#national opposite day

[respect-the-kitty]

[murderousink23]

01/25/2024 is National Tourism Day 🇮🇳, Tu B'Shevat 🇮🇱, Students Day 🇷🇺, National Irish Coffee Day ☕️🇺🇸, National Opposite Day 🇺🇸, Tatiana Day 🇺🇦, Burns Night 🇬🇧, St. Dwynwen's Day 🇬🇧

[subby-sab]

Today is 25th of January.

Today is National Opposite Day, National Irish Coffee Day, Clashing Clothes Day.

[ami-ven]

Happy National Opposite Day!

[magicicephoenix]

happy national opposite day :)

[fizzyfishepicgaymer]

Sethno (Sethos & Cyno) relationship analysis pt. 1!

I've been contemplating if I should post it here but it's my job to spread the sethno agenda everywhere so HERE WE GO!!!! I am here to present to u (whoever is reading this) this fairly long in-detail analysis of the relationship between the General Mahamatra, the current vessel of Hermanubis, Cyno and the current leader of the Temple of Silence, the former vessel of Hermanubis, Sethos to explain why their relationship is so interesting and hopefully to get more ppl to understand them better! (and also, bc… well… someone had to do this and since no one else was willing to I decided to take my chance and have a go at analysing their relationship and compiling everything we know about them so far *thumbs up emoji*)

NOTE - Will update this as more content gets released/more parallels are revealed!

Contents:

Comparing their visual designs

Who is Hermanubis and how did he shape the course of their lives?

Oathkeeper (Cyno's 2nd story quest) - Sethos's introduction as a playable character (NPC at the time of release) and his interactions with Cyno

Mirrors/parallels with each other

Sethos’s story and voicelines – finalising their relationship: who are Sethos and Cyno to each other and why are their lives so intertwined/their stories so inevitably interconnected?

Conclusion! (or more like a few last words from me)

Now, to clear one thing up before we get on with this – I AM IN NO WAY OR FORM forcing anyone to ship them or see their relationship in a romantic light, despite the fact that I do ship them myself. U are free to think about them as u wish, I’m just here to give my opinion and vision of them because I feel like many ppl are misinterpreting their relationship or even throwing it out of the window completely bc they just don’t get it (and that rlly hurts to see so I had to do something about it). ALSO btw just so u are aware, English is not my first language and I’m not great at analysing things and so if I word something in a slightly strange or unusual way or if I repeat myself too many times then I apologise, I genuinely tried my best to make this the best that I possibly could make it to be because these 2 and their relationship means a lot to me, and I’ve been having a crazy hyperfixation on them since the day when I finished Oathkeeper and went insane over their dynamic and potential. AAAAAAAND that’s all I have to say for now, so let’s get onto the essay! :3

!!! SPOILER ALERT FOR CYNO’S 2ND STORY QUEST “OATHKEEPER” AND SETHOS’S VOICELINES AND STORY! I recommend u to finish the quest and take a look through Sethos’s character profile before u read this! 

PART 1 - Comparing their visual designs!

As we likely already know (or might have guessed), Cyno and Sethos were designed to be visual counterparts of each other, and their designs use the same/similar colours to different extents! Cyno has medium length white hair while Sethos has long dark brown hair with some white/grey highlights. Their eye colours – Sethos’s bright green eyes and Cyno’s red eyes – are opposite each other on the colour wheel. Sethos’s primary outfit colour is white with dark brown as the secondary colour, while for Cyno it’s the opposite – his primary outfit colour is dark brown with white as the secondary colour. The colour that stands out the most in Sethos’s outfit is orange on his scarf, complimented by dark purple, while in Cyno’s outfit it’s the dark purple that stands out the most, complimented by orange, though of a different shade to the orange in Sethos’s outfit. Both of their designs also include golden accessories or ornaments (and in Sethos’s case, many of them are shaped like an hourglass, the symbol representing his Ba fragment), and another detail I’ve noticed is Sethos’s golden armband on his left arm kind of “matches” the mark on Cyno’s left arm (not sure on what it is called though). So, I guess u can say that their designs complement each other well, as well as “mirror” each other! (Note – THEY LOOK INSANELY GOOD TOGETHER I’M OBSESSED WITH THEIR DESIGNS sorry I just had to add this)

(also - this part was inspired by @ cynoimpact ‘s mini comparison thread on twitter that was made after the 4.6 Special Program where Sethos was first shown!)

As for their drip marketing arts u can also notice some interesting parallels in them – the poses are somewhat similar but Cyno holds his polearm in his right hand behind him while Sethos holds his bow in his left hand in front of him, and their free hands are lifted to be at the same level as their faces or slightly higher.

Cyno’s default signature outfit is called the “Heart of the Scales” (and according to the wiki, the Chinese name for it is 衡断之心 (Héngduàn zhī Xīn) meaning “Heart of Judgement”) – does that ring a bell? If not then I will tell u that in Ancient Egypt there was a strong belief that after a person dies, they will be judged in the Hall of Maat by placing their heart (conscience) on the scales representing balance and justice and weighing it against an ostrich feather (known as the feather of Maat) representing purity, truth and balance. If the heart balanced with the feather of Maat, then the person would pass the test and gain eternal life. Now, back to the Heart of the Scales, its description reads:

“Cyno's outfit. This garb displays the General Mahamatra's dignity and the just principles he sticks by. It was a rather complicated piece to commission due to Cyno's request for the custom-made head ornaments and requires regular maintenance.”

Meanwhile, Sethos’s default signature outfit is called the “Golden Sandstrider” (again according to the wiki, the Chinese name for it is 金沙行者 (Jīnshāxíng-zhě) meaning “Golden Sandwalker”) and its description reads:

“Sethos's outfit. The lapel is the shade of golden sand, embodying the vast desert that raised him, as well as his faith.”

Not much to say about this but it does go back to the point that Sethos’s design links in very closely to the ToS, SPECIFICALLY his Ba fragment as there is A LOT of hourglass-related ornaments/elements in it.

There’s also imagery related to their Ba Fragments in their designs! Cyno’s helmet has the eye motif at the back, and Sethos’s scarf has the hourglass motif, and I will come back to expand on this when discussing their lore!

And of course, we can’t forget that during their fight in the Rite of Duels in their Hermanubis enhanced states, Cyno’s claws are black/dark purple while Sethos’s claws are white – once again, clearly meant to contrast with each other and compliment their designs! In terms of visions, they are both Electro vision wielders which means that they have certain ideals/traits in common (yep, despite being almost polar opposites in many ways) – I will come back to this at the part discussing their lore!

[readandwriteclub]

Trump Confirms He Could Use Military For Deportations In "National Emergency"

"National Emergency" is Trump's pathway to suspend the U.S. Constitution, remain in office forever, etc... You think I'm kidding? This is the man who was assured that Jan 6th would be successful (it had been road tested for the previous 6 months in Venezuela in 2020); the incompetence of his minions to flub that is an embarrassment to would-be dictators everywhere! Hell, the Myanmar Junta did it with whitewall tires 😂 but back to the topic:

National Emergency *ahem*

The lovely domestic terrorists in my life ❤️ have legitimately floated 👽 --a made-up existential threat from outer space, which has long been favoured because of the pageantry of blaming "abductions" of all political dissent on the non-existent 👽-- as casus belli for a "National Emergency" to seize total control and begin disappearing people. Sounds crazy, right?

..so it's only slightly rewarmed refried beans this time to declare "illegal aliens" casus belli for the, airquotes, "National Emergency"

Except, it isn't actually an emergency; it's just a "pretext"!

And it only has to be just barely plausible enough that the majority of your supporters believe it!

Because it's a pretext to eliminate or otherwise quash all the other people who aren't your supporters!

Once it starts, it will keep the rest of your supporters in line out of fear, so make sure to make it brutal!!!

In this "National Emergency" context, does the talk about "Denaturalization" make sense to you now?

[sw4gf1sh]

Ayo it’s national bat day…everyone say happy day to Zylenol Peehem

[helianskies]

i think this has only just occured to me because i've spent the last 5 hours going thru pics from my Denmark trip back in summer but imagine Den taking the other nations to Tivoli Gardens (a sort of theme park right in the centre of Copenhagen) to wind down after a conference he's been hosting lmao

[orcelito]

ykno i was wondering if Dohalim would be promoted to the same level as Yuri Lowell in my mind. bc ive been in love with Yuri Lowell for yeaaars now.

and you know what. i think he already has been lmaooo

sorry Yuri, u got a rival in my heart

[respect-the-kitty]

[murderousink23]

1/25/2023 is National Tourism Day 🇮🇳, Students Day 🇷🇺, National Irish Coffee Day 🇺🇲, National Opposite Day 🇺🇲, Tatiana Day 🇺🇦, Burns Night 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, St. Dwynwen's Day 🇬🇧

[violetclarity]

me: wow it's so nice that my friends that live far away often end up visiting a city adjacent to mine, giving me the opportunity to see them when I otherwise wouldn't!

also me: bitches and moans every time I have to haul ass into dc or nova to see said friends

[fionnaskyborn]

in light of recent events: still feeling kinda "huh." about the fact that they canonized what was most likely a formatting error on bungie's part that occurred when the info sheets for noble team were being published as part of the promo campaign way back in the day. as of 2022, it's just. canon now. huh. alright.

[mariacallous]

It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.

On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.

Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.

“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.

“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.

She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.

“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”

As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.

It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.

But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.

“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.

“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”

The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.

That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.

But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.

For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.

And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.

Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.

At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.

And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.

Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.

“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.

“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.

Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.

“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.

“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”

Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?

Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.

“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.

“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”

[fiercynn]

okay, if you have ever made or reblogged a “hold your nose and vote for biden” post, this is for you.

here’s the fucking thing about these kinds of posts. i've been seeing them since i first returned to tumblr in, I think, late 2022? they've certainly increased in frequency since october 7, but they were there before too, ready to counter any kind of opposition to biden that has cropped up. many of them are not just trying to educate people about what positive things biden has done, which, like, at least I can understand the motivation behind those ones? but so many of them are directly in response to people criticizing biden, and their only real point is “sure you’re upset at this thing biden did, but have you considered the election?” starting YEARS before the next presidential election, mind you.

and october 7 only made that clearer. i don’t think it had been a week before i saw these posts cropping up. can you not see how fucking ghoulish that is? to look at the rightful pain and anger of those whose relatives and communities are being slaughtered with active american support, to respond to one of the few pieces of agency most americans have in influencing what their governments do – their vote – by saying “yes but trump would be worse.” as if the primary people you’re lecturing – palestinians, muslims, arabs, black people, indigenous people, disabled people, other marginalized people – don’t remember exactly how bad it was under trump!

and even if you think not voting is an empty gesture – something i, who studied political science at a mainstream american lib college, who has worked as a field organizer on a previous democratic presidential campaign and for several policy campaigns, who currently works in public policy in america, used to believe, but have absolutely changed my mind on – what is in no way an empty gesture is saying publicly that you will not vote for someone. the arguments people usually have about why simply not voting is bad are that you can’t tell why someone is not voting, so it is as likely to be apathy or disenfranchisement as it is a political statement. but saying publicly that you will not vote for someone, and why you will not vote for them, absolutely is a political statement, and potentially a powerful one! but you choose to negate and/or ignore that by trotting out the “lesser of two evils” bullshit.

and then there’s the whole “yes but people will DIE under trump”. PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW. even if you’re fucking racist and have decided that palestinian lives don’t count, have you forgotten biden’s ongoing covid minimalism and dismantling of the CDC’s covid research and prevention infrastructure? have you forgotten his increase in spending for law enforcement scant years after the murder of george floyd and his administration's surveillance of protesters, including cop city protesters? have you forgotten his recent ramp-up in deportations of undocumented immigrants, including the active continuation of many trump-era policies?

maybe you have forgotten all those things and do purport to care about palestinians, but you just think that biden is doing his best to influence netanyahu and is getting nowhere! but then you must have forgotten all of the things that biden and his administration themselves have done to further this fucking genocide, including:

continuing to send arms to israel

putting together a military task force within days of yemen’s red sea blockade and attacking yemeni ships

bombing yemen

bombing syria

bombing iraq

vetoing three ceasefire resolutions at the united nations

testifying to defend israel and its genocide and occupation at the international court of justice

refusing to rescue palestinian-americans stuck in gaza

halting funding to the united nations relief and works agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on israeli claims that 12 of UNRWA’s over 30,000 staff were hamas agents, even though u.s. intelligence has not been able to independently verify this

lying that he’s personally seen photos of babies beheaded by hamas when he hadn’t because they didn’t exist (and even when his own staff cautioned him that reports of beheaded babies may not be credible)

questioning the number of palestinian deaths reported by the gaza ministry of health (when even israel has not questioned them, since they are in fact proud of those numbers)

perpetuating lies about hamas having committed the attack on al-aqsa hospital

questioning united nations reports of adults and children raped by israeli soldiers while claiming to have proof (that no one else has seen) of hamas doing the same

honestly so many more things that i can’t remember them all but others feel free to add

or maybe you haven’t forgotten any of that, and think that you’re still justified in lecturing people about why they should vote for biden, because you genuinely believe trump would still be worse. if that is the case, you have still failed to see that by saying you will vote for biden no matter what, you are part of the problem of biden continuing to act like this. because biden is counting on fear of trump to win him this next election no matter what else he does. despite his appalling polling numbers, despite the knowledge that he is losing the palestinian-american vote, the arab-american vote, the muslim-american vote, the black american vote, the youth vote – despite all of that, he is secure in the idea that he will still win because he is better than trump. can you not see how that allows him to act without impunity? how it becomes increasingly impossible for his base to influence what he’s doing if he thinks that they will be with him no matter what? this is how you make yourself complicit to biden’s actions, by not affording anyone even the slightest power to hold him accountable for anything.

and in most cases, the “hold your nose and vote for biden” thing is the response of people who aren’t even being instructed by others not to vote for biden. it is their response to people saying they themselves are choosing not to vote for biden. fucking ghoulish.