#justice and vengeance and revenge

[rivilu]

Dude how am I supposed to get back into dragon age mood in time with this level of brainrot

[quotent-potables]

"Perhaps you have forgotten. That's one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he'll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he'll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—" He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. "If he ever knew, he has forgotten. 'Move on!' you tell us. 'Move on! Forget what we've done to you. Tomorrow's another day!' But it isn't, Mr. Brue." He still had Brue's hand. "Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door."

— Dr. Abdullah, A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

[whumperofworlds]

Whump Dialogue

"I always wanted revenge against them. So... why do I feel guilty...?"

[thedemigodsguide]

Hi um child of nemesis here, do you mind telling me what the nemesis cabin is like

Nice to meet you! I'm Kally, daughter of Clio!

Nemesis, eh? That's an interesting one! There aren't too many Nemesis kids running around!

To start, Nemesis is the goddess of vengeance, retribution, balance, and justice.

So the cabin design itself mostly reflects her balanced aspect. Its colors are mostly black and white (sort of like the yin and yang symbol), with a pair of torches outside and red accents.

The color red often symbolizes things such as blood, passion, rage, and therefore vengeance. But red also symbolizes love. A balance between love and hate.

I'm not particularly close with any of the Nemesis kids, but from what I've seen, their personalities can be interesting. Damien White, your counselor sometimes has a tendency to be angry towards certain things, but he is also calm and collected when it comes to others. He is kind, because his girlfriend Chiara would settle for no less than

As the goddess of retribution and vengeance, it can probably be easy to become angry, especially if you or someone you love is being treated unfairly. Nemesis kids want equal treatment for everything.

The key is understanding balance. When to dole out punishment, when to let it go. Physical, mental, and spiritual balance are all going to be important points in your journey.

So yeah. Nemesis kids are fair, balanced, sometimes emotional compared to others. Will probably be competitive, but not as much as the Nike/Victoria kids.

Did that answer your question? If you have any more, or if my answer didn't quite get at what you wanted, feel free to drop another ask! And if you have any questions for anyone else at camp, I'll be happy to interview them! I want to start doing a few interviews but I haven't had much time to come up with good questions!

I’ll see you around camp!

–Kally

[swan2swan]

It really is funny how the first act of Arcane's second half just had the girls all fight and get it out of their system.

[captianimarum]

@draikoeques || LIKED for a STARTER with Nuada

"Admittedly, I'm rather impressed." His acidic eyes had long settled upon the corpse of the Wood Wailer, the pale of his face suggesting he'd been dead some few hours - - which then begged the question as to whether Ro had dragged the remains with him or that length of time.

"There is a marsh nearby, we'll drop him in there. The wilds will consume him soon enough - at least that'll mean he was useful in death despite not being so in life." A boot briefly kicks the side of the corpse, idly judging its vulgarity. "I presume nobody saw you-?"

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump increasingly is acting like a James Bond villain – albeit a particularly mindless one. He spends a disproportionate amount of his time plotting revenge against his perceived enemies.

The really sad part is that the bulk of the Republican Party fully understands that he's a psychopath but refuses to call him out.

Even worse than those GOP sycophants, there are rightwing think tanks and attorneys plotting out the details of Trump's revenge.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters. The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.

Number one on Trump's list are Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team.

This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future. Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies.

Stalin's NKVD and the Spanish Inquisition would be jealous.

Trump's second term special prosecutors whose job it would be to go after his targets would be based inside the White House rather than at the Justice Department.

Some far right grovelers have already begun to kiss up to Trump to get a place on his revenge squad.

Some lawyers and operatives close to Trump have pitched themselves for these kinds of roles, telling either Trump or some of his closest advisers that they’d be more than happy to take the gig in Trump’s possible return to power in 2025. And along with having dreams of sweeping retribution and purges, the upper ranks of Trumpworld have spent years putting together projects to vet and prepare a new generation of appointments — for “special prosecutor” posts, as well as much else — and administrative talent. In this informal vetting for Justice Department candidates, former senior Trump aides and well-connected activists have sought lawyers with a track record of loathing DOJ, particularly what they deem its supposedly “liberal,” “left-wing,” or “Marxist” elements. Between these different Trump allies, different private spreadsheets have been created in recent years, some laying out dozens of possible contenders, while some include upwards of a hundred names, sources with direct knowledge of the situation say. Former top Trump White House policy adviser Stephen Miller and other key Trump diehards have contributed names to several of these lists. 

Yep, if you smell fascism then there's a good chance Stephen Miller is nearby.

Trump got elected once and he could get elected again. People on the moderate to progressive part of the spectrum need to unite and make complacency a thing of the past.

[theclaravoyant]

sometimes meeting violence with violence and it not being as cathartic as you expect is something that can be so personal

[american-pagan]

On Retribution and Luigi Mangione

(A Roman Pagan Sermon)

This writing contains a brief description of suicide and mention of violence.

On Althaea and Meleager // De Althaea Meleagrosque

I was reminded today in prayer and reflection of the story of Althaea and Meleager. I will speak shortly on their story and a Roman scripture's perspective on retribution, but would like to discuss the basics of the story first. Those two are described briefly in Michael Grant and John Hazel's Who's Who in Classical Mythology (p. 24) thusly:

"...during the Calydonian boar-hunt [Althaea's] son Meleager killed her brothers Toxeus and Plexipus, and as a result she cursed him. There was a tradition that at his birth the Fates had told Althea that when a log, burning at that moment in the fire, was consumed, her son would die. She had snatched it out and kept it in a chest, but now, in her anger at his deed, she put it on the fire and burnt it, thus causing his death. Shortly afterwards she was overcome by remorse and hanged herself."

The story is clearly and undoubtedly written as a tragedy, and although a useful summary, Grant and Hazel's overview leaves out some of Althaea's inner turmoil and the complicated and torturous nature of her decision to seek retribution. Ovid's Metamorphoses tells the story, first on her desire for vengeance (8.520-525):

"'For retribution I do this evil. Death must be avenged through death, crime heaped on crime, and grave on grave. Let piles of grief bring down this impious house! ...You both should mourn.'"

Her desire for retribution is visceral and justified. Her son murdered her brothers. She would, for some, be in the right for avenging their deaths. However, she is also gripped by a complicated compassion (8.530-534):

"'My hands can't do this. He deserves to die, but I don't want to author his destruction. So will he live, unpunished? Will that victor, puffed by his own success, rule Calydon, while you lie dead, mere ash and frigid shades?"

As Grant and Hazel explained, Althaea ultimately decides to kill her son (8.558-566):

"...he'll die a coward's bloodless death... his soul floats slowly off onto the gentle breeze as white ash slowly overlays the coals."

The consequences of Althaea's decision are dire. Grant and Hazel's telling of the story says that Althaea hanged herself, where Ovid's describes her as impaling herself with a sword; either way, the suicide is conveyed. The entire city of Calydon mourns Meleager's death, and his sisters are so overtaken by grief, that Diana mercifully turns them into meleagrides, guinea fowl. Ovid, speaking for himself, says of the grief (8.575-578),

"Had the gods given me a hundred mouths, all voiced with tongues, great genius, and the whole of Helicon, I still could not convey the sad fate of his brokenhearted sisters."

(Helicon is a Greek mountain, associated with the Muses).

On Luigi Mangione

I will not claim that Luigi Mangione's alleged killing of Brian Thompson is the same as Althaea's story. I will however, take insights from the story of Althaea and Meleager on the nature of retribution.

Brian Thompson, like Meleager, arguably deserved it. A good case can be made for his killing being justified. I will admit that upon hearing the news I felt apathy for his death, if not satisfaction. There is a natural sense of justice for seeing harm befall someone who has caused great harm. Part of my satisfaction of Thompson's death came with the pleasure that I did not have to do it. I was not the "author of his destruction."

I will not argue that retribution is bad because of the harm that befalls the targets of its vengeance, but because of the harm that befalls its authors. When we give in to revenge, we lose something of ourselves. Althaea lost her life. Meleager's sisters lost their humanity. We lose a tenderness to life or a conviction in our values.

The feeling of satisfaction or justice at Thompson's killing is justified. I will never ask his victims or victims of people like him to mourn him or to think of him above his victims. I only ask that we question if acts like these are solutions, activism, self-defense, or are they the more sinister retribution.

[liketwoswansinbalance]

I've been reading a bit about the themes of justice and retribution in fairy tales lately, and I keep finding excerpts that sound like they were ghostwritten by Rafal, haha.

"Most parents today shield their children from the violent imagery found in Grimm’s fairy tales. But if you’ve had enough conversations with young children, you’ll find that they already think a good deal about violence and death and what it all means, so sanitizing fairy tales will not stop children from thinking what they naturally think. If children are nursed on fairy tales that have been sanitized to appease the sentiments of adults and not left alone to nurture their own spiritual development, it will damage their ability to develop a sense of justice, [...]"

"The thirst for justice is strong in children. To deny them drink is to deny them redemption. The next time my daughter pronounces a death sentence on a wicked sinner, I won’t talk her out of it. I’ll agree: they do need to die. [...]"

Source.

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” ― G.K. Chesterton

"Modern crime fiction has nothing on the ingenuity, brutality and sheer bizarreness of the offenses committed in classic fairy tales. Moreover, fairy tales are ruthless. Our contemporary crime novels have the monopoly on moral ambiguity, true, but fairy tales take no prisoners and often offer no redemption. Mercy is not a hallmark of the genre and even the kindest, most benevolent maid-turned-princess isn’t afraid to take out her wicked stepmother."

Source.

"[...] revenge tends to break out whenever legal remedies are blocked, as when the evildoer controls the legal machinery or is otherwise above the law, or when public law enforcement is very lax."

Source.

[outofmymindbebacklater]

when jet goes “sokka you fool! we could have freed this valley.” and sokka goes “Who would be free? everyone would be dead.”

[blueheartbookclub]

"Euripides' Electra: A Timeless Tragedy of Vengeance and Redemption"

In Gilbert Murray's evocative translation of Euripides' timeless Greek tragedy, "Electra," the spirit of ancient drama is vividly brought to life. Set against the backdrop of familial betrayal and revenge, Murray's translation captures the essence of the original work, allowing contemporary readers to delve into the emotional depths of a classic tale.

The play unfolds with Electra, daughter of King Agamemnon, harboring a deep-seated resentment for her mother, Clytemnestra, and her stepfather, Aegisthus, who conspired to murder her father upon his return from the Trojan War. The narrative is woven with themes of justice, retribution, and the intricate complexities of human relationships.

Murray's translation strikes a delicate balance, preserving the poetic beauty of Euripides' language while making it accessible to a modern audience. The dialogue crackles with intensity as characters grapple with the moral consequences of their actions. Electra's grief and seething anger resonate powerfully, making her a compelling protagonist navigating the treacherous waters of vengeance.

The dramatic tension builds steadily, culminating in a gripping climax that explores the consequences of relentless pursuit of justice. Murray's translation masterfully captures the psychological nuances of the characters, inviting readers to empathize with their struggles and dilemmas.

"Euripides' Electra" remains relevant across centuries, offering a profound exploration of human nature, morality, and the enduring quest for justice. Gilbert Murray's translation ensures that the play's emotional depth and intellectual richness are not lost in translation, making it a compelling read for both scholars and those new to classical Greek literature.

"Electra," of Euripides skillfully translated by Gilbert Murray is available in Amazon in paperback 10.99$ and hardcover 18.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 132

Language: English

Rating: 9/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

[howifeltabouthim]

He will not get away with this. I have made a vow.

Siri Hustvedt, from The Blazing World

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

hiiii really enjoyed your chenglingposting i was thinking about how sometimes the kids in adult stories function as a sort of barometer for optimism about the future in their views and options in life... obviously the alliance wants to continue the cycle of antagonizing and vengeance and conflict with the veneer of "honor" but. zcl gets to choose not to. its been a while since I either read or watched, do you know if zcl was ever onboard with actually wanting vengeance or if that was just being pushed on him? Obv its not super in line w his personality but grief could be a factor. i just thought it'd make a lot of sense if he changed his mind on that due to the influence of wenzhou and how they prioritize enjoying life w your people and following your own path over expectations. priest really took one more chance to emphasize breaking cycles/"if it sucks hit the bricks"

hi!! omg!!! thank you and im glad you enjoyed it! honestly this is a question i have been thinking about since at least two rereads ago. the show and the novel are handling this issue of zcl picking up his legacy / giving in to external expectations / finding out what he really wants in life a little differently, i think, as befitting of what they both focus on. ive said in my chenglingpost that the show is about legacy and inheritance in my eyes, while the novel is about martial arts and freedom of choice. obvs freedom of choice is a high priority in word of honor as well, but word of honor seems to have an overarching look, kind of focusing on the big picture and what a generation / a community needs rather than a few individuals, while the novel focuses exclusively on wenzhou and their little group and seems to handle the rest of the themes in priest's usual style. the show is about something "grand", the novel is about the mundane, almost boring human experience. martial arts play a bigger role in the latter too because they are a stand-in for many things that are hard to grasp, like autonomy. in chengling's context, martial arts are irrevocably linked with seeking revenge. i think that is specifically in the novel the case, not so much in the show. in the show seeking revenge is pushed onto him by others as well as inheriting his sect's legacy and becoming worthy of being his father's son. in the novel, the idea of seeking revenge is first presented to him by gu xiang, and it is actually this huge contrast to how others treat him because others "generously" offer to take revenge for him, while gu xiang tells him he can do that himself. we see with wen kexing that getting revenge does not make u happy. it gives u closure but it does not make u happy. i think that is something chengling learns during the novel. he gets closure in the end but it does not look the way he had imagined it would. i think he imagined himself to get super strong and then single-handedly slay his foes. yknow, as u often see in wuxia and as wen kexing literally does. then he starts learning martial arts and realizes getting super strong is actually not that easy, and this chasm between what he expects of himself and what he is able to achieve gets wider and wider and he falls into depression spirals, because to chengling, seeking revenge was taking ownership of his life and his trauma, and what use does he have when he cant even do that? that is the path wen kexing walks and it hollowed him out and it would have him kill himself if he hadnt met zhou zishu; wen kexing viewed himself as an instrument for a very long time rather than as someone deserving of having his own life. so obvs, that path is rubbish by itself (wkx gets his revenge and his closure and his life, good for him!) and its far too much for a kid. and i think, that is what chengling learns here: he only needs to do as much as he can, only bite off what he can chew, and the rest should not be his concern. and there really turns out to be a way to get everything he needs without walking the same path as wen kexing, as the novel proves, because wen kexing had nobody when he was in the same situation while trying to survive the valley, while chengling has wenzhou who guide him and shield him and love him. (crying myself into a huddle over wen kexing and chengling and them being foils of each other.) so in that sense youre already putting it into words. chengling seems to have changed his mind over the course of the novel, he doesnt have that same outlook on vengeance as he as in the start. i think thats different for the show. in the show, there is this weighing of the concept of revenge against the concept of getting justice, and what both these things do and require of a person and what they can offer u as an individual, but also u as a collective, in the long run. they are seen as two different things and are explored and qestioned individually. i think that can be seen in the conflict with chengling and all these expectations everyone has of him and how he handles that.

[emcads]

I really need to sleep but can’t stop thinking about esme’s fleet (or lack thereof). venganza’s men have a sense of loyalty to her because they’ve been sailing with her for years, but the other ships that sailed under Don Rafael barely know her, and many of those men mostly know her as the entitled girl who got the title (through family, not democracy, mind you.) under her grandfather it was definitely a proper fleet, and he took a share of their prizes, but under Esmeralda it’s more of a loose confederation. they would show up to fight with her if needed, but they don’t take regular orders from her, and she doesn’t take a share of their prizes. mostly, they provide her with information, though she has a few friends among the captains and officers who will occasionally share the spoils or keep something specific for her out of the takings. if it came to conflict with another pirate lord, though, they’re at her back no question.

[artistaspiring]

Punishment is a violence in itself.

The thing is, until you get past the mindset of "justice=punishment" you will never be able to create lasting change. We have actual proof that punitive justice creates more crime and makes criminals more violent. We have actual proof that rehabilitation reduces crime and recidivism. But some of y'all are so stuck on this idea that the wrongdoer must be punished for justice to be done that you will choose sating your need for revenge over actually moving toward a better world every time. And that's sad!