age 10-19) (god it feels gross to type that) are at much higher risk for conditions like eclampsia, endometritis, and systemic infections, not to mention fetal complications (3). Regardless of the details, Feyre’s body is not equipped to handle this pregnancy, and yet they never seem to explore the option of terminating it.

Which begs the question: did Feyre even know abortion was an option? Is it an option in Prythian?

In my opinion, probably. If the fae have contraception (let’s not even get into STDs and the ’they have magical healing’ BS), they must have abortion. The first record of an induced abortion was on an Egyption Papyrus around 1600BC, though the practice likely well predates that. The Ancient Greeks drove a plant to extinction for its abortifacient properties (4). And even when banned, people find ways, because they have to. Reproductive health has long been of importance to pregnancy-capable people for reasons of safety, resources, and survival. 

At the end of the day, Feyre is allowed to carry a pregnancy to term that she knows will kill her. That’s her right to bodily autonomy being exercised freely, and I will never begrudge her that. But imagine if abortion were an open option for her, and she knew the birth would kill her, and then Rhys. Knowing that, what do you think she’d choose? To die, bringing her mate along with her, and leave her child parentless, if they even survive? I really struggle to see that. Feyre loves hard, and knows what it’s like to grow up with extreme neglect. I cannot imagine her condemning a child to the same circumstance she found so damaging. But Rhys doesn’t tell her, forbids anyone else to, and possibly robs her of the ability to terminate the pregnancy. And also Madja, I don’t forgive her either for glossing over it. Girl needs to retake her boards.

In the beginning of my career, I worked at an inpatient substance use treatment center that was specifically for pregnant people and mothers with young children. They were allowed to bring two kids under the age of 5. I could write a million words about the flaws in that place, but it was at least something. In working with these people, the same themes came up over and over:

They wanted to get jobs but couldn’t afford childcare. 

Caring for children kept them isolated from support networks and financially strapped.

The daily maintenance and self-focus of sobriety felt at odds with being responsible for children. Ironically, that neglect of self often created the perfect conditions for relapse.

Children kept them tethered, legally and/or personally to abusive partners.

They received extreme judgment, even while seeking help, for “doing this to their children”.

They did not have adequate access to reproductive autonomy, whether financially, from religious beliefs, or otherwise.

This evidence is purely anecdotal, but I do think it speaks to the larger cycle of covert violence and policing of women and pregnancy-capable people’s bodies. It is well-documented that lack of reproductive freedom has a direct negative effect on mental health and wellbeing of people of child -bearing age (5). There is also a much larger intersection to this conversation when it comes to race, class, and the systemic oppression of people of color via reproductive restriction, but Feyre is privileged in the ACOTAR world for the most part so this doesn’t touch her. She doesn’t have to wonder if she can afford a baby, or if her husband is going to be racially profiled and taken to jail or just straight up murdered by law enforcement. (and this is not to downplay the experiences Rhysand have, that Sarah doesn’t give us, being a mixed race man, more so that he is in an extreme position of power.)

I think it’s a shame we didn’t get to explore this in ACOSF with Cassian and Nesta. They jump in the sack even after learning Nesta’s body could not handle an Illyrian baby. No amount of ‘the monthly aid’ justifies not having an honest and thorough conversation about what having sex means before they sleep together. Cassian must feel real confident in the birth control options of Prythian to be spreading his soldiers around so willy nilly. And I just hope, for all their sakes, that he’s right.

Ibis Reproductive Health and Center for Reproductive Rights, “Evaluating Priorities: Measuring Women’s and Children’s Health and Well-being against Abortion Restrictions in the States,” (2017).

Kim SK, Romero R, Kusanovic JP, Erez O, Vaisbuch E, Mazaki-Tovi S, Gotsch F, Mittal P, Chaiworapongsa T, Pacora P, Oggé G, Gomez R, Yoon BH, Yeo L, Lamont RF, Hassan SS. The prognosis of pregnancy conceived despite the presence of an intrauterine device (IUD). J Perinat Med. 2010;38(1):45-53. doi: 10.1515/jpm.2009.133. PMID: 19650756; PMCID: PMC3418877.

World Health Organization: WHO. (2023, June 2). Adolescent pregnancy. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-pregnancy#:~:text=Adolescent%20mothers%20(aged%2010%E2%80%9319,birth%20and%20severe%20neonatal%20condition.

Muvs - Abtreibung in der Antike. (n.d.). https://muvs.org/en/topics/termination-of-pregnancy/abortion-in-antiquity-en/

Liu SY, Benny C, Grinshteyn E, Ehntholt A, Cook D, Pabayo R. The association between reproductive rights and access to abortion services and mental health among US women. SSM Popul Health. 2023 May 12;23:101428. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101428. PMID: 37215399; PMCID: PMC10199416.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

*beating my head on the table anytime i see any statement whatsoever about who did or did not kill jesus*

Tl;dr: Everyone killed Jesus. Including you. And that's really freaking important.

The answer is everyone, btw. Literally everyone on earth. Peter straight up says in the Book of Acts who is responsible: Herod. Pilate. Every single non-jewish nation on earth. The people of Israel.

Clearly Peter is not actually meaning to say that every individual in the world is responsible for Jesus' literal physical death (for which the answer is Judas of Kerioth and The Jerusalem Leaders: Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas, etc. Really just the religious and political authorities at the time). But it's obvious that by the time of the writings of the apostles, they've moved beyond thinking about Jesus' death in historical terms and are thinking about it theologically.

What does it mean for God to die? What does it mean for God to be willing to die? What does it mean for God to be able to die?

The answer they came to around the responsibility of Jesus' death was both historically and cosmically rooted. Historically, it was the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem. The romans leaders literally put him to death; the jewish leaders handed him over to be killed.

But the cosmic significance if of much more importance. Who cares who literally killed him? He's dead. What matters is why. Why did he die? And when you ask that question you get a new answer: Everyone killed him. Peter says it quite clearly, "in [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant/son Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the nations and the peoples of Israel" Does that sound like the Jews to you? Does that sound like the Romans to you? No. That is everyone in every nation on planet earth.

What does that mean? Well look later in the same book. Saul (a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin) is perusing and imprisoning and killing (probably hellenistic-jewish) followers of the Way because in his mind they are blaspheming and idolatrous followers of a new cult and will bring down the wrath of God upon their people (which. valid.). But while he's on the Road to Damascus he has an apocalypse, an unveiling, where he sees a vision of the risen Jesus who tells Saul that he isn't persecuting idolatrous cultists, but is persecuting Jesus himself who also claims to be the Anointed One that Saul (and everyone else at the time) had been waiting for.

But the important thing is the first thing: Saul isn't persecuting his followers, he's persecuting Jesus himself. This same concept is played with in Matthew 25: when you see the poor, the incarcerated, the immigrant, the sick, the widow, etc etc etc. When you see the oppressed, it is not merely human beings you see, but it is God himself who identifies with their suffering. This is what Christians call the kenosis: that God emptied himself to become human, born of a poor girl in a washed up town, died the death of a cursed blaspheming slave. God is the God of the suffering. So to persecuted God is to persecute anyone. To kill God is to kill anyone. But especially vulnerable and marginalized groups.

Cain killed (the image of) God when he killed his brother.

Pharaoh killed (the image of) God when he killed the infants.

The kings of Israel and Judah oppressed (the image of) God when they oppressed the widow, orphan, immigrant, and poor.

They killed (the image of) God when they killed the prophets.

That soldier killed (the image of) God when he killed a poor man.

That rich woman abused (the image of) God when she abused her maidservant.

The conquistadors killed (the image of) God when they conquered the "West Indies".

The crusaders killed (the image of) God when they murdered Muslims and Jews.

The Spanish colonists enslaved and killed (the image of) God when they enslaved and killed off the natives.

I could go on. But I don't need to. You can already think of many. From the past. And from today. Need I mention antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, rape, genocide, hinduphobia, etc etc etc.

Now, I've never persecuted or killed anyone. The total abolition of the use of death as a weapon and all that. But you know what, I have treated people as less than human. And so have you. If you claim you haven't, I don't believe you. We all have treated people as less than human before which is the foundation for how murder comes about. Which is why Jesus says bursting out in rage is just as bad as murdering someone. because when you do, you treat them like they're an object, and not an image (of God). Thus, we all have the blood of God on our hands. The question is about whether we are going to wash our hands clean of it, like Pilate. Or whether we're going to be washed in it, like the apostles.

[magpie-come-east]

One more for the character meme, Mohg!

favorite thing about them

First, his boss fight is probably my favorite in the game. I've probably beaten him as a furled finger close to 100 times. I believe I managed to no-hit him once, even.

I dunno I love his flying animations. He really seems to have weight and heft as he flies. It's a delight to watch. Plus those wings are outrageous.

As i've mentioned before, I find him being a narrative foil to Morgott really interesting. At first glance he seems like the most classically evil of all the characters in the ER catalogue (except maybe Rykard?). He kidnaps and tortures people. His goals are vague but he seems to want to usher in a God of blood and suffering. He has tortured the supposed purest of the Demigods- his child brother whom he wants to wed. Looking at Rivers of Blood and the blood pots, he's always had this strange, dark charisma that I love.

But literally scratch the surface and there's a deeper character there. He was abused himself. He suffered for so long. He was imprisoned for being a monster, and he embraced that role. Without his mother's guidance, he embraced suffering as an inherent truth to existence and feels no qualms about inflicting it on others. I feel there was a part of him that once wanted to champion the Order's spurned and oppressed. But if he'd accomplished his goals, there would have been little healing. He would have been a tyrant to rival Marika.

least favorite thing about them

While I loved the Miquella charm reveal, I do completely understand why others don't. Mohg is, unfortunately, blighted with the trifecta of unforgivable problematic character traits. I can understand why people would feel like they had the rug pulled out from under them when he was seemingly exonerated of those traits- and his supposed victim was to blame. 2 years after the base game was released.

He was always divisive, and SOTE muddying those parts of his character have only fanned the flames. It's unfortunate. Mohg is an interesting character, and while I think his relationship with Miquella is vital to his themes and role, it is only one part of him. But its the part that gets the most attention.

favorite line

Sadly Mohg doesn't have many canon lines. Of the ones that exist though, "You must abide alone awhile," is the one that has entered my lexicon lol. Nothing is funnier than telling the ferrets 'You must abide alone awhile' before leaving the house.

brOTP

I said it before, but Morgott and Mohg come immediately to mind.

Varre and Mohg somewhat fill this niche? Kinda? I do still feel Varre's relationship with Mohg is largely a mirror of Mohg's obsession and abuse. Varre was, after all, kidnapped into the Dynasty.

OTP

Mohg x Sir Ansbach at this point. I'm just weak for the loyal knight and their Lord dynamics all the Demigods seem to have.

Mohg x My Specific OC (Cyprus). I'm in my era of fandom where I want to see Mohg be with more Omen/hornsent partners. He sees being Omen as a blessing. Let him love an Omen!

Then finally, Miquella x Mohg in a sense. This one is weird because I don't enjoy it the same way I enjoy Ansbach x Mohg. But I do feel it to be an integral part of the canon. Mohg's themes of trauma and abuse and his nature being developed more by the rejection of his mother than as the creature he was born as is reflected viscerally in the relationship Mohg has (or thinks he has) with Miquella. It feels kind of hollow when fandom engages with Mohg's character but conspicuously leave out his deal with Miquella. Like this isn't me saying people HAVE to make Mohg/Miq a huge deal in fanworks. But scrubbing Miquella's existence from Mohg's story entirely sands down his overarching role in the canon if you get me.

nOTP

To me, Mohg is homosexual. I do not care for Mohg being shipped with women. To be clear, there’s nothing problematic about it. I don’t seethe at the sight of women getting with Mohg. It’s just that I prefer to indulge my HCs more. 

Trina x Mohg is my least favorite of all the Mohg-with-woman ships.

Again, Morgott x Mohg, too. As a lovely mutual put it 'it adds nothing' for me.

random headcanon

Mohg lays eggs. I will not elaborate.

Mohg coerced Ansbach into Mohgwyn by preying on his vulnerable circumstances. Just because Ansbach loved Mohg eventually doesn't change that he didn't exactly sign up of his own volition.

Mohgwyn pre-Miquella charm worked secretively to prolong the Shattering War. Both to prolong bloodshed and allow the hierarchy to destroy itself, but also to safeguard Morgott in Leyndell. Because if the other Demigods took the city, Morgott would fight to the death (canon tbh).

Morgott and Mohg kept in contact even after they parted ways. They shared a strong bond all their youth. Even if decades went between meetings, they still cared for one another.

Mohg was treated worse as a baby by Marika and her house because of his appearance. Morgott received some affection. Thus, when he was imprisoned in the shunning grounds he was better conditioned to re-earn and seek that approval again by championing the Order. Mohg never knew that familial affection. So he was drawn all the more easily to the Formless Mother for it.

If Mohg is ashamed by any part of himself, it's the behaviors that are ingrained in him by his torment in the Shunning Grounds. He is territorial and has irregular eating behaviors.

Mohg used to be a midwife in the Shunning Grounds.

unpopular opinion

I think I echo a lot of people here when I say that much of his fandom interpretations aren't to my liking. Since Mohg is a divisive character, there's a dozen ways he gets interpreted.

I don't like it when Mohg is made into a goofy comic relief character. It works in silly comics and jokey memes. But in more in-depth, serious works it's a shame he's too often relegated to this cringey funny uncle role. I feel like it's a big cope/defensive mechanism against fandom backlash. Like people strip him down of any rough edges to preemptively prevent harassment.

Again, Rykard, the character closest in the villain archetype to Mohg for me, is never flattened out as much as Mohg is. No one has to write Mohg as an incestuous rapist if they don't want but at least allow him some intimidation, bravado, charisma, and dignified competency?? Please??

song i associate with them

Never Change (Sullivan King Remix)

Villain - MISSIO

March of Mephisto by Kamelot (especially this one, latin, slightly corny rock, fitting lyrics)

Virus by Gen.Kloud

Ptolemaea by Ethel Cain!

Kiss Me You Animal

The Dark - Whipped Cream

Cloud Nine by Evanescence!

Thomas by A Perfect Circle!

Nature of Inviting by IAMX

(Whew thats a whole playlist lol)

favorite picture of them

There's too many to list. But right now the Mohg in Jordans one is my favorite.

@krakenguard since you asked for this one too!

[velvetvexations]

tw: brief discussion of intercommunity transphobia

I do think that the idea of people Doing Gender Wrong is a reason people are discriminated against but, as you say, a transphobe sees a transmasc A) doing womanhood wrong B) being a pervert/degen/freak of nature. The same for any other type of trans person. In their eyes, trans people are not failing at being our "target gender" but at conforming to our "assigned gender". Because they don't want us to be trans at all. Transphobes do not stop being transphobic on a societal and institutional level to cis-passing and/or gender-conforming trans people. They dont want trans people to exist. In any capacity. They wouldn't suddenly stop hating trans men if they Did Manhood Right.

Yeah like. I literally asked "can you explain to me how trans women are different from cis women and how that's different from how trans men are different from cis men", because a transmasc could 100% pass and be the most stereotypically masculine person imaginable and he'd still get abuse because he was born with the wrong sexual characteristics. It's a completely nonsensical excuse to keep transmasc and transfem oppression separate while giving priority to the latter because we suffer for being trans AND get misogyny from a world that totally sees us as women to whom misogynistic ideas apply.

It makes me think of that one post that was talking about a Christian who 100% supported trans people but thought that a trans woman should stay in the kitchen etc. and it's like. Hey, now there's some transmisogny, finally.

[hamliet]

Hamliet, can I ask what do you think of Judas Iscariot? I just heard my mom told my little niece so she don't end up like Judas Iscariot the "Traitor". Like I think it's so sad to become doom since birth. But without his actions there would not be crucifixion, right? Now when I become an adult I felt sorry for him.

And as Christian, I'm embarrassed that my Church still support Is**el even until now because that is what the Bible said, like WTF....

Also, I'm glad when I read your meta, that I'm not the only one who think David is bisexual....

To start with, yeah. That's awful. I grew up in a church with similar views. That's a very uncritical view of Scripture, to the point where it denies the authenticity/power of other aspects of the Bible in favor of literalism (and in favor of earthly powers like nation-states, which is all too often at the root of a lot of evil done in the name of not just Christianity, but any religion). The Bible tells everyone to love thy neighbor as yourself and to welcome people. Christian nationalism is a cancer and responsible for a lot of the support for the government of Israel in the US. But that again centers power, not Christ.

For Judas... well. I'm sorry your niece got told that; unless she's threatening to sell your mom or her friends out to the state for the death penalty I don't think that's a fair accusation lol.

Putting under the cut because I'm gonna talk theology!

But to get back to Judas, it actually connects to what I said above a bit--namely, earthly powers. I think Judas was well-intentioned and tragic. When Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem the week prior to the crucifixion, everyone was shouting "Hosanna!" and laying down olive branches because they believed he was the Messiah, whom they believed would oust the Roman Empire who had been oppressing them. And them wanting the Romans gone was, to put it mildly, very valid.

But that wasn't what Jesus came to do in the Gospels. He came to do more than they could ask or think--instead of liberating them from earthly powers of oppression and moving on to spiritual ones, he started with the spiritual first (the ones we humans cannot hope to counter). He conquered death itself. But to do that, he had to die. As humans, we can't conquer death on our own--it's a natural part of life, and yet paradoxically, everyone who has ever lost someone close to them knows how unnatural death is.

That isn't to say Jesus didn't care about the earthly powers. I think he does. But he gave people the Holy Spirit to help move earthly powers; the sad thing is that the Church has all too often joined forces with them instead of, you know, reconsidering. But power is a very appealing idea, because at the heart of power comes justification and affirmation of the ones in power.

To bring it back to Judas--I honestly think there's a very good chance he was among the people who made the assumption Jesus would liberate them from Roman rule. Actually, it's pretty clear in Scripture that most if not all the disciples thought this, which is why they didn't seem to "get" the fact that he literally told them he was going to die over and over. And so Judas took matters into his own hands and handed Jesus over, hoping that this would jumpstart the revolution. Except it didn't, and Judas regretted it.

I also think it's worth noting that almost all the disciples, including Judas, were under 20 years old. At that time if they were older than 20, they would have been married. Peter is the only disciple who is said to be married; it's also plausible Matthew was older than 20 thanks to being a tax collector. The rest almost certainly were not.

So think of Judas as being like, 17-19 here. Idealist kiddo thinking he knows best and can save the world, who has grown up under occupation and seen the abuses that causes first hand, hopes to not only be liberated (a good hope) but to be in power himself; what's wrong with taking steps to force this to happen? I think it's more than understandable why he did what he did, and thought he was justified. I don't know I'd think differently.

But he wasn't. An innocent man was crucified. Yet from that act, the world was offered resurrection, a chance at a new life. From the evil, God turned it to good. Judas, it seems, didn't stick around long enough to see that.

However, that doesn't mean that Judas is in the deepest circle of hell for ever and ever. We don't know that. There is another verse in the Bible that states that Jesus is reconciling "all things" to himself. And the word for all means all, as in everything, everywhere, every time. I've got to think that means Judas, too.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Infinite trust and responsibilities?

Trust and responsibility are composed differently based in the contexts from which they emerge. They can be conceived as a set of questions, including the capacity to selectively extend trust across the divisions of race, class, sex, gender, colonization, ability, age, and other forms of oppression and division.

There are good reasons why trust may be difficult. Distrust is often based on experiences of abuse, violation, or being used or taken advantage of. A lot of women, genderqueer, and trans folks don’t trust cis-gendered men; people of color are often wary of white people, and Indigenous people refuse to trust settlers. These are not ideological prejudices, but strategies of survival.

Moreover, to talk about trust and responsibility can sound naïve or just plain stupid in a world in which individual responsibility is callously imposed and so much violence happens to trusting people. At the same time, we want to recognize that people are constantly building trust across these divisions, in ways that open potentials for new relationships. In this sense, a crucial component of joyful militancy is a collective capacity to build, maintain, and repair trust, which may entail taking responsibility for harm, disrespect, or complicity with Empire in ways that we may not have anticipated. Richard Day suggests that many anti-authoritarian currents today are animated by what he calls “infinite responsibility”:

This means that as individuals, as groups, we can never allow ourselves to think that we are “done”, that we have identified all of the sites, structures, and processes of oppression “out there” or “in here”, inside our own individual and group identities. Infinite responsibility means always being ready to hear another other, a subject who by definition does not “exist”, indeed must not exist (be heard) if current relations of power are to be maintained.[122]

In this sense, the questions of what we are responsible for, whom we are responsible to, and what we can be held accountable for are always open, ethical questions. This does not mean that they will be completely revised at any second, but that they are never completely fixed, held open by an ethical responsiveness. Responsibility is infinite in the sense that it is unbounded: we can harm each other in unforeseen ways, and infinite responsibility gestures at the potential of remaining responsive to this. As a way of furthering this line of thought, responsibility could be broken apart into response-ability. Writer and facilitator Zainab Amadahy writes,

Responsibility in this sense is not a burden but something that actually enhances our life experience. The word literally means “ability to respond.” In the relational framework we might understand responsibility as the ability to respond appropriately – that is, for the common good. In this sense, responsibility is seen as preferable to individualism, which doesn’t really exist.[123]

This “common good” is not an abstract good based in Western morality. For Amadahy, it is based in attunement to human and non-human relationships and the capacity to support them. Following this line, responsibility is ethical rather than moral. As soon as answers to these questions become permanent, the ethical moment is gone, and one cannot be responsive to relationships in motion.

Like all common notions, trust and responsibility are not guarantees that things will go well, or that oppression and violence will not happen. Trust, hospitality, and openness are precious and important precisely because they entail incredible courage and risk, especially in the context of Empire, with its many layers of violence and control. For this reason, Esteva and Prakash write that “nothing is more treacherous than that which violates hospitality.”[124] To be open and vulnerable entails the risk of being hurt and betrayed in ways that we cannot be if we are on guard or closed-off. Pointing to the need for openness is not an injunction to remain open to everything. Instead, it is another open-ended ethical question about where, when, with whom, and how to be open and trusting.

[i-was-a-teenage-eldritch-horror]

Does it feel weird to you that AsuShin seems to be the dominant pairing in the Eva fandom? Or at least outside of Tumblr?

Yes and no.

It's not weird (as in uncommon) that people would ship a girl with a boy who has traumatized her. We live under patriarchy, after all. Men and boys as a class traumatize women and girls on a daily basis. That is the whole purpose of men and women as constructed classes* in society: to abuse and to be abused, to oppress and to be oppressed. But it is weird (as in troubling).

Asuka stands nothing to gain from being in a relationship with Shinji. She herself is aware of this in the show -- her "you won't even hold me" speech is shorthand for how he gives her nothing but pain, which she says very directly in the hell kitchen scene in eoe, which, btw, mimics a scene of domestic violence.

Shinji stands to gain a lot at Asuka's expense, as do all men and boys when it comes to relationships with women and girls. Remember that when Shinji asks for help in eoe, he's also referring to sex, which really brings that gendering of their relationship to a sharp point, doesn't it?

Remember that Asuka gains nothing but humiliation after the kiss in episode 9, and is literally asleep for the next kiss and why Shinji masturbates next to her in eoe. How many women in relationships with men do you know whom are sexually satisfied** or get anything out of that relationship besides the hollow satisfaction that they're viewed as less weird by society for being in it?

In short, I don't like it. Nobody will ever get me to like asushin in any way shape or form.

*we do actually know how patriarchy began, it's just that the culture very effectively obscures this fact

**we do actually know why women's sexuality seems to be so different from men's, it's just that the culture very effectively obscures this fact

[invisiblefoxfire]

Seen an alarming number of people on my dash passing around a post insisting that Biden is just as bad as Trump, and listing some bad shit that has happened under Biden as proof of this, all framed as a "this is WHITE PEOPLE'S FAULT and just because you have white privilege and aren't being targeted by these things doesn't mean Biden isn't EVIL" and...

And these posts are being shared by people I have seen, recently, also sharing posts about how you need to watch out for psy-ops and propaganda, and you need to remember just HOW MUCH WORSE Trump is, and how anyone who can needs to vote for Democrats to prevent the US from becoming a literal overt christofascist dictatorship.

And it looks like the moment they saw a post that said "you only think that because you're white," their guilt over having privilege caused them to crumble.

I can't believe I'm having to write this. I can't believe the people I follow don't already know this, aren't already on the lookout for this. I can't believe there's a very serious chance that these campaigns will work and too many young people won't vote because "Biden is bad too" and the entire world will have to suffer under the christofascist dictatorship the Republicans are overtly, not secretly, but openly promising to institute under Trump.

Biden sucks in a lot of ways. He's done things he shouldn't which should make you angry. He's not done things he should have which should also make you angry. There are some things people think he should do which he doesn't actually have the power to do (which is why you vote the whole ballot, not just the president). He has also done a lot of really good things that people aren't talking about as much because anger and outrage get more clicks. (No, I am not going to list them here because I'm just one poor queer trans disabled guy who is mustering up the last of his energy to post this today, but I've shared lists of good stuff he's done before, and I will again whenever they pop up.)

Trump wants to burn down the world and start armageddon in the name of the evangelical christian religion. He wants everyone like me to die. He wants every queer person to die. He wants every disabled person to die. He wants every brown and black person to die. He wants to write Israel a blank check to nuke every last Palestinian. He wants to flood the air with deadly chemicals. He wants to get rid of no-fault divorce to trap people in abusive marriages. He wants to get rid of birth control and turn every person with a uterus into a baby producing factory. He wants to start fresh wars with everyone on earth. He wants to suck Putin's dick. He wants to burn down the rainforests. He has a rabid group of fascists, many of whom are fucking cops and military, chomping at the bit to make things so much worse than you could possibly imagine.

Things are bad. Things are bad right now. If you do not vote for Biden, you are saying you're fine with things getting unfathomably worse for the entire planet.

If you think it is more important to do nothing wrong than to do something right, if you think it is better to keep your soul~ pure by never voting for someone imperfect than to vote however you have to to stop far greater evils from taking power, then fuck you.

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA. The propaganda will not come in the form of a MAGA red hat wearing skinhead trying to persuade you to join him. It will come in the form of a post that says "actually I'm OPPRESSED by the democrats and if you vote for them you are RACIST." It will come in the form of someone pretending to be on your side who is framing voting as somehow not woke enough. It will come in the form of someone who pretends to be just like you telling you that there's no point in voting, so just stay home.

They are putting SO MUCH EFFORT into trying to persuade young people not to vote, because voting MATTERS. But if you don't vote, and the Republicans win, then you might never get the chance to vote again.

Both parties are not the same. FUCKING. VOTE. Because if you can vote democrat, and you don't, and the republicans win, the horrors that will be unleashed as a result will be on your conscience for the rest of your life.

[brightdown00]

Why Hades x Persephone Isn't The Healthy Couple You Think They Are (Part 1)

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of child marriage, sexual assault/abuse, unhealthy/abusive relationships

Oh, holy shit! I went there!

Brace yourselves, folks! You're in for a long, bumpy ride! I'm going to have to separate this into two entries!

Looking around on and offline, it's all too easy to get the wrong impression of Hades and Persephone. With all the fanfic and merchandise (e.g. Lore Olympus, Punderworld, Hadestown, Hades, Class of the Titans, Percy Jackson, A Touch of Darkness, Kaos, Blood of Zeus, Neon Gods, Super Giants ... the list is seemingly endless), you'd easily be forgiven for thinking, and I quote, they're one of the top three healthiest and most functional relationships in Ancient Greek mythology. (I actually saw a YT video on this.)

No, no. A thousand times, no.

The whole point of their relationship that people seem to be missing is that it's a toxic and abusive one, even by the standards of Ancient Greece, and I'll explain why in extensive detail below. (Source: Theoi.com and JSTOR)

Firstly, we need to dispel the baseless notion that Persephone wandered into the Underworld on her own, or that she made the choice to willingly leave with Hades, which came from an book written in the 1960s/1970s by Charlene Spretnak who claims that misogynistic men stole away Persephone's power and agency by making her a victim of Hades, because she wanted to get her daughter into Greek mythology and didn't want to tell her the truth. (Yes, because lying to your daughter about the very real historical misogyny in Ancient Greece is the feminist thing to do, amirite?!) It has led to an demonization of Demeter (who should be, by all accounts, hailed as an feminist mother in an era of oppressive patriarchy). There are literally NO versions of the myth (Homeric Hymn, Diodorus Siculus, Apollodorus, Claudian, Ovid) in which Persephone wasn't abducted, it's literally called 'The Rape/Abduction of Persephone' for a reason. There is even a famous statue of Hades violently kidnapping (a barely pubescent) Persephone in Italy!

In the Claudian version of the myth, Hades literally puts Persephone in chains: She saw Proserpine shut in the dark confines of a prison-house and bound with cruel chains.

Now, let's get into the other baseless notion (spread by YouTubers such as Overly Sarcastic Productions) ... that Hades didn't rape Persephone, he only abducted her because of a mistranslation, that rape and abduction are the same word. (Oh, please just kill me ...) That's not true, because 'rape' and 'abduction' are the same word in the LATIN language, not the GREEK language ... and they're used interchangeably because abduction always led to rape back in those days (and often these days!) You want proof that he raped her (or at least coerced her into sex)? Here it is:

"There he found the lord in his palace sitting on a bed with his bashful bedmate, very much unwilling, longing for her mother."

Regardless of the true translation, he was forcing her to share a bed with him, and why would he do that if they weren't having sex? In Claudian's version, Persephone was literally screaming about how she was inevitably going to lose her virginity to Hades as she was being taken by him: "Happy girls whom other ravishers have stolen; they at least enjoy the general light of day, while I, together with my virginity, lose the air of heaven; stolen from me alike is innocence and daylight."

People online bring up Overly Sarcastic Productions' video on Hades and Persephone as a rebuttal, and yet on OSP's website, she brings up the 'unwilling bedmate'. (OSP isn't a valid source of information  -  she admits that she deeply sanitizes these myths for her YT videos.)

I see people online defending Hades by saying that it's more of a forced marriage than a child abduction, which is true ... and they're also completely missing the entire point of the myth, which is why it's WRONG! It's true that in Ancient Greece (and elsewhere!), a man only needed to obtain the father's permission to marry his daughter, it didn't matter if her mother or the daughter herself disagreed. Even so, fathers in Ancient Greece (even Athens!) would at least inform their daughters of it, especially if the marriage was to another relative, hence why the Homeric Hymn goes out of its way to condemn Zeus for it. Yet, in the Claudian version of the myth, Hades threatens Zeus with releasing the Titans from Tartarus if Zeus did not comply with his demands for a wife and family. Ovid has Hades shot with an love arrow from Eros because Aphrodite did not want one more virgin goddess.

That's not even getting into how Persephone isn't just a young woman, she's implicitly an actual CHILD in these myths. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is the earliest source of the myth, calls her 'Kore' (girl). Ovid's retelling of the myth in his Metamorphoses has this line:

Here Proserpina [Persephone] was playing in a glade and picking flowers, pansies and lilies, with a child's delight, filling her basket and her lap to gather more than the other girls, when, in a trice, Dis [Haides] saw her, loved her, carried her away--love leapt in such a hurry! Terrified, in tears, the goddess called her mother, called her comrades too, but oftenest her mother; and, as she'd torn the shoulder of her dress, the folds slipped down and out the flowers fell, and she, in innocent simplicity, grieved in her girlish heart for their loss too.

In Ancient Greece (with the exception of Sparta), the average age of marriage for girls was 12-14 to grown men twice their age, and if you were of the upper-class, then you would be married off to your half-uncle. Greece hasn't been pagan for centuries now, and yet girls as young as 14 were still being married off to old men for financial reasons in the rural countryside until 1970. Child marriage is still widespread globally to this day (the United States leads the Western world in child brides because of the Mormons and the Amish, with only 12 banning it by 2024, and two-thirds of teen pregnancies are conceived via statutory rape by men in their twenties).

Ancient Greece was a society in which young women and little girls alike would vanish off the face of the earth, and their mothers would never come to know of them again, either because they were dead and/or holed up in the basement of a rapist's house. This is because Ancient Greece was a society in which they regularly and routinely exposed baby girls to die, which created an severe gender imbalance in many city-states (mainly Athens), leading many men to resort to what we would consider in the modern era to be human trafficking (abduction and rape) of women and girls from city-states such as Sparta, Crete, Mycenae, etc. (The myth of Theseus and Ariadne also reflects this.) Mothers in Ancient Greece would pray to Demeter to bring their daughters back alive. The EXACT SAME literally goes on today, in countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand, Armenia, India (which was once invaded by the Greeks under Alexander the Great and adopted many of their cultural practices).

The grief and pain felt by Demeter and Persephone is still felt by mothers and daughters over the world. That's part of the reason why the incessant romanticization of this myth has a damaging side to this, it is not something we have left behind, and women still continue to fight against it. When we have a collective perception that this isn't a practice anymore, it's easier for it to continue, hidden in plain sight, while we dismiss mothers and loved ones for being "dramatic" and "ruining" a "love story", it becomes easier to turn a blind eye to the Demeters and the Persephones all around of us.

To be continued ... in Part 2

[seeingteacupsindragons]

i had literally never heard about the BANANA FISH antisemetism; what happened? (i haven't watched it because i am semi-allergic to horrible major character death lol)

There's two main parts that I remember distinctly after not revisiting the series for like four years. And I'm not Jewish, so this is just what I noticed.

One is more obvious than the other.

The first one to happen is this nerdy scientist who created the BANANA FISH drug was, in fact, Jewish. One: hell of a stereotype about Jewish nerds. But more importantly, he was referred to as a slur for Jewish people and then...decided to....BANANA FISH them?

Now, BANANA FISH is clearly like, based off on MK Ultra or some shit: there's no cure and it controls people's minds and makes people basically trapped in a living hell and makes them very violent.

People he tested this thing on include Ash's older brother, Griffin, whom our racist scientist admitted had done nothing actually to him. But other soldiers they were in the military with were abusive to him and called him a slur for Jewish people.

And so...he just. Killed people in a gruesome, horrific way because he was oppressed. Ash murders him, and we're not even supposed to feel bad because his actions were completely inexcusable and disgusting.

The more obvious one is this fucking line after Blanca shows up about Union Corse wanting to be the next "Jewish American community" like, excuse me, what, the pedophile mafia?

This obviously traffics in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are rich and powerful and control things behind the scenes, and it also draws a connection to another antisemitic conspiracy theory that (Christian) children are in danger from Jewish people (yay, blood libel!) both physically and sexually and etc. This is where the QAnon pedophile conspiracy comes from.

This line about the Jewish American community was actually removed from the original English translation of the manga. It was in the Japanese, and whoever looked at it when translating it into English in the 90s clearly went, "Whoa, okay, no," and they changed it to the "Rockerfellers" which frankly makes more sense anyway.

The anime kept it.

So, uh, yeah.

Not great.

[happyfanofeverything]

reading umineko chapter 3

!! we’re actually getting power dynamics between the seven sisters of purgatory. they’re very well thought out, i find this very intriguing. they’re like representations of ways people act/operate within/navigate abusive structures. all of them remind me so viscerally of people in my life and i felt so many emotions reading their provided character bios that i started typing this long thing up while in the middle of their first group dialogue:

the seven sisters of purgatory represent ways people live within abusive structures. for example, the eldest, Lucifer, who is the “leader” due only to being the eldest, and is “secretly aware that she is actually the least talented, always carrying herself with pride to hide this fact, living in terror of her sisters finding out”, reminds me of many people in my life, and also Krauss.

Leviathan, who “often confronts the eldest sister on behalf of the younger sisters”, reminds me of many people in my life... and Eva, who fiercely fights for justice when she’s made disadvantaged but doesn’t follow through to dismantle the aspects of the system she gains from, and thus makes no lasting change. Leviathan reminds me of Shion too

Satan, who acts cruel but wants to be challenged on it and feels lonely because people fear her, reminded me most immediately of that scene with Battler sexually harassing Shannon because he didn’t act with responsibility about his power over people and instead expected to be fought back against by someone in no position to not receive abuse for doing so :/

Belphegor, the fourth sister who gets by by developing skill & reliability at the tasks of service that she’s responsible for, knowing that (perhaps only) her own skills will continue to reliably serve her in the future even when she’s subjugated under a different entity, and “isn’t used to being treated with kindness”, reminds me of how a lot of people navigate capitalism and patriarchy, especially racialized transfem people. and a bit of Rena. ough

Mammon, the fifth sister, quite low in the hierarchy, who survives with “her motto to be greedy and have things all to herself” and is the most honest with her own emotions, reminds me of someone i love and also Shion

Beelzebub, the sixth sister, “always talking about food”, something all of the sisters have secure power over, “which makes her a calming influence among the sisters”... reminds me of people who socialize in this way not at the expense of literal fruit-and-veggies food, but at the expense of people subjugated/oppressed so firmly below them that their agency is never a concern. happens everywhere all the time. umineko itself makes the connection that “food” for these magic entities includes living humans too. it’s like a soothing peace among people in power that can only be maintained because they all benefit from the oppression of other living people whom they never have to treat as people. ugh. and the Ushiromiyas pull from this frequently

Asmodeus, the youngest sister, alone kept out of conversations, “fantasizing about the prince who will never come”, reminds me of Maria, surviving abuse by imagining magic rescue rather than fighting to understand reality

it’s apparent how the different ways that the sisters act all end up maintaining the uneven power structure, and how they *all* truly wish to break free of it and live as equals. wow... ryukishi does it once again

i feel like these characters are so helpful for understanding how people act around me in real life that i wish i’d read umineko sooner