#revolutionary starters

[that-hawke-woman]

"Without freedom, what are we? Just sheep waiting for the slaughter." ~ Anders

Revolutionary Starters

From somewhere behind him, Ana emerged from within the crowd with several tankards of ale. Swinging her legs around the seat she had previously claimed, she plunked them down and spread them out amongst her companions, but held Anders' back for a moment. "I think, if you were truly sheep, Anders, they wouldn't be so afraid of you." She then handed him his drink with as airy and winsome a smile as she could muster. Varric, from the other side of the table, agreed, for whatever that was worth, and launched into a tale (with some level of relevance, one presumed), as Ana made herself comfortable.

[pokemonfrommemory]

Gen 6? Could it be? :0

[allpossibilities]

@revolutionary-jinx liked for a plotted starter .

golden eyes squint slightly as he makes his way through the mix of smoke and gas in the air. he tries to will away mild lightheadedness, but it had been awhile now since he'd ventured past the gilded gates of piltover. he can only hope his lungs can still take it as he follows the subtle hum of the device in his hand.

after the attack on progress day, jayce had managed to create a device that can help t r a c k the hextech gemstone. picking up on the arcane energy coming from the small spheres. when he'd posed the the topic to those in his inner circle, there didn't seem to be much confidence in his ability to go after the thief. however, his plan wasn't to go after ANYONE ... he just needed the gemstone back. he could manage that, surely.

the device in his hand begins to flash outside a seemingly abandoned building, giving him pause. brows furrow as he looks around to see if anyone is l i n g e r i n g about before slowly making his way into the building. he follows the device, admittedly not paying too much attention to his surroundings. and that turns out to be a rather big regret when he's suddenly flat on his back. his device flies from his hand. “ SHIT. ”

[arsonist4hire]

A neutral settlement away from their war is often a nice place to hide away for a while. It is also a nice place for people too unlike him to make bars that bet on the existence of the few people who are insane enough to wish for something neutral— be it to be able to talk to old friends turn enemies, siblings, or even lovers.

Hot Rod, however, doesn’t care about that. He likes neutral settlements because the music tends to be a little too loud, a little too alien, and the engex tends to range from bad to plain horrible— nothing pure, and certainly nothing fresh, Hot Rod is sure this specific bar rarely ever gets Cybertronians, so the drinks available are probably months old— and because he can just enjoy himself. The Wreckers don’t often join him, and they often also scare neutrals away, so he tends to go on endeavors alone and thank the universe for it.

Today plays out differently than he is used to. The local species are celebrating a full rotation around their star, and everything is louder than usual and maybe a little too much even for him. Undeterred is his will to socialize with the few mechanical beings he can identify in the place, though.

He sits besides you, smiling wide, optics a little too bright. He’s carrying his glass with him.

“Hey! Never seen ya before, came for the festival?”

[solar-throne]

[Like for a starter with one of the Réunion Revolutionaries]

[theorahsart]

Some little doodles and inspirational quotes from Camille Desmoulins, Louis Antoine Saint-Just, and Maximilien Robespierre 💖

I've made these 3 cos I'm making some stickers for a comic convention thats very soon, and did the most 'famous' people for starters/who ppl following me might know from my comic :3

But when I have free time I'm definately gonna make some of lesser discussed but equally inspiring revolutionaries~

[spacerockfloater]

hi! i noticed you learnt about what ryan condal said regarding blood and cheese. it was…something. i would like to know your thoughts on the matter. though it would be completely understandable if you need sometime to gather them together or if you would rather not at all! thank you and bye!

Hello beloved, thank you so much for asking me! I’d love to share my opinion!

If anyone’s wondering, @rhaenelle is referring to this interview where Ryan Condal essentially says he believes that Blood & Cheese’s brutality and heinousness was exaggerated by the Greens in a propagandistic attempt to convince their subjects that Rhaenyra and Daemon are the worst villains ever born, hence why he toned the event down; to show us what he thinks is the accurate version of Jaehaerys’ murder.

Now, I am aware that Condal had already warned us that HOTD was going to be a feminist retelling of the events of F&B, which practically means that his plan has always been to whitewash the everlasting fuck out of Rhaenyra. So what do I think about this?

Well, for starters, I think that Ryan Condal is an excellent businessman. He knows what kind of tropes are going to make the audience engage with his show. He understands that people need a hero to cheer for and a villain to hate, therefore he removed the moral ambiguity from all of the characters and divided them into two categories: the Blacks, enlightened revolutionaries full of passion, deserving of admiration and correct in everything they do, and the Greens, pious fools with a moral superiority complex who are stack in the ways of the past and commit despicable crimes. The average viewer does not possess the intelligence to comprehend that both parties have their good and bad moments, and that they’re both correct in fighting for what each believes is rightfully theirs. Simultaneously, he benefits from the modern trends that want women in media to take revenge when they are wronged and emerge as triumphant girlbosses, because of course a white upper class woman’s suffering in a western world (or Westeros) society has everything to do with her gender and nothing to do with her personality or decisions (even if this works solely for Rhaenyra, because Alicent seems to be held accountable for every single one of her actions). Finally, it is obvious that Condal is trying to appease disgruntled Daenerys fans, so he has rebuilt Rhaenyra into this tortured martyr that wishes to change the world for the better in an attempt to make her resemble her great granddaughter six times removed.

For all of these reasons, I find it very logical that he is going out of his way to minimise the tragedy the Greens experience. It just doesn’t make Rhaenyra look good and honestly, who wants that? The producers saw how unhappy Danny’s stans were when they made her lose her shit; they’re not going to make the same mistake twice. They don’t want their show to tank like the last season of GOT did, so they’ll do everything in their power to keep the audience happy. And it’s working! What’s the last thing Condal says in this clip? “You kinda start rooting for [Blood and Cheese]!” and boy oh boy, the TB stans sure do! Literally hundreds of memes that rejoiced at Jaehaerys’ death were posted on X this week, with tens of thousands of likes. But when Lucerys died, it was presented as the most foul thing to ever happen in the ASOIAF universe. It is the TB supporters that dictate which child murder is good and which is bad, and that decision usually depends on which child came out Rhaenyra’s womb, not let’s say, the fact that one kid was a toddler that could barely walk, while the other was a teenager that laughed at the disabled person he mutilated himself.

It’s all just marketing

That being said, I want to clarify that I understand why Condal and the HOTD producers do what they do, but being a good entrepreneur does not necessarily make you a literary genius. Now, I’m not gonna explain why stripping Rhaenyra off of every character trait that made her interesting is a bad decision and that in their attempt to remove the blame from her so that they can elevate her as this righteous patron of feminism, they’re accidentally removing all of her agency and turning her simply into a victim, because I have a whole blog dedicated to that. But let’s just say that presenting Rhaenyra as this sexually liberated idol that’s incapable of evil, when in fact she’s an entitled aristocrat who’s completely at the mercy of men around her, from her father to her husbuncle, is the most performative activism move ever pulled in recent TV history, as well as pushing the narrative that Alicent suffers from internalised misogyny because duh, a woman can only be good and a feminist if she supports Rhaenyra, not when she pursues her own interests.

Ultimately, I think we just have to accept that this show is not meant for TG fans. We are not going to find any satisfaction in it. Everything that was unique and admirable about the Greens in the book has vanished. Their family dynamic is fucked up, Alicent’s children hate her, Aegon and Halaena cannot stand one another, Alicent is constantly a victim and never someone that chases her own ambitions, Halaena is very vague, Aemond appears to be more angsty than angry, Aegon is a stupid rapist, Jaehaerys’ death was turned into a mockery, Alicole was weaponised in order to make us shit on Alicent and Criston even more and so on. This show barely caters to us because we’re not making them any money.

The reason that there are more TB than TG stans is because (I’m gonna get so much fucking hate for this) most people who watch TV are fucking morons. I swear, when F&B came out 6 years ago, no one gave a flying fuck about Rhaenyra, because we all understood that everyone involved in the Dance of the Dragons was fucked up in their own way and that the message of this story, just like the general message of ASOIAF, is that nobody deserves to sit on that fucking throne. We were all in agreement about that. But then this fucking show came along and all the oblivious simpletons that swallowed whatever the producers shoved down their throats, grabbed the book and decided that “Woah, this book is obviously a critique on patriarchy and Rhaenyra is obviously the victim of the story”! As if GRRM, the man who said that he doesn’t sit down and think “Oh, I’m going to write a woman now” but instead he believes women to be people just like men, with complex personalities, would ever do that. And they just can’t believe that it is possible for book!Rhaenyra to be an evil racist classist full of entitlement! Surely it must be because the Greens are rewriting history! There’s no way GRRM, the man that created Cersei fucking Lannister, would ever make a female character that’s vicious and crazy just because she feels like it! Y’all need to sit down for a moment. I say this as a radical feminist that supports the 4B movement: you’re projecting your own ideas onto George’s work. Not all the media we consume has to reflect our ideologies, but if you think that it has to, then this book isn’t the anti misogynistic masterpiece you wish it was.

Like, when it comes to F&B, I am firmly anti Targaryen and did not wish for any side to win. I wanted them all wiped out to be honest. But when it comes to HOTD, I’m TG basically out of spite at this point.

All in all, I just think that things are going to go downhill for us from this point on. They’ll just keep glorifying the Blacks until the very end.

[soracities]

what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds

I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.

I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)

The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)

The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)

A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )

Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)

Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems

The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.

But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:

anything by Sara Teasdale

Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver

Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti

Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr

Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)

Crush by Richard Siken

Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Selected Poems by Walt Whitman

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Collected Poems by Vasko Popa

Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,

Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef

As for individual poems:

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib

"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros

"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky

“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail

"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin

“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón

“The Flea” by John Donne

"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland

“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker

"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside

“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio

“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver

"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott

“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska

"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy

“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris

"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer

"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje

"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis

"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)

"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz

"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye

"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman

"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah

"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller

"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May

"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:

Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver

"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca

"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky

"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan

[shadow13dickpistons]

So, I saw War of the Rohirrim.

And...I really enjoyed it! This is essentially WB trying to keep hold of their theatrical rights to Tolkien's work, and the release is somewhat short and limited, so it's not getting great reviews, but I would honestly seriously recommend it to fans and non-fans alike.

For starters, I am really glad it's not re-treading the same ground we've walked a hundred times before (for better and worse) and telling a story most people aren't going to be familiar with. I'm also thrilled to fuck that it's animated. 1) I am so God blessed sick of green screens and bad CG, and 2), I'm so happy to not see the same 3D animation literally every other major studio does now. I'm not going to claim the animation is breathtaking or revolutionary, it's neither, and at times it's even clunky. But just having something DIFFERENT? Thank you for that. The plot was able to surprise me in places, I never found it too predictable. My friend felt the pacing sometimes dragged, but I never felt it was too much.

I think it's a great movie for girls, too, being empowering without the cheap, saccharine, and condescending "girl power" I despise. The female characters are extremely solid. (If anything, it's the male characters that sometimes grate, but not intolerably). I would hesitate to take anyone under 13, though, because if they're a scardey cat like me, some of the violence might be a little intense. It's never gory, but it is a WAR of the Rohirrim, after all, not a tea party.

I'm also traditionally very difficult to please in terms of canon and lore, and I was totally fine with it. My two complaints are mild and very livable. Firstly, that people are in a snit about Hera potentially being betrothed to someone from Gondor. This is a continuation of the film trilogy idea that Gondor and Rohan are not on good terms, which isn't really true in the books. Intermarriage in the ruling houses is very common. Theoden's mother is a woman of Gondor.

BUUUUT, given this is primarily coming from the malcontent Lord Freca, I think it works, since I think anyone with political unrest could see Eorl the Younger's vow to the Steward as restrictive.

The only other thing that I took slight pause with was characters voicing the idea of Hera's having a shot at the crown. Sure, she may "deserve" it, but women don't inherit in Tolkien. It's never gonna happen.

Hera and Wulf have some great angst for shippers, but I'm preparing for my future crucification by the purity brigade because I IMMEDIATELY shipped Hera and Frealaf.

I really had a great time, and if I had more time on my hands, I would be diving back into Tolkien right now. But I really don't think you'd lose anything if you're not someone whose already memorized the lore. Total recommendation from me and I'm probably going to see it again.

[thedeafprophet]

Starter Guide On Where To Find The Calender Council In Game

Alright, so here i've put together a little intro guide on where to find information/interact with The Calender Council in Fallen London proper, since most of their lore and experience is scattered throughout the game

This is not a summary of these characters, rather, where people can go to experience the content and read things for themselves. I'm also not gonna mention every single little mention, this is just a starter guide.

There will be mild spoilers here, by the nature of knowing where these characters are involved

Obliatory reference to [Fate] The Calender Code, this ES has some brief overview to all CC members, and introduces the concept of most CC members being tied to a quirk.

January

January is primarily found in the Railway Questline.

In order to have her on the board and experience her inclusion, you must first recruit September, supported the liberationist tracklayers twice, and have 7 Revolutionary Favours

She can be a City Leader and has extra text in the City in Silver

(I recommend recruiting her as early on as possible to experience full text, especially before the initial Creditor plotline)

She is connected to the Discordance

February

Rival during the Cave of The Nadir Expedition

Cameos briefly in nemesis if you choose to try and reach out to revolutionary connections

[Fate] Scene in the Revolutionary option during Sackmas

[Fate] Appears briefly in Lost In Reflections

[Fate] Involved in the marriage of September text

Now removed from the game, February was involved in Knife and Candle

March

The previous March is no longer active, we have minimal information about the new March

Old march was John Cassell, RPF moment.

April

April is a significant character in the Bag A Legend ambition

BaL players can have her as a laboratory assistant

BaL Players can also recruit April to the Railway Board

(Yea unfortunately she's pretty much entierly restricted to having played Bag A Legend )

May

May is The Manager Of The Royal Bethlehem. This was confirmed out of universe years ago . As such, theres a fair amount connected to him by nature of The Manager being a major npc.

The Manager is a significant character in the Heart's Desire Ambition

The Manager appears in a later part of The Railway, with a significant extra contribution for Heart's Desire players

[Fate] The Bloody Wallpaper is a great ES where he is a focus

Nightmares is increasing...

June

Very little is known about June.

She is referenced briefly in the Red Feathers Pin renown raising, "Bury the Council's Secrets"

Out of universe text confirms her as the archictect of the dawn machine

July

[Fate] July is the featured character in the "Lost In Reflections" ES

[Fate] She can be a companion and a Railway Board member with minimal extra dialogue, purchased from Mr Chime's lost and found

August

August of the Calendar Council is the Jovial Contrarian. He appears substaintially throughout the game.

Can be a railway board member

September

September can be met in Balmoral at the Kirk during the Railway Storyline. He has a storyline there, and can become a railway board member.

[Fate] September can become a companion at the Feast of The Rose, and is a marriage candidate.

There's extra text at the Burrow station but we all know my bone to pick with the Burrow

October

You meet October in the Heart's Desire Ambition

'The Peace of October' is an option for calvary in The Parabolan War

[Fate] The Shallows has a deep insight into October's Actions

[Fate] October briefly cameos in The Bloody Wallpaper

The results of October's actions are seen in Nemesis Ambition, but she is not directly mentioned

November

[Fate] Appears in A Little Pandemonium (I have not played this)

[Fate] A Feast Of The Rose Companion

December

For this one, if you really want information I recommend playing Sunless Skies. There is a lot more information on them there.

Theres a few bits of text here or there, in the GCO, Evolution, and a Jewlled Future Destiny text, but nothing particularly substaintial in Fallen London proper.

[alukardtheabysswalker]

I find interesting the relationship (or lack thereof) that Ulysses Dies At Dawn has with The Odyssey.

For starters the name of the character, no Odysseus there, however the full album and story takes heavily from The Iliad in fact almost the same general plot and resolution, changing the political and romantic conflict to a revolutionary and still heavily political but in a different way conflict (not mention of Helen or a parallel of her at all).

So Ulysses is Ulysses and has not gone through an Odyssey yet they did spent over twenty years at war and then in regret. Original Odysseus wanted nothing more than to get back home, to his kingdom and son but mostly to his dear Penelope, a woman who did everything to wait for him, in fact what else she did was focused on making sure everything was in place for when he got back. So obviously The Mechs (in meta) wanted to avoid that stereotype (that in some ways was set by the legend of Penelope herself) but this is where we do get to how UDAD does in fact relate to The Odyssey, somewhat.

Ulysses wins the war and regrets the massacre if not outright genocide they committed so they spend a decade or more drunk, high and or fucking but no Penelope to go back to. We find out in the end is because she is dead, but for how long? When did she die?

Admittedly I haven't read all of the lore posts so this whole thing might have been answered already but when she died is important here. If she died before the war on Ilium it sets Ulysses' mind (did the people of Ilium kill her somehow?) during the war also could have affected them (did she participate?) Or was it after the war? And for how long?

The tree next to which she is buried is stated to have been a beacon of rebellion that at least Ulysses if not her as well wanted to use, long ago. That beacon, that thing it symbolizes is death. True death, death as freedom, as liberation from the oppression of The Olympians.

That is what Ulysses is after, truly, they want to return to Penelope, to reunite with her, which they can only do in death.

Their Odyssey is to die.

[desmon1995]

Hamilton, Weaponized Wokeness, and the Internet’s Compulsive Guilt Complex

So we need to talk about Hamilton. If you’re part of a certain demographic that grew up with it in the mid-2010s, you probably remember the near-religious zeal that surrounded this musical. People were quoting it like gospel, crying over the mixtape, and breaking their banks to see it live. But now? Now, a lot of those same fans are backtracking, performing intellectual gymnastics to disown their past love. Why? Because Hamilton doesn’t check every box on today’s “woke” checklist. It’s revisionism, pure and simple, and it’s more a reflection on the critics than on Hamilton itself.

For starters, let’s talk about what Hamilton was at the time. This wasn’t just another musical; it was a cultural moment. Especially for Black and brown theater performers and fans, Hamilton was revolutionary. It put actors of color in roles traditionally whitewashed, blended contemporary music with Broadway, and reached audiences who’d never felt welcome in that space. In the sanitized world of theater, Hamilton was a bombshell, offering a fresh take that made young performers feel seen. It wasn’t perfect, but it was monumental.

The critiques I keep seeing—from both former fans and the politically progressive crowd—paint Hamilton as a whitewashed version of America’s founding, a sanitized theme-park history. But here’s the thing: Hamilton was never supposed to be a gritty historical documentary. It’s a musical about Alexander Hamilton’s ambition, his missteps, and his place in the American story—a story that is flawed, contradictory, and unfinished. Hamilton doesn’t hold up a perfect picture of America; it holds up a mirror to its messiness. And dismissing it for not being an all-encompassing critique of early America is missing the point.

Take Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s cautious, centrist foil. The musical presents Burr as someone who opts for safety over risk, and ultimately, inaction over bold moves. Burr’s passivity and Hamilton’s relentless drive serve as metaphors for the choices America has made: to act or to sit back, to strive for legacy or avoid the cost. Together, they reflect the push and pull of American ambition and apathy, neither of which are “good” or “bad.” They just are, and that’s complex. Erasing this because it’s not “woke” enough ignores the nuance Hamilton brings.

Another point these revisionist critics cling to is that Hamilton sanitizes its lead, making him into a hero. And yes, the real-life Hamilton was self-interested, married into a slave-owning family, and was often ruthless. But the musical doesn’t ignore this. It shows him as dogmatic, driven by his own ambition, and flawed beyond repair. He is, in many ways, a textbook example of the contradictions in America itself: deeply flawed, trying to belong, and ultimately, paying the price for his ego. This isn’t glorification; it’s tragedy.

Then there’s the critique that Hamilton is just “Obama-era liberalism” packaged with catchy tunes—a symbol of the old days of hope and “yes we can” that’s cringe-worthy in today’s climate. Fine. Hamilton does reflect that era of hope in America, where progress seemed possible. But slapping that label on it and moving on misses why it resonated then and why it endures. Hamilton cracked open the gates for diverse representation on Broadway, sparking conversations and productions that are still unfolding. Sure, it’s not as radical as we might want now, but that doesn’t erase its impact.

Let’s not forget that Hamilton was a product of its time and place—and one that challenged Broadway norms. Calling it “whitewashing” ignores the fact that it was a groundbreaking show for many Black and brown artists and fans. It was never intended to be the ultimate word on representation, and that’s something Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast have made clear. The show was about opening doors, not being the final answer.

Yes, Hamilton deserves critique. It’s not above analysis or even condemnation. But this revisionist guilt trip, where we erase its impact or reframe it to absolve ourselves of loving it, is shallow. Critique Hamilton all you want—but let’s not pretend it wasn’t a moment, or that its flaws erase the doors it opened and the conversations it started. History, just like art, is complicated, and this need to revise or sanitize what we once embraced doesn’t make us more progressive; it just makes us short-sighted.

Here’s the thing: We can’t just rewrite our own histories because it’s uncomfortable to confront who we once were. Hamilton isn’t perfect, and neither is America, but both invite us to grapple with contradictions and reckon with legacy. Loving something flawed doesn't make us naïve—it makes us human. Instead of erasing the impact Hamilton had, maybe we need to remember what it meant, even in its messiness.

Because at the end of the day, our cultural milestones, like Hamilton, are pieces of our journey, for better or worse. Revisiting them with fresh eyes is part of growth, but denying their impact? That’s erasing our own stories. We can move forward without tearing down the things that got us here. After all, the story of America—of progress, failure, and trying again—is still being written. And like Hamilton himself, maybe the question isn’t whether it’s perfect but whether it’s brave enough to take its shot.

[calliesmemes]

SONGS ACROSS THE INTERNET

A COLLECTION OF SENTENCE STARTERS FEATURING LYRICS FROM MYRIAD SONGS — found in my Spotify playlists, on Tumblr and Pinterest, and pulled from my own songwriting notebook.

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

“   Revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate. ”

“   Oh, who would ever want to be king? ”

“   I dreamt I was a soldier. ”

“   What’s your real name? ”

“   I’m your biggest fan. ”

“   How could you be so judgemental? ”

“   We’re living in the age of lies. ”

“   I am barely sane; this is pulsing in my veins. ”

“   Those troublemakers must be so lonely. ”

“   I'm causing you so much frustration. ”

“   I’m sorry that I let you down. ”

“   You’re nobody ‘till somebody wants you dead. ”

“   I don’t want to spend my life trying to fight for what’s not mine. ”

“   I want nothing less than to be who I’m meant to be. ”

“   It’s so hard to breathe. ”

“   Would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten, and the damned? ”

“   Sometimes I get the feeling she’s watching over me. ”

“   I keep breaking under the weight of everything. ”

“   I know I’m more than what I fear. ”

“   If you go to war, then I’m going with you. ”

“   Maybe you’re right to have doubts in me. ”

“   Only fools tread where angels fear to go. ”

“   I’m afraid of what I’m risking if I follow you. ”

“   Good stories are bad lives. ”

“   I know that you want to be seen and to be heard. ”

“   They don’t know anything that you’ve been through. ”

“   You don’t even have the potential to be half as great as me. ”

“   I will stay, and I will fight with you. ”

“   Now, I wield the sword that you left behind. ”

“   You’re not what a hero looks like. ”

“   If it’s evil that you’re planting, then it’s evil that will grow. ”

“   I can see the fear in your eyes. ”

“   There is so much that you could be, if only you’d join me. ”

“   There’s something wrong in the village. ”

“   There’s nothing wrong with you. ”

“   I know I’m meant for something else. ”

“   I see you in my dreams. ”

“   We make one hell of a team. ”

“   I’ll never, ever leave your side. ”

“   We have so much in common. ”

“   Can you see right through me? ”

“   You’ll be okay. Everything will be okay. ”

“   I think you’re my best friend. ”

“   It was only just a dream. ”

“   I tried to play God, and I paid with my son. ”

“   I’ll never, ever leave your side. ”

“   I’m not the girl I ought to be. ”

“   I break tradition. ”

“   You were clearly meant for more, if you weren’t a life lost in the war. ”

“   You are not here to conform. ”

“   I don’t wanna live in a man’s world anymore. ”

“   I see things that nobody else sees. ”

“   I don’t see why you would want me. ”

“   The only one who’s really judging you is yourself. ”

“   I need somebody to hold me. ”

“   So what if I’m crazy? The best people are. ”

“   It’s obvious the way that you’re hurting. Who made you think that you deserve it? ”

“   Who made you a monster? ”

“   We’re all afraid of you. ”

“   I’m a bad liar with a savior complex. ”

“   Why don’t you take the chance? ”

“   If nothing can be known, then stupidity is holy. ”

“   Real men don’t need other people. ”

“   Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful? ”

“   There’s nowhere safe to hide. ”

“   This is how legends are made. ”

“   God forbid I’m seen just as an average human being. ”

“   This event will be history. ”

“   I’m worried that I’m not in the right place. ”

“   You took me down, but you didn’t finish me off. ”

“   Enjoy your temporary win. ”

“   Come pick up your stride. ”

“   I have played a part in the way that things have gotten out of hand. ”

“   If I’m going down, I guess I’ll take you with me. ”

“   Show me how you justify telling all your lies. ”

“   Abandon all your wicked ways, make amends, and start again. ”

“   Oh, I wish I’d find a lover that could hold me. ”

“   We are friends, are we not? ”

“   It’s the truth if it’s officially the story. ”

“   I have romanticized every little thing that you’ve said. ”

“   Just know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away. ”

“   Close your eyes and take my hand. ”

“   America has a problem. ”

“   Somewhere, someone’s got it worse. ”

“   This could be the death of me. ”

“   Remember, everything will be alright. ”

“   Can't you see how I cry for help? ”

“   It's torturing me, but I can't break free. ”

“   Tell me why you're putting pressure on me and every day you cause me harm. ”

“   Tell me what’s been happening, and what’s been on your mind. ”

“   I refuse to lose another friend. ”

“   Hiding from the truth isn’t going to make this okay. ”

“   I don’t think I’m still alive. ”

“   We are problems that want to be solved. ”

“   Don’t make me be the bad guy. ”

“   I know I won’t be leaving here. ”

“   Fate is upon us. ”

“   I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet. ”

“   We’ve been conditioned not to make mistakes, but I can’t live that way. ”

“   I’m terrified of rejection. ”

“   I’m focusing all of my energy on just staying awake. ”

“   Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll show you what you’re missing. ”

“   I’m not prepared for the future. ”

“   They were quick to recognize the devil in me. ”

[ambroselm]

The Music Rooms. Sometime in the first week. [ OPEN STARTER ]

The ten most difficult songs to play on a piano. Hungarian Rhapsody N. 2, Liszt. Flight of the Bumblebee, Korsakov. Fantaisie Impromptu, Chopin. Piano Concerto N. 5, Beethoven. Moonlight Sonata (3rd Movement), Beethoven. Revolutionary Etude, Chopin. Etude Op. 25 No. 11 - Winter Wind, Chopin. Piano Concerto No. 21, Mozart. Grande Polonaise Brillante Opus 22, Chopin. "Heroic" Polonaise Opus 53, Chopin. Ambrose went over the songs once, twice, upwards of ten times. Over and over again. Hammering out the difficult details of each one until his head started pounding, and his fingers felt like they were going to fall off. But he had to make a good first impression on his instructors. He had to be the best in his classes. He didn't just think that because he was a perfectionist either. He had to be the best because if he didn't prove he could do this - music - while simultaneously making a career out of doing music he'd be nothing but a joke.

He was too deep in his head that his fingers tripped over the wrong keys, and the palms of his hands followed, flattening into a loud angry dissonant sound. He huffed a deep breath lifting his head and noticing someone else must have come into the room sometime in the past thirty minutes. He really did find it unsurprising that he'd really missed a whole person. "Sorry," Ambrose said. I promise I can do better. "Have you been in here long?"

[tblsomedoodles]

Soo I may have had a few questions about the baby plant that Morgan and Venus use to grow their kids...

Mostly about how the plant works asside from blood amount.

Does it need two people or can one person use it?

If one person can use it are the kid(s) an phsyical exact clone or do they have some diffrences or something else?

Can more than two people use it?

Do the babys appear in a specific plant or is it based on something?

OOh thank you for giving me an excuse to go off about this silly little concept!

So

Baby-Plant Lore Dump! : )

To start off with, it was a bit of a lost technique before Morgan rediscovered it. The council a long time ago banned and hid it long ago b/c they caught someone trying to grow an army. Morgan found a book on it during their days interning at the council's archives, illegally coppied it, then forgot about it until they rediscovered the copy they made.

It's not a singular plant that grows babies, but a series of spells you put on a seed that essentially makes said plant grow babies instead of whatever it's supposed to be.

It can technically be any plant, but it will only grow the child to whatever size their fruit would normally grow to. Therefore plants with bigger fruits are best to make sure the baby is big enough. Morgan and Venus used a watermelon seed. (Morgan wanted to use a tomato but they couldn't find a type of tomato big enough that the two of them would be comfortable growing a baby to. Thus they went with watermelon.)

It then follows the plants original growing pattern until it is mature enough to start producing fruit. for a Watermelon, that's about 60 days. during that time it needs to be fed the parent(s) blood 3-4 times. (this wasn't in the book and thus Morgan and Venus fed it some every couple days.)

No it does not necessarily require 2 dna donors. THough if only 1 is used, the resulting child(ren) would be near identical clones. (there is a variation of the starter spell that would vary the dna more, but it causes them to be plant hybrids since its caused by taking the second source of dna from the plant itself.)

And technically, you can use as many dna donors as you like, but a child will only end up using 2 or 3 of them, though it will end up growing several children to use the rest. kind of like how kittens from the same litter can have different fathers, if more than 3 donors are used, the children born from that plant would have different parents. (idk if that makes sense.)

ANYWAYS!

Once the fruit/babies start growing, the plants own development slows down. instead of the 1 month that watermelons would normally take, the babies grow over the next 5 months

If you look very closely, you can see the infant inside, but from farther away, it just looks like a plain watermelon.

Once the babies are ready, ie they're starting to get too crowded in their fully grown fruit, the fruit slowly cracks open releasing them into the world.

They're a little slimy and covered in fruit innards, but a healthy baby none-the-less.

Fun fact! When these spells were first developed (a long, long, long time before Morgan found them) it was so yokai parents (specifically those of two or more species) would have a safer way of having their hybrid children. The plant mixes the donor dnas in a way that it stabilizes it (like makes sure the child wouldn't have any conflicting traits and the like). sometimes that means a child will be more genetically closer to one parent than the other (like how Tom is more like Morgan, while his sisters are more like Venus). But the plant insures the child has no genetic issues as a result of being a hybrid. It doesn't rule out illnesses or deformities, it just gives the parents the same chance at having a healthy baby as those not having a hybrid child. (i imagine there was a lot of health issues with hybrids in the past, before mystic medicine was able to catch up and help with that, so something like this would be revolutionary for that time.)

Thank you!!

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

How the “Disney Renaissance” narrative changed, the few pivotal movies that got left out…

It is often agreed that the famed Disney Renaissance began with the 1989 theatrical release of THE LITTLE MERMAID… A return to the kind of critical acclaim the studio’s animated features hadn’t enjoyed in a long while, especially on a consistent basis. And apparently, their first box office hit in a long while.

History shows a different picture… THE LITTLE MERMAID, in fact, was merely building upon an upward climb that not only Disney Feature Animation was seeing back then, but also other divisions of the enterprise’s film domain.

It’s not like Disney Animation was really struggling THAT much anyways, before Michael Eisner and Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg came into the picture with a returning Roy E. Disney. Things were far from great in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, yes, but the features made between the posthumous release of THE JUNGLE BOOK in 1967 and the misfire release of THE BLACK CAULDRON in 1985 did not lose money. ARISTOCATS, ROBIN HOOD, RESCUERS, FOX AND THE HOUND made beaucoup bucks in several European territories, for starters. THE RESCUERS even enjoyed rather enthusiastic critical reception on American soil, with one figure asking if a “renaissance” (!) for animation was underway… In the year 1977… 12 years before THE LITTLE MERMAID came out.

Really, it all begins in the summer of 1986 with the muted release of THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE.

This one entered full production after Eisner/Wells/Katzenberg assumed control, and it was Katzenberg who had significant changes and facelifts made to the project, other than its silly title change. Despite the production being a more enthusiastic one for its young animators, more so than the previous endeavors, Disney didn’t really go ham on its marketing outside of a few trailers (which were surprisingly lost until some really cool folks did lots and lots of digging in the recent years). In fact, its theatrical posters were the early mock-ups. They just… Went with those, and called it a day…

MOUSE DETECTIVE was no blockbuster by any means. $26m domestically only put it $5m above the previous summer’s BLACK CAULDRON, but because it hadn’t cost as much as CAULDRON nor was marketed much, it was considered a profitable success. Reviews were generally positive, too, the best for a Disney animated feature since THE RESCUERS nearly a decade earlier... It no doubt kept the thought of shuttering the animation studio at bay, and it no doubt created some enthusiasm within the walls of the studio.

Later that year, former Disney animator turned rival Don Bluth struck big with a picture that freakin' Steven Spielberg produced... AN AMERICAN TAIL. Released by Universal during the Thanksgiving frame, the feature does the unprecedented: It takes the box office crown that Disney had held for decades. A real upset! Reportedly, it got Katzenberg and all of them nervous. All of a sudden, there was a real push to invest in making animated films. By early 1987, Disney began to put more pictures into development. Only three was in the works by then: Modernized Dickens adaptation OLIVER AND THE DODGER, classic fairy tale THE LITTLE MERMAID, and a RESCUERS sequel. By the end of 1987 and into early 1988, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, and a story about the African wildernesses were in some form of development.

Summer 1988 saw the release of the live-action/animation hybrid WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, a revolutionary animation and VFX spectacle that involved Spielberg as producer, directed by BACK TO THE FUTURE director Robert Zemeckis, and had most of its animation provided by the esteemed Richard Williams house across the Atlantic.

Critical darling, huge box office smash, animation and classic American cartoons are cool again to the general public...

OLIVER & COMPANY came next in the fall of 1988. A full-fledged marketing effort, and Disney had the guts to release it next to Bluth's THE LAND BEFORE TIME, which Spielberg back as producer, **and** freakin' George Lucas as well...

It was a big hit. $53m domestically, and - according to Disney at the time of its release - over $100m at the worldwide box office, taking the crown back from Bluth in addition to beating his newest endeavor. Things were looking up...

Then THE LITTLE MERMAID released in Thanksgiving 1989, rest is history... They saw a small bump in the box office road with THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER in late 1990, but rebounded BIG TIME with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, and THE LION KING, one after the other...

So yeah... ROGER RABBIT aside, because it wasn't a Walt Disney Feature Animation production (Spielberg especially felt the studio's crew weren't really cut out to make the animation of a high level that he was looking for), the two pictures before MERMAID are typically left out of the Disney Renaissance narrative.

MOUSE DETECTIVE was a much lower-budget endeavor, seen as a B-picture of sorts. It didn't make a huge amount at the box office, it had merely only made its money back and got good reviews. So some do not count it because of that. But on the other hand, it was the directorial debut of Ron Clements and John Musker, the reviews were very solid, it showcased the then-young animators having the kind of fun they didn't enjoy on FOX AND THE HOUND, MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL, and BLACK CAULDRON... For some, it is the seeds of the Renaissance. The launchpad for the rocket.

OLIVER & COMPANY is even more baffling when you consider it took the highest-grossing animated movie crown back from Bluth, and was the first animated film to make over $100m worldwide on its initial release. However, the reviews were more mixed for that one, and it's considered an incredibly outdated film. Which it is, I won't lie. It's certainly stuck in the late 1980s, for sure, and many consider its storytelling to be average at best. They feel the story is definitely buried in the hip attitude and pop star voice cast.

But its success was absolutely important to what lie ahead.

Disney *used* to credit it as such...

Look at the BEAUTY AND THE BEAST sneak peek from the May 1991 VHS release of THE JUNGLE BOOK...

OLIVER is a prominent part of the narrative. RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, which was only a few months old by the time they put together that sneak peek, is not alluded to whatsoever. The narrative is OLIVER, then MERMAID, now BEAST. An example of the studio's upward climb... No DOWN UNDER, despite its technological innovations that allowed for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST to even be made the way it was...

DOWN UNDER got a more mixed critical reception and also underperformed, but that was largely because Disney had lost faith in the film long before it was released. After a not-so-great re-release of the original RESCUERS in spring 1989, it was largely just seen as a vehicle for the further development of the C.A.P.S. process of digitally inking and painting animated movies. A full-length test feature/gap filler, if you will. Then it came out, wasn't warmly-received, and it didn't do great. Disney immediately excluded it from their new upward climb narrative.

(Though, I guess as compensation, a trailer for THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER comes on after this JUNGLE BOOK tape's BATB sneak peek. It's a short trailer for its home video release, though it looks to be a snippet of a commercial or theatrical trailer.)

Flash-forward... ALADDIN is coming out...

Its marketing emphasized MERMAID and BEAST as the stepping stones to that film...

No OLIVER, and certainly no DOWN UNDER...

The fall 1992 release of ALADDIN was where it was cemented, that THE LITTLE MERMAID started it all...