#major vanguard

[robertmisirian]

A headshot of Lieutenant Safeguard from the Pinatrix Universe.

[browsethestacks]

Incredible Hulk #258 (1981)

Art by Frank Miller And Al Milgrom

[dayurno]

(heavy french accent) kévi… so zis is true….. ze historrí of all hitherto existing society is ze historrí of ze class strugglé…..

[msclaritea]

WHO IS THANOS?

I knew he was a genocidal maniac, and a Rightwing symbol, especially after seeing trolls repeat, and nauseum, for years that "THANOS WAS RIGHT! THANOS WAS RIGHT!"

But even knowing most characters in Marvel are based on old myths, I didn't dwell on it. Until yesterday, when I saw this:

Wolf imagery. The video posted was full of wolves. That's when I decided to look closer. Playing around with the letters in the name, I first stopped on SONTHA, which is both Hindu and the name of one family from Ayrshire, Scotland.

But then, I tried SONATH, and bingo:

The name Somnath is of Indian origin, specifically from Sanskrit. It is derived from the combination of two words: "Soma," meaning moon, and "Nath," meaning lord or protector. Therefore, Somnath can be interpreted as "Lord of the Moon" or "Protector of the Moon."

https://parenting.firstcry.com › mea...

BUT SOMNATH IS ALSO THE NAME FOR LORD SHIVA, GOD OF DEATH, DESTRUCTION. AND THE CONQUERER OF TIME.

Thanos is basically a Dropped Letter Cypher.

"Symbolism of Wolves in Hinduism

Jackals, however, are associated with certain fierce deities like Bhairava (Shiva), Kāli, and Tara. Most of the time they are shown in the ..."

I spoke with Aeltrileaf about all of this. Well, we had a long discussion. She believed Thanos to be based on Thanatos, the Hindu equivalent of Yama, God of Death:

Thanatos, in ancient Greek religion and mythology, the personification of death. Thanatos was the son of Nyx, the goddess of night, and the brother of Hypnos, the god of sleep. He appeared to humans to carry them off to the underworld when the time allotted to them by the Fates had expired.

https://www.britannica.com › topic

Thanatos | Death, Personification & God - Britannica

My personal choice was still Shiva, due to other similarities...the Purple, the Wolves, etc. I did acknowledge that the Hindu and Greek might be related. It's too much of a coincidence that Thanatos is associated with Night and sleep and SOMNATH is too. Aeltrileaf hit on it, saying that Greek is Indo-European, so if you go back far enough, there is overlap. I think at some point, Thanatos got reversed to Somnath, or vice versa.

She said, "The Babylonian equivalent of Soma was called SIN, also a 🌙 deity." The deities are intertwined:

It's basically all Death Cult stuff. Now, who exactly were they advertising, while pushing Thanos, AGAIN, just last night:

Scientology has been bending over backwards, to rehabilitate Jonathan Majors, just so he doesn't lose the Kang role. Also spammed under Thanos was Homelander, The Joker, Darth Vader., and of course, Scarlet Witch. I've said for a long time, the rule of thumb with these groups is relentlessly advertising who they control, or are associated with, under certain tags.

You know, IF Thanos makes some sort of comeback in the upcoming round of Marvel films, fine. But people should be aware of what inspired him.

[justdealingwithsomeissues]

the Soviet Super Soldiers get their own big ol' special issue... no clue who thought these guys were popular enough for this...

[nitpickrider]

Being a superhero in the Soviet Union would, by nature, require also being a guerilla or at least an agitator. The Soviet government did not like do gooders and it certainly didn't like them outside of state control.

[wanderingmind867]

Marvel already had a Soviet Superhero team, the Soviet Super Soldiers. Bill Mantlo created them in 1981 or so (but I think they appeared in prototype form in 1978). I want to take his idea, and create something fresh with it. I haven't read The Champions (where Darkstar, one of the Soviet Heroes is introduced), but I need to write this down immediately!

It's 1976 or 1977. At least 12 years since the avengers were founded in the US. The Soviet Union is desperate to create their own superhero team to rival the avengers. They've tried to create figures like the Red Guardian, or the Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man before, but it always fails. But perhaps it's because they never assembled a proper team? That's the logic that leads to the creation of the Union of Soviet Super Soldiers (Or USSS for short) in 1976 or 1977.

Some members will be characters you know from the 70s and 80s Marvel Comics: The Crimson Dynamo, Vanguard, Ursa Major, Darkstar (who eventually comes back and joins them following her story in The Champions), etc. But there will be new characters too. There will definitely be my own take on the Red Guardian, as well as some other heroes from across the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, more broadly (I kind of want an East German hero, for example).

PS: Please reblog if you'd like to add anything to this. I'd like it if people did that. At least then when my hyperfixation fades, people will remember this idea and do hopefully do stuff with it.

[doctorslippery]

(via Soviet Super-Soldiers Team 1 by Windwalker44 on DeviantArt)

[autoacafiles]

[viiridiangreen]

I'm bi. It's 10000% hetbaiting. Would be hilarious if the figurative horse in question didn't by now amount to a few eohippus vertebrae caught in a hydraulic press, with how old & dead it is.

The markedly cold and distant fictional post-human woman who was decreed bi via word-of-god (image of god? there's literally only the one screensaver with the bi flag) and hasn't displayed personal interest in anyone but women in-text.... probably didn't screw a male she barely regarded as a person at the time (since she saw all Risen as creepy inconvenient creatures) during their one private meeting which functioned as a funeral for her wife of centuries.... done in private so as to avoid letting her guard down around her court, done with him so she could understand an aspect of her warrior wife which she seemed to share with Shaxx as her friend, done forcibly and with his face under a helmet because he also didn't trust Mara, though he left with a crush and she gained some respect for Shaxx specifically, perhaps Risen generally. This echoes what Sjur did with Misraaks specifically, Eliksni generally. She set down the first stone of the bridge. It's an excellent way to honour her memory. It's disgusting that it's completely drowned out by trite superficial het memes that I struggle to see as an interpretation & not just a display of either ignorance / media illiteracy, lack of interest in the story, or lack of respect for sapphic relationships. And like of course you're welcome to have whatever headcanon you want, but to make the extraordinary claim that they unequivocally canonically screwed would require extraordinary overhwelming evidence. Which a single sentence in that one lore tab is not.

What we have can at most, being extremely generous with the mara/shaxx crowd, be said to be ambiguous. The vast majority of the raunchy interpretation adherents are manchildren who haven't read a single paragraph of lore (& lack the reading comprehension to glean anything from it anyway) & are thus usually unaware Sjur is a thing in the story at all, though. So this meme is made in the spirit of having seen a dizzying amount of cold takes and worse humour and vomitworthy imagery about it. Not for uh, "bi erasure". Lmfao.

The latest audio in which Riven-with-Shaxx's-voice alludes to the incident / cringissimo onesided crush shaxx developed as a result (bless his heart) / shit-tier fanon.... is further hetbaiting. It was delicious. You're welcome to continue falling for it if it suits you though lmao :)

updated my old Sjur Eido meme w/ extra Educational Material for the loreless + maidenless

[opencommunion]

looking back on how liberal political analysts talked about donald trump during his 2016 campaign, I notice two very important insights that have vanished from the conversation this time around.

1: the dire warnings about the rise of fascism were really centered on trump's followers, not the man himself. what concerned scholars of fascism in particular was that the already well-established neonazi presence in the US was openly rallying around a presidential candidate. trump's campaign emboldened neonazis, but the neonazis were already there — this is why we saw an astronomical rise in hate crimes against many marginalized groups during trump's campaign, before he was elected. trump himself was understood as an opportunist riding the wave of rising fascist sentiment — the wave itself was a bigger concern than the surfer. trump was replaceable. liberals now seem to have forgotten that trump's followers won't disappear if harris wins. the heritage foundation (originators of 'project 2025,' blue maga's favorite boogeyman) won't disappear if harris wins. extreme right politicians — many of whom I would argue are even further right than trump, and more embedded in the establishment — won't disappear. even if you mistakenly see the republican party as the sole provenance of usamerican fascism, republicans won't disappear if harris is elected.

2: the people centered in the crosshairs of trump's agenda were migrants and asylum seekers; chiefly those from south of the US border and from majority muslim countries. the intensified demonization of these groups led analysts to draw parallels with fascist parties that were on the rise in europe. hatred of migrants and muslims is indisputably the primary driver of 21st century fascism, from the UK to India. so tell me why the conversation in the US has shifted to revolve around white trans people? yes, trump supporters are obviously transphobic, but you have to trace this particular manifestation of transphobia to its source, which still comes down to white supremacy and anti-migrant sentiment. when you actually look at the way fascists talk about trans people, it all comes back to the idea that hostile foreign elements invading the country have degraded white christian values. trans people of color have already been targeted for a long time, because we're seen as a sort of vanguard of non-white perversion; this isn't new to us. white trans people are now experiencing increased persecution because transness is seen as infiltrating white families/communities and corrupting their whiteness. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about the rise of transphobic policies; of course we should. what disturbs me is that anti-migrant sentiment has been shunted to the sidelines of discussions of 'trumpism,' when it is still very much the center of his platform. and that's the part of his platform that the harris campaign has adopted to try and pull voters from him! that's the part of the republican platform that the biden administration advanced with the excuse of 'reaching across the aisle.' and what more extreme manifestation of an anti-migrant anti-muslim platform is there than committing genocide in gaza and then refusing to let gazan asylum seekers (or even gazans with US citizenship!) into the US?

the entire US government, red and blue, is unified around the anti-migrant, white supremacist crux of so-called 'trumpism.' large swathes of the american public, whether they vote red or blue, are enthusiastic about genocidal foreign and domestic policies. none of this stops when trump is gone

[simonxriley]

for some reason i decided to get all the remaining cold war zombie seasonal challenges done 🤷🏻‍♀

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Was it antifascist when the USSR only ever allowed less than 10% of the population to vote for the one candidate the dictatorship put forward for each role?

Why did you deactivate your last account? Were you upset that you looked so foolish? You don't look any less foolish creating multiple alternate accounts to send anon hate with. I don't even have anon asks turned off.

The Soviet Union had universal suffrage. Every voting-age adult was allowed to participate in the elections, besides felons and those who were incapable of voting due to mental disability. All ballots were secret (at least, after 1936. Oftentimes elections prior were done by show of hands, but this became problematic.)

If you are referring to the election of the Presidium or the appointment of the Premier by the elected representatives of the Supreme Soviet, I would consider that more democratic than the election of the President of the United States, since not only was the Presidium a council of multiple people in and of itself instead of one singular person at the head of the government, but the election of the Presidium was undertaken by representatives who were directly elected by the people, as opposed to the electors of the Electoral College in the United States who are appointed by party officials.

If you are referring to the election of the General Secretary of the Communist Party by Communist party members, then that position was not a governmental one. While the General Secretary did indeed have significant political influence due to their role as leader of the vanguard party, they were not a dictator and the position did not confer any state powers.

Not only were the Supreme Soviet and the Presidium composed of many different people who collectively decided upon state actions, many powers and duties were constitutionally delegated to regional councils and soviets. The federal government never held supreme power.

As for the idea that there was only "one candidate" for office during elections, the so-called "single-slate ticket" decried by the West, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about how communist politics works. Competitive tickets were not impossible, although party discipline prevented them from occurring at any high level. Rather, the single-slate ticket arose because prior to the printing of any ballots, there was a period of discussion to determine who would be the candidate in the first place. So it was not a case of people being told by the party "here is your candidate, now you must vote for them". The people and the party worked together to find candidates who had public support in the first place. In addition, not only could voters simply vote "no" and reject a candidate (and any candidate who did not receive a majority of "yes" votes would be rejected,) but all elected officials were subject to recall at any time if they were found to be deficient in their responsibilities by the electorate. Candidates were not forced on the Soviet people by faceless party bureaucrats.

If you want to know more, I recommend checking out "Soviet Democracy" by Pat Sloan (I should note that that particular work forms most of my knowledge on Soviet democracy, so take all of that with a grain of salt for anything past 1937 when the book was written) and pretty much anything written by Anne Louise Strong, although I would recommend "In North Korea", in particular Chapter 3 which goes into detail on pre-war DPRK elections and includes a very enlightening passage on how the North Korean voters at the time viewed single-slate tickets. Suffice it to say, they did not at all feel disenfranchised.

I can understand why you would be misinformed as to how the Soviet government worked. But to decry the Soviet Union as undemocratic, let alone fascistic, is absurd.

[reality-detective]

This was the cause of the flooding in North Carolina when Duke Energy was gearing up for over a million potential power outages in Florida as Hurricane Milton looms.

Interestingly, the company also owns the dams that released water in North Carolina and Hawaiian Electric, tied to the Lahaina fire in Maui.

Major shareholders include BlackRock Vanguard and State Street. 🤔

[justdealingwithsomeissues]

and these guys call themselves the Exiles but that isn't gonna last... nor will a chunk of their members...

[nitpickrider]

Watching a trio of russian superheroes laughing their pants off at Ronald Reagan is much more cathartic than it probably should be