#so long evil empire of injustice! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

livums · 1 year ago

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WIP Theme Tag

I was tagged by @violets-in-her-arms-writes ! Tysm!!! 💜 find her post here!

Rules: Bold the themes that appear in your WIP (& italicize those that are loosely covered) then tag 10 people.

{or some amount of people, I guess}

THAT’S RRRRRRIGHT WE’RE BACK TO THE MARKING BLOOD TODAY BABYYYYYYY

I did some selected explanations under the cut for anyone who’s interested 💖 (not the ones that are spoilers lmao go bananas)

Betrayal - Sonea learns and fears again and again that those closest to her cannot be trusted to keep her safe...

Change vs. Tradition / Chaos vs. Order / Convention vs. Rebellion - Sylah desperately trying to wrangle her sisters as she notices them slipping further and further away from the vampire hunting profession. Sonea being the Donkey Kong to Sylah’s Jumpman (hurling the plot down at her while she desperately tries to dodge it). Sonea questioning society’s fear of vampires, and hunters’ drive to slay them. Zova wondering if there is more for her in life.

Corruption - : )

Death - The inevitability that haunts Sylah, the ultimate, unavoidable loss of control. The death of her father has come and gone, and she can hear the bells in the distance.

Facing Darkness - There’s something unique and awful that lives in each of the sisters, something grown and fed at the hand of their father. In order to survive and protect their loved ones, they have no choice but to reckon with it.

Faith vs. Doubt - Sylah knows the Rules, and staunchly abides. Sylah knows the righteousness of her cause above all else... until she doesn’t. There is little that could shake the faith of one such as Sylah. But, hey, when it rains...

Family - THAT’S THE WHOLE GOD DAMN STORY!!!!!!!!

Fate - Sylah is haunted by omens and visions of the future. She does her best to warp fate to her desires, but fails again and again. The impossibility of control is the bane of her existence.

Fear - It’s a Gothic romance, baby! Fear and anxiety ripples through the townsfolk long before the appearance of the stalking evils. Fear is a constant companion of all three sisters--frequently commingled with some flavor of desire.

Fear of Failure - Sylah can feel the clock ticking. She has a limited amount of time to save her sisters, her love, and her town. She cannot fail. She cannot fail. She cannot fail. Not with Father watching from the grave.

Good vs. Bad - The empire and the Guild have long devised the dichotomy of Good and Evil, Man and Vampire. Sonea and Zova have begun to understand that the truth of things is far more complex. Sylah is not so easily swayed.

Guilt and Forgiveness - Sylah has wronged Nieve--this much is known. The guilt threatens to consume her every time she thinks of her beloved. Nieve struggles against the desire to fall back into Sylah’s arms. Sonea has a number of sins for which to atone--and Father yearns for absolution of his own from beyond the grave.

Injustice - To become a vampire is to have been wronged and failed by society at large. Where a helping hand is needed, one finds instead a fist, closed about a wooden stake.

Lost Love - Sylah has yet to understand what went wrong between herself and Nieve. Sonea suffers beneath the realization that Cascabel cannot give her what she needs above all else.

Love - Sylah, who loves heavy and strong, but speaks it in thorns. Sonea, who loves from afar, perched, awaiting the cue to flee. Zova, who loves with the depth and the fury of the raging ocean, who drowns all in her feelings.

Manipulation - In her time of need, Sonea reached out for her family, and found Cascabel instead. To be doomed to be a vampire’s plaything is, perhaps, a fate worse than undeath.

Power - Control. In all things, Sylah seeks this. It eludes her when she yearns for it the most. It crushes all it tries to hold tenderly.

Prejudice - The vampire, the stalking evil, the night-creeping horror. No longer human. We forget they ever were.

Relationships - To be (or to have been) human is to submit to the pain of knowing oneself from another. In romance, in friendship, in family, the sisters learn this again and again and again. To call someone a “lover”, a “sister”, a “father”... how could one word possibly encompass all that it entails to hold the knife that wounds your precious ones? By accident? On purpose? Does it matter?

Revenge - Zova seeks to find the truth behind the death of her father. She doesn’t know, despite everything. How could she possibly know?

Secrets - Concealed from the sisters, concealed about the sisters, concealed by the sisters--Sylah, Sonea, and Zova are plagued by that which is better left unsaid and unknown.

Self-awareness - If the sisters cannot realize the truth of their being, they and their town will suffer the cost.

Self-preservation - Who cares for you, when you are scorned by the one on whom you should rely? Who cares for you, when you’ve done the unforgivable? You have to do what you can. You can’t believe they’ll keep you safe.

Sexuality - The. Girls. Are. Fucking. 🎉

Temptation and Destruction - You know what it means to cross into undeath. All know this. And you do everything right, you are good. But the siren song of immortality rings--but you’re strong enough to resist it. Right?

Tagginggggg (gently…if you haven’t done it already….) @thewardenofwinter @lorenfinch @writernopal @writinglittlebeasts @yedithwrites and anyone else who may be interested.... <3333 (i mean it idk how else to express . i do mean it)

#writeblr #writeblr community #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #tag game #{sanguis in monte}

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yolowritter · 4 months ago

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Well yes, but actually no. Star Wars does have a simple approach to good and evil on the surface level, that is true. But there is also a lot of complexity here. Star Wars has (imo) never been about Light vs Dark, or Good vs Evil. It's always been about people. Those on either side of the Big Picture, whose choices affect themselves and those around them. It's an extremely nuanced world, which I refuse to see as black and white. Sometimes it is hard to tell who the villains are, because people can't always know if they're doing the right thing.

Count Dooku, Syfo Dias and Anakin Skywalker are amazing examples of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. However, there's also cases of the opposite happening. People on the wrong side choosing to be better. Iden Versio, Revan, Darth Marr, and others as well. There's a lot I want to say here, so I'll cut for whoever wants to scroll by. To those interested, please head below.

Dooku saw the corruption in the Republic, saw the suffering of people across the Galaxy that the bloated, money-hungry senators were ignoring. He saw what was ignored by the rest of the Jedi Order. The Republic was failing. Had been failing long before he was even born. And Dooku tried so hard to fix it. He argued with the Council, went on missions around the whole galaxy as a Jedi Master, helped people. But all he saw was more and more suffering, always ignored and often caused by the Republic which he was meant to protect. How could a Jedi, whose mandate is of a peacekeeper and protector, ever stand aside and do nothing? That's what Dooku asked himself about the Council, which had grown complacent on Coruscant, locked away in a literal ivory tower away from the people they were supposedly protecting. All of this culminated in Dooku making a deal with the devil (Sidious) and becoming the thing he swore to destroy.

Syfo Dias had been plagued by visions ever since he was young; he watched the Galaxy burn countless times. And always, he saw it's defenders. The Jedi. The people he was a part of and believed in the most. Those who stood against oppression and slavery and injustice. He saw an army of brave soldiers in white, marching against the forces of darkness. And later in life, he discovered Kamino. He was the linchpin to Sidious' plan about the Clone Army. In his attempts to help the Jedi, Syfo Dias unknowingly damned them all to betrayal. And the Clones? Born and trained to die, thrown like cannon fodder at an endless army of unfeeling machines. Slaves to the Republic. They became everything the Jedi were meant to stand against.

Anakin Skywalker is a familiar story. Born into slavery and desperately wanting to save people from a young age, Anakin's life was filled with loss. As a slave, he had little control of his surroundings. People he knew, friends even, would be sold and bought on the whims of other, often very cruel people. And those Anakin knew would die. Eventually, Qui Gon Jinn would arrive on Tatooine and rescue a young Anakin Skywalker...only to die barely a few days later, leaving Anakin without a father figure. Later, his mother would die too, tortured and alone except in her final moments. During the Clone Wars, the men Anakin served with would die too. Again and again and again, Anakin Skywalker would lose the people he loved, never strong enough to protect them. And then, we all know what happened. Darth Sidious swept in and corrupted the Chosen One, turning him into Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker, who wanted only to save those he cared about, ended up killing them one by one with his very own hands.

On the other hand, there's the cases of people realizing they're the villains, and choosing to be better. Iden Versio is one such example, one of countless Imperials who defected to the Rebellion upon realizing what the Empire actually was. They saw the same thing that Dooku had so many years ago, only too late. Only now, instead of a somewhat-fixable Republic, it's a Sith Empire ruling the Galaxy. The fact is that a lot of Imperials simply didn't realize they were the villains until it was undeniable. For the audience, it's obvious from the opening minutes of A New Hope, but not for them. It's a parallel to the real world. Sometimes people just don't realize they're wrong.

To give a more specific example, Revan. I could go on and on about Revan, but we all know what happened there. Revan very much believed he was doing the right thing, up until the moment that Malak betrayed him and the amnesia set in. Once again, it's obvious for the audience that Sith = Bad Guys, but Darth Revan didn't see it that way. He wasn't corrupted into some Machiavellian maniac, he had reasons for doing the very evil acts he committed. Revan still thought he was the hero of the story, up until the very end.

As an honorable mention, Darth Marr. He was leader of the Sith Empire during the Second Galactic War (I think so anyway, feel free to correct me), and cooperated with Satile Shan, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order at the time, to beat back the first invasion of the Eternal Empire. This marked one of the very few times in history where Sith and Jedi worked together. Marr put aside his ambitions for power, and out of loyalty to the Empire he was ruling over, perhaps even out of care, brokered a peace with ancient enemies and gladly gave his life in an attempt to kill Vitiate, the Eternal Emperor.

What I'm trying to say with all of this is that Star Wars has a clearly defined Good and Evil, but what's mattered is always the people. Yes, there are purely evil characters like Palpatine we can point to, and I agree that a vast majority of Star Wars is how heroes can become the villains. Dooku, Anakin, the Republic itself, etc. But for me, the individuals in Star Wars will always matter more than the Bigger Picture. It was a bunch of scruffy rebels that blew up 2 Death Stars and defeated the Empire. It was a farm boy turned Jedi and a redeemed Darth Vader who killed the Emperor. It was a decorated hero and beloved Jedi that destroyed the Order. It was a man of morals and stern conviction that helped Darth Sidious incite civil war across the stars. Star Wars has always been about people, and that's why I adore it so much.

I'm sorry for rambling as long as I have, I just really wanted to rant about it for ages and giving my two cents on this topic was the perfect excuse. As always, this isn't an argument to be won. There are no right and wrong opinions; I just want to start up a (civil) discussion about it. Anyway, those are just my thoughts, and @incorrect-kotor-quotes is right; Star Wars doesn't deserve so much criticism for how it handles morality.

I'm really tired of people criticizing Star Wars for its simple approach to good and evil, because that ignores the point.

Star Wars is not about morally complex situations where it's hard to tell who the villains are.

Star Wars is about how easy it is to become one of the villains.

#star wars #discussion #yolo rants #anakin skywalker #count dooku #revan #morality discussion #star wars is about people yall #also sorry for such a long post on a reblog #my brain was itching to rant about this

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aravas-writing · 5 days ago

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Bit of a delay, but here we go

Zoroastrianism

In the beginning, there was Spenta Mainyu, the Good Thought, the Creator, Ahura Mazda. Contrary to what you might think of, he did not drive a Mazda nor was he one.

There was also his twin, Angra Mainyu, the Evil Thought, father of Daevas. These two rule over a realm of light and darkness, locked in eternal battle on earth itself. The grand finale shall be the inevitable victory of the Mazda, who drives Mainyu back into the pit, ushering in the Final Age.

Interesting is how, as the creator is the good thought, it implies the inherent goodness of creation and humanity, even if it is susceptible to corruption by the evil thought. In reality, it's all about the free will, the ability to choose between the truth, the good thought and righteousness. And evil, lies and injustice as long as it would benefit oneself.

How deliciously heavy handed, no? A shame we have to argue what is righteous and what isn't.

Originally, Zoroastrianism had an oral tradition. No it doesn't mean you went down on someone and they got the knowledge of the Divine Battle into their brains, you miscreants -

No? Just me? Okay, but the thought is funny.

Anyway, they just told stories and the religion survived that way. An actual scripture appeared during the time of the Sassanid empire, so 4th century at the earliest. The oldest surviving ones, however, come from the 10th century, and even that is a rough estimate.

History doesn't die as long as it remains remembered, even if you have to hew it into stone.

Anyway, Ahura Mazda, or ormazhd, was originally his own person before later scriptures united his role with Spenta Mainyu. Must have been freaky for the two

"who are you, oh king?"

"you"

""whoa""

Obvious paraphrasing aside, Ormazhd does sound an awful lot like Ozymandias, no? Thankfully that's just a coincidence.

Maybe.

Probably.

Anyway, there's a whole pantheon of lesser gods on the Mazda side, like the six Amescha Spenta; direct offshoots of the OG and described as "benevolent immortals".

Second, there's the Yazatas, the ones worthy of sacrifice.

Third, astral gods like Mazda himself.

Zoroastrianists worship fire as a gift of the gods. the flame of knowledge burns in every temple of theirs and has to burn at all times. Water, in turn, is associated with Anahita, the one who feeds the world.

The Daevas are more freaky. Particularly the female Daeva want to fuck humans and make them evil that way. Feels like misogyny, but I bet someone felt like expressing their fetish of getting that real sinful pussy, making him hang the toilet paper the wrong way around.

Interestingly, this religion considers dogs to be closest to humans,which is why they often enjoy the same funeral rites as them. That is to say: leave the carcass on some makeshift tower so that birds can feed in them until there's only bones left, then store the remains in jars.

Also, ants are considered evil. Probably because they ate farmers crops one time too often and they live underground.

And that's mostly Zoroastrianism. Anyone interested, @falleri-salvatore made a post where they cited several sources.

As for me, I'm writing this in a car and gotta stop now before I get carsick 😅

#zoroastrianism

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thepoliticalvulcan · 3 months ago

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Despite Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, Darryl Cooper is an Anti-Human and leftists shouldn't argue with strawmen or take the Black pill.

With Darryl Cooper of Martyr Made fame blowing up after an appearance on Tucker Carlson, I think it's important to clarify just what it is he is doing with his brand of historical revisionism because there are points he makes that have a whiff of truth if you have anti-establishment, anti-military industrial complex impulses but like so much of the "alt-right" where he takes the small kernel of truth is in an anti-human direction rather than choosing to break the long, bleak cycles of inhumanity that he is so skillful at presenting as inevitable.

Humanism doesn’t require a rejection of unpleasant historical truths and it doesn’t require we flatten all injustice and harm. We can grade these things on a curve. While I love me some Virtue Ethics, we can’t pretend consequences don’t matter, or that all sin is equal regardless of scale or intent.

Churchill can be an imperialist bigot and also empirically correct about Hitler’s untrustworthiness and willingness to commit acts of violence on a grand scale.

About 3k more words below the jump.

The Holocaust can be something that wasn’t “planned” in its final, nightmarish form down to the last detail from its inception but evolved as circumstances changed. At the same time if you think critically about it, it is a logical outcome of the profoundly evil choice to create a scapegoat class who could be blamed for all of society’s problems, looted, forced to labor until they are death’s door, and then - once all value has been extracted - become a “burden” that must be addressed. And that first step of reclassifying Jews and other “undesirables” as “burdensome” and illegitimate was planned.

This is also why all talk of concentration camps for anyone for any reason should be chilling, because if it gets to that point, then the re-integration of half starved people embittered by their treatment and disenfranchisement is a very dubious prospect indeed. And as we are seeing once again, the world has limited patience and empathy for the victims of oppression and deprivation seeking comfort and safety abroad. Closed borders too are how Holocausts happen.

The Ukrainian war can both be the product of Western efforts to “court” Ukraine as a source of income, ally, and “check” on Russia and of an intentional Russian decision to deny Ukrainians comfort, safety, and self determination because Putin et al. think Ukraine belongs to Russia, that the Ukrainian identity isn’t real, and that Ukraine will be the launchpad for some future aggression despite Russia’s nuclear arsenal, vast size, challenging climate and geography, and large stockpiles of conventional military hardware.

The Ukraine War & NATO

The lazy debunk of the narrative that Russia is actually a victim and crusader fighting for the “real” West is to blame Russia for everything and call it a day. This isn’t technically wrong or morally wrong, but it's important to recognize that there is skepticism of NATO expansion and of the 2014 ousting of Ukraine’s extremely unpopular, pro-Russian President that nonetheless align with anti-fascist and anti-interventionist sensibilities. This means there is an opening that a particularly skillful propagandist can utilize to steer anti-fascists towards sympathy with Russia.

The problem with the Great Power conflict narrative of the post Cold War era is that it presumes that the “peasants” don’t have a say. Ever. That they have no true preferences, that what preferences they do have are manufactured out of whole cloth (which I believe is a reductive and shallow reading of Chomsky by people who have never engaged with his ideas any further than the title “Manufacturing Consent”) and since they have no true preferences, it is largely irrelevant which flag flies over their Capitals or what configuration their borders have, if they’re not living in a post capitalist communitarian or anarchist context, then all capitalist oligarchs are the same, if not literally, then figuratively.

This is the nasty side of class essentialism. The side that waves off racism, religious persecution, pogroms, death camps, secret police etc. as a product solely of the oligarchy, that it has no true grassroots participation or origin, and thus any thought towards “harm reduction” - that does not involve true and complete liberation, i.e. the dissolution of capitalism, is just imperialism pretending to be humanitarian. This mindset can putrefy into refusing to accept any notion that oppression exists on a spectrum and that, while we must very correctly be skeptical of the intentions of the elite when they make the case for alliance building and armed interventions, such interventions can truly be beneficial for some groups of people in very tangible ways.

Lets use an extreme example: the Islamic State.

We can be hyper critical of the methods used to combat the Islamic State like over reliance on indiscriminate bombing and local proxies whose ideals and methods are wildly out of step with what we say our ideals and methods are.

We can be hyper critical of the incredible incompetence, malice, and stupidity of the Bush administration and its decision to first invade Iraq and then utterly and completely mismanage the occupation. (An occupation I firmly believe was always doomed even in the best case scenario with maximum competency and cultural literacy.) The occupation being a first degree cause of the Islamic State, born as it was from a cauldron of unemployed ex-Baathists, Al Qaeda operators who thought Al Qaeda was too timid, and broken people who had buried loved ones either directly killed by the occupiers or as a result of the breakdown of safety and social coherence.

But you don’t get do overs in life. There’s no man in a blue box moving up and down the timeline to talk Bush, Cheney et al. out of invading Iraq and Paul Bremmer out of being a malevolently useless waste of carbon.

Which means if you’re confronted with an entity like the Islamic State who is bragging about killing every non-believer they can get their hands on and is making good progress doing so within the areas they control, whose problem is this?

Is it only the problem of the people who are the most likely to be gunned down by the Islamic State in the next day, week, or month? Because in many fundamental ways, that’s what some non-interventionist arguments seem like they are suggesting to me.

Not all of them. When we come to somewhat more rational and predictable actors like Russia, I’m much less critical of the people who said deescalation was possible prior to 2022.

But these things exist along a spectrum and I think you can comfortably place ISIL on one end of that spectrum. That end being that anyone in a position to do anything must do something. This being one of those situations where even if the fog of war is incredibly dense and your toolbox extremely limited, you’re unlikely to make the situation significantly worse by trying to help.

Russia prior to the 2014 annexation of Crimea is perhaps more in the middle of the spectrum. Maybe even closer to the “better to do nothing” side if we disallow ourselves the benefit of hindsight. You could perhaps make the argument that NATO expansion, arms exports, and diplomatic and economic coziness in the former Soviet Union sphere was antagonizing to Russia.

You could argue that while the peoples of this region are entitled to free association and safety, including safety from an abusive regional hegemon, indulging that desire to cozy up to the EU, NATO, or the US as a check on Russia increases the likelihood that Russia might try to claw back the freedoms these people won after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I don’t think that’s a sadistic or stupid argument.

However, the interventionists had a point too: the Ukrainians took steps to seek EU membership. Plenty of countries surrounding Ukraine very swiftly sought NATO membership after the fall of the Soviet Union. I believe the US has built itself a tidy little empire hiding in plain sight and expanded the invisible borders of that informal empire after the USSR fell, but I also believe that a lot of this “expansion” also happened with the consent of the governed and for damn good reasons.

The Chechen wars took place in the 90s. The interventionist would look at that and say the ex-bloc states had a lot of very reasonable fears. The non-interventionist would certainly say that ex-bloc states would be wise not to overestimate the ability and willingness of the West to protect them if the Russian bear rose from its stupor and started lashing out at threats real or perceived.

After the annexation of Crimea, in my book Russia shifts closer to the ISIL end. Not all the way, but it's definitely no longer at the opposite end of the intervention spectrum. It’s definitely not in the same club as Canada. The list of nations who have seized portions of other nations under force of arms since the end of World War 2 is larger than it should be (that list should be zero) but it’s not a very big list. Yes it does include the United States. Creating puppet states is conquest with extra steps. The presence of the United States on that list doesn’t mean we owe Russia the courtesy to annex a few states to maintain equilibrium, it means we need to stop making puppet states.

The invasion of Ukraine shifts Russia even further to the ISL end of the spectrum. Not all the way. Nuclear weapons are a thing. The opposite end of the anti-fascist spectrum, the side that says we have nothing to fear from Russia at all and thus should just intervene directly are very silly and I want them very, very far from any position of authority. But by my reckoning, Russia is comfortably within the “do something” region of the spectrum of responsibility to ease suffering and protect other people’s right to self determination.

We can complicate “self determination” all we want and mutter about no true freedom under capitalism, but unless you think every reputable NGO, the UN etc. are lying: Russian unfreedom is more unfree than Ukrainian and their lives are shorter and more miserable than that of your typical prewar Ukrainian and this includes minorities like Russian identifying Ukrainians and Jewish people.

The existence of Ukrainian fascist militias is not not a problem, but it's also not representative of the Ukrainian people or government, whereas ethnosupremacism is the defining feature of a Russian state that describes the Ukrainian identity as something to be destroyed and is using its own minorities and recruits from other countries as cannon fodder. Ukrainian usage of fascist imagery and aesthetics also should be put in a historical context: the Nazis were the enemy of my enemy for Ukrainians who hated life under the Soviet Union and had suffered enormously. This is similar in some respects to Arab nationalists expressing solidarity with the Nazis during World War 2.

Not everyone who expresses solidarity with Nazis should be assumed to be doing so with the full context of what the Nazis did, what they represent to Westerners, or co-signing the Holocaust; but we definitely can judge people by their actions and whether they make overtly racist declarations or engage in violence against traditional targets of Nazi violence.

Which when the list includes socialists, Jews, LGBTQ, the disabled, and an array of other political dissidents, is a stern reminder for aspiring historical revisionists that very few people indeed were truly safe from the Nazis. For someone as historically literate as Darryl Cooper to be trying to rehabilitate Hitler there can be no plausible deniability nor is he providing a useful service with his sweat and blood that justifies polite but very conditional and temporary tolerance like Azov or the various militias that deleted the “state” in Islamic State.

Giants in a Playground

Let's get real here for a second. If you tell someone whose country is being invaded that actually they are just pawns in a struggle between imperialist systems seeking to extract the wealth of the commons and thus should do nothing to resist, they are liable to shoot you first and then move on to the first available occupying soldier.

You can call this false consciousness all you want, but invading armies really do murder everyone they feel is subhuman or vaguely a threat. They really do often target specific groups of people for significantly harsher treatment on the basis of race, religion, or being a sexual/gender “deviant.”

Western Germany and Japan after World War 2 are rare outliers in the grand narrative of history where for a variety of unique historical circumstances, it was a priority of the occupiers to provide the occupied with a decent standard of living, civil liberties, and something that resembled autonomy because these actually made these states easier to govern and more resilient to ideologically motivated insurgents. Especially revanchists and socialists. Usually a conquered state gets less free and poorer, at least for the laboring classes since conquest is usually either about extracting resources, creating a security cordon around the conqueror’s heartland, or both.

Blaming Ukrainians for their cities being turned to rubble by Russia “because they resisted” is a form of victim blaming. If you’re all in on pacifism, okay sure. You’re not technically wrong. I’m also not fully bought into the narrative that all resistance to “bullies” reduces harm to a greater degree than simply politely lowering one’s flag and allowing the aggressor to raise their own and meekly accepting whatever changes to one’s socioeconomic status and civil liberties that follow.

But if you’re a Jew in the 30s and 40s, you’re not just experiencing a change in socioeconomic status, some mix of soldiers, mobs, prison guards, or famine are liable to kill you and it’s extremely predictable rather than scaremongering.

Ask the Yazidis and other religious minorities how well the Islamic State treated noncombatants.

Not everyone is “harmed” equally by a quiescent lowering of the flag and its replacement with a new one. Some people just get poorer. Others are killed for some inalterable and fickle characteristic.

Darryl Cooper knows this, because he wrote and spoke about it at length in Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem.

So when we speak of Churchill's Britain and Hitler’s Germany as a battle between two murderous imperial powers, it's not wrong.

Technically.

But it sure is reductive.

I’ve got no quarrel with some Indian conscript who was called up to be abused by fellow soldiers who had the same ethnicity as the colonial masters, to try not to die in a far away land in WW1 and WW2, did not love the experience, and may have become radicalized into his people’s liberation movement as a consequence.

Yet if we look at the recent history prior to Hitler’s “appeal to reason” that allegedly spoke to a desire to settle the war with Britain, we see broken promises, fallen countries, and a level of violence that cannot be excused by military necessity. Violent rampages and cullings of civilians that were entirely unrelated to combat.

Churchill may have spent his political career arguing for a confrontation with Nazi Germany, but it takes two to tango. I think the word appeasement gets thrown around too readily when “peaceniks” argue against stupidity like invading Iraq, but a word that has come to be used too frivolously and too disingenuously is not automatically devalued in its original context.

And I say this as someone who has heard at least one good argument defending Chamberlain and appeasement as a bleak but necessary strategy to buy time for Britain to prepare for Germany’s inevitable betrayal and that there actually isn’t a clearcut point prior to the invasion of France where Britain and France were actually capable of winning decisively.

Never forget that both France and Britain also had to deal with the consequences of the Great Depression and the long demographic and economic tail of World War 1. We’re extremely hard on Britain and France in the runup to WW2 because of a mix of presentism: we know what is going to happen so in retrospect all the signs seem perfectly clear, but also ethnocentrism: Americans didn’t have a “lost generation” after WW1 due to the enormity of the casualties sustained. We showed up late and lost way, way less people as a proportion of our overall population.

People contain multitudes. What you choose to define a person’s totality can reflect the definer’s place in the world. I don’t begrudge Native Americans for not revering George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, two men separated by generations that nonetheless were both involved, Lincoln somewhat less directly, in military actions against Native Americans. It's appropriate to label these conflicts brutal and racist colonialism.

Yet one person set the precedent that power should be yielded without excessive legal wrangling or violence, the other made choices that resulted in the end of slavery, even though it wasn’t his original and foremost intent nor was he a perfect specimen of anti-racism in his time. Lincoln had to be talked out of the idea of trying to colonize Africa with emancipated slaves rather than permit them to stay in the land of their birth. A popular “gotcha” was that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed Southern Slaves, which is again, technically true, but slavery was already outlawed in the overwhelming majority of Union states when the war broke out.

Churchill was racist, loved the empire, and was itching for a fight with Germany as early as the 30s.

Does that then mean that Hitler’s peace proposal was in good faith or likely to be a good deal for Britain?

Is it a good deal for Britain if Britain’s skies are clear and her citizens not being killed while Germany focuses all of its attention on the Soviet Union?

Is it still a good deal if in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years etc. Germany has consolidated its new empire, recovered from the bloodletting in the East, and has now built a navy that can contest the channel while German troops attempt to invade by sea?

Is this “worst case” scenario that I’ve imagined an on balance reduction in harm for British and German innocents - whether you define innocents as civilians cowering in basements from aerial bombardments or as civilians who will eventually be pressed to take up arms and go kill and die? Is the way we calculate harm strictly deaths from firsthand violence or does an almost certain increase in unfreedom and oppression also factor in?

Because it's not like the Third Reich had a House of Commons or any substantive, official forum for citizens to make grievances known without fear of reprisal. People who are absolutists about there being no true freedom except under Anarchism or the final stage of Communism can handwave about this just being another flag lowering and flag raising ceremony with no real changes other than the Third Reich doing away with the polite fictions. Yet I would imagine a British Jew would have a very different experience than a generic Londoner of Anglo-Saxon heritage.

And that does matter. As much as the class essentialists try to say it doesn’t, it matters.

And don’t let black pills like Darryl Cooper trick you into thinking that a war monger imperialist like Churchill can’t be pragmatically and morally in the right to not surrender to someone worse. Someone worse being Hitler. Darryl Cooper knows better, because Darryl Cooper is somebody who can affect sympathy for both the Jewish and Muslim perspectives when it comes to the founding of Israel, but only because he sees existence as a zero sum, Hobbessian nightmare where the natural order is to murder all who are not like us rather than welcome the stranger gladly and give them room to disappoint us rather than turning our backs to them by default.

He understands the depths of rage and sorrow in the Middle East, as expressed in Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, but only because there isn’t a single thing in that saga he’d do differently if he was a Muslim or Jew in the Palestine Mandate. Unless that Jew or Muslim was a kind neighbor who minded their own business and offered assistance to those outside their Volk, that he can’t comprehend.

By all means, let's talk about saturation bombing. Let's talk about Allied atrocities. Let’s talk about some of the cynical, great power competition influences that were present at the same time as idealistic influences.

But let's not twist history to justify abdication of duty for those suffering or to rationalize a longing for a strongman like Hitler or Trump to stick it to our enemies, maybe even slaughter them wholesale. That’s Cooper and Carlson’s game. They want to exploit our antipathy to war. Our antipathy to violence. Our antipathy to elite power games. They want to turn our moral objections to senseless cruelty into indifference.

Because that’s all they need. They don’t need our support. They just need our indifference. They just need a third of us to make excuses and argue about whether it was 2 million or 8 million who died in the Holocaust while one third of the country murders the rest.

#darryl cooper #donald trump #civil rights #foucault's boomerang #revisionist history #nazis #winston churchill #churchill #russian invasion of ukraine #Daesh #ISIL #Islamic State #NATO #Imperialism #Tucker Carlson #antifascism #world war 2 #class essentialism #class reductionism

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jadegemsss · 5 months ago

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On Palestine and other world conflicts like it: Make no mistake, some of us who seemingly say “nothing” about mass genocide and social injustice are saying solemn prayers to ourselves. Christ said “forgive them Father, for they know not what they do” and we don’t. Humanity has no idea what sins we commit in our pursuits of power. You could say “yes they do, they’re just evil.” And write the notion off like some freshly-plucked booger; but, the reality is they are blind with power lust.

In these establishments and expansions of ��empires” and “holy lands” our governors lose sight of the Holy One and can claim that they are committing such atrocities in His honor but this is not the case. For those who claim to be taking the rightful place of God’s children and people, there is too much bloodshed to be taken seriously. Palestine is being destroyed and I won’t say anything out of turn- I am no oracle, so I cannot predict which neighboring cities or countries are next out of further destruction or divine retribution; but I can say this won’t end well.

Babylon, Egypt, Rome, England, France, Spain, Germany… Tick… Tock… this won’t end well and I know so. Humans were not made to rule over one another. We all need to turn our hearts to God and realize that some of us are being possessed and used. We are throwing each other into the fire only to end up there ourselves. Nature is His creation and the earth is beautiful, but make no mistake… We live in a godless world.

There is no fear or reverance of Him… If there was we would act like it. I speak not, because it is not my place to judge. I have a list of sins as long as my own arm. But in my prayers and my somber thoughts, I hope we see the ills of our ways and finally stop. I hope humanity can control its violent and bloodthirsty nature. I hope that one day the jowls will become tired, we will be nauseated with the bones and rot that we feed ourselves on, and we will be repentant in letting divine justice settle our scores.

It is naive and cliche but I can only hope that we become more Christlike. But the collective can only do this by addressing the sins within ourselves, and that can only happen within the individual- in the quietness of the four walls that cover them as they sleep. That is why some of us “don’t use our voice”. We know better than to bring God before false prophets, we will not waste His time with people who don’t care. My heart and sorrow goes to all of the children who have never known love or peace… “Let the children come to me. Do not stop them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” -Matthew 19:14

I pray that our future be spared from more terror. Amen.

#when it all falls down #speakjade #💔#existentialism #use your platform they said #speak up against injustice they said

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qqueenofhades · 9 days ago

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I think this is a very useful analysis that helpfully puts into words some of the scattered thoughts I've had, but have not been able to centralize, articulate, or otherwise had the spoons to offer post-election.

The one thing Bernie has not gotten and never gotten, even with all his Champion of the Working Class cosplay crusading (as a wealthy Vermont millionaire who has accomplished very little during his long tenure in office aside from repeatedly fracturing the Democratic party), is that a lot of the American working class see billionaires (as pointed out above) as aspirational role models, not evil parasites. Scholars can and indeed have written many long sociological, political, and analytical papers about the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem, wherein working class and poor people vote against their own economic interests in order to elevate grifting xenophobic populists whose policies only benefit the already-rich. For one thing, this presupposes the "rational individual" economic-maximization model of human behavior, which was popularized in the free-market 1970s and 80s, and has never been true in any meaningful sense, but as pointed out above: America is addicted to the "hard work makes you rich and billionaires have clearly worked to earn their wealth" mindset. They are equally addicted to the "temporarily dispossessed millionaire" fallacy, wherein if they too just Pull Themselves Up By The Bootstraps, that is the only thing stopping them from being equally wealthy. It's not, but we're still absolutely throttled by the "Republicans Are Better For The Economy" myth that just played a huge part in Trump's second election win. What's empirically "real" or not matters less and less.

Bernie's brand of faux-leftist populism is so toxic in America precisely because it pairs this apparent destruction of the American Dream (hey why do you want to destroy my chance of becoming a billionaire?!) with virulent anti-American tankie-lite rhetoric spouted by the online left, who see America as the source of all evil in the world despite benefiting enormously from their upbringing in America and access to American privilege. We can (and again, have!) written many, many papers about the founding and continuing social ills embedded in America: its establishment on the back of slavery, racism, genocide, and so on. But when it comes to day-to-day electoral politics, the average mid-to-low-information American voter does not give a shit about complicated historical debates and generational injustices. They just don't. They care about how much things cost at the grocery store and what the vibes "feel" like to them. After a brief upsurge of social acceptance in 2020 with BLM/George Floyd, they've also lost interest in dealing with systemic racism, and are inclined to accept Trump's easy-scapegoating rhetoric. This is not limited to white people either; witness the major gains he made with Hispanics in particular. The ones who are able to vote in presidential elections are US citizens and see themselves as safely insulated from Trump's mass-deportation policies because they're not undocumented (even if they have friends and relatives who are and who are very much NOT safe). They want to preserve their own piece of the pie and are not acting in grand pan-Latino racial solidarity. Nobody says they have to -- they can focus on their own personal interests just as much as white voters -- but they're definitely one of the communities who are in the soonest for a rude wakeup call.

Looking at the election results shows that America is, as ever, an extremely divided country. This election was not a landslide for Trump. The Republicans benefited from an extremely favorable map to pick up WV, OH, MT, PA in the Senate, but added no House seats and still have a tiny majority of about 3 (which may shrink further with special elections and/or unexpected departure). Trump got 49.9% of the vote; Harris got around 48.5%. The American electorate is not left-wing; it is also not immutably right-wing. It is primarily transactional, "what have you done for me lately," and cursed with low information literacy, sophisticated disinformation campaigns, and short-term memory that is worse than a goldfish. Abortion passed everywhere except in FL (where it needed 60% and got 57%). As ever, the public liked Democratic policies, but voted for Republicans to punish Democrats for not implementing them fast enough. That is one of the most maddening paradoxes in all of American politics and it fucked us good this time, but that's the twist of the screw. The Republicans also benefited from the post-COVID anti-incumbency that kicked Trump out in 2020. A lot of the scary things that happened in the last four years -- rising prices, ongoing threats to democracy, Dobbs, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, etc -- were not necessarily Biden's fault, but they happened on his watch and contributed to the sense of visceral fear and threat that is always a better predictor of electoral behavior than the flawed idea of Rational Economic Maximization.

As such, despite the avalanche of "What Democrats Must Do Now" postmortems, we should definitely point out that Bernie instantly threw them under the bus for not being "pro-worker," when the Biden administration was the most pro-worker, pro-labor, and anti-corporate in recent history (and due to the electoral backlash it received as a result, quite possibly for a very long time). Bernie primarily conceives of the American working class as white people, often white men, engaged in customary trade-union pursuits, which is outdated and inadequate and reeks of the rancid "the left wasn't nice enough to fragile insecure white men" takes that are latently or openly misogynist. Biden did a hell of a lot to address their economic interests, and they punished him for it, because what is at stake, in their minds, isn't actually their economic interest (even if that's what is often used to describe it) but their position of unquestioned power as white men. They will happily give up the chance of better economic policies if it means continuing to assert their authority over other marginalized people; their lot might not be great, but at least they're still white. And indeed, still men. Bernie complaining that the Democrats didn't cater enough to White Men is, objectively, bullshit.

As such, I can tell you that one way that the Democrats can get back to electoral relevancy, which is definitely likely in 2026 and 2028 if we can get that far, is not by listening to Bernie. "Destroy the billionaires" paired with toxic tankie rhetoric driven by the online left competing with each other to be more extreme and unpleasant is electoral poison and that's why Bernie's chronic campaigning got him nowhere and fatally splintered the Democratic party in 2016, allowing Trump to win in the first place. It's a dud. The end. There is nothing positive or constructive in that vision, and while riding aggrieved populism can get you decently far, it also has to be a populism that's rooted in some idea of America, however shallow and lip-service. "Make America Great Again," despite how much Trump does to destroy America in every conceivable sense, works because MAGAts wave American flags and feel like a righteous and integral part of their country. The fact that in this election cycle, Democrats actually embraced love-of-country rhetoric, American flags, and appeals to fundamental "American" values, no matter how cringy and schmaltizily-nationalistic it feels to educated liberals, is an important part of getting that ground back. It promotes the idea that you can love America (however defined) and vote Democratic, and we can't give that up. Because then yeah, everyone waving the flag will be a jingoistic MAGA fascist, and people who like and respond to that imagery (which is a decent majority of ordinary Americans) will want to associate with them by default.

Likewise: a lot of online leftist/Bernie Bro rhetoric focuses on the magical revolution fantasy that America will just disappear and/or be Gloriously Overthrown and thus, somehow, all injustice from the tyrannical government will come to an end and we will live in a perfect utopia forevermore! (Uh, ask the Bolsheviks how that worked out for them.) America is an enormously flawed historical and geopolitical entity, but one thing it is not going to do is suddenly disappear overnight because of deranged Moral Purity Posting by so-called leftist keyboard warriors. It still matters how its massive power is used, and as anyone with a brain cell was well aware beforehand, Trump is only going to abuse it ever more egregiously. He will try to stay in office (if he doesn't die beforehand); he will pack SCOTUS with more corrupt toadies; he will do his best to wreck anything and everything that stymied him last time. He will undoubtedly succeed in at least some of that, and that is very scary. However, as I have said before, his total success is neither inevitable nor even very likely. If we are going to continue to hold the line and find victories where they come, we need to do a lot of things, but chief among them is not listen to Bernie F'n Sanders. He can, indeed, take several seats.

Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.

Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.

You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.

In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.

It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.

–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"

#history #american history #politics for ts #the national nightmare #long post

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coffeewithcutcaffeine · 10 months ago

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talk my ear off, i'd gladly listen to you for eternity my love, tell me everything you want to say <3

My beloved Lizzie! So many emotions are bursting within me like little balloons right now — excitement, nervousness, all in an intense mixture! Thank you for granting me the opportunity to talk about this! This is a very long post (and I hope no one will consider me bonkers for what I have to say here), but I nonetheless hope someone will read this and enjoy it/find it interesting! ❤️️

I want to use this Ask to basically outline what this is all about — who I am writing about, why I am writing about him, who else is a part of the story, what the themes are, and what I am trying to avoid in my work. The man himself is a little controversial, and I hope this explains why he is worth giving a shot (if you find it being your thing). So, bear with me as I blabber about...

Voievod (a.k.a. it's Vlad Dracula time)

Why am I writing Voievod?

Voievod is essentially my attempt to rehabilitate a historical figure who has become a prototypical villain through a series of betrayals and deliberate propaganda against him, which has tarnished his reputation so significantly that the world thinks very poorly of him even hundreds of years after his death. When someone mentions Vlad the Impaler, the immediate image that comes to mind is “a bloodthirsty tyrant with psychopathic tendencies who killed hundreds of thousands of people in his lifetime out of sheer bloodlust”... and that is a very inaccurate portrayal of his character that stems from intentionally crafted slander that was created during his lifetime, for clear political purposes. While Vlad is far from being an innocent angel, I strive to portray him with the full complexity that his persona embodies. My goal is to give voice to this legendary figure who was, at his core, a man — a man who experienced love, sorrow, victories, losses, and betrayals; a ruler who lived in a cruel world and had to be cruel himself in order to survive.

Also, this historical fiction is by no means a way of a random girlie trying to glorify a despicable person but is instead a thoroughly researched work based on available facts (and a work that keeps being researched still). I am not trying to turn a bloodthirsty tyrant into a hero through silly antics because the current works I am writing for Voievod are the result of almost ten years of research. My initial interest in Vlad began in 2015, and at first, I was also exposed to the portrayal of him as an “evil psychopath” — then I started digging deeper, educating myself, and exposing myself to anything and everything I could that has been written about him so far. Once you start reading works from historians who have dedicated their lives to studying history and have the expertise to analyse historical sources and distinguish between truths and falsehoods, they explain that Vlad was a victim of cruel injustice.

I believe there has been a significant change in the perception of him in the last decade alone. When I first became interested in his story, his English Wikipedia page primarily focused on the “psychopath” stereotype. However, if you visit the page today, you will find a much more detailed biography of the man (although some facts may be missing or not entirely accurate, given that he is a complex subject to summarize in a single Wiki page). In popular culture, there has been a rise in generally positive and complex portrayals of him, and many works attempt to add depth to his character. Even in the second season of the Turkish series Rise of Empires: Ottoman, Vlad is portrayed in a positive and nuanced manner — while he is clearly the enemy of the Ottoman Sultan, his history, character, and motives are explained in a complex way that honours his personality.

All the historical figures who are seen as fierce warriors worthy of admiration were also cruel. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Stephen the Great, Mehmed the Conqueror, Napoleon — all of these men are regarded as great warriors and heroes, but they also committed great acts of cruelty during their lives. So I hope people will give Vlad a chance and learn more about his extraordinary life. Or at least be interested in reading something darker about a badass man.

Vlad Drăculea — who, when, where, why.

To sum up his extensive biography in a “brief” introduction, Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, was a 15th-century ruler of Wallachia, a region in present-day Romania. Born in 1431, he ruled intermittently from 1448 until his death in 1476 or 1477. Vlad earned his nickname “the Impaler” due to impaling his enemies on stakes, and the first mention of this nickname comes from the Turks who called him Kazıklı Voyvoda (Voivode Impaler). He is often associated with the fictional character Dracula, created by Bram Stoker, although the connection is more based on inspiration than historical accuracy. Vlad III is remembered for his fierce resistance against the Ottoman Empire and his brutal methods of maintaining order within his realm. His reign was marked by both acts of cruelty and efforts to defend his kingdom against foreign invaders.

To understand Vlad within the right context, it is important to understand that his actions were not motivated by any wicked “bloodlust” but by his circumstances. From the very beginning, he was a product of his times and a person thrust into a life of intrigue and cruelty. After the death of Mircea cel Bătrân (his grandfather) in 1418, a bitter war of succession started among his numerous sons (including Vlad Dracul, Vlad’s father), which was further complicated by claims made by distant members of the family. This threw the principality into disarray and bloodshed. The average time a voivode spent on the throne during this period was only six to twelve months, and their rule was often marked by power struggles, usurpations, and conflicts with neighbouring powers. At the same time, what had once been a strong and independent principality became a vassal state to two dominant powers of the time — the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

Vlad’s main objectives as a ruler were to weaken the power of noblemen in his country (who, in order to keep power in their hands, tried to support the weaknesses of the voivodes to use them as puppets), implement reforms to bring order and progress, strengthen Wallachia’s position and self-sufficiency, and ultimately extricate his land from the intense dependency of being a vassal state to two powers. In a country where your life is constantly in danger and many people seek to manipulate and control you, it is not surprising that Vlad ruled with an iron fist. The late Middle Ages were already violent and brutal, and the volatile and turbulent region of the Balkans only added to the challenges. Survival depended on strength, and rulers had to be ruthless in order to endure.

As for the spread of the Impaler propaganda, there is one man to blame — Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary. The monarch arrested Vlad and began to propaganda and lies about Vlad Dracula primarily due to political motivations. Vlad III was a neighbouring ruler who posed a threat to Corvinus’ ambitions for expansion and consolidation of power in the region. At the same time, he used Vlad’s willingness to fight the Ottomans in 1462 to get money for a new crusade from the Pope… and then used the money to buy back the Holy Crown of Hungary which had been in the possession of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor for almost two decades. The Emperor was to return the Holy Crown of Hungary for 80,000 golden florins, which is around $ 11,200,000 to $ 80,000,000 in today’s worth. Corvinus’ actions started to seem suspicious to the Christian world, and the king needed a scapegoat to avoid a scandal. Vlad, a man who always remained loyal to his allegiances and promises, was used by the Hungarian king and disposed of when he was standing in the way.

The Wallachian voivode had just defeated the Ottomans all on his own, without the promised help, when he was imprisoned by Corvinus for allegedly siding with the Ottomans. According to the letters Corvinus provided as proof of the ruler’s imprisonment, Vlad offered to join his forces with the sultan’s army against Hungary if the sultan restored him to his throne. Most historians agree that the documents were forged to give grounds for Vlad’s imprisonment, and even Corvinus’ court historian, Antonio Bonfini, admitted that the reason for Vlad’s imprisonment was never clarified. In fact, the lack of proof meant that Vlad was eventually put on house arrest and allowed to marry into the king’s family twice, which is a suspiciously luxurious punishment for a man who allegedly committed high treason. By vilifying Vlad through propaganda and painting him as a cruel and monstrous figure served Corvinus’ political agenda by justifying his actions against Vlad and solidifying his own authority.

Last but not least, it is also important to take into consideration what Romanians have to say on this topic since Vlad is their national hero, and this beautiful post by @/vladvodashitposts perfectly sums it up — highly recommend reading it!

Important characters in Voievod.

Vlad Drăculea: The protagonist of the story, a fierce and determined enigmatic voivode whose life turns into a battle in the treacherous political landscape of 15th-century Wallachia. A man whose destiny is largely determined by unconditional love for his family, a sense of loyalty and justice, and a desire for freedom. Haunted by his past and driven by a desire to protect his homeland from losing its liberty, Vlad must confront his inner demons while battling external threats. As he struggles to maintain order amidst chaos, Vlad’s quest for power and redemption leaves a lasting mark on history.

Vlad Dracul: Vlad’s father, a savvy and just voivode and a skilled diplomat known as “the Dragon”. Having travelled extensively in his life and served on various European courts, Vlad has ambitious plans that he believes will help maintain order and balance in his war-torn homeland. For a while, it seems he might be successful — but pleasing one powerful side only enrages another. When his two sons Vlad and Radu are taken hostages by the Ottoman Sultan to ensure the ruler’s loyalty and obedience, Vlad gets into a precarious — and agonising — position.

Mircea Drăculea: The eldest of the Drăculești siblings, Mircea is raised by his father to become the future Voivode of Wallachia. A good-natured and observant boy, Mircea is considered to be the bright future of the country. When his younger brothers are taken hostages, and his father is held a prisoner, any remnants of innocence are abruptly taken from him and, at thirteen, he briefly becomes the ruler of Wallachia. The tumultuous days swiftly turn the innocent boy into a competent voivode and a formidable warrior — and he would certainly become a hero of the nation if he were not viciously murdered by his family’s enemies.

Alexandra Drăculescu: As the only daughter of Vlad Dracul, Alexandra is destined to live in the shadows of her brothers. However, she always strives to step away from them. Being forced into marriage to survive after the massacre inflicted upon her family does not stop the sharp-minded and intelligent Dragon’s daughter to try to live her life despite the societal pressures. Throughout her life, she becomes indispensable to her brothers, each of whom sits on the Wallachian throne at some point.

Radu Drăculea: The youngest of the Drăculești siblings and a man who becomes known as “the Beautiful” proves to be one of Vlad’s most dangerous rivals — no one loves or hates him with more intensity than his younger brother. Radu’s journey is one of conflicting loyalties, torn between his allegiance to his family and his desire for a different path. As he navigates the intrigues and anguishes of the Ottoman Empire, Radu must grapple with his own identity and ambitions, ultimately facing the stark realities of power, betrayal, and the legacy of his infamous brother. Known to be a highly ambitious and calculating diplomat, Radu knows how to survive — and how to orchestrate his brother’s demise to earn his own freedom.

Cătălina Costescu: The enchanting mistress of Vlad Drăculea possesses a beauty that rivals the dawn’s first light and a cunning wit sharper than any warrior’s blade. Her grace and charm veil a shrewd mind, guiding her through the treacherous politics of the court as she wields her influence with finesse — but her grit and rational approach stem from having suffered great hardship in her past. Even in moments of despair, Cătălina always finds a way to survive and to protect her children, no matter the cost.

Mircea, Mihnea and Vlad Drăculești: The three sons of Vlad Drăculea, the last of whom has a different mother, are all unique yet similar in their own ways. As they navigate the world of cruelty, each of them seeks to forge his own path.

Mehmed II: A formidable and ambitious ruler, Mehmed ascends to power in the Ottoman Empire with a burning desire to expand his realm. Motivated by a vision of uniting the newly conquered lands under his rule and creating a magnificent empire unlike any the world has seen, he orchestrates strategic military campaigns that demonstrate both brilliance and ruthlessness. Over time, Mehmed transforms from a young ruler with audacious dreams into a legendary figure who reshapes the course of history with his conquest of Constantinople and the unification of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ștefan III: Hailed as the “Athlete of Christ”, Vlad’s cousin Ștefan proves to be a cunning ruler and a marvellous military strategist. The young Moldavian voivode becomes famous for his restless nature, ambitious visions, and zeal that drives him forward to defend his land against the relentless onslaughts. As he battles adversaries both on and off the battlefield, Ștefan’s determination and devotion to his people shape him into a legendary figure of courage and resilience. However, he realises that the price for power sometimes costs a man his humanity — especially when he must betray his cherished cousin.

János Hunyadi: Fueled by ambition and a fervent desire to defend Christendom, Hunyadi navigates the treacherous politics of medieval Europe in search of finding the right opportunities to lead his troops into battles against the Ottoman Empire. With his indomitable spirit, cunning intellect, and unwavering determination, he becomes a symbol of hope and resilience of the Christian world. Despite being involved in Vlad Dracul’s murder, changing circumstances in the world compel him to seek the assistance of young Vlad Drăculea — and a bitter enemy unexpectedly becomes an indispensable advisor.

Matthias Corvinus: The younger son of János Hunyadi becomes the ambitious and cunning King of Hungary — partially through the help of the Wallachian voivode he eventually destroys. With a keen intellect and a thirst for power, Corvinus employs strategic tactics to expand his kingdom, ruthlessly manipulating allies and enemies alike, often resorting to the art of diplomacy and manipulation. His shrewd political manoeuvres and prowess pose a formidable challenge to Vlad Drăculea, testing his resilience in the face of the young king’s relentless ambition.

Themes Voievod focuses on.

Violence and cruelty. I mean… when one writes about Vlad Dracula, you cannot avoid the gore of the surrounding events — his life (and the lives of everyone around him) was no picnics and rainbows. My works include explicit descriptions of torture, battlefield scenes, killings, all things you cannot really omit when writing about such a dark period. I also try to delve into the psychological motivations behind the violent actions of the characters mentioned in my works, and the impact on those around them. However, I always provide warnings and use a tagging system to alert readers in advance, so if someone does not feel comfortable with the explicit nature of these scenes, they can skip them and maybe give a try to other works from Voievod that do not contain any explicit violence.

Politics, intrigues, and betrayal. Sometimes, it is necessary for me to temporarily leave Wallachia and explore the politics and issues of other countries. For the work on Voievod, I have had to do my research on four different countries from that time. Vlad’s interactions with other rulers and his dealings with the Ottoman Empire and other European powers provide quite a nicely fertile ground for exploring themes of political manoeuvring, alliances, and betrayals. Throughout his life, the man experiences numerous betrayals — some that are easier to handle, others that impact him on a visceral level. For a writer who loves exploring the psychology of her characters, this offers a nice opportunity to truly explore just how many different shades a betrayal can have; it can range from personal vendettas and malice up to the heart-wrenching betrayals that are necessary for the greater good.

Power and ambition. Vlad Dracula’s rise to power and his determination to defend his realm against invaders is a prominent theme, but these themes are not necessarily unique to him alone. They also belong to all of Vlad’s contemporaries who seize power at some point in their lives and have their own methods of maintaining and executing it. Vlad’s ambitions and objectives differ significantly from those of Mehmed the Conqueror or Matthias Corvinus, but each of these figures is highly fascinating in their own right.

Identity and legacy. These are prominent themes in the context of Voievod because they apply to both the characters as individual human beings and as public figures. They demonstrate the internal conflicts that arise when these identities clash, as well as the sacrifices that may need to be made at the expense of someone’s values. I also explore how individuals associate themselves with their surroundings and personal values, and how the expectations placed upon them might redefine or distort these values. Additionally, I try to highlight the complexity and contradiction that hide within a person, such as the ability to love fiercely while also being capable of mercilessly taking a life, or the contrast between a joyful and boastful exterior and hidden anguish. Lastly, the themes delve into the idea of what individuals wish to leave behind in the world, and how external factors beyond their control can heavily distort the legacy they desire to leave behind.

Family relations. Voievod manages to map the lives of three generations — that of Vlad’s parents, of Vlad and his contemporaries, and eventually of Vlad’s children. The works heavily focus on the diversity of family dynamics within a single family. It portrays parents who love their children wholeheartedly and yet have to watch themselves fail them, siblings who love each other just as fiercely as they hate each other, and lovers whose lives must continue even when they are forbidden from seeing each other. It highlights how a family can provide immense strength and weaken one at the same time. This is one of my favourite topics to write about because, within the Drăculești family, the emotions that its members have for each other are incredibly rich, conflicting, and painful, and truly showcase the depth and complexity of human emotions.

Psychology of characters. Those who are already familiar with my style of writing know that I love nothing more than looking inside my characters’ brains and dissecting their thoughts one by one sksksk and Voievod provides me with plenty of opportunities to do just that! Delving into the characters’ psyche, motivations, and inner conflicts adds layers of complexity to the personalities and deepens the narrative, as well as explores themes of trauma, vengeance, and the human capacity for both good and evil. The interaction between characters from diverse cultures and environments adds to the enjoyment of the story. It is fascinating to see how they can sympathize with each other despite their differences, or how these differences create barriers that prevent them from understanding each other’s perspectives.

Things Voievod wants to avoid.

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to some portrayals of Vlad Dracula is the blatant Islamophobia that some authors insert into their stories which I want to avoid as much as I possibly can, also by doing my research and staying true to facts. Yes yes yes, I know some people will come at me and say that Vlad was a religious man and the “defender of Faith” and called the Ottomans “infidels” — but strong religious semantics were standard for that time and often did not tell us anything about what the person truly thought about these matters (and Mehmed also called himself the “defender of Faith” and called the Christians “infidels”, so it was a mutual thing). Some people use religion and Islamophobia in these depictions to defend their own beliefs, and while it is true that Vlad went to war against the Ottomans, he had far more conflicts with his brothers in Christ — which is why I believe it is important to avoid being hateful towards some of the characters on the basis of different religions and cultures and focus more on the fact that these were conflicts largely based on politics and geographical expansion.

Here is how a writer can avoid slipping into Islamophobia (because, yes, by approaching the story with empathy, accuracy, and a commitment to portraying diverse perspectives, you can create a compelling narrative about Vlad Dracula that avoids perpetuating Islamophobia):

Historical accuracy: One should adhere to the facts about Vlad Dracula’s life and reign without great embellishments or distortions of historical events to fit a narrative that vilifies Islam or Muslims. Also, when you study about one side to understand them better (written accounts, societal beliefs, religion, etc.), it is also important to learn as much as one can about and from the other side. If you want Vlad Dracula to be treated with respect and without all the blatant slander and propaganda thrown at him, you should approach everything and everyone the same way. The works should also educate, so it is crucial to provide context for the historical events depicted in the story, including the complex political and religious dynamics of the time period, to help readers understand the motivations behind the characters’ actions without demonizing any particular group.

Avoid stereotypes: It is super important to ensure that any Muslim characters in the story are portrayed as diverse individuals with their own motivations, beliefs, and personalities, rather than as one-dimensional villains or caricatures (which is what some works tend to slip into and which feels very wrong). What individuals do does not stem from their religion, but rather from their own personality. Even among the Christian characters, there are some despicable people, as evidenced by certain powerful noblemen from Wallachia or one scheming king from Hungary.

Highlight complexities: All of the characters’ motivations and actions should be explored in a nuanced way and with minimal to zero personal bias. These historical figures were multifaceted human beings, just like us, and cannot be reduced to simple labels of “good” or “evil”. The world is complicated now, and imagine how complicated it must have been during the bloodshed of the 15th century.

Include diverse perspectives: What I enjoy working on is incorporating viewpoints from different characters, including Muslims, to present a balanced portrayal of the historical context and its impact on diverse communities. Through extensive learning about the Ottoman Empire, I have gained valuable insight into a religion that is foreign to the predominant one in my country, which has made me more open-minded and knowledgeable about the world’s differences. Additionally, to create a multi-dimensional character, it is beneficial to include the perspectives of those around them, even if they are impartial or hold negative opinions.

Condemn prejudice: It is one of the golden rules of any storytelling that if the story addresses themes of discrimination or prejudice, the author should make it clear that such attitudes are harmful and unjust, regardless of the historical setting.

Additionally, it is important to remember that Vlad spent approximately seven years living with the Ottomans during his formative years. This exposure to different cultures and religions undoubtedly influenced his perception of the world, and while we will never truly know Vlad’s exact thoughts, I strive to shape his character in a way that highlights how the diversity of cultures he was exposed to became a natural part of his life and customs. Here we circle back to the complexity of one’s portrayal — just because he hated being the hostage and was rebelling against his surroundings does not automatically mean he despised and refused everything and everyone new around him. He was an intelligent man, so it is natural to portray him as a curious boy who decides for himself that he enjoys certain things, and these things in turn only make sense to incorporate into his life.

A few mini HCs to show his “Ottoman influence”:

I have elaborated here on my thoughts about how the Muslim culture of the time influences his sexuality and his treatment of women.

We know that he spoke fluent Turkish and Arabic and continued to converse in these languages without any issues long after leaving the Ottoman Empire… which implies that he must have deliberately practised, as one’s vocabulary decreases over time with infrequent use of a language.

He will always appreciate the Ottomans’ advanced sanitation infrastructure and medical knowledge.

Just as Mehmed the Conqueror is interested in theoretical studies of Christianity, Vlad voluntarily studies a bit of theory behind Islam (I want to highlight voluntarily because the Ottomans very rarely forced Christians into becoming Muslims, so Vlad would do so of his own volition). At the same time, Vlad is a pretty strong believer in kismet in certain matters, as opposed to the Christian definition of destiny. His free-spirited nature gravitates more towards the dynamic interplay between divine sovereignty and human agency where individuals are called to make choices and play an active role in shaping their destinies (while also trusting in God’s overarching plan), but the fatalism of kismet, where events are seen as immutable and predetermined by divine will, appeal to him as he believes his mission in life — to push his beloved homeland towards prosperity — is written in his bones and ensconced around his neck.

When he is gifted his beloved Turkoman horse by the Ottoman Sultan (truly the love of his life), he is given the nazar boncuğu talisman to protect him and his new horse from evil spirits. Though it does not protect him from the evils of the world, he keeps it in his possession his whole life.

He knows several poems of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī by heart.

WARFARE STUFF. He was trained in military tactics and fighting there, so he has grown accustomed to the Ottoman weapons (generally lighter) and fighting style (based on agility, mobility, and adaptability). In adulthood, he prefers using kılıç (one-handed, single-edged and curved scimitar) to the standard hand-and-a-half European sword — and even Corpus Draculianum admit that it was pretty possible he used an Oriental-style weapon! Also, he still keeps a hançer (the Oriental curved dagger) he was gifted there.

In the Ottoman Empire, there existed a practice of requiring noblemen, particularly those in the administrative and military elite, to learn a craft or trade. Vlad likes the idea of learning a skill on his own and picks forging (some historical sources claim that he even learnt tailoring during his imprisonment in Hungary, so the man was full of talents!). Learning a craft had several purposes, but among them:

By learning a craft, Ottoman noblemen could develop practical skills that could be useful both within and outside the context of their official duties. This versatility allowed them to even possibly contribute to various aspects of the empire’s economy and administration, making them less reliant on external sources for certain goods or services.

The Ottoman Empire was a diverse and multi-ethnic state, encompassing various cultures, languages, and religious communities, and requiring noblemen to learn a craft helped integrate them into Ottoman society by fostering connections with artisans, merchants, and other segments of the population. This integration contributed to social cohesion and stability within the empire.

In general, I also aim to avoid being influenced by personal opinions and unintentionally portraying a character as solely good or bad. If a character has done something terrible, I make sure to mention it. Likewise, if they have done something extraordinary, I also make sure to mention it. (This only applies to the character of Matthias Corvinus whom I genuinely despise, so you can imagine the anguish and torment of my heart… But commitments are commitments.) The only explicitly bad characters are some of the side characters who play no great role in the story other than being Vlad’s enemies or the characters that are explicitly mentioned in historical accounts as being the bad guys within the specific context.

Another thing I vow to avoid like the plague is the distorted portrayal of Radu, Vlad’s brother. Because of Radu’s sexuality and affair with Mehmed, he is often portrayed as a deeply feminine, submissive, weak, and overly emotional tender flower who is the exact opposite of his elder badass brother and who only achieves things thanks to Mehmed — and that is very wrong and frankly reeks of blatant homophobia. He is also often portrayed as incredibly incompetent, which is also far from true. Another extreme is that a very traumatic event of Radu’s life (it is a historical fact that Mehmed tried to rape Radu) is glorified by some people and turned into a dark forbidden romance, which disregards the horrific situation of a human being that most likely influenced the rest of his life. We do not know as much about Radu as we know about Vlad, but we can take the facts we have available when portraying him, and that is what I am trying to do.

Radu is in fact one of the dearest characters to me because of how complicated and full of contradictions he is, maybe even more than Vlad. He grows up adoring and idolizing his elder brother and has a hard time accepting their differences as time goes on, when their different approaches to life with the Ottomans create a rift between them. He may not possess the same level of brilliance as his elder brothers in terms of warfare, but he is undoubtedly a highly perceptive tactician and an incredibly skilled diplomat. What sets Radu apart from Vlad is his remarkable charm, which he can utilise and adapt as needed — he has a unique ability to disarm people with his words, often without them even realizing it. Where Vlad refuses to lie and prefers the type of honesty that cuts to the bone, Radu is more adjustable as it buys him time to navigate obstacles without engaging in direct confrontation. His stay with the Ottomans is also very complicated because, on the one hand, he desires to build a life for himself there, but on the other hand, he tries to find his way out when the right opportunity presents itself. He has the bravery and determination of his siblings, he just has his own means of surviving and reaching his goals. In theory, these differences would be perfect if they ever managed to become co-rulers as one would excel in qualities the other did not have, creating a perfect balance — in practice, it leads them to fight against each other.

But Radu also shares many similar traits with Vlad, especially when emotionally pushed into a corner, and the more he tries to suppress these similarities, the more they shine forth. In a way, he will always be the polar opposite of Vlad, as well as his mirror. He will never stop loving his brother with all his heart but will always hate him ferociously, and he will never stop wanting to protect him from everything while yearning to be the one to deliver Vlad’s blow of death. On several occasions, he tries to help Vlad, just to want to make him suffer. Their relationship is bittersweet and conflicting, yet beautiful because it exemplifies the complexity of sibling relationships, especially when disagreements and betrayals arise and grievances cannot be addressed.

And that would be all from me today! Sksksk I hope I will not be condemned by the community and Vlad gets his chance among others. Now let me hide in a dark cave for a while. 🙈❤️️

#ask reply #( work: voievod )#additional asks are always welcome y'all!

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dfroza · 2 years ago

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what makes art worth something?

what gives it value?

does a dollar amount determine its worth, its significance? or does it go deeper than money?

is money the most important thing in the world? is its power above all others? people work for it, they inherit it, but also do quite terrible things because of it. it is a driving force that forces people to do things that may harm others, or even take their life from earth.

and wars are financed by governments and taxes. just as currency is created based on debt, future taxation. and this debt, such as the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency, is sold and held all over the world. but there has been a shift developing by nations who want more of their own monetary control. and people like control, especially over a nation’s wealth. certainly, a war over earth’s land and resources has been ongoing for thousands of years by nations and kingdoms and dynasties and empires. all the while cultures have formed, different languages and races and ethnicities and nationalities ever since the great Flood receded and earth was repopulated, branching out just as the animal kingdom has. our Creator planted the “seeds” of life upon earth as the instrumental womb of the universe, and people began very simplistic in nature, before technology overtook the world and its industrial and war revolutions. and yet, even God stood behind some ancient wars through the Hebrews, a “chosen” people to unveil God’s truth to the world. but the Israelites weren’t always faithful, and were punished for it. idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, is very popular in this world. we may respect others for their personal choices, including their religion, but absent the revealed truth (the True illumination) of the Son, there can be no real connection with God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Author of the universe and our heavenly Father who is known to us in Spirit.

beauty and wealth originate in God who makes all things good. this is a picture of Heaven. poverty is a curse. this world bears an evil curse that only grace can heal. people trying to usurp control over others to manipulate has been happening for a very long time. not that we shouldn’t have respect for authority, because such is God-ordained. mostly, we have respect and fear of God, and this above man. authority on earth should be righteous and God-fearing, God-honoring. but sadly, this isn’t always the case. obviously. we’re meant to submit to governmental authorities by doing right. but sometimes even those who do right are unjustly punished for it. injustice in this world has nearly reached its peak, and it will all be cleansed at some point. this whole world in the way we know it will come to an end. righteousness and purity will be restored, and real peace. the sacredness of life will return. respect and honor. humility and the fear of God.

this is the hope of “healing” when our heavenly King returns.

and we are caught in the meantime, an in-between time of sharing the True story of grace with the world.

and even though we live and work in the midst of a governmentally controlled “centralized” and manipulated monetary system that is dishonest, yet value is still placed on so many things. some are tangible assets, or work done. and although money as we know it is nothing more than paper currency with no real backing of value, but is rather a mountain of debt, merely a government controlled force of power. centralized digits, with paper and coin now becoming “digitized” in a computerized world. but we still have to deal with it the best we can. to live our lives with honesty and respect. with personal integrity. even if the government is corrupt.

the Unites States has been a powerful economic force on earth for quite some time, yet some people live in places where currency is worth little, or has gone worthless. and gold holds its own through it as a tangible asset, a honest store of wealth. but with governmental control of the currency supply we’ve witnessed many monetary failures in History. booms and busts. so many lives affected. hyperinflation that destroys normal life. all because of a corrupt system that can become enslavement to a whole nation.

we all know that it’s important that people have what they need to live life. and that poverty is not wanted by anyone. people want to be free to dream and become something in this temporal life. we see how people pursue many different desires. we’re not all made to do the same thing. children should grow up in a safe and loving environment, in family. but so many families are broken these days. and children become broken in heart and misbehave, losing parental respect and for others in authority which may lead to a life of hate and anger, crime, or involvement in drugs. the illegal drug world is an insane and fearful place to be, just as human trafficking, and people are doing things to fight against it. but with the power of money controlling so much of it, and the power of addiction, it isn’t an easy task. and people involved in such crime use the fear of death to manipulate others to get their way. such evil at work. bullying fear in this world has marred life, beginning in the early years of childhood.

we need to learn. but people learn in so many different ways, in different environments. education should be based on truth with those who teach bearing integrity, and integrity in discipline (the same from parents), but this is a world of much deceit. lies can become the norm. what is accepted. we do live in a corrupt world and the ‘father of lies’ indeed exists, but we can still be open to search for truth and know that we don’t actually belong to this world, that our True identity as children of Light is in a heavenly and pure world made by God.

we need True nature, to know who we really are. with so many fake things in this world, especially now in a world of digital manipulation, the world has become marred by the counterfeit. life has been “cheapened” in so many ways. nothing seems sacred, although the sacred will always exist.

we need to be open to see the wonder and beauty of life. this is why some seem to “connect” with nature. people see the work of our Creator in it, even when they don’t yet realize it.

just take a look into a clear night sky sometime.

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askmemenoquestions · 3 years ago

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Luca (Pixar) Sentence Starters

"What if the old stories are true?"

"He's either dead, or he's... out there somewhere, seeing the world. But he's probably dead."

"When I was a kid, we'd go weeks without seeing a boat."

"We do not talk, think, discuss, contemplate, or go anywhere near the surface. Got it?"

"Wow. That was hard to watch."

"Now, walking is just like swimming. But without fins. Or a tail. And also there's no water. Otherwise, it's like the exact some thing."

"I don't know how to not think about something!"

"As you can see, I've been collecting for a long time, so ask me anything."

"Woah! You unbroke it!"

"You just sit on it, and it takes you anywhere you wanna go in the whole stinkin' world!"

"His life is maybe a little more important than your snacks."

"Thank you, but no thank you. I mean, I just think maybe I would die."

"I never go anywhere, I just dream about it."

"Sure there's no sunlight, but there's nothing to see anyway, or do. It's just you and your thoughts."

"I know you. And I know what's best for you."

"I love your stylish clothes. Where did you get them, a dead body?"

"I didn't quit, they made me stop!"

"You know, we underdogs have to look out for each other, right?"

"Every summer that jerk makes my life miserable, so no one's taking him down, unless it's me!"

"My family was going to send me somewhere horrible, away from everything I love."

"You guys want this just as bad as I do, you have the Hunger. That's the most important thing."

"What do you think he kills with those?"

"You want to work? I'll put you to work."

"Wow, we look horrifying."

"They don't love you, they're afraid of you!"

"I eat kids like you for breakfast."

"Ugh, rules are for... rule people."

"Well, at least you won. I think..."

"And every summer I come here, and everyone thinks I'm just some weird kid who doesn't belong."

"Sorry, too much? My mom says sometimes I'm too much."

"We don't need school. We don't need anybody."

"Why did you make him mad? We should've left!"

"Nothing's fine! My parents just saw me!"

"Look, this town is making you crazy."

"Do you think I want you to leave? This is the happiest I've--."

"I'm sorry. I never should've done that. I wish I could take it back."

"Yeah, whatever, you're sorry. Now just go away!"

"What are those marks on the wall? Tell me what they mean."

"You were living here alone for that many days?"

"I guess even your terrible friends don't want to be friends."

"So long, evil empire of injustice."

"Some people, they'll never accept him. But some will."

"We gotta fix this thing up before we take it across the entire world."

"Just remember, we are always here for you. Okay?"

"But how am I going to know you're okay?"

#sentence starters #starter sentences #rp memes #ask memes #rp ask memes #rp starters #luca starters

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rametarin · 11 months ago

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I'd like to comment here that this is sort of where the conversation of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade exists.

As an American, slavery has always been the step 1 conversational piece to explain the social disparity of everything and why there are race based lines in society. It's not the whole story by a long shot, but it's the very good PR one that is used to paint a very black and white picture. With the horrible no good whites that ran around destroying everything in the name of whiteness, and everybody else painted as if they never had any sort of bigoted bone in their collective bodies until the whites corrupted them with bigotry.

And like most social problems, it stems from progressive socialists co-opting the conversation to push their ideas of class struggle theory. In lieu of most Americans caring that wealthy people have things, they instead decided to set the differences to race and say whites were occupying the position that hereditary nobles and privileged classes had. Which when you're a xenophobic tribalist and a minority, sounds really good, and you'll cling to any romantic idea if it means you're morally right and can get something out of it.

So they teach about the USA's part in the slave trade, conveniently leaving out that the vast majority of people found the practice of "indentured servitude," be it on the basis of race or not, as abominable, and were just too small potatoes to be able to stop it, or knew that in an era without industrial machines for labor, keeping up with their imperialist supremacist neighbors might mean one day millions of those imperialists (Russia) might just come barreling through the door to slaughter them and steal their homes in the name of their own horrible, enslaving, immoral empire.

They omit exactly what % of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade went to South America and while speaking on it, make it sound like North American whites were the only people enslaving other human beings. When the reality is, roughly 500,000 black Africans in total since the start of the slave trade to America, were moved by ship- the rest were born here from that population. That's not even 1,000,000 people in a time when Ghengis Khan killed more in a single battle.

They deliberately conflate that the wealthy or well-to-do were the ones with the big plantations, specifically in very regional places down south, and that most whites did not own slaves of any kind, period, and will gladly say it was a "white" cultural practice. That even if you, as a descendant of European whites, never owned slaves, never came from a slave owning family, it doesn't matter, you're guilty because, "your society" owned slaves, and you're white, so you're a recipient of that legacy.

Which is something that is used to cultivate an acceptable tribalism and bigotry among young black Americans, today. They're encouraged either in public schools or gladly turned a blind eye to when they form what amount to race pride groups and tribalist identitarian groups that see whites as outsiders, malign and dangerous. They're encouraged to see everything on the basis of, "the whites are evil and American society is inherently white supremacist, because we're oppressed and not in charge."

They maintain this position as educator to make these logical and conversational and conceptual leaps to talking about slavery into talking about how North American society can never be good or scrubbed clean of slavery, "because it's inherently and inescapably a white supremacy." Not because of anything on the books, but because "it needs to be destroyed to be better."

So somehow we arrive at a time and place in American history where the injustices are conceptual and abstract in nature, not material, and they only use the objective ones to count the number of inexcusable sins against black people, but no matter what they do in retaliation, individually or collectively, it can never ever start to equate or take back what was taken. It doesn't matter how many were victims of hate crimes or outward racism, because they moved away from actual incidences of racism to thinking NOT being given free money and a home is white supremacism, and therefore, something denied to them by the evil whites, and a mark against the society that is to be paid in blood.

There can't ever be any "healing," because the wounds they inflict are to themselves in the name of seeing whites as an overarching, intangible concept like sin, or invisible bonds. There can't ever be any form of reparations that stick, because the only sum they'll settle for and not come back after a generation for more, would involve the destruction of whites and the US of A. And it doesn't matter how many initiatives society employs to try and do something for the descendants; They still say, 'What is a drop of a pebble into a well?" And come back yelling in another generation about how the whites have never tried to make amends or do any sort of reparations or anything to reimburse black people. Right into the ears of the children, who will at the time be struggling to even understand there's a psychodrama going on and some of the acting is staged and crocodile teared.

And it always boils down to trying to have "that conversation," every generation. The demand for a black nation inside of America, the demand for the US to fund it as a secessionist, separatist society that does not pay taxes, the demand for recognition of national sovereignty on US land, and absolutely obscene amounts of reparations. Everything else is either stage props or trying to get the people whose skin tones and ancestors were wronged to participate in it.

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flying-elliska · 3 years ago

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Just binge read the Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon and !!!!!! amazing. Now I want to yell about it for a bit, bear with me (essay incoming sorry)

- the concept already, urban fantasy dystopia, just feels both so fresh and so obvious it's surprising it's not more of a Thing, and the world building is next level. the modern technology + Victorian aesthetics is not just cool (although it is) it evokes the fact that Victorian England was a brutal, very unequal and fucked up society, so it really fits a dystopia. Plus Scion is also an evil empire that invades other countries, which is also thematically relevant, as is the fact that the MC is Irish.

- I'm obsessed with the concept of a magical mob and Underworld (unsurprisingly) and people who are pushed to the margins of society because their very existence has been outlawed and bond together to find freedom but are also forced to exist in a state of constant brutality and the damage it all does

- the first book throws a lot of plot and world building at you in ways that can be a bit overwhelming and confusing, and doesn't give you a lot of time to connect emotionally to the characters, so that took me a while, but it's really worth pushing through for, i love them all now.

- I love the main character, Paige, so much. she's a survivor ; clever, witty, action oriented and very down to earth ; she's also very competent in ways that feel earned, and interestingly flawed, not some gratuitous emotionless Strong Female Character with plot armor or a 'not like other girls' complex. She's proud and she has a mean, ruthless streak. She's brave, too loyal for her own good, and impulsive to the point of recklessness, and sometimes her gambles pay off and sometimes she has to pay a very heavy price for them (it made me yell at the page several times). It's really cool to see a female MC that is so invested in the politics of her world. I hate that so many female mains in fantasy or dystopia are these isolated loners who hate politics, only really care about a handful of people and want to retire to their husband/2.5 kids happy ending as fast as possible, with a plot-line that focuses over personal development rather than political goals, because it sends this weird message that women are not meant to be in the public space. (Not making this into a rant about the Shadow and Bone books but lol I could)

Paige has to shoulder massive burdens that nobody in their right mind should want and that's understandable, but you do get the sense that she enjoys being a criminal, running free and scheming and climbing over roofs and outwitting her enemies and sticking it to the government. She doubts herself sometimes, worries about people only valuing her for her powers, but she doesn't have a lot of time to waste on self-consciousness, angsting or moping about her feelings. It's very empowering to read. And she's fiercely compassionate in moments where it's actually very dangerous for her to be. She has this constant struggle between the part of her that finds injustice intolerable and the part of her that is grimly pragmatic. This is exactly what women in fiction have been excluded from for too long, complex dilemmas about action and morality taken seriously, not just love triangle shit. It's great. Although wow does she deserve a break. Ouch. Baby </3

- the world is incredibly fucked up but there seems to be no sexism/homophobia/racism, which is refreshing to read. the main romance is m/f but there's a lot of ambient queerness, just because and not to 'make a point' ; the author has confirmed that the MC is demisexual, her bff is gay, the love interest is pan, there's a badass trans commander/mob boss, you get randomly informed that this henchwoman has a wife or that this mobster is trying to save his boyfriend, it's great (and it's not a word-of-god after the fact thing like jkr it's actually shown on the page, they just don't use any labels)

- the main romance is a slow build that is very low-key at first, enemies to reluctant allies to friends to lovers, but becomes really powerful over time. the fact that the MC is demi means it can't rely on 'omg so hot i can't stop thinking about him!' clichés - nothing wrong with attraction at first sight but it often leads to lazy storytelling and irritating instalove, tell over show romances. the characters are drawn to each other but it's more of a meeting of minds and souls at first, admiration and common goals, and their actions are still first and foremost guided by strategy, not sentiment. (sidenote I've often wondered if i wasn't at least a little demi myself. that would explain why i have such high standards for credible romance lmao.) also there's a significant power imbalance at the start but it gets very much deconstructed before anything can happen and it's an interesting negotiation. Warden could easily have fit in the 'brooding immortal douchebags' category but there's an alienness and gentleness to him that lifts him above that, along with the respect and space he gives to Paige and their shared experience of trauma and hopes for a better world. Her hot-headedness and his calm, deadpan sort-of-humor play off each other really well. Also I love the idea that develops over the series that their connection isn't a distraction from their fight but that it makes them stronger and allows them to resist and find solace from the deluge of constant horror that is their world. their whole dynamic in s4...no words. also the second time i read a scene where one character is bandaging the other's wounds and there's touch aversion involved and like, I LOVE that.

- lots of complex different bad guys. some are just brutes, some are sadistic masterminds with superiority complexes, some are deceptive and manipulative and morally ambiguous. love that the Big Bad Guy is a woman - female characters being fully realized means that sometimes, they're just incredibly evil (as long as it's not tied to their gender, i love that). Paige and Jaxon's relationship is fascinating - he's a terrible, manipulative person but i do feel in his own way, he cares about her and wants to see her thrive ; but that's not necessarily a good thing as he sees it as a justification to make her go through awful things. She knows he's awful but she can't get over the fact that he took her in, taught her, believed in her and gave her a sense of belonging and freedom when nobody else did ; she was super proud of being his mollisher and it makes sense it would take time for her to rebuild her sense of self without that, on her own. I like that the ambiguity isn't resolved (it's also a very good illustration of how emotionally abusive parental dynamics can get their hooks in you). The fact that he's aroace really works there too, could have been a lot creepier otherwise and i feel that's really not the point.

- also it's really cool how each book really feels like its own thing, it never feels repetitive, there are huge twists and a shift of focus each time - the penal colony in Oxford in the first, the London Underworld in the second, traveling through England in the third, Paris in the fourth, etc. The pace is pretty breakneck and i wasn't bored for one moment - actually at times i would have liked more quiet moments w the characters. There are two novellas that focus more on that and the second one is an exploration of trauma and recovery that's particularly hard hitting and beautiful. The first book does feel like a beginner novel, it's a bit clunky in terms of exposition, pacing and character development etc ; and there are moments where all the violence and brutality feel a bit repetitive ; but overall the story builds up so beautifully and in so many complex ways it's just really worth it and it's not for nothing i read the four books and two novellas in five days. just have to wait for the next one now though argh

- anyway more people should read it

#the bone season #samantha shannon #book reviews #paige mahoney #bookblr #the mime order #the song rising #the mask falling #ellie reads things

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