#this is LITERALLY what death of the author is FOR
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ohnoitstbskyen · 3 days ago
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You are still doing it. You are still doing the thing. You are uncritically accepting the framing and understanding of Jesus developed by Christians in Christian texts for Christian audiences, and what i am trying to ask people to do is to just for one picosecond adopt a hostile reading of those texts, or literally any frame of understanding of them other than credulity!
"Wow, I'm reading this book about Dienetics and L. Ron Hubbard sure is a swell guy! He was a revolutionary against the galactic tyrant Xenu! Sure, his followers have done some bad things in his name, but Ron was a radical progressive!"
For just a moment, please understand Christian theology and Christian texts and Christian narratives as what they are: propaganda literature, written by and for members of a cult to reinforce and justify their own moral and political belief systems.
Literally not one single word of the Bible is written in Jesus' own hand, all of it is writing ABOUT the man, after his death, by other people with an agenda for how they wanted his martyrdom to be meaningful politically and spiritually. It is a text with hundreds of authors, all competing for authority.
If there was a historical Jesus, he did not heal the sick, did not turn water to wine, did not feed 5000 people or walk on water, and was not resurrected after being dead in a cave for three days. And because we know that all of those stories about him are, generously speaking, fucking fairy tales, we should also be able to accept that the rest of the stories about him are not credible historical reportage either, and understand that "Jesus" is a literary creation who bears at best passing resemblance to whatever real man may have inspired him.
Please be willing to read the Bible with the same frame of skepticism that you would use for any other piece of beatific cult literature. The Bible makes Jesus look like a swell guy because it is religious propaganda designed to glorify a martyr and rhetorically justify structuring power around his (purported) dogmas.
Once we adopt a skeptical or hostile reading of the Bible, and once we understand Jesus as a literary creation, maybe then we can treat him like one and have him play a villain in a TV show.
Maybe then he can be used to narratively embody a critique or satire or mockery of his pop cultural persona or his movement in history or the religious dogma that is ascribed to him, just the same as we do with so many other historical and religious and folkloric figures. And maybe we can do it without credulous cultural Christians jumping in to be like "um actually this is factually incorrect, Jesus was historically an uwu cinnamon roll smol bean, it says so in my favourite fanfic!"
The eschatology espoused by Christ in the Bible is and remains fucked up, by the way, I will not yield on this. Human life on Earth is not a gauntlet of noble suffering whose misery is justified and paid for by a reward in the afterlife. Being oppressed and abused does not make you spiritually more pure it just fucks you up and usually makes you a worse person. And the meek shall not inherit the fucking Earth, the Earth will be strip mined and left a scorched wasteland by capital holders unless the meek stop sitting prayerfully in their holy misery and start [redacted] some fucking executives' houses.
"Render unto Caesar" how about render unto the oppressor a mouthful of their own broken teeth actually, Jesus, how about that? Maybe it kinda sucked how you made a virtue out of material inaction against oppression, maybe "turn the other cheek" is dogshit advice for making a better world on Earth. Maybe the idea that the suffering of the poor shall be repaid in the kingdom of heaven has turned out to be a really effective way of justifying keeping the poor fucking miserable.
Rich men can't enter the kingdom of heaven? Oh wow, I guess I'll enjoy my epic moral victory over Jeff Bezos as the AI data centers cook the atmosphere and drink the lakes dry. Truly, the most noble thing an oppressed person can do is die about it!
I'm not even a fucking atheist, i don't think religion is inherently either good or bad and I don't think Christianity is evil or poisonous. I am just so desperately bored with the special little moral exception carve out that is constantly given especially to Jesus specifically, sheltering him from ever being portrayed as anything other than a really swell guy who is sooooooooo tragically misunderstood, and who can never be held responsible for any bad things done in his name, but always be credited with the good things. I am sick of people considering it somehow taboo to mock or be rude about a fucking cult leader.
"If they introduce either of them, I hope they are straight up villains. I am tired of Jesus Was A Nice Guy Actually interpretations of that particular prophet, it lets Christianity off the hook far too easy."
That is certainly a challenge because, just as Tv Tropes explains in their page for "Jesus Was Way Cool" (a.k.a: this trope), he is God in human form who routinely mingled with and was willing to forgive those who were considered outcasts even to the church primarily through the pen and not the sword
9 times out of 10, you will look like a asshole because you're demeaning what might essentially be the most universal "Greatest Of All Time" to ever exist
See this is the shit I'm talking about. It's this shit right here. I am so tired of this exact thing.
"Jesus was so nice" he was a cult leader who claimed to have the divine power to define and forgive human sin, and you live in a culture which is pathologically obsessed with worshipping him, even while the religion he founded has slaughtered and persecuted untold millions of people over the course of two thousand years in his name.
I'm not particularly atheistic as a person, but I feel vomit well up in my throat when people uncritically and without a hint of irony take it as Literal Gospel that Jesus Was Nice Actually, and that it would somehow be unfair to him to use him in fiction to embody literally any of the bad things that his religion has done.
I dunno man, maybe the apocalypse cult leader's eschatological teachings are partly to blame for how the followers of his religion obsess over sin and purity in the eyes of God? Maybe his claim to be an instrument of universal divine justice on Earth is partly to blame when his followers abuse and murder non-Christians as enemies of that divine justice?? Maybe some of the things Jesus said and did have a causative impact on how the followers of his teachings behave??
But no, I'm just talking crazy talk here. Everyone knows that the things Jesus said and did can never be to blame for any bad thing that Christians do, but they can always be credited for all the good things that Christians do.
Only the good things, because Jesus Was Nice. He was the universal Greatest Of All Time. It says so on tv tropes dot org
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moonlightdancer26 · 2 days ago
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I just thought of something.
James Potter was the only bully who was not part of a hated group and had to deal with it personally, unless you count how Muggles drove wizards into hiding. Even then, he had no experience with Muggles.
Draco Malfoy is a Slytherin and a Death Eaters child, which caused him to occasionally be treated more harshly than normal even when he’s right/didn’t do anything wrong. He was definitely raised wrongly as in he would get mocked by DEs for not being cruel enough and taught bad beliefs. He was also trained to keep secrets about himself.
(In addition Rowling doesnt seem to have liked Slytherin or Draco much. Especially since she repeatedly denied/retconned things that she wrote in the books.)
Dudley Dursley is a muggle and he and his mother both had first hand experience of wizards prejudice against them.
Severus Snape had to deal with prejudices against Wizards, Slytherin and potentially being a Half Blood.
No wonder James Potter was so much more sadistic than any of them. Unlike them, He has no idea what it’s like to be discriminated against and he is in the authors favorite house, Gryffindor.
That’s extremely true, I always thought part of the reason why he was so sadistic was due to his insane privilege, and never having faced discrimination is definitely a privilege.
That’s why so many Marauder stans race-bend James or make up lore or angst to make his actions more excusable and make him more likeable/relatable. Because, think about it, Remus was a werewolf and is shunned by literally ALL of society (including blood traitors), Sirius was rich and handsome but was abused by his family so badly to the point of running away, and Peter was unattractive and a bit slow. So it’s easy to sympathise and make excuses for them, y’know? “Oh don’t blame him, imagine being _________.” No excuse can be made for James. He was a rich, pureblood, white, good-looking, smart, popular, and athletic Gryffindor who was loved by his parents and had every opportunity to be good, and he failed miserably.
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saintvainglorious · 3 months ago
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Fics I Enjoyed in January - DC Comics Fic Rec List Part 2
I am still neck-deep in DC fandom this month and the fics have been so so good. Unlike last time, I am too tired to write mini summaries/reviews, so I'm going to feature my favorite quote from each fic instead.
My first DC Comics fic rec list is here!
Floor Plans by @oh-mother-of-darkness (Teen & Up, 1k, 2016) “I really didn’t want to die,” he finished. “I was kind of hoping if I laid here long enough, I would remember what that felt like.”
Losing two brothers in six months takes an emotional toll.
almost right by @bitimdrake (Teen & Up, 3k, 2020) He desperately wishes that he didn’t know what Dick’s cheekbone feels like under a gauntleted fist.
Bruce sucks in a breath, hand raising to fix the cowl. Dick flinches back.
but more with love by @danishsweethearts (Teen & Up, 3k, 2022) Dick wakes up one morning, groggy from a dream that he thinks might’ve been about the circus and also about his favourite car and also about how lonely he is, and realizes that he can’t remember what his mother’s voice sounds like anymore.
O Robin, Robin, wherefore art thou Robin?
The Mechanics of a Hug by @sohotthateveryonedied (General Audiences, 4k, 2017) “You know… that crushing sense of depression? Like,” Dick chews his lip. “It’s. A physical weight. Makes it hard to breathe?” “Yeah,” Tim says, soft. He smiles, wryly. “I sort of hoped you didn’t, though.”
“So,” Tim ventures. “It's… what, a cuddle pollen?” Bruce just shrugs. “Something like that.”
No Pain, All Gain by @sohotthateveryonedied (General Audiences, 1k, 2020) Tim’s eyes go even wider. “You stole my organs?” “Technically,” Jason chimes in, “the doctors stole your organs. We just gave them permission.”
Bruce checks Tim’s IV. “Are you in any pain? Do you need more morphine?” Tim’s pupils are so wide that only the faintest ring of blue can be seen. He watches Bruce the way a five-year-old watches cartoons. “I’m all good, B-dog. All Gucci, like we cool teens say." His words are slurred almost beyond recognition, but Tim doesn’t seem to notice or care. "I could fight Superman right now.”
The Wind Sits in the Shoulder of Your Sail by @birdchildsnest (Teen & Up, 7k, 2020) “Oh my god. Bruce. I can’t even tell if you’re serious. When everybody finally eats the rich—they’re going to eat you first.”
At least, back then, Tim had barely been a teenager. He could almost forgive his own volatility. And he’d been smart enough (scared enough?) not to tell Jack that he didn’t need him. What was his excuse now? Bruce was his dad (at least, in the legal sense), but (surprise, surprise) it turned out that Tim wasn’t any better at being a son. Or Tim and Bruce still have some things to sort through after the adoption.
I Left My Conscience On Your Front Doorstep by @dustorange (Teen & Up, 21k, 2022) He doesn’t want to be loved if being loved is like this.
"I think I'm leaving," Dick whispers. "I think I'm not coming back."
bad boys bad boys (whatcha gonna do) ♫ by @drakefeathers (Teen & Up, 20k, 2014) "They live their lives thinking they can charge through the city with the right to hurt and kill and destroy as many lives as they want. And they do it all without a shred of remorse." “But—” Damian begins, brow furrowed in confusion. “Isn’t that like you?”
a Jason and Damian as Batman and Robin AU!! featuring a bunch of graffiti, a rival dynamic duo, and Cat Jason (a cat named Jason).
The Biggest Mistake by @oh-mother-of-darkness (General Audiences, 1k, 2016) “I could ground him anyway, if it would make you feel better.” “He only said it because I called him ‘a garbage can so ineffective it actually became garbage.’”
"You know what really needs to be addressed? Bruce's truly terrible treatment of Damian." -Me, on a daily basis
been a number and a name by @wynterstars (Teen & Up, 35k, 2023) “Turns out if you just say ‘spacetime’ until people’s eyes glaze over they don’t really question anything you say. Also, somehow nobody expects me to be able to actually do enough math to explain it.”
On a field trip, Robin has a close encounter with the newest super in Metropolis, only to discover the hard way that Superboy secretly works for Lex Luthor. They agree to work together on a plan to free Superboy from Luthor’s hold, but Robin isn’t sure how far he can trust him—and his developing feelings only make things more complicated.
clean it like you mean it by @wynterstars (Teen & Up, 70k, 2024) "Wait, ugh, you're not my dead dad, right? If I'm getting a dying vision of my dead dad I want a do-over because he suuuuucked."
When Gotham's crooks have to scrub down their lairs, who do they call? Jason Todd, Gotham's first and only underworld crime scene cleaning specialist. He's spent his life dodging the Bat, but after a chance encounter he saves Robin's life. Tim Drake finds himself drawn to the conflicted rogue, and soon Jason becomes Robin's street informant. But they can only stay on opposite sides of the law for so long before something breaks.
3:16 by @wufflesvetinari (Teen & Up, 70k (WIP), 2023) “Try to decouple one thing from the other. I’m proud of you, but ice cream isn’t my grand statement about whether you’ve been good or bad today. Good things are good. Happiness is precious. Sometimes you just want caramel chocolate chip.”
The knife pushes thin along Dick’s carotid artery, cupping the indent between neck and jawline—forcing him to angle his chin. The metal is warm, pulled with execution speed from under Damian’s pillow. “Okay,” Dick says quietly, tracking the intricacies of his own heartbeat—counting the space between breaths. “Guess I did need a shave.” (With faltering steps, Dick and Damian become Batman and Robin.)
wolf-king of rome by @mysterycitrus (Not Rated, 25k, 2024) “You go after Joker, but you don’t kill him, because it’s not about the Joker dying, it’s about Bruce breaking his code for you. It’s about Bruce loving you enough to change himself for the worse. It’s about your idea of grieving.”
Jason doesn’t fear Dick Grayson. Fear itself has changed shape for him, since his return from the Pit - it tastes of dirt in his mouth, of drowning, of fire and blood and laughter, more than a tangible face. Still, he’d be stupid not to be cautious. Dick liked playing on an uneven field, and would do anything to keep him off balance, so he just had to stay focused. That’s the nature of the armistice, both waiting for the other to make a move. It’s like balancing on the head of a pin.
Declensions by @dustorange (Teen & Up, 13k, 2018) “Do not tell them your name. Do as I did to survive. I lied. I have always lied. Make one up. Do not let them have you. Say your name is…is…is…Richard Grayson. Or something. They are going to steal you; do not give them anything to steal.”
“My father,” Dick says, “worked the rope. It cut him. His hands were never clean.”
Passiontide by @bigdvmnhero (Teen & Up, 5k, 2025) Despite its faults, the day had tried to be good. He felt young, like someone's son.
On the 96th day Bruce didn't call, Dick remembered their old game. Three things he knew: 1) In three months, it would be Dick's death anniversary; 2) Bruce was still missing his check-ins; 3) Here Dick was, persisting. Imagine the things I'd survive, Dick thought distantly, if I loved Bruce less. Or: Agent 37 and his various crises of faith, on Day 277 at Spyral, Day 150, and Day -0.
the time you won your town the race by @silverwhittlingknife (Teen & Up, 4k (WIP), 2022) Tim. Tim is Dick’s. Death sharpens, clarifies these things. Who will receive the body, decide on the funeral, receive condolences, make all the decisions that matter. No one has questioned it, not even Tim’s friends. There’s a terrible clarity about death. If Dick said, let’s burn everything he owned, Alfred would do it.
He doesn’t know exactly what Tim would say. But he knows what Tim would do. Tim dies. Dick doesn’t take death for an answer. A Red Robin 12 AU.
door, opening by @cowboysorceror (Mature, 70k (WIP), 2024) Dick, with the keys to every locked door Jason has ever tried to open, tucked inside the cradle of his skull; all of that, snuffed out like a candle.
It’s barely audible, but he knows what he heard. A short, four-note whistle, chirping down – E, C#, then jumping up to A, F#, a little trill on the finish. He waits a moment, head turned slightly towards the dim shapes of storage containers between him and the ramp, eyes straining against the blackness. Long, stretching seconds. There it is again. His gloved hand, prickling with cold, closes into a fist. It’s a wood thrush. A small North American songbird that doesn’t sing at night, doesn’t live in the city. He knows what it means. It means hold, steady, not yet. It means wait for me, I’m behind you.
#fic recs#fanfiction#dc comics#batfamily#bruce wayne#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#damian wayne#cassandra cain#stephanie brown#kon el#timkon#god i read so many emotionally devastating fics this month my whole soul is a shattered wreck#Floor Plans is my favorite by that author read it back in high school and never forgot will always be haunted by the Tim on the floor fic#almost right hit WAY too close to home uhhhhh maybe i should acquire a therapist#but more with love is 100% how I'd want Dick telling his family about the origins of Robin to go down in canon#(and is also a fic about Bruce fucking up but his relationship with Dick still being repairable which i. desperately needed this month#after reading many MANY other fics where It Will Never Be Okay Between Them (And That's The Point))#I Left My Conscience On Your Front Doorstep aka yet another fic that has made me be like hmmmm maybe i need therapy for my father issues#been a number and a name aka delightful 90s references AND Kon's origin being the Death of Superman animated movies#(my FAV version of his origin ever) AND Tim crossdressing??? rlly what more could u ask for in a Timkon fic chefs kiss#wolf-king of rome literally had me writing an essay to multiple friends explaining how galaxy brained this fic is#the themes of that whole fic series (the body is a haunted house) are once again therapy inducing im rotating them in my mind#Declensions is just straight up literature they just weren't writing Dick fic like this when i was in high school i feel blessed#the time you won your town the race was the only silverwhittlingknife fic I hadn't read yet and oh my god the SCREAMS i SCRAMPT#it was so so hard to pick a favorite quote from door opening that fic has got some spectacular prose#some other quotes I strongly considered for that fic:#“Jason worries sometimes that there’s a piece of him that will be fifteen forever calcified like a little black pearl”#“Gotham is a shade a moon-pale queen withered by the grief of the centuries the crypt of the empire”
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lord-squiggletits · 1 year ago
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I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.
I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.
The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...
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Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.
I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.
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And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?
It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.
To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.
In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.
Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.
So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.
What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.
Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?
#squiggposting#pharma apologism#i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain#so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash#i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent#what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving#is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt#and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists#so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character#so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of#'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him'#but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid#and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like#the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of#being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths#then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part#and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts#and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine#this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer#and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like#how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil#and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit#like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma#but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel#and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple#bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed#but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal
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achillesunly · 16 days ago
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Yk that feeling when you undergo any type of surgery and you are left with an intense feeling of helplessness and trust for the professionals? That's what's happening to me my heart is in Hiraeth's hands rn
And it's not even frightening I can't even worry that's what is most crazy about it
Like I'm being gently cradled to my death it's insane a slow tranquil flow yk???
Such a fucking bizarre experience
It's like all the problems and troubles I feel as I read are being dealt with it's like the story is putting its finger on my lips and goes 'shsh babygirl I'll take care of it for ya' AND IT DO
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yuseirra · 9 months ago
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金輪際現れない 一番星の生まれ変わり
キラキラお星様宿したあなたのeyes カラカラ渇いて可哀想なlack of 愛?
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bestworstcase · 6 months ago
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Something I can't help but think of is the Great War in RWBY. How Ozpin in one of his past selves had to basically wipe out entire armies of soldiers and people with a single attack from what was likely the Sword of Destruction.
I have to wonder just how many generations of men and women were wiped out. How many settlements of people basically lost their breadwinners or no longer had anyone to protect them from Grimm.
How many years of battle experience and wisdom about the follies of war, just annihilated in an instant. How many lessons that could have been taught to a new generation made lost forever, ensuring that many of the newer generations could not learn from the past except only through a distorted, flawed lens.
I wonder if this loss might have contributed to Atlas' lackluster military capabilities, because anyone from Mantle who could have held the jackasses at the top to account with hardened experience and wisdom JUST. WEREN'T. THERE.
anon i am grabbing u gently by the shoulders
you have fallen for ozma’s propaganda that he is the Main Character of history. and also activated one of my many trap cards (sorry)
the institution of huntsmen is – overtly, albeit not couched in exactly these terms – predicated on the Great Man, the idea that the course of human history is predominately a product of the decisive choices and actions of Heroes, of individuals whose superior intellect and fortitude and so forth elevated them above the common people. this is the fundamental idea undergirding ozpin’s whole thing – his guardians, the maidens, silver-eyed warriors, his “smaller, more honest soul,” the greatness he promises oscar, the way he describes ruby as possessing “something unquantifiable: a spark, that can inspire others even in the darkest of times” – these are his Great Men. the practical short term purpose of the huntsmen academies is to mold children into warriors in order to guard his fortresses, but in the longer term the point of them is to create Great Men.
narratively, this is an idea that rwby does not agree with; the thematic critique leveled against this view of history begins with the inherent contradiction between ozpin’s soaring rhetoric – the stated ideal of everyone standing together as one – and his actual behavior, which (as salem points out, correctly, in her v3 soliloquy) betrays the hollowness and lack of conviction in his professed “faith” in humanity. to believe in Great Men is fundamentally cynical; it is anti-humanistic; it is self-defeating.
we don’t really have time to outline everything in the CFVY novels that leads me to believe that this narrative critique is building inexorably toward bringing the common people into sharp focus as the true engine of history in vacuo – suffice it to say that there are passages in both books which elevate and emphasize the importance of ordinary people working together to achieve greater things than huntsmen can – but the atlas arc already offers a tangible shift in this direction with civilian politics dawning as a central narrative concern in contrast to the insularity of the beacon and mistral arcs.
the point being that the story structure itself is dismantling ozpin’s view of history; civilians are distant, abstracted set dressing within the hermetically sealed artificial reality of beacon academy, and irrelevant in mistral until the instant the lost fable shatters ozpin’s grip on the narrative and then – bam. brunswick farm is a horror-tragedy about subsistence farmers. the kids stay with the cotta-arcs in argus, and it is this connection with ordinary people that gets the kids to atlas, where class tensions between mantle and atlas and a contested council election dominate the plot and ozpin’s Great Man crumbles because he’s still hermetically sealed inside that artificial reality where the common people don’t really matter or exist in any meaningful way.
you see?
(and of course, professor oobleck, the exception who proves the rule: there is no one still living in the hollowed out ruins of mountain glenn, but that mini-arc is the one time in the beacon arc where the existence of ordinary people feels real and tangible and important, and it is because the history teacher says when i look at these ruins i see lives that were lost. i see a failure that must never be repeated. i see lives, past and future, and this is why i am a teacher, because history is more important than heroism.)
ok. so
the great war.
in qrow’s account of the great war, ozma – the king of vale – is the Great Man. the story of this sprawling, worldwide conflict is that the king of vale tried and failed to avert it, and for ten years the war raged on without an end in sight, until at last the king of vale took to the field of battle himself and single-handedly ended it by the sword; everyone bowed to him in surrender, but he lifted up the world by the hand and established a new world order.
no one else – not a single other participant in this conflict aside from the king of vale and (qrow hints ominously, and completely without evidence) salem – has a drop of agency or even a meaningful presence in the great war as qrow, received from ozpin, would tell it. and i do not think that is supposed to be taken at face value whatsoever; none of the other WOR spots are objective. these are character studies as much as they are worldbuilding shorts.
rwby is a narrative that has rejected this kind of simplicity over and over and over again. the great war was more complicated than that. some big chickens will be coming home to roost in the vacuo arc.
so with all that being said.
the historical exemplar that rwby’s great war seems to be modeled after is the first world war. (in brief: fought 80-90 years ago; the conflict was preceded by decades of increasing tensions driven by imperialist expansion and economic competition between rapidly-industrializing great powers; the war itself famously exploded from a single gunshot – although rwby eschews the political assassination angle perhaps because there were only three extant states in the world; the ending of the war resulted in massive redistribution of imperial territories and the formation of multiple new states. i know the usamerican tendency is to forget WWI happened and that ozma ‘nuking’ the battlefield with the sword to decisively end the war is likely to evoke the atomic bomb in the mind of the average viewer, but here i will remind everyone that the united states massacred nearly a quarter of a million civilians and that figure does not include deaths from cancer or long-term radiation exposure. because we dropped those bombs on cities. in contrast WWI was decided on the battlefield with the hundred days offensive.)
the real great war lasted from the summer of 1914 to the autumn of 1918. four years, three months. do you know how many people died?
an estimated 9 to 11 million military deaths, and 23 million more wounded. 7-8 million of those deaths were combat-related. upwards of 6 million civilians died. one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and aside from WWII (in which as many as two thirds of fatalities were civilians and genocide and war-related famine killed millions and millions of people, so many of these deaths were not combat-related), the only two conflicts in history that killed more people than WWI lasted 14 years, and 47. again, WWI lasted just four years.
ok. the reason WWI was so deadly, and the reason almost all of those military fatalities were combat-related is because of when and how this conflict was fought. in 1914 when the war began, the world was just coming out of the second industrial revolution. that was a period when railroads really began to proliferate, mass-manufacture of steel became possible, rise of production lines, automobiles, the telegraph, that kind of thing.
cannons, and things, had existed for a relatively long time at this point, but the second industrial revolution heralded the dawn of modern artillery weapons, and warfare, cultural conceptions of how wars are fought, had not caught up yet to the sheer scale of destruction that were now possible because of this new technology. which meant that WWI was the last conflict where war meant lining up troops on the battlefield and smashing the armies together, except everyone had things like rapid-firing heavy artillery, and explosive shells, and machine guns, and barbed wire, and chlorine gas.
this is what led to horrible, bloody stalemate of trench warfare and the unprecedented scale of casualties and the idea of “no man’s land” – it’s why the cultural image of what a battlefield looks like in the popular conscious for decades and decades after this war has been and often still is just a barren, muddy, completely obliterated wasteland strewn with debris. WWI was the transition between pre-industrial and modern warfare where industrialization had led to the development of military technology that rendered the old way of doing war obsolete. suicidal.
in the WOR spot, those are exactly the the conditions surrounding the great war except more lopsided because one side has a massive technological advantage. vacuo wasn’t even a state, it had no formal government of its own and it was under mistrali occupation when the vacuans rebelled. not an industrialized nation. vale was had probably industrialized to some degree (the artwork in the WOR spot doesn’t reflect this, but “no one knows who shot first” and vale/vacuan forces were reliant on dust munitions – everyone had guns) but mantle was significantly ahead of the curve.
so.
you have ten years of trench warfare – more than double the length of our own great war. you have the grimm, who are drawn to all negative feelings but especially to violence. you have huge swaths of territory that are just annihilated and never reclaimed. qrow mentions food rationing, so there were probably widespread famines caused by the loss and destruction of farmland. and this was happening all over the world, on every continent, including the unnamed continent that is now literally uninhabited – it wasn’t always, there used to be settlements there, they’re shown in i think WOR: vale – for a decade. right
ozma brought the sword of destruction onto the battlefield to break what was either a brutal stalemate or a slow grind of brutal attrition depending how lopsided the technological advantage was – after ten years of what had to be every military commander and every leader trying everything they could think of to force a surrender because nobody wants this – in the single bloodiest battle of the war, which, yes, means he personally killed an unfathomable number of people because trench warfare is a uniquely deadly form of warfare –
but the vast, vast vast majority of people who died in the great war were not killed in that one battle. remnant’s population is a lot smaller than ours – millions, not billions – so it’s unlikely that millions of people died. but proportionally this war probably killed hundreds of thousands of people and i would not be surprised if at some point a character drops a figure like “almost a million” or even “over a million” – like just. in raw terms, thinking about this as remnant’s great war – the historical exemplar is really not. subtle – that lasted for a decade, this is a conflict that wiped out a significant percentage of the global population.
all that said,
the military tacticians and strategists largely would have survived and military historians would have been all over this conflict. lessons learned. the infantry poured into the trenches were not gaining any battle experience other than “this is actual, literal hell” while they endured hours of artillery barrage. the only wisdom that can be imparted by trench warfare is that it must be avoided at any cost because the only way to win is for the other side to run out of men or ammunition or popular resolve first. pure attrition. that’s the only takeaway. never let this happen again.
i think this is why the atlas military immediately pivoted to, like, robotic soldiers and armored mechs and the warships. that is “we cannot do trench warfare again. we cannot do trench warfare again.”
(in combination with radically changing the way you deploy troops, tanks and aircraft is indeed how you never do trench warfare again – there were tanks and light aircraft during WWI but none of them were good enough to break the stalemate.)
the problem, largely, for the atlas military – in terms of tactical innovation – is that in the eighty years since the great war, there’s only been one large-scale conflict and the faunus revolution was an insurgency, which – had to have been a protracted war waged by some phenomenally tactically ingenious faunus because the insurgents won – and that is a completely different kind of ballgame.
strategic doctrine and military tactics are developed and tested through practice. we did not jump from WWI straight to modern warfare, there have been many many regional wars and smaller conflicts between then and now. after a war, win or lose, you can theorize all you want but until there’s another war that puts your new technology or new tactics to the test, there’s not really a way to know if you’ve learned the right lessons and corrected successfully from whatever errors you made in the previous war.
in a world like remnant, where there are only five states in the entire world and there is so much pressure against open warfare, military innovation is going to be really slow. glacial even. stagnant. the horrifying scale of the great war is not something anyone wanted to ever repeat, and you can see that in the development of atlas’ military technology since then. but, as we can see when salem begins her assault on atlas:
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the doctrine has not changed significantly. we have unmanned robotic light infantry arrayed in formation support the atlesian equivalent of tanks, with heavy artillery mounted on the warships in formation above. and, in the back, trenches for the human shock infantry and huntsmen. this is still very much warfare in the pre-industrial mode.
the calculation that the atlas military made here is quite clear – pursue aerial superiority to control the skies so you can eliminate ground-based enemy artillery, mass-manufacture lightweight disposable robotic infantry to feed into the meat grinder, deploy soldiers in heavily-armored mechs supported by those disposable infantry bots into the no man’s land to lead the advance and clear a path for the human rear infantry (<- those mechs would be excellent for cutting rapidly through barbed wire, a major advantage over tanks in another WWI-style conflict).
this is a military that reacted to trench warfare by investing in armored ground vehicles and heavy aircraft (✅ tanks and bombers), and by substituting disposable drones for human shock infantry instead of the shift toward evasive maneuvering and detection avoidance that undergirds modern warfare. which is not unreasonable! if in 1918 it had seemed remotely possible to anyone to replace human troops with little war machines, people would have tried! and in a world where a) the technology to do that proves viable and b) the great war is followed by an 80-year period in which the only major conflict is an insurgency, it’s inevitable that the doctrine stagnates there because it’s untested.
no matter how many drills and VR scenarios and war games you do, you can’t know how this new approach works in a real war until you fight another war. the iterative process of improvement is stalled.
and the terrifying thing about salem is she knows what the fuck she’s doing. it is clear that one of the lessons ozpin took away from the great war is that the general public cannot be entrusted to know that war is on the horizon – he’s furious with ironwood for bringing warships to vale because (aside from risking a bona fide diplomatic incident that could inflame tensions between vale and atlas should the vale council take issue with the uninvited presence of a foreign state’s air force in their kingdom!) he’s concerned that it will make people tense.
you know, like how people were tense when mistral occupied eastern vale and ozma tried to avert war by appeasement, and then there was a deadly riot that exploded into a decade of trench warfare. like how things were probably pretty goddamned tense before the faunus revolution broke out in response to humans being – as oobleck very delicately put it – “quite, quite adamant about centralizing the faunus population in menagerie.”
(that’s code for, at best, systematic persecution intended to make living outside menagerie so untenable that faunus would leave en masse; mass deportations and genocide at worst. in case that isn’t clear.)
i doubt ozma was remotely as obsessed with absolute secrecy such that the common people don’t even know there’s anything unusual happening prior to the great war and the faunus revolution. ozpin is a trauma reaction to those conflicts, deeply and profoundly shaped by them and terrified to the point of irrationality of allowing the “energy” that preceded the outbreak of those wars to happen again.
salem hits beacon with three separate and extremely public terroristic attacks all on the same night – she planned for four, but one fired early – all of which were broadcast internationally, live. she spent eighty years observing how oz reacted to the great war and then struck at him in a manner he would never be able to conceal, and (if he’d survived) would have gotten him stripped of power and cast out of his fortress in disgrace. i think her calculation here is that ozpin would either be dead for at least a few years or self-immolate out of panic.
haven, of course, she had lionheart in her pocket and planned a covert operation. low risk, quick and quiet.
but then, when her plans shuffled and brought her to atlas – a military power that has spent eighty years preparing for war between industrialized states, trying to claw its way ahead of the curve so it won’t be trapped in a trench stalemate again – salem made an inexhaustible force of grimm and delivered a an old-school siege, because a post-industrial military that has focused for eight decades on the problem of avoiding trench stalemate is not prepared to handle an enemy force that is effectively immune to artillery fire.
i think the atlas military would have done a lot better in a round two of the great war. but that’s not the war it got. it got a premodern siege by the eldritch roman legion with instant and infinite respawns so artillery barrages just don’t matter. it’s not about overpowering the enemy! it’s about taking away what power they have!
(this, plus the atlesian military’s development of devices that provoke massive grimm swarms as per arrowfell, makes it emphatically clear that the atlas military does not exist for the purpose of grimm extirpation. it’s an institution that has been built from the ground up for open warfare with other states.)
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the-poppy-outie-effect · 2 years ago
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only the biggest brained individuals understand that Grif is actually the smartest of the reds and blues. only the wisest among us know that it takes a genius to get away with the bullshit he gets into on the daily. only the sharpest crayons in the box get that Grif has been playing everyone the entire show and only acts dumb so everyone underestimates him. only the smartiest of pantses can comprehend him.
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wonder-worker · 8 months ago
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"[Elizabeth Woodville] was the only member of [Crown Prince Edward of Westminster's] original 1471 council not already on the king’s council and her name headed the list of those appointed as administrators in Wales during Edward’s minority. [She remained on the council after it was expanded in 1473 and granted additional governing and judicial powers]."
"In 1478 Prince Richard married the Mowbray heiress. Like his elder brother he had a chancellor, seal, household and council to manage his estates. His council, like that of Prince Edward, comprised the queen [Elizabeth Woodville] and a group of magnates and bishops, few of whom were Woodville supporters. [...] It was Elizabeth who mattered, for Richard resided with her and Rivers treated his affairs as their own."
— J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 / Michael Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals: Magnates and their Motives in the Wars of the Roses
#good👏🏻 for 👏🏻 her#historicwomendaily#elizabeth woodville#15th century#english history#princes in the tower#my post#Reminder that these sort of additional official positions in governance were very unusual (unprecedented) for late medieval English queens#Elizabeth's formal appointment in royal councils (+ authority over her sons) should not be ignored or downplayed in the slightest bit#It should instead be considered one of the most defining aspects of her queenship that spanned over a decade and lasted right till the end#& should also be highlighted as one of the most vital topics of discussion when it comes to broader queenly power in late medieval England#I think it also says a lot about Elizabeth's relationship to Edward IV and the regard he seems to have had for her capabilities#'The only member of the original 1471 council not already on the king’s council' that speaks VOLUMES. Once again: good for her.#It's also really frustrating how some historians (Katherine J. Lewis; AJ Pollard; Laynesmith etc) have incredibly lopsided perspectives on#Elizabeth that fundamentally *do not work* when you remember these actual facts and what they reveal about her power and influence#I'm also still baffled at Lynda Pidgeon's claim that 'Elizabeth's influence with Edward IV was less than with family members who were#part of the king's council or that of her son Edward prince of Wales'. Like???????#First of all - we *already know* that Elizabeth had the most personal influence with Edward and was the one he trusted the most#The case in 1480 & his own will in 1475 (where he referred to her as the one 'in whom we most singularly place our trust') make both clear#Second of all - ELIZABETH WAS LITERALLY ON HER SONS' COUNCILS HERSELF. HER NAME HEADED THE GODDAMN LIST. How have you missed this????????#It's actually bizarre because it completely ignores the fact that 1) Late medieval queens *weren't* generally given positions like this?#If we accept Pidgeon's (false) interpretation we have to claim that NONE of them were influential at all#Which I'm pretty sure nobody agrees with? So why have I seen people agreeing with Pidgeon's FALSE take on Elizabeth based on that lmfao?#2) Elizabeth WAS in fact given such positions. She genuinely was given unusual authority and was an Exception™ rather than the rule#Forget emphasizing her atypical role - Pidgeon has outright erased it in an effort to diminish her#She does the same thing when talking about Elizabeth's role after Edward IV's death and it's equally ridiculous and incorrect#There's stupidity and then there's willful misreading & rewriting of history according to your own imagination. This fits the latter
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metanarrates · 1 year ago
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watched a majora's mask analysis earlier today with my fiancee. my verdict is that I actually really enjoyed the op's interpretations, but that I wished that they talked more about mm's literal level and what one can get from it, rather than talking about those events as if they are strictly metaphor. yes, of course the metaphorical layer of the game is rich to dig into, but it's also such an open-ended and surreal game that it's difficult to nail down every single distinct metaphor that can be derived from its events. which is why I consider it necessary to discuss the way the literal layer presents itself and what sort of motifs and ideas exist there as a baseline before you begin looking at it as metaphor
#narrates#zelda#^ longwinded way of saying that i think that both the impeding inevitability of death#the way the characters react to it#and the question of whether or not termina is even 'real' or can be saved are all intensely interesting aspects of the game#regardless of metaphor. you are existing in a world where you empirically cannot change anything permanently until your very last cycle#and in a world that is potentially not real or is doomed in other ways. but your task is still to help these people and save it#which is interesting even before you get into the symbolic spiritual and metaphorical reads of the game#again thats not to say those reads are bad. i think those reads are what people find the MOST meaningful about mm#most of mm's strength lies in its atmosphere and its ability to convey all these overlapping ideas#its surrealism and the richness of its ideas is what allows for an audience to draw all sorts of meanings out of it#it's just also very meaningful in its LITERAL events and I enjoy that quite a lot!#also... I feel like you heavily have to acknowledge death of the author when dealing with mm#you cannot rely on what you think the author intended. because thats both unclear and does a disservice to the games open endedness#which means that your analysis tends to be far more meaningful when you discuss how IDEAS are embedded in the game#and how you personally constructed meaning out of that#rather than relying on your ability to convince me that your specific read was completely what the devs were thinking#idc about the devs tell me about YOU!#this video was way better than most at doing that but I just prefer mm analysis that is heavier on death of the author#edit: i don't mean you should discount cultural context. thats part of the ideas embedded in ths game#i just mean that I don't like arguments that rely on the idea that the devs INTENDED that cultural context to shape the games metaphors
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free-luigi-mangione · 25 days ago
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Why do you guys take this as if im shitting on luigi and rooting for his death LOL. I stand with luigi, but it’s good that we acknowledge and prepare ourselves for his fate. You really think they caught a random person that coincidentally was estranged from their family for half a year, went missing, had a backpack full of items that make sense in this murder, similar looks from hostel image and cab, exact gait as the murderer, and the confirmed journal entry discussing the healthcare system??? Really guys? Come on. It’s important we continue what he started. Not the murder itself but the message.
While anon is correct about death penalty being abolished in NY, Pam Bondi is asking to seek it to the full extent for luigi. On her part, she was dumb to not say alleged, given she’s a public figure and should state things legally. But trump ks in office guys, he’s an elite just like any CEO, he’s definitely going to take any measure when luigi gets convicted. I’m not saying alleged because 1) im anon and not a public/political figure 2)my OPINION, I DO however, say he’s innocent until proven guilty. Because everyone deserves the presumption of innocence, but it’s quite obvious he’s the one who did it.
I live off government assistance, I can’t afford any top grade insurance, why the fuck would I be a boot licker? You have no idea what insults you’re throwing around. I can’t even work because of my mental disorders, the same people who preach kindness and peace are the same ones to attack you the second you don’t agree with them on something. How ironic. I have mutuals that went to UPenn the same time as luigi and they all ofc had great things to say about him, but some were close with his best friend Matt and have more personal details that I will not be sharing but it all connects, unfortunately. I know me saying this sounds false, but I’m aware some of you guys deep dive into Luigi’s life and will know who im talking about if you really dig, I guess.
Free luigi. He needs help. He needs to leave this country and find peace without murdering an innocent (Brian was not a murderer, just because he holds a CEO title, does NOT mean HE directly declines every claim. Please do your research for that before attacking me.) And yes he deserves a fair trial, but let me tell you, it’s NOT going to be pretty. I bet he’s going to do a plea deal or admit his guilt like a certain criminal…
well, the way i answered was based on how you spoke in those asks. so it's not my fault i guess. you will get exactly what you give here. i can't help that. *shrugs*
i can say everything you said is perfectly valid and is a perfectly sane opinion to have, except one thing. i will say that you're so wrong when you're saying the dead ceo is innocent. Hitler also personally didn't send every single person who died in the gas chambers or in transportation to the concentration camps, but he did 100% device all the plans that made that happen and basked in the glory of the genocide that he was the mastermind of. it's the same thing with the dead ceo, maybe he didn't deny healthcare of every single person by himself, but he still sat on his ceo throne and overlooked a system that was actively denying essential healthcare to too many people to count and he was basking in the glory of this deeply evil act by earning over ten millions per year and not giving a single flying fuck over whether people died because they were being denied healthcare because of his policies and other policies he enabled. so yes, that dead ceo was just as much as a murderer as Hitler was, at least in my eyes. and i am sorry to tell you that most people (around the world) would agree with me on this. altho whether most of those uwuified americans would agree with me or not is a different matter, because y'all seem to be desensitised to a whole host of things that people of no other country (at least the democratic ones) are desensitised to. but i think it's fair to say that everybody around this part of tumblr would agree with me, so you're on thin ice if you attempt to call the ceo innocent again.
#once again saying this if you didn't hear already Luigi would not be agreeing to a plea deal#you have made me believe that you can read fairly well altho not well enough since you're professing this opinion#so i'll tell you to read any of his lawyers' statements especially KFA's#even in her last statement released immediately after the death penalty announcement came from Bondi#KFA said that his legal team would fight the charges in PA and in NY and at the federal level and anything else they want to pile on top#of him which directly says that they're going to fight the charges all the charges and they're literally getting paid to do that#so in short no Luigi would not be taking a plea deal under no conditions not even the Trump administration returning back to power#why?? because he has the public's support Luigi only wins with a jury deciding on his fate#he would never lose with a jury made of fellow citizens#i cannot promise that he would win a.k.a. walk free but i can promise he would never lose no matter what is the outcome of the jury trials#because no jury would ever unanimously agree to execute him which means the authorities fail automatically with Luigi getting a jury trial#and he also doesn't lose at all#edit: also wait i forgot to say this but i gotta#if you scrolled through this blog even for a bit you'd know that i have extensively talked about the death penalty and what other things#could happen to Luigi i have not sugarcoated anything everybody on this blog (including me) are aware of what could happen#so for you to tell us to be prepared for the worst and the second worst things that could happen we know buddy#everybody here knows that too well already you're in fact late to the party and you're not even partaking in the appetizers at this party#asks
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m1ckeyb3rry · 1 year ago
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wattpad is so crazy because users will leave comments expressing nothing but pure disdain and anger for whatever reason (y/n’s characterization, the decision to include original characters, temporary ships and subplots, etc)…like at a certain point i start to wonder if they realize that no one is forcing them to read anything 😭
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a-really-cool-blog-name · 3 months ago
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do you ever have a comparison or a crossover of two things you like that are so wildly different with such specific interpretations that you don't even know how to share it because the Venn diagram center might just be you
#on a completely unrelated note#Does anyone here like both wicked and adventure forward because I have a comparison#That kinda doesn't make sense but kinda does#like glinda becoming a symbol for good (ha) because she knows the truth about the perceived villain but is#Too scared of discomfort and cowardly in a way to truly help and make actions towards changing the status quo#While Anshine also becomes a symbol (ha) for good but doesn't know the truth about the perceived villain as that was stripped from him#Along with the rest of his memories#he still tries to figure out the truth and learn more about what happened#But Anshine's not afraid to change the status quo he's not afraid of what might happen if he stands up to the “authority figure” of sorts#They also both would look great in a ball gown but that's besides the point#Elphaba is painted as a symbol for pure evil even though she try to do what was right#people's perception of her was changed forcefully but she still does the actions on her own accord#Still in an attempt to do what's right#And eventually causes someone close to her to literally lose his mind (heh)#While Stratosfear is painted as a symbol (I am not making the same joke twice) for pure evil forcefully#He attempts to do what's right and succeeds only to be forced to do his actions#He keeps looping his perception keeps being reset but his actions aren't his own#And eventually he causes someone close to him to lose their memories#Also there's a guy in charge who's lying to everyone#So yeah that's my unhinged comparison#They're also all gay#Doomed yaoi vs doomed yuri fight to the death ig#a rare original post#Wicked spoilers#In the tags??? It's more likely than you think#I am not tagging both of them for stuff that's in the tags#Posts where the tags are the actual post but I'm a coward to post the actual post
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rayatii · 7 months ago
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What is your Hogwarts house?
I beg you'll forgive me, but I feel like I can no longer answer questions of this kind without a whole discussion on how I have grown absolutely disenchanted with the Harry Potter franchise and J.K. Rowling's growing villain arc. It's particularly egregious in that she herself stated that supporting Harry Potter equals supporting her anti-trans views (also we're not talking about her recent book that was both transphobic and Islamophobic at the same time; mentioned this bc I was raised Muslim). Her bigotry is truly starting to seep more and more into her works. You will see more posts about it if you explore the "fuck jk rowling" and "fuck jkr" tags on my blog.
(but anyway, I am... was... a Hufflepuff. Yes, I was a fan, but I was able to let go of the fandom almost as soon as her villain arc started. And besides, the Fantastic Beasts franchise was starting to really suck.)
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wonder-worker · 7 months ago
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"As for the government of the kingdom, [Edward V] had complete confidence in the peers of realm and the queen."
"According to the Crowland continuator, [Elizabeth Woodville] seems to have taken the king's place in listening to his council immediately after Edward IV's death. It does appear that she expected to have some role in her son's kingship, and the Crowland continuator’s report of the letters sent to her by [Richard of Gloucester] indicates that she had good reason to expect to be able to work with him and the other councillors: 'the duke of Gloucester wrote the most pleasant letters to console the queen; he promised to come and offer submission, fealty and all that was due from him to his lord and king, Edward V, the first-born son of his brother the dead king and the queen'."
"[However], in what was Gloucester's first coup, Edward V was separated from his household and Woodville advisors. When the young king questioned the move, Buckingham was reported to have told the boy 'It is not in the business of women but men to govern kingdoms'. The blunt remark referred to the authority of Elizabeth Woodville as queen and the power she must have anticipated within the new political climate left by Edward IV's sudden death. [...] While the veracity of this scene is questionable*, the words attributed to the duke no doubt seemed plausible to Dominic Mancini who believed they exemplified the popular sentiment held by men [...]."
— Dominic Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard the Third / J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 / Alexander R. Brondarbit, Power Brokers and the Yorkist State, 1461-1485
*One of Mancini's key sources seems to have been Edward V's own doctor, John Argentine, who attended to him in the Tower. It's very likely that he was the one who recounted this scene to Mancini, which suggests that it should probably be considered more credible than not.
#historicwomendaily#elizabeth woodville#wars of the roses#15th century#english history#my post#Croyland wrote that 'The counsellors of the king - now deceased - were present with the queen' so yes#He clearly seemed to view Elizabeth as taking on Edward's role after his death#Which is striking since her son - the new King - hadn't even arrived in London yet let alone be crowned#It's also interesting that Richard wrote letters to *her* rather than the rest of the council and that she was the final deciding authority#when it came to her son (she was the one who wrote to him for his military escort) - it's a clear indication of who was seen as important#This is also reflected in 16th century chronicles like the claim that the Archbishop of York gave Elizabeth the Great Seal#We don't know if this is true - the Archbishop was definitely opposed to Richard but More may have embellished or invented the story#But either way it reflects the perception that Elizabeth would have a major role in the realm's governance during her son's minority#Which makes sense as Edward V would have been used to his mother governing for him as part of his council his whole life#It's also interesting to compare the impression we get of Elizabeth's role with that of former kings' mothers in late medieval England#Because that can help us understand her activities (and perception of them) within proper context rather than purely in isolation#From what I understand kings' mothers could be very influential (eg: Joan of Kent) but were almost never visibly/directly associated#with the governance of the realm. It's striking that the most extreme and arguably the only exception - Isabella of France - assumed#her unofficial regent-like role only after literally deposing the former King aka her husband in the most atypical situation imaginable#So it's striking that Elizabeth *was* visibly and directly associated with it despite her situation being entirely standard; despite the#lack of precedents; and despite the physical absence of her son. Especially since she was effectively the king's mother for only 20 days#I do think it's possible to argue that it says something about her power as queen#(Edward *did* give her unusual positions of authority either way) and may also suggest a more direct personality on her part#It may also explain why historians were/are so readily prepared to believe that she wanted to 'usurp the sovereignty' to quote George Buck#Ofc this is my interpretation based on my (limited) knowledge - feel free to correct me
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spacedace · 2 years ago
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Okay, finished Death and the Maidens and uh, yeah. Everything I saw that said it was fucking terrible was right. Absolutely hated it. -10000/10.
There was exactly 3 things about all of that I liked:
The concept of Nyssa as Talia's older half sister that's been running around doing humanitarian efforts for centuries (and literally nothing else about her backstory because holy fucking shit what).
The single moment of Talia being happy and enjoying herself and briefly vulnerable and open about how she doesn't have many friends (could have truly been some great character moment stuff in something else)
Alfred's sass.
That's it. That was everything I enjoyed about that story line. What the absolute fuck did I just read?
Anyway, uh. I'm gonna take the 3 things I liked about the story, try to scrub the memory of literally everything else, and work out what I would have liked to see happen with Nyssa & Talia instead and figure out how to incorporate that into a fic.
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