#making silence speak

[cor-lapis]

Boycotting Genshin

I don't feel comfortable playing through Natlan and doing quest summaries + other fanart for the region. Unless something changes, I will be boycotting the game, since I don't want to support this level of insensitivity. I would encourage anyone reading this to do the same/go F2P/sign the below petition.

Here's all the designs/edits I've found for the Natlan characters so far which aim to portray the characters more accurately to their inspirations, along with other resources:

Mauvika: xxxiiv (Tumblr)

Chasca: artbymanyy (Twitter) NGreentail (Twitter) Fanart of NGreentail's design by FantaMiix (Twitter)

Xilonen: idkwhatevs1 (Twitter) inebyoonei (Twitter)

Kinich: chururira2da3 (Twitter) pam0537 (Twitter)

Mualani: mikrys_art (Twitter) fremelleCEO (Twitter)

Kachina: With Mualani and Kinich by kattkeyy (Twitter) With Mualani and Kinich by TioFarofeiro (Twitter) With Mualani and Kinich by foogie_boogie (Twitter) With Mualani and Kinich by eleiwitch (Tumblr) fruberry01 (Twitter)

Olorun: foogie_boogie (Twitter)

Citlali: NGreentail (Twitter) beubeubbu (Twitter)

OC: keadeharaaa (Twitter)

Notes on inspirations for in-game designs: DailyNatlanBR (Twitter)

Guide to complaint emails to Hoyoverse: sakura_branches (Twitter)

[crescentfool]

DO U EVER JUST RUN INTO A TEAM THATS JUST. A WORK OF ART. IM LAUGHING SO HARD PLEASE

[iphigeniacomplex]

breaking my silence on chess the musical to say that i would literally not give a fuck about this show if i thought it was good or fully successful at what it is saying. SORRY! i love how messy she is. i love how since 1984 and continuing to this very day people with entirely different perceptions of and opinions on the musical have attempted in their own ways to "make it good" by creating all these different versions with like notably different plots, characterization, and song order, and i love how fucking bad the vast majority of these are despite it all. i hope people keep trying to fix chess the musical forever and until the end of time. i hope no one ever figures it out. i want every currently living theatre director in existence to make their own version and for all these versions to come out on broadway at the same time, making that year's musical season entirely comprised of various different versions of the cold war chess musical by tim rice and half of abba. i want not only our greatest minds but also our middlest-of-the-road and worst minds to come up with their own conclusions as to why chess does not entirely work in its original form or any subsequent forms like to really think about it and yes i do want someone to dedicate their entire life to perfecting chess by releasing version after version after version until they die peacefully but still, as always, in the grips of obsession. i want marriages to be broken up. i want mental states to be shattered. i dream of this world

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

it's this way! / squirrelpaw and leafpaw

[f1-birb]

Lando saying that if he had braked 1 meter later they probably would’ve crashed. Im glad he said at least

literally, time and time again we see that it's only Lando's quick reactions that save him from collisions

but ofc it was all fair, Lando just didn't expect it 🙃

[letitbehurt]

Nonverbal/Nonspeaking Whumpees. And all that this entails.

[sunnykeysmash]

Man of words

[zeb-z]

leo leaving foolish a sign like all the others, leaving the most concrete out of all the messages, but no one comments on it. foolish, dead quiet after asking for a direct translation, as the others come in, take note of the sign, and then continue on to other topics. forever coming up, asking if this is anything new or “just another sign”. baghera and fit, the only ones asking if he’s okay, and he just brushes it off, because of course he would, it’s foolish, and it’s easy even though it’s entirely unconvincing and obviously a lie, because everyone else is talking over them anyway. etoiles not even checking in, just pulling him aside to accuse him of federation bullshit. everyone proceeding to talk about crimes in his tower, sitting right on the concrete trail. mouse in the cappy place, saying foolish doesn’t even care about leo, he doesn’t care that she’s gone, and foolish goes quiet for a full minute, until he can find some joke to latch onto and start deflecting again. I can’t take it anymore I’m at my limit.

did anyone other than foolish know the significance of the amethyst, and take note, like they did with the other eggs and their left behind items? or was it just him, alone later on, repeating always juntos to himself as he looks at the message again.

[alvsanne]

thinking about hotd making my girl elinda massey go on errands and do seemingly the same job as talya like a lady in waiting isn’t a maid? and ofc that brings me to WHY don’t rhaenyra, alicent, helaena, baela and rhaena (or jeyne arryn, or rhaenys in her scenes on driftmark, or aemma in the two gd scenes we get with her) have friends? actual lady companions from the nobility. grrm is so bad at this in the books but it’s even worse in got and hotd

[newm8n]

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

speak 2004

[lagosbratzdoll]

On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom

This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.

Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding family, neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.

Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned. 

Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people. 

I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement. 

In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.

How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? The brutal repression required to keep one house in power for thousands of years is nothing to sniff at. The suppression required to keep the vast majority of Westeros worshipping one (or seven) gods. The systems in place ensure that language does not grow or evolve amongst the highborns at least.

Centuries before Aegon's Landing the maesters were the definitive educational authority and even now centuries after, nothing has changed. The grey rats still decide who learns what and when they learn it. There's one in every highborn home, all correspondence passes through them, they are the healers and the councillors.

The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures. 

Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery. 

However, if we give the nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.

Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.  

People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie. 

I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.

What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay. 

This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.

I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery. 

It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.

Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour. 

Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalisations about other people and that we keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text. 

[1]  

Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.

The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth

Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.

And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills

In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.

Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.

They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.

For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.

Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.

For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

EPISODE 40 PART ONE HOLY FUCK THATS GOD

[tenshiharmonia]

Okay, I know there are much wilder things happening right now, but am I the only one who'd really like to see Razor Rex' "seven fearsome Corpse Cardinals" ?

[awakenthebeing]

(2/2)

[sinistersuns]

who goes there...

[saytrrose]

Friendly reminder to not support the Autism Speaks organization