#they literally didn't deserve him

[platoniccereal]

this one is the post that has stayed in draft for the longest time and, tbh, was the thing that got me creating a profile here because i wanted to write about it. there is a relatively lengthy analysis of the iron bull's time on seheron, trauma, him rebuilding himself and the abuse of power under the qun.

it was inspired by many detailed analyses from other people, and especially this analysis of qun's attitude towards anger. because, may god be my witness, every in-depth post about bull's character just makes me grrr bark bark about his superiors. if you get my meaning.

ok, there's a very solid base to what paves the way for power abuse under the qun.

we know relatively little about the qunari society, out of all races they're the only ones we haven't met on their own territory, in their own culture. but even so i get the feeling that quite a big part of their people perceive actions of those in charge as fighting for the greater good and the enlightened society. or, to put it better, this is the correct point of view qunari are advised to have. meanwhile in reality these actions are also political. and this is what lets the abuse happen.

all in all, it's the “they fight for political reasons, while it's the betterment of society for us” dichotomy. that is, of course, a result of despising political life outside the qun – and propaganda within it. i don't believe it's an entirely meanspirited attitude of the high ranks that's intentionally hidden from the public eye. even arishok seems to believe it. you can get this impression through the whole second act in da2, where he continuously expresses contempt for human political squabbles. sten also seems to be puzzled by that part of human cultures in dao. bull openly hates everything that happens in orlais in comparison to what he saw in par vollen.

when it comes to criticism of the qun, it seems to be more about “the qun protects its people from themselves/taught to them as such protection”, which is again more ideological, than “it's politically profitable to make qunari think that the qun is the only way for them, because then they have meat for holding positions on seheron and conquering thedas”. the way they secure this position is in the whole story of qunari on seheron.

and as in any politics, qunari at the top ranks are able and willing to go over the heads and make sacrifices. just like they did with the iron bull.

it’s so cruel and expected of a system to pose itself as the only answer and attribute it’s screw-ups to its people simultaneously. besides, it’s just heartbreaking to see how it destroys people on a mental level. people there aren't sent the way sten was sent on the continent. service on seheron has no endpoint in one’s role and path. one’s path is to be a baker, one’s path is to be a philosopher, and one’s path is to serve in a hot spot for wear and tear until they die. because someone's made this decision and it’s politics. the very thing the qun is opposed to.

such attitude is even more justified in their society than in the “bas” ones because it's their entire philosophy. it's easier to turn a blind eye on something that cruel when you live in opposition to licentious bas nations that are drowning in their political games. they're taught that whatever happens, happens for the betterment of people. they're basically taught that for no qunari is it possible to wrong another. because the qun is right, the qun cannot wrong you, those who live true to the qun principles aren't interested in their own victories like human politicians are, they're interested in a healthy society, so they cannot wrong you. the qun definitely had its time to polish its system of gatekeep gaslight government to perfection.

but there are so many other ways and reasons why one may abuse their power.

i'm sure qunari see that, tal-vashoth see that. more importantly, the iron bull sees that. he understands that it sometimes more ruthless politics than the philosophical greater good. he's too smart not to notice.

plus, i think that with bull there's a giant problem for him in his own intelligence. ben-hassrath decided to send one of the smartest men in the room to the environment where each and every qunari goes rogue and the qun is daily doubted and tested by its people. this decision created a tragic situation where bull really does see every flaw and knows that he must not see that. and this decision to sent him there still was made even though bull's superiors knew the risks, because the qun needed more people on seheron to control what's crumbles. did anyone responsible care for anything else?

when i'm analysing this, i don't want to make claims against the whole qun society/philosophy here, since it'd shift the responsibility from certain members of it to an abstract Whole. every qunari also was brought up in that propaganda, but the understanding of it doesn't unable superiors in ben-hassrath from being held accountable. and maybe somewhere in some other world they should've been held accountable. i understand that it's in their mindset to use someone in the way the bull's superiors did. they used him like a horse that was driven to the point where its legs were broken, and then they continued to load it further, and then they got rid of it. because it's just how they treat people, but frankly, i don't believe the philosophy relieves the ben-hassrath of responsibility for their actions.

and bull's superiors knew he's not going anywhere. his tama said that he would solve problems others cannot, that he was a wise little boy, “eager to help”. this is in his nature, he's a people person and at his very core he's someone who ultimately wants to help others and make people feel better. but his outgoing all-seeing personality is a perfect tool to crack up people's shells to see what they really need.

at his core, the iron bull is ashkaari, a boy who called tama when he knew someone was in trouble. he is hissrad, a man who held his position on seheron for almost ten years because he was too loyal and because when he thinks something is going to make someone's life better, he fights for it. he doesn't want to hurt people he cares about. this proceeds to be true in the inquisition: he decapitates bad guys so he won't lash out to his loved ones. he likes to slay 'vints because at least he knows who are the bad guys, because he cares too much and hates any casualties.

as in any politics, these traits were used.

his superiors used this perfect tool at their disposal, twisted ashkaari's nature to make him track down and kill people in a hellhole of an island. which is ironic, since the qun's core principle is being true to one's nature/natural function. ashkaari wants to help people, but he became a killing machine; he's afraid of his anger and being possessed because he's afraid hurting his loved ones by his anger, but strangling friends on someone else's orders was exactly what he'd done under the qun. the philosophy is about staying true to one's nature, but it doesn't matter much when there's a call for political and military gain, i guess.

gatt says in his report to their superiors that hissrad was furious all the time: in a battle, at the dinner table. at the same time, he didn't have any agency or right to be furious. the iron bull had to carry conflicting statements within his head: everything is too bad for him, but it shouldn't be, because otherwise he'll go rogue, and he can't quit and not participate in this system that's too bad for him, because that way he'll go rogue, too.

this is just unfair. bull was indeed too stubborn and loyal to break, so there's nothing he could do except for creating an alternative universe in his head, where each of these statements didn't conflict with each other. if bull hadn't have this illusion (keeper of illusions, my ass), he would've had to explain these contradictory facts of reality in other, more conscious, intentional and resource-absorbing ways. so of course it was the way his mind chose to protect itself. on seheron, nobody had too many spoons, and he didn't have spare ones to deal with the fact that the qun ideas didn't meet reality as they were supposed to.

moreover, he neither had a right to give up and quit – nor a way to do so. this mind trap led him into burnout. he knew the only way for him to quit was to just let some enemy win a fight – and the only way for him and for any other qunari to reach out for help and guidance was to turn themselves to re-educators. so, the iron bull, whose main fear is madness. who as a child woke up at nights crying in fear of demons in his head. who hates the very idea of someone in his mind. turned himself to the re-educators. and every person above him knew that since his very childhood he was afraid of hurting people he loves. they used it to that degree to keep him on the leash. they managed to suppress him this bad.

the sad thing is, nothing gets fixed. he's sent there likely to just track down enemies, but he decides to help whoever he can on seheron when he wasn't supposed to, and nothing gets fixed. he spends eight years on seheron, trying to improve people's lives, believing that if he does all the right things, everything will be better, as if he has such responsibility, such power. but this is not true, and while he had no opportunity to give up, bull had to keep trying make things right, and eight years later, it's all still this broken same.

i reckon it's the story of many before and after him. people are sent in this hellhole in cold blood by their superiors who don't expect them to survive for longer than a couple of years, they're left to figure out how to cope with that mostly to themselves, they won't get any help if you don't count the re-education as one. all while it somehow simultaneously contradicts and stresses everything the qun is about.

i know it may be strange to view bull as a victim of his society and state, more often i see people view him as a victim of war. i suppose he even does it himself. he won't admit he's traumatized, in a huge part due to the actions of his superiors. he indeed describes seheron as a shithole, but throughout all his dialogue, i don't get the impression that he believes that seheron continues to influence him up until now as a trauma. it's also one of the fail-safe ways the qun secures itself, and it looks textbook abusive and gaslighting to me. bull may have left seheron or even the qun, but complicated and ambiguous feelings about it chase him up until demands of the qun and maybe later – so nearly ten years.

but there's something so beautiful about his personality. because even after the seheron's hell the iron bull remained himself. he brought everything that was the core of his identity out of this catastrophe and saved it. i can think of numerous dreadful ways he could break and become hardened, how many casualties this could've entailed (at the behest of the qun). but bull saved a man he didn't know at the cost of his own eye, he cares about common people of thedas the way he always cared about everyone all the time, even though it is expected (and approved) that the qunari will be chill about the way bas people devour themselves. all the things that were deeply damaged by seheron and the qun and tevinter, hissrad saved – and turned these shards into the iron bull (and i cannot stress enough how the fact that he gave himself the right to create this identity is important, because he could've remained hissrad and no one would even care- but that's a different topic).

this is where bull's true power and strength lie. re-educators most likely worried about his loyalty, if they worried about anything at all. i doubt they provided him with any real help while he needed it the most, shattered to pieces and lost his faith and will to live. the best ben-hassrath could think of is to shake their broken hissrad off into orlais. just to use what they still could benefit from. so bull had to help himself, alone.

of course bull’s afraid he will go astray without any role. but it wasn’t the qun that kept him sane, was it? it’s his heart, will and backbone of steel, his ultimate desire to make people’s lives better. years later, he still has ashkaari's heart of gold.

after demands of the qun bull must be on his way to understanding that not only the qun wasn't the reason his sanity was intact, but anger also won't be the reason he loses it. i can picture him being afraid of break-downs that eventually get to any person in the world, afraid now more than ever. and i can picture how he learns, surrounded by friends and family, that neither fury nor any strong feelings lead a person to madness. that it's ok and even healthy to have these feelings, as long as you express them the right way. bull knows these right ways, he's been dealing with anger and his own might that may hurt people all his life. he just isn't sure that it would be enough to stop him from going rogue. he'll learn the opposite, eventually. he'll learn that there's no re-educators, for better or for worse, and his people aren't obligated to turn him in to the re-educators, and now they will just offer him support and understanding, and it would be a perfectly normal thing to do. he will learn that his anger is just a feeling and no inner beast to be afraid of.

it always bugged me when he said those lines:

because no, it's not true for many reasons. but it makes sense from his point of view, if you see it as bull’s way to protect himself. it’s rather a self-affirmation. it’s what hissrad was taught so he won’t go astray even in his mind. thus, he himself makes sure he doesn’t do it.

the iron bull ends up as a good person who had to dedicate himself to wrong people that were able to value him only as a useful function – because it's the qun, where his well-intentioned personality was abused and subdued for the sake of a pure political profit, where people in charge made sure that he had no way to break free, and from a very young age he didn't have a chance to escape this faith. it is a tragedy.

in heaven bull jokes that he doesn't need the inquisitor's protection since his blade pretty much protects him. bull carries his own weight, everything bounces off of him.

but i think he needs it. this man needs community and to learn how to lean on them.

he's afraid to go rogue, eventually, but now he has the chargers and the inquisition. it's not seheron anymore. he's out. bull had friends before, but now he doesn't need to look into his people's eyes and guess which one is the tevinter's mole, which one will snap soon. he doesn't need to think that tomorrow he'll need to kill someone who today is his friend. he doesn't need to brace himself for daily deaths of his men. it's all different now, bull is safe and has got unconditional love and support.

and maybe he needs to understand that *sigh* he was abused. he rightfully hates the great game of orlais in opposition to the qun, but he may need to understand that he suffered not only from military actions and tal-vashoth they've created, but also from the political gain. from tevinter and the qun's sides. when he names things that made seheron unbearable, it's the whole range from tal-vashoth to fog warriors, but bull names nothing connected with the qun itself (ofc).

the iron bull also suffered from his government. he says to dorian that they both had to walk away knowing they didn't fit in and disappointed people who cared about them. but as gatt wrote in his letter, ben-hassrath owe bull for what they've done to him.

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[pretty-weird-ideas]

Episode Seven and White Tears

The trial's allegory is not just a lynching, it is a lynching for a Black person entering a relationship with a respected White man, and proceeding to leave him. It's not a murder case, as seen through the show, there's actually very little emphasis on the murder in the episode in regards to Louis. The emphasis is on his "seduction", his "ungiving nature", and "refusing to give his body". It is a public humiliation and lynching for turning a respected white man down. The crime isn't hurting Lestat, it's hurting his feelings.

Lestat doesn't speak to the audience about the pain of his throat being slit. He speaks of loneliness, the audience chants and jeers about how cheating was justified if Louis isn't putting out. Santiago isn't talking about the murder, he's talking about how much of a sexual deviant Louis is the second he is introduced. The show is telling us what's important to the case, and what language hurt and stuck out to Louis the most. The deciding factor in the eyes of the audience, the story that Sam and Santiago are trying to tell, is that the crime is heinous because Louis turned down Lestat.

The audience isn't mad about the murder, they're mad about Lestat's emotions, they're mad about the betrayal, and they are mad that Louis and Claudia didn't put up with things. The case built against the two of them isn't based on violence, it's based on white tears. Louis isn't called a monster for slitting Lestat's throat, the audience member calls him a monster for turning down Lestat's advances.

The show is clear that the trial isn't really about the murder, it is about Louis not "giving enough" for Lestat. It's about Louis asking Lestat to turn Claudia and literally bargaining his happiness where he literally gets on his knees and says "I'll be happy for you, I will never leave you if you do this for me". It's never been about the murder, it's quite literally just shaming Louis for not "loving a good man who might be abusive".

At the end of the day, the trial as framed and written by Sam is building a case off of Lestat's tears, not actual physical harm.

Like my skin is crawling but also the show is so chilling with how it portrayed the "He's a good man so hold your tongue and endure! Lest you read as ungrateful".

Anyways someone take the laptop from me before this becomes my life.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The boy patting tournament has taken a competitive turn

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[reislesbian]

I saw someone on Tiktok saying that Mace Windu ended as a villain and I wonder if that person has braincells.

[maxphilippa]

paper bag

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

kind of hilarious how Armand's favorite method of bonding with people he loves or even just kind of incidentally crosses orbits with is to make them replay his own fucked-up experiences. hi stepdaughter would you like to get objectified and exploited before your inevitable demise. hi husband would you like to lose your memories and lose your loved ones to fire and get trapped in the dark. hi ex-boyfriend would you like to watch your family burn alive. hi pet journalist would you like to have your mind wiped and writhe like a split fish around the damage. hi this is fun this is sooo fun. i could not prevent it. disregard. this worked out great in the sims trust me. armand is an unstable concept that never really existed but with your help we can all be armand i.e. dead fucking wrecks.

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[crewtawn]

"Hah, looks like we were thinking the same thing..."

"Is that traditional saiyan wear? Where did you even get that thing 'geta?"

BONUSES:

[rhymaes]

another genius element of mxtx protagonists is how one of the love interest always toes the line of potential victimhood Just enough to make you concerned while reading & then you see their interactions with the other love interest & it's like! oh! they're both fucking freaks! i get it now

[the--firevenus]

God forbid when aang has emotions and act like his age, like seriously I can't with people. Like I'm sorry, a lot of you assume people that defend aang thought he's perfect that could never do anything wrong, like no bitch I love him DESPITE his flaw, because guess what?? When he act childish, and or do anything wrong in the show, his ACTION HAS CONSEQUENCES. and ya know what else?? DESPITE EVERYTHING HE'S STILL A VERY COMPASSIONATE CHARACTER WITH HEARTS AND LOVE SO BIG FOR THE WORLD THAT DONE NOTHING BUT GAVE HIM SO MUCH PAIN AND SUFFERING.

You people keep nick picking every single thing he had done as if it's the crime against humanity, it's not him who commit genocide and colonialism in the show now isn't!? I'm sick and tired many of y'all act like he's one dimensional as well. HE HAS DEPTH, WE LITERALLY WATCH THE SAME SHOW!?

Come on man, it's almost two decades of this same thing, I'm so tired, leave my boy alone for fuck sake oh my god

[sapphic-agent]

Why does the ATLA subreddit act like they don't tear Katara apart on a daily just for breathing? If Sokka or Aang had said this no one would have bat an eye I hate it here

[iamnmbr3]

harry definitely not heterosexual potter is the funniest thing to me because i literally cannot remember a single time in the book where he thinks “i should probably be nervous about draco trying to kill me because i am literally convinced that he is willingly working with voldemort.” no. he was like “oh draco? yeah he is definitely working for voldemort and he is so evil because did you see the way he is combing his hair now? probably switched shampoo. he would never change conditioner, that thing works wonders. what do you mean, this is common knowledge. anyway, he is so evil and definitely working for voldy. but of course he won’t kill me, are you crazy? who would he talk to across the great hall? like literally you don’t even understand.” and everyone just WENT WITH IT.

Hahahahaha I KNOW! Would he feel this safe around literally any other person who he suspected of being in league with Voldemort? I think tf not!

Even once Draco has Harry incapacitated and totally at his mercy on the train Harry at no point thinks that he's in danger. Even after Draco breaks his nose he doesn't think it. After that incident Harry still is all 'can't wait to break into the Room of Requirement BY MYSELF while Draco is in there so I can see what secret evil mission he's working on for Voldemort' and at no point does he worry that going in without backup could end badly. And HE'S RIGHT. When Draco has Harry at his mercy he never seriously harms him and risks everything multiple times in book 7 to protect him. This is NOT Harry seeing Draco with rose tinted glasses. This is Harry deeply and intimately understanding that Draco will not hurt him and feeling comfortable around him on an instinctual level despite every reason he has not to.

And let's not forget why Harry finally stops investigating Draco in 6th year. It's not because he decides he's wrong about his whole "Draco is a Death Eater on a mission from Voldemort" theory nor is it because he gets worried that since Draco is a Death Eater on a mission from Voldemort looking into this could get Harry or his friends hurt. No. He stops because his investigation leads to Draco getting hurt. And Harry is so horrified by this that he completely backs off and gives up trying to stop the super secret evil mission from Voldemort that Harry is sure Draco is on. Harry is like 'foiling an evil plot masterminded by Voldemort himself isn't worth it if it could lead to me hurting Draco.' He really said 'I can excuse putting myself in mortal danger on a regular basis to stop Voldemort's plots but I draw the line at Draco being upset.' In canon.

And yeah Harry cares about people in general but not to this extent. When Umbridge gets carried off by centaurs Harry doesn't even think of going after her. He's just like 'lmao bye bitch.' He straight up KILLS Quirrell in first year and when he finds out he's like 'well that sucks for him.' Tons of Death Eaters get hurt and maimed at the Department of Mysteries and Harry never even stops to check if they're ok. In second year he forces Lockhart to enter the Chamber of Secrets first in case there's a Basilisk waiting at the bottom of the chute.

But anytime he sees Draco in danger he does whatever he can to help without even thinking about it. From the time in first year in the Forbidden Forest when he immediately throws his arm out to stop Draco walking towards Voldemort to 7th year when he risks his own life and that of his friends to pull him out of the fiendfyre and reveals his presence while running through the battle so he can stun a Death Eater threatening Draco. And he does it automatically, without a second thought because Harry can't fathom a world where he wouldn't protect Draco.

[yourlowkeyidiot3]

Why are people blaming the fact that Stan got kicked out on Ford and not on Filbrick

[full-time-femboy]

I haven't drawn in a week!

HERE ARE MY TED SPANKOFFSKI SKETCHES!!

[queercontrarian]

the reason the spring court fell apart so easily is actually because at his core tamlin was a good high lord. in this essay i will