#to twist their own ideology for the worst

[bifntastic]

I hate that Jews have to be actively murdered/genocided before we are ever taken seriously about antisemitism. And that no amount of atrocity committed against us goes without some sort of twisted justification by our oppressors. And even when the worst and most inexcusable happens, when our assaulters and murderers and rapists film their crimes to laude as trophies, glorifying their acts of Jew hatred, it still isn’t enough for you.

If we dare to sound the alarm on this shift in culture we are seeing with our own damn eyes, likening it to pre-holocauset Germany, you call us hyperbolic. “Alarmist.” We’re just over exaggerating. Over reacting. Or worse, you tut and condemn us for selfishly belittling the “true” suffering of Jews during the Holocaust for our own (((nefarious))) political goals. Because you surely know better on this then we do.

Even when Jews are literally having wanted posters of them posted in the halls of Rochester University, being chased through the streets of Amsterdam, threatened with knives in Berlin, raped in France, and murdered and assaulted in random cities across the globe, thats still not enough for you is it?

But how could we be so naive? If October 7th itself wasn’t enough for you then what possibly could ever be?

Will nothing short of the literal Nazis rising from their rotting graves to march us to our deaths by the millions one again, serve to convince you that what is happening to us in this moment is real?

In this grotesque fantasy of yours where we are once again slaughtered en masse, will you look back and sob your performative, self-comforting tears of gentile guilt over having not done enough, having not listened, having not learned from the sins of your forefathers?

Perhaps you will wax poetic in your history books about how you were merely “occupied” by an oppressive ideology, held “hostage” as the Polish claimed to be, as they gleefully handed off their inconvenient Jewish pests to be slaughtered. You will wail that you couldn’t possibly have known any better. And you will find a way to make it our fault. To absolve yourself of your own guilt and responsibility.

We have lived this same tired song and dance for thousands of years. We have watched you and your forefathers weep with self pitying remorse time and time again before going right back to killing us once the horror of your crimes fade in your memory.

But the children of Israel live, and our memories do not so easily fade. We have never forgotten and we never will. Never Again will we allow ourselves to be at the mercy of our enemies. For we have a nation now. We finally have a home. And we will never let you take it from us again.

[snekdood]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/14/map-these-are-the-worlds-least-religious-countries/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/which-is-the-most-peaceful-country-in-the-world/

also

light blue is least democratic, dark blue is most. kinda seems to align a lot better with the "most peaceful countries" map. turns out the problem is any ideology being twisted for nefarious reasons and not religion specifically and exclusively. I mean, look at fucking china.

#Opinion http://dlvr.it/T8kCbl

[lxmelle]

Gojo’s beliefs of “when you die, you die alone” & “there is no curse more twisted than love”.

We know these were his personal beliefs. At least the latter was confirmed by his own mouth as a personal theory in jjk0. What he told Megumi during the 1on1 training wasn’t a lecture but a piece of advice for how he hoped Megumi could overcome his limitations. It must’ve worked for, or been personal to, Gojo himself who reflected on how this was inaccurate in ch236.

It got to thinking about how he came to believe these. It’s normal to philosophise following personal experiences and form our worldview. So within the context of the world in jjk, here are my reflections, right or wrong:

As a jujutsu sorcerer they’re expected to embrace death at any moment. They were trained to take lives and therefore they expect the risk that comes with it to some degree. Those whose lives they wish to take will defend themselves, and they can be killed instead. Those with an exceptional burden, whether it be as a teacher or as a talented sorcerer, they’d have to be prepared to lay their lives on the line for others.

We see even adults expressing reluctance over this - like Kusakabe and MeiMei - who have something greater they wish to protect through their survival. Of course it’s not easy to embrace death. Especially when you have a lot to lose. Nanami said he wouldn’t be married for as long as he was a sorcerer. Maybe that’s why they trained them young... but that’s by the by. The greater the strength, the greater the responsibility. This is what the strongest duo shouldered with the mission from Tengen, and this was what they had to get used to when being sent on missions separately.

Meaning, there was always the need to accept the high possibility of going alone. Risking just yourself. Alone.

And it’s not hard to imagine that Gojo and Geto both accepted that death equated to a sense of being alone after they parted ways.

Because they weren’t a duo anymore. The end, the death of it. Even if they were, like in HI, they might still have “died” separately. Helplessly.

So in that sense we can see how the ideal about dying alone could have come about for Gojo, who tended to learn things experientially (e.g. not only as a talented & gifted sorcerer - a genius, but also in the matters of decorum, love, etc.) so in terms of loss and grief, it should not be any different.

When Geto embarked on his path, he accepted that this alone-ness equated to a certain death. He actually sought to be alone (like killing his parents) aside from the girls he protected and found a family who were considered outcasts/minorities within the conservative Japanese society.

He embraced his own self sacrifice - his death - so much so that he proclaimed it would have meaning for Gojo to take his life. Gege wanted him to caution Gojo not to take others’ lives along with his (since they had opposing ideologies too), encouraging Gojo to stay on that path and not follow him. It was like walking alone to his death, living on borrowed time.

And Gojo for certain left behind.

Maybe the pain of having left behind, feeling alone as the strongest, felt like death too. It was not enough to be strong if you were alone. Loss is grief. Being alone was a loss and grief. Grief and loss have roots in separation, in death.

And in being the strongest, being left behind, being alone, being prepared to die, watching someone be prepared to die, and seeing others die - he might’ve felt that his death would equate to being alone too. This was the worst pain he had ever known after all.

So I HC that, just like “love is the most twisted curse” he believed that “when you die, you die alone” based on his own lived experiences.

And for what reason did his greatest hurt/pain emerge? Why was he left behind…? Well, it was out of love.

Love really could make the most twisted of curses. It can bind someone to your soul. We know the parallels with Yuta & Rika and Gojo & Geto.

From HI we can delve deeper. For the sake of humanity, out of compassion and love, Geto became twisted and cursed himself by having crazy ideals that required him to sacrifice himself and humans. Out of love for Gojo, he also cursed them both to separation & loneliness. Out of love, Gojo was twisted himself, cursed as he couldn’t kill his friend, had chosen to abide by the principles and values shown to him, could not move on … and therefore this personal theory was born.

It of course got worse for Gojo (😭) and all hell broke loose when he had to kill his beloved bff but couldn’t let his corpse go.

Sigh.

Love is also salvation though. Gojo made sure Geto didn’t die alone. And Haibara made sure Nanami didn’t. Maybe Nanami made sure Haibara didn’t all the way back then too.

When Gojo died, Geto picked him up.

Love also gave meaning and purpose. It drives humanity. But it was also a curse and Gojo theorised right.

Maybe the two beliefs are linked, in that if you didn’t know love (humanity?) you might die alone, with regret. If you hung onto love and lived purposefully with humanity in mind, you might die a good death.

Who knows what themes Gege is cooking...

Thoughts? Feel free to comment or reblog with them!

[qqueenofhades]

Extremely stupid and contradictory question that I still want an answer to, but what is it that makes people want a dictatorship with progressive values?

For that matter, why is it that nearly all dictatorships are so fundamentally built on conservative/authoritarian ideals and values?

Why doesn't genuinely good values ever end up being the core value that gets enforced with ruthless brutality instead of people twisting themselves into knots to justify always sinking to the worst possible impulses built on hatred?

Is decency just fundamentally anathema to it?

This is one of those questions where you're actually asking several different things at once, and it will take a lot of work for me to explain and contextualize everything that you're looking for. However, I do think this is important to understand, so I'll give it a shot.

First, if I may point out, you've answered a bit of your own question when you ask "why don't genuinely good values ever end up being enforced with ruthless brutality?" I think it's fair to say that if your values were actually good or something that would broadly benefit the lives of most people, they would not need to be enforced with ruthless brutality. This is the case regardless of which ideology your totalitarian dictatorship is built on; i.e. conservative Christian fascism or left-wing old-school communism/People's Republics. Because a dictatorship, no matter which values it claims to use to justify itself, never exists to benefit people. A dictatorship exists to vest supreme power in one person or system and totally disenfranchise everyone else, and it is not, regardless of what some people on the internet in 2023 seem to think, a tool of social justice. Marginalized groups who have a hard time in a traditionally white/culturally Christian Western democracy will nonetheless have an orders of magnitude worse time under a dictatorship, as will everyone else. It is not something you should wish for under any circumstances, and also represents a naïve Western privilege where, having grown up with the unpleasant consequences of late-stage capitalism, people go for the fallacy that old-school communism must be better! Except it isn't, and when you totally blow over and ignore the objections of people who actually grew up under those regimes and warn you that they're not so great, you're just straight-up projecting and wishful thinking. It has nothing to do with reality or history or what anyone should aspire to.

The idea has existed in human society for thousands of years that if you can just get a "benevolent dictator" or "merciful autocrat," who can be trusted to rule with supreme power, do what's right for everyone, and get rid of the messy and flawed process of representative democracy that never seems to quite fix society's biggest problems. However: this doesn't work, it has never worked, there have been countless wars fought over this question, and it would certainly never, ever work in a setting as complex as the globalized twenty-first century. The Online Leftists who want Bernie Sanders, an old white man, to be their all-powerful dictator -- that is, uh, not the Social Justice Flex (tm) you think it is. And as noted, a dictator of any stripe is fundamentally anathema to actual progressivism or social justice, and anyone who loudly wants one (or thinks that the American president should act like one) is exposing both their profoundly immature understanding of the situation and a worrisome thirst for tyrannical despotism as long as it has "the right ideas." This has, again, caused countless wars and numberless deaths, because "the right ideas" will never be universal, universally agreed upon, or anything else, and if they're enforced with violence, you have -- again -- a dictatorship! It's not great!

In chaotic and uncertain times, people tend to want a "strong leader" who they can trust to just fix all their problems and relieve them from the burden of governance or worrying how things are going to work out. This was first articulated in modern Western political philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, who wrote his Leviathan in the mid-17th century during the English Civil War. Basically, his idea was that the people should democratically elect an absolute monarch/leader, who would then rule with an iron fist and retain supreme power, because they couldn't be trusted to govern themselves. (Hobbes is also where we get the pessimistic description of life being "nasty, brutish, and short.") Because things are bad right now, people likewise tend to want an absolute monarch of either right or left political persuasion, but these are both very bad options and should be equally resisted.

Democracy is flawed, imperfect, slow, cumbersome, and contradictory. It can be badly hijacked and corrupted (as we've seen in the last few years) by money, misinformation, bad-faith actors, and more. It is also still always, 100%, all-of-the-time preferable to a dictatorship. People still fall for the idea that having an absolute monarch who just "makes things happen" right away without the cumbersome apparatus of congresses or senates or supreme courts of judges would be "better," and totally ignore the massive and systemic disenfranchisement it would impose on everyone else. Especially in our current misogynist white-supremacist homophobic etc. system; the dictator WOULD be a rich white dude and let's not even pretend otherwise. Even if he made a play at being "progressive," it would not be true and it would not last. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc. etc. I do not want a dictatorship. I do not want to live in a dictatorship. I don't care what Good Intentions (tm) anyone has, because I think that anyone who wants to be a dictator or to live under a dictatorship has a very different idea of Good Intentions than I, or indeed most sane people, do. The end.

Yes, America is a deeply flawed country. Yes, it is built on systemic and ongoing racial and cultural white-settler-colonial genocide. However, where modern leftists struggle the most is the idea that two things can be true, because they're so deeply sunk into black-and-white, zero-sum thinking where if one thing is true, it rejects all the others. If we have a flawed democracy, the solution is to fix that democracy, not to just throw it out the window and cavil for an absolute monarch. You can be fiercely critical of America's imperialist actions, unnecessary wars, racist violence, and everything else while also realizing that if the first and oldest presidential democratic republic in existence was dismantled or turned into a fascist autocracy, it would be absolutely terrible for many, many countries around the world, and humankind in general. You do not have to subscribe to the nonsensical, navel-gazing tankie "logic" that America is the only country with (evil) agency ever, and everyone else in the world is just its helpless pawns. You do not have to subscribe to the idea that any work within the system, or accepting basic political realities, makes you a "bootlicking neoliberal shill" or whatever they're using to insult anyone who doesn't just live in their distorted bubble of self-righteous ignorance. You don't!

As I always say, the only people who really want a dictatorship are those who know that their ideas aren't popular enough to win a free and fair election, but think they "deserve" to be in power anyway, because etc. etc. My Ideas Are Better! (Spoiler alert: they are not.) This is the same whether it's the Republicans trying to outlaw elections or the Online Leftists who sanctimoniously refuse to engage with the civic process because it's "contaminating" for their Pure Ideas to make any compromise with reality. And yet those so-called progressives are utterly dependent on us Normie Liberals who actually vote against the rabid fascists, and are (just barely) holding the line. Because yes, in a liberal democracy, they do have the right to be sanctimonious, useless, toxic, holier-than-thou ideologues who sit on their asses and contribute nothing to the actual dirty process of change. But if the Normie Liberals haughtily refused to vote in the same way the Online Leftists do, the fascists WOULD be in complete control by now, and trust me, it would be grim.

To be frank, I think most, if not all, of what calls itself "Western leftism" has categorically and completely failed as a moral, political, or practical opposing force to right-wing fascism. Much of it is dependent on savagely backbiting even those people who already agree with you, refusing to take basic steps to enact change even incrementally (i.e. voting), and attacking the establishment liberal party, i.e. the Democrats in America, while vocally supporting foreign dictatorships as long as they're "anti-American" or ancestrally "socialist." We've seen the utter failure of Western leftists at developing a moral stance on Ukraine, a consistent opposition to Trump, or pretty much anything else that requires them to come down from their high horses and accept a more complex reality than their abstract purity tests or outright nonsensical clichés. And when you're attacking the Democrats nonstop and backing foreign dictatorships, that is, uh, pretty much the exact same thing that the fascist Republicans are doing. Which means both of these groups are profoundly and dangerously anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-intellectual, and anti-humanity. There's no way around it.

In short, so-called "progressives" want a dictatorship because they too have given up on democracy, don't believe that people at large are as "smart" as they are, and don't want actual praxis or the effort of making change within a flawed democracy. They subscribe instead to the magical thinking that an absolute monarch will instantly and benevolently fix everything, which has -- as noted -- been violently disproved over and over in human history, and they think that "leftism" consists of having the most "pure" views. They do not care about or actively deplore any idea of making compromises to put them into practice, they gain moral superiority by excluding more and more people to make a smaller and smaller in-group, they refuse to accept any information, history, or factual evidence that contradicts their beliefs, and they're just as angrily anti-intellectual as the worst Christian-fascist-nutjob-right-winger, because reality has a bad habit of being complicated and not fitting into neat boxes. And if you think, as I do, that it would be a very, very bad idea to trust these mean, vindictive, constantly-want-to-punish-everyone-who-is-not-exactly-like-them people with absolute power, then you'll have to move to the idea of accepting that for all its flaws, democracy is still the best and most just system we have yet invented for governing ourselves, and the idea is to fix ours, not get rid of it entirely. So yeah.

[khaire-traveler]

Sniffing Out The Bullshit: Spotting Misinformation

Ah, misinformation - the bane of any pagan or polytheist's existence. With information in general spreading faster than the speed of light these days, we must be able to discern when something isn't as true as it claims to be. This post delves into different methods of verifying sources and noticing misinformation. It's, by no means, exhaustive; it's simply meant to serve as a guide for those who may not know how to do discern falsities otherwise.

Spreading misinformation is ahistorical at best and immensely harmful - hell, even deadly - at worst, especially when it comes to physical/mental health and marginalized groups. Misinformation is how conspiracies about "drinking bleach to cure XYZ illness" start (among many other factors, of course). When people listen to the loudest voice rather than the most credible, they are easily misled into believing falsities and spreading those harmful lies to others. It's best to stay accurately informed about topics so that you both know what you're talking about and can't be easily misled by someone with potentially malicious intentions.

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Now onto how to actually discern misinformation online. Here is my guide on sniffing out misinformation (numbered for your convenience, but you don't have to go in order):

Are there any logical fallacies in the person's claims? Here is a website that explains each individual logical fallacy. People will often use logical fallacies to twist an argument in their favor, despite having no real evidence of their own. You'll see this a lot within online discourse. I've noticed "appeal to emotion", "strawman", and "tu quoque" are quite prevalent online, especially on this website.

2. Is this fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice? This website offers a good explanation of how to distinguish each. I see people often confusing these with one another, and it contributes greatly to how misinformation is spread. Someone will share an opinion on something historical or historical-sounding, and others will take it as fact. Not being able to differentiate fact from opinion, belief, etc. can lead us to assume someone knows a lot about a topic that they actually know nothing about or are simply not qualified to speak on. Someone who is not a doctor diagnosing people with certainty and conviction is a great example of this and something I see, unfortunately, quite often.

3. Is the source emotionally manipulative? Although WebMD is admittedly not the best source of information, this website discusses emotional manipulation in detail and what to look out for. Believe it or not, people do use emotional manipulation to spread their ideologies and misinformation online. This is actually a form of control often employed by cults. Be on the lookout for anyone who seems to be emotionally manipulating their audience.

4. Is the information claiming to be historically accurate? If so, are they providing any sources? If you're unsure whether or not something has any historical accuracy, I recommend looking it up on Google Scholar. Run the information through a general search as well to see if you can find other sources claiming similar things. Remember that just because the same information appears in an online article does not make it accurate, as some websites are more trustworthy than others. Honestly, I'd recommend reading books by credible authors over looking things up online, but for looking up a random fact, that's not exactly always helpful.

5. Does the source seem credible? Here is a website that provides a guideline for distinguishing credibility. This is probably the hardest question for people to answer when looking into a topic. Websites that have ".org" or ".gov" tend to appear more trustworthy, but keep the website name and the other content present on the site in mind. For example, if a site claims to be historically accurate but also advertises articles about "top ten celebrities who turned their lives around", it is not a trustworthy source. Also, keep in mind the date of the article or website. Is it over ten years old? Five years old? If it seems dated, try to find information on the topic that is a bit fresher. It can be difficult to find newer sources on certain topics, however, as some topics are just not discussed often, even within their field.

6. Are the claims being made UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis)? Wikipedia defines UPG here. Not everyone will state when something is their UPG or not. A good way to immediately verify a claim is to search it up. Does have any root in the actual history of the deity? If not, do many people still have the same or similar experiences? If yes to the second question, it may be considered an SPG (Shared Personal Gnosis) which is a belief or experience shared between several or many people but is still historically absent overall. Just because something is a UPG also doesn't automatically make it misinformation; it's simply a part of that person's individual practice and belief system. It only becomes an issue when the person with the UPG is masquerading it as full-fledged fact. It's still important to be able to tell the difference between concrete fact and UPG - fact or belief. I feel earlier information covers this topic better, but I figured I'd at least address it more directly.

7. Keep yourself educated. As much as it would be great to not ever have to research things or read more about them, the fact of the matter is that paganism, of any sort, kind of requires some level of research. Even if you are only looking up who a specific deity is and what their domains are, you're still doing research on that deity. For some pagan religions, information is also rather hard to come by. Norse paganism, for example, doesn't have much information on it, mostly due to the fact that it was more oral-based. That's why it's crucial to educate ourselves, at least to some extent, by reading educational books and articles or even researching ancient art, ensuring that we don't fall into the traps of misinformation by, hopefully, already knowing the answer ourselves. If we already have the base knowledge required to debunk something, then we're less likely to be tricked. However, we can't know everything about every pagan religions, and some religions, such as Greek/Hellenic paganism, have A LOT of information about them, to the point where it can be overwhelming. Regardless, knowledge is power, and the more you know, the more power you have over misinformation when it rears its ugly head.

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I hope that fellow pagans and polytheists alike are able to find use in this post. It took a lot of work to make, but my goal is to hopefully help people stay educated and avoid misinformation. I'm sure it's not perfect, but nothing is. I wish the best for you all. Take care, and thank you for reading. <3

[fantasyinvader]

In Snow, before taking Enbarr Flayn gives a speech about how the crew are rejecting Edelgard's “twisted morality” and is willing to kill, and that to go down the same dark path themselves. Yet Seteth talks about how Edelgard will never bend to the player's will a few scenes later despite how Byleth would wish for a peaceful solution. It makes Snow sound hypocritical, no?

However, the Japanese instead says it's Edelgard's willingness to sacrifice others and rejecting that path, whereas Seteth says that while it's understandable that Byleth would want to walk a path with Edelgard it's Edelgard who refuses to give in towards that goal. This bookends the map, where Edelgard on her defeat says that through her death she and Byleth will walk the same path together.

You can see how the changes, though slight in some places, alter the meaning of the story. But this, ultimately, is the case. Byleth's path is supposed to be representative of Nirvana, the Path of Liberation, with Byleth's ending title being The Flame Who Seeks Their Destiny. Edelgard's path is identified as both hadou, where she uses her power to impose her will upon people including through the use of violence, as well as the animal path, the antithesis of Nirvana. Byleth can reject their own path and walk Edelgard's, but it's not meant to be a good thing. Meanwhile, Edelgard's joining Byleth's side through her death comes across as an act of redemption. That by defeating her ideals by winning without the methods she used to gain strength, Edelgard realized her own wrongdoing.

But the thing is, looking at the choices at Snow, it's basically clear the player is being pushed to choose rational thought and logic rather than act on emotion. The player doesn't have a choice, instead the game tells them “no, you have to do this.” Case in point, where the player may want to join Dimitri their forces are in no state to do so so they sit Gronder out. Or how Byleth in the end is pushed to become the new ruler of Fodlan. In the English script, pushing the idea that Edelgard champions freedom if supported rather than oppression, it only makes it look worse.

But it makes sense when you consider Edelgard's path is meant to be the animal path (though the other lords at their worst could be said to have sunk to Edelgard's level.). It's not just that she's hurting through her ignorance, it's also that she's abandoned morality and her humanity doing so. Edelgard might appear rational, but in reality this is saying that she's acting more on instinct and impulses in order to achieve her goals. In contrast, Snow is about saying to have the self-control Edelgard doesn't and to do the right thing. It's not saying to be emotionless, but to look at things logically before acting.

Just like how Seteth says at the beginning of the route, to not see the intent behind Edelgard's words would be a dire mistake while in the Japanese script she flat out says that she did everything she could to try and sway Byleth to her side. Being in the BE House just gave her more opportunities to do so.

Plus the hadou stuff would make it clear that Edelgard isn't benevolent, whereas Byleth is meant to be if they follow their path. The Animal path is thought to be a path of evil, leading to a world of suffering where the strong rule over the weak who cower in fear. To be human means to have the ability to act in a humane manner in Buddhism. Edelgard and Byleth's ideologies being in direct conflict, with hers being made out as evil in the Japanese script, only serves to say that Snow is the hero route for the BE class. To walk Edelgard's path doesn't make her see the light, it just tells her her methods work and encourage their usage further.

But all this is lost due to the translation mischaracterizing Edelgard and trying to make the game grey. Houses essentially wanted players to be Jedi only for the translation to pull a “From my point of view, it's the Jedi who are evil.” And because of that, Edelgard's redemption is lost and instead they try to justify her means by altering her ends.

[dootznbootz]

Hello. I honestly don't know how to prep this but uh, why do I feel like MM's Circe had so much potential? Like, MM did the lazy thing that is "making Circe's life a living shit show because that's the only way her actions would be justified" which... Is the annoying thing most modern interpretations do.

One good example would actually be EPIC: The musical. But in EPIC it only works because Circe isn't exactly a vocal point. And Circe having a motive plays into a pretty big theme of the show (Specifically in the song "Monster" where Odysseus is basically just... Contemplating everything)

But when you have 400 paged book, focusing around Circe, you have so much potential to focus more on the godly elements of these people. Someone else has said this before but ama say it too. The Greek gods had REASONS for acting the way they did. Zeus misused his power, that's what a king does. Artemis's wrath was unmatched when you wronged her, that's how nature is. Hades took a young girl from her mother, that's what death does.

And I'd like to add some of my own.

Aphrodite is a completely morally gray character, that's how love can be, it can go againts you sometimes. Dionysus was all over the place, sometimes good sometimes terrible, that's what madness is. Hermes is swift and a trickster because that's what people we deem 'messengers' can be like, via rumours.

When you notice these complexities to the characters, you start to realize. Circe misused her magic on innocent people for entertainment, that's what black/evil magic does. But at the same time, she helped Odysseus. Because even evil magic, or the 'worst possibilities' can be useful sometimes.

I think it is SUCH a missed opportunity MM didn't focus more on this aspect. Because that would've made for such an interesting story an unique story. Most of these modern retellings try to push modern ideologies on ancient works, which doesn't work. No retelling tries to tell these stories in a ancient Greek perspective (which is actually fairly easy you just have to do your research)

And with an author as skilled as MM is, I'm sure she could do it. But honestly, I don't think her writing is good in the perspective of Greek mythology. She could probably do a great modern story but let's face it, that wouldn't get as much money.

A story focusing around a goddess, and what it means to be a divine personification of nature and a concept, not to you but to the humans you exist for.You can really focus a lot on that and it could be such an interesting story.

All of these writers to me just seem like they're exploiting Greek mythology, which bugs me. If miller wanted to tell these stories, she would've told THE stories with her own twist. Not completely change them to the point they lose their charm.

If miller couldn't do that, if she wanted to write a complex feminist character she wouldn't have chosen Circe.

Something I really admire in your work is how you characterize these guys. It's obvious you're extremely passionate. I also love how you give Penelope clear flaws. You don't have to mortify everyone else to make her 'stand out' or to be 'more likable'. I really love your fic and I'm wishing you nothing but success in the future! :D

Anyways, enough about MM's book.

What do you think is one of Penelope's favorite little quirks od Odysseus', like something he does she finds really cute? :)

I hope you find pretty flowers today and get a sweet for free, dear anon. This ask made me so happy as it's like, perfect. As you gave a Circe rant that will be fun to dissect but also gave me a silly lil question for me to feast on and for the balance and the silly and I love it. You also sent it at the perfect time as I was getting a wee bit sad about how women from Greek Mythology get treated by retellings and fandoms. This really cheered me up 🩵

And thank you so much for the sweet compliment! It means so much to me that you love my silly lil guys as I love sharing them! And don't worry I am working on stuff! ;~; I know I'm taking a while but I am!

I'll do the cute stuff Penelope loves about Odysseus :P

(I do have them "mirror" each other a lot with "like-minded" so they often have SOME similar traits in some ways that both find endearing about the other. (both love watching the other brainstorm/think/swindle/winning/etc., both love (and are sometimes annoyed by) their stubbornness.) Stuff like that :D Also in general. Thank you, Anon. You've made me realize I've been going a wee bit too crazy with Penelope and kind of forgot about Odysseus.

1.) This is a past post that goes into it more but she just adores his freckles. She has counted them and memorized them. She's going to kiss every single one. He mostly has them on his face and shoulders but they are peppered a lil everywhere (he gets it from his mama). She uses the freckle pattern he has across his nose as "stars" for her tapestries.

Rando: Hey, that's not how the stars are mapped. Penelope: They're my stars, asshole >:(

She has to do a "recount" when he returns as some of his "stars" are covered by scars now :')

2.) She loves his hair and how well-groomed he usually is. He also is a bit like a cat in how he loves being pampered. (lil post about that) She loves scratching at his scalp and at the tiny hairs that are at the back of the neck. She loves the pretty grays he has when he returns as well :') She really loved how he looked without and with a beard. (It doesn't end up growing too long anyway)

3.) He's very warm. She's not really affected by temperature too much (she's used to freezing rivers and she herself is naturally cold. Her average temperature is colder than the average person. She only really has to worry about "drying up".) she loves his warmth. She wraps herself up in blankets while he's gone despite not really needing them sometimes as...she misses her furnace. (also his snoring) He also wraps himself in her blankets while away but sadly wakes up to them tossed about because he gets too hot. He needs his lil iceblock wife.

4.) She just adores his big laugh. The laughing so hard you cry one. Hearing it was kind of a "...Okay, I wanna hear that again." for her.

5.) He tends to bite his lip. Sometimes it's endearing and hot but he also will often rip at them. She tries to help him with this habit by distracting with kisses...Though with her teeth, it doesn't always help. Fun fact: For their first kiss on the lips, they were so stupid excited that he knicked himself on her teeth. She felt awful but he just kissed her again. It was bloody and bad but they were so happy. His bad habit returns when he's away because he's not getting his kisses 😔

6.) He whistles while he whittles often.

7.) So ancient Greece had yo-yos (probably in Odyssey but I'm getting silly with it)...and Odysseus is a nerd who WILL do tricks with them. (they can be made with wood and string so... odypen lol) He has fun trying to show other people how to do it too. It's a nice fidget. (modern day he would have definitely been that guy with that rubix cube lol)

8.) So Penelope is better at getting more for less, (lowering prices) and Odysseus is better at giving less for more. (selling shit for good things) They both can do it but they have their strengths.

9.) He got big eyebrows and with his weird "face shifting" thing he inherited from Autolycus, he can make a lot of silly faces.

10.) He tends to make sandcastles whenever he waits for her at the banks of rivers.

11.) He's a "heavy stepper" when he's not sneaking. It's not because of his scar. He just likes walking like that. :) Not so much "stompy" but she finds it cute that she knows it's him coming based on the footsteps she hears.

Some things that annoy her >:3

She's incredibly ticklish and he's not so much and he keeps doing it. STOP IT >:(

So she's smaller than him in mine and in general, he loves draping himself across her (he's like a cat remember?). Most of the time she loves that weight as she loves him and he's a warm weighted blanket. Though while she's strong, he'll sometimes be a brat and put so much of his weight on her just to mes with her. (mostly when they're young and dumb. not so much after he returns)

(Not this big of a size difference ofc but you know >:) )

Those are some and I have more rattling around in my head but I wanna finish this ask and I gotta do some shit :')

Thank you again, Anon. This made me happy <3

[invested-in-your-future]

I feel like people wouldn't discriminate openly again after the War. Maybe shops refusing service but they aren't going to imprison people just because they are Faunus. The world has rejected that.

I am sorry but that's naive.

That's now how racism works - bigots don't just shrug and become good when they are told "racism bad" (despite that being the only thing shown happening in the MilesWBY canon, with Yang telling someone racism bad).

Discrimination has layers, and levels of intensity - and people "feeling" that way don't just disappear - they adapt and they prod over and over again to see what's "acceptable" currently.

Sure, smaller discrimination cases will happen, but that's not the "end".

Discrimination always longs to reach its "greatest hits" - there's a reason why lots of ideologies of oppression resort to "Hey, do you want to go back to the Good Old Days when X?"

Smaller cases of intolerance not getting a pushback are treated as "acceptable status quo" - and the bigotry takes a step forward and escalates onto bigger ones.

And before you know it, you have dehumanizing language, restrictions, rights being taken away, laws being walked back upon and repealed.

It's all about moving the window of what's "acceptable" - we have seen it in our world over and over again (for example - the surge of racism and authoritarian surveillance after September 11)

Think about it - in the show, with Volume 3 one of the four largest huntsmen academies got assaulted by White Fang.

Of course, it's not just them, but that only means different people with different prejudices will focus on different parts of what happened - to some, Atlas would be at fault, while to others - Faunus would be at fault.

Discrimination of all kinds would absolutely escalate - bigotry twists facts to its liking to "prove itself right" - mistrust spreads, and tragedy births propaganda.

And yes - White Fang is not the whole species, but to bigots, that wouldn't matter - it's an age-old tradition to take the examples of worst-of and use them as stereotypes, broad brush strokes, and all.

Destruction, discrimination, AND war are largely cyclical in no small part due to complacency and ignorance.

Need I remind you that even in "present-day Remnant" Atlas (and especially Schnees) had literal slave mines? Remnant is nowhere near close to getting rid of the uglier parts of its past.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the show is that there never were any real consequences or shockwaves from what happened at Vale - not just in terms of kingdom relations and tensions, but also in terms of Faunus rights, mistrust, and overall chaos. In a way, the show ended up making Fall of Beacon feel smaller than it actually was because of that.

The shockwaves of what happened at Beacon SHOULD affect all four main leads in different ways due to how the event connects to them as people.

It robbed us of the arc about Ruby dealing with the realities of the world and her idealism as the world around her falls apart and everyone she knows is hurt (and few of her closest friends are dead)

It robbed us of the arc about Weiss having to face the oppressive privileged nature of her family and things in her life she took for granted.

It robbed us of the arc about Blake having to face the increasingly hostile world around her as she struggles to find her path and face her own indecisiveness and hypocrisy.

It robbed us of Yang having to deal with the fallout of the tournament and the uncertain chaotic reality of the world around her as she's searching for a goal of her own.

It's one of the first things I thought about when I started outlining my plans years ago. There are multiple avalanche effects planned out for more than one part of the setting and characterization of the leads.

[moonymode]

re: a conversation with @casurlaub in the replies of this post about harry having never done anything wrong in his life (source: trust me). replying here because i wrote too much 😅:

i agree with you, it's wild because i have not only also seen people genuinely frame harry as draco's bully, but go further and insist that harry is just willfully cruel, like as a character flaw. which is obviously ironic cause that's draco's entire personality for the first 5 books, especially irt his treatment of harry, as you said! and the sectumsempra thing is crazy to bring up w/o acknowledging draco's purposeful use of crucio. which is in contrast to harry's misinformed use of sectumsempra, something we know harry wouldn't have used deliberately knowing the effects (we know this because harry feels terrible about it but the way this works in fandom is that when a character expresses guilt for anything that means they're actually the worst person alive by their own admission. because it's famously true that only the worst people admit to their mistakes and try to do better. which is really just an unassailable argument in many ways). this is where someone who isn't me might criticize harry's carelessness in trying out a spell he doesn't know on another person. which is kind of valid but not as evidence of moral failure. and i would argue that harry has no reason to assume a fellow 16 year old such as himself would ever invent something as twisted as sectumsempra, not the least his funny, downtrodden friend the half-blood prince who helps him with his potions homework! his little friend who harry has been relating to and empathizing with for most of the novel! the scene is partly so shocking because we as readers are also not expecting it. no one @ me about harry's stupidity in trusting another supposedly evil book, snape's old potions notes simply cannot be compared to a horcrux that possesses and kills people and i don't have time to draft up a defensive essay on harry's mental state in hbp and how that informs his parasocial relationship with teenage snape; the point is that harry would never deliberately maim someone.

and beyond the fact that harry's hostility towards draco can't be isolated from draco's years-long campaign to harass him and his friends (and which as you point out is almost always reactive, not something harry often initiates himself), there's an explicit reason for why their conflict escalates as much as it does in hbp; draco's ideologies aren't hypothetical anymore, people are being killed, draco's father was involved in the murder of harry's godfather and the attempted murder (and successful injuring) of harry's friends months prior. harry has real reason to suspect that draco is now continuing his father's legacy and, crucially, is the only one working to corroborate or prevent that. like it's wild that harry actually makes such a concerted effort to involve anyone he can in his suspicions in hbp, more so than he ever has before. and he is routinely dismissed and mocked for it (and also actively gaslit by dumbledore lmao). it's funny cause that's a huge running theme throughout the books; harry cannot rely on others, esp not adults, to save him or his loved ones. this is harry's belief (that he again tries to correct in hbp, which ends up proving him sadly right) but it's also a huge part of the narrative, it's an inescapable fact of harry's life. the fact that people read harry's behavior in hbp as unreasonable or malicious and not profoundly defensive after the events of ootp is really strange, but also frustratingly typical. it's no wonder that harry stalks draco; no one will listen to harry when he says he's a threat. the times that harry has defeated voldemort in the past have often relied on information he's gleaned in a clandestine fashion, of course the morality of such behavior is greyed out by the consequences of inaction (which are by this point unspeakable). and most important of all, the crux of this entire debate, is that harry fucking literally is right about his suspicions that draco is working for voldemort. like it's so relevant perhaps thee most relevant that draco literally does almost get all of harry's friends killed by letting the death eaters into the school, and harry has suspected this for the entire novel, has been shut down at every turn to prevent it, and it's only harry's intervention (LITERAL GOOD LUCK) that saves them. if it's possible to justify draco's behavior through the pressure and coercion voldemort puts on him in hbp, the logical imperative is to afford the same leniency to harry. literally of all people.

in conclusion: i'm not going to argue that harry isn't reckless or sometimes negligent as a general rule, but any argument that blames harry for reacting imperfectly to violence and danger, especially in comparison to consistently antagonistic characters (that embody ideologies which are themselves implicitly and later explicitly and demonstrably violent), is hypocritical and just, like fucking dumb. like it's just dumb as fuck. i've talked about how the fanbase tends to hold more empathy for racist villains and i think that's relevant to understanding why people sympathize with draco over harry. but i think it's also a matter of media illiteracy which is a phrase that's kind of losing its luster at this point but i really constantly see this persistent cognitive dissonance in fans that say and even think they're progressive, whatever that means to them, and then fully unironically think that the unequivocally fascist characters were more sympathetic for suffering the consequences of their own actions vs the imperfect reactions of the heroes to combat um literal death by those characters. like i don't even know if i can reasonably expect people who still engage uncritically with hp to be capable of understanding jkr's mid writing past a level so shallow not even a worm could drown in it. anyway thank you for listening <3

[citadelofmythoughts]

https://www.tumblr.com/citadelofmythoughts/751236349698375680/httpswwwredditcomrrwbycomments1cy3mvxcomm

Yeah, for all of Adam's very real evil actions, a point of the series is that he WAS a legitimate victim of genuine horrors inflicted on him.

Where he went wrong was that he found a group of people who was willing to help him and gave him basically everything he needed to turn his situation into a fight for justice...and instead he twisted and exploited them for his own selfish bloodlust instead, nearly destroying them in the process.

That's a pretty constant point, in that the villains are right that there is great evil and horrible things that Remnant's societies suffer from, that something DOES have to be done about them and that the heroes aren't inherently correct about protecting the status quo...BUT at the same time, Adam is still a bad guy because he chose to focus on handling things in the worst way possible, prioritizing himself in a way that ensured that no real conversation, no real change could occur for the sake of shortsighted decisions that almost killed any chance of true growth and progress.

Being on the right side of a ideological conflict doesn't make villainous actions less villainous, much like how being heroic doesn't inherently make being on the wrong side of an ideological conflict any less wrong, and RWBY embodies this to a T.

There's no cause to celebrate Another soul consumed by hate and spite Another destroyed life There's no pleasure, there's no joy It's just a story of a boy Who lost his way into shadows strayed He'll see the light of day

Nevermore, nevermore

[homenecromancer]

I intend to post the full text of this story at some point, but there’s a whole lot of formatting I would need to manually copy over, and I am not doing that right now. So here is a radio play of Frederick Pohl’s “The Tunnel Under The World”.

(If you can’t access this, or it isn’t loading, this is X Minus One, episode 42.)

The radio play aired on March 14th, 1956, just over a year after the short story was published in Galaxy Science Fiction. Not every story in Galaxy (or in Astounding Science Fiction, which also provided stories for X Minus One) got adapted for radio. Many of those that did are either classics in their own right — such as “Cold Equations” or “There Will Come Soft Rains” — or are by classic science fiction authors — such as Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague du Camp, or Robert Heinlein. But boy are there some clunkers in the bunch.

This story isn’t bad. It passes the time. Its construction makes sense, and the plot moves along quickly. There are just, like, two plot twists too many for me, and the whole thing consequently feels overstuffed — the small amount of charm it has for me is in exactly that quality, because I do find it fun when an author seems to just be throwing all their ideas in at one time.

So… why talk about a story I don’t like very much? Well, this is the worst story I intend to actually post about — there’s a whole lot of stuff on Project Gutenberg I clicked on, rolled my eyes at, and closed the tab. This is not the worst that’s out there, not by a long shot. And in its pervasive sense of paranoia, it does serve a couple of valuable purposes:

1. You could probably use this to demonstrate to a class what exactly people mean when they say “People were, indeed, paranoid about Communists hiding in their communities for a hot second, and that seeped outward into fiction of all sorts”. Here you go. A short story where enemy agents representing a strange ideology have compromised an entire American town to their fiendish ends. That’s it. That’s the whole entire plot. The tension is figuring out what exactly their ideology is. This time they’re not aliens, though!

2. I’ve read a whole lot of Philip K. Dick, and this made me appreciate Dick’s specific weirdo skill at evoking a crushing sense of the whole world being in a conspiracy against the protagonist. I dunno. Maybe I just like Dick’s writing better overall. But I can tell you that if you find this story interesting, Ubik and Time Out of Joint may intrigue you. (And I will apologize for Dick’s specific flaws as a writer ahead of time. He was really not very good at writing women, or men thinking about women.)

Come to think of it, that does bring up something else I’ve wanted to mention. X Minus One is overall good — if nothing else it’s a good sampler platter of 1950s science fiction — but of 127 broadcast episodes, just 2 are based on stories written by a woman. Two. And they’re both by the same author (Katherine MacLean, whose work I recommend). It’s not like there was a shortage of women writing science fiction… their stories just didn’t make it to this specific radio program. And there are some good science fiction stories written by women in the 1950s out there; as I work my way down my list of bookmarks, we will come to them in due turn.

Also, this isn’t my least favorite episode of X Minus One. That honor goes to “The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert Heinlein, which has a heavy emphasis on fictional songs written by the protagonist. And they all suck.

[thecleverqueer]

Pure speculation and likely a lot of head canon, but this is how I think everything likely happened between Ahsoka and Sabine…

(While I think the Master/ Padawan relationship was the best complex relationship to explore with Ahsoka since a romance or her own child would be super lame and out of character, it is odd that Filoni chose Sabine. But, part of me thinks that it all either clicked in his head and he assumed we all knew what happened, or he wrongfully thought Fandom could fill in the blanks)

Anyway, here goes:

In my mind, and likely right after the Battle of Lothal, Ahsoka showed up there looking for Ezra as promised to find a broken Sabine trying to hold it together after losing 1/3 of her Ghost Family to death/ disappearance and the other 2/3 to the larger Rebellion. Sabine had made a promise to watch over Lothal, and that was what she was primarily committed to doing. Ahsoka and Sabine likely trauma bonded pretty quickly, and began going on adventures together in Ahsoka’s T-6 shuttle with Huyang (who I think likely joined up with Ahsoka early on in the Rebellion. It is my theory that he was the one that inevitably rescued her from Malachor).

One of their first adventures was likely a failed attempt to find Ezra (this is what I think they were probably doing during a New Hope).

After being unable to find their long lost friend, Ahsoka and Sabine likely helped the Rebellion when necessary, but were probably more likely just helping people or pockets of resistance than fighting the Empire directly. Anakin’s betrayal shattered Ahsoka in many ways, and the politics behind it all likely twisted her stomachs (yeah, togs have two of those). Sabine probably liked this better as well because it reminded her of a simpler time with the Ghost Crew.

They likely met Luke Skywalker for the first time during this time. Hera likely kept in close contact with Sabine, and she told her about the destruction of the first Death Star. And while Ahsoka was likely incredibly reluctant to disclose any details about her fallen Master, Sabine knew his name and Luke’s existence intrigued Ahsoka (albeit probably also weirded her out a bit where she was unwilling to stay around for too long).

All the while, Sabine likely needled Ahsoka to train her as a Jedi. She probably mentioned it often, and dropped it into conversations frequently. Sabine would want to cling to something that reminded her of Kanan and Ezra, having been raised by the former and grown up alongside the latter. Ahsoka probably saw something within Sabine, possibly a force spark. There were teases in Rebels that Sabine had very slight sensitivities to the force (rewatch “The Trials of the Dark Saber” arc and the “Wolves and the Door” / “World between Worlds” arc as reference, and REALLY squint). A reluctant Ahsoka probably thought to herself, “What the hell, right? She’s not THAT force sensitive! It’s not as if her power will damn the galaxy to fall into a sinking hole of darkness if the worst aspects of my dumpster fire of a lineage seep into her by my teachings.”

Ahsoka likely began to impart her wisdom on Sabine, but was not fully committed to it herself. Ahsoka looked at her legacy and saw a wake of death and destruction that shook her to her core. She thought of her time fighting in the Clone Wars being trained more as a warrior than a Jedi (likely the source of her “I’m no Jedi” sentiments; questions and concerns more than a lack of commitment to the ideology or code). She remembered encountering her older self in the cave on Mortis, warning her that the seeds of darkness were planted inside her by her master. It scared her. Also knowing exactly what happened to her master at that point (with the knowledge of Luke’s existence), she likely became even more cold, stoic and detached; fearful that her own attachments to people could make her vulnerable to the temptation of the darkness.

Their adventures continued… but then, the destruction of Mandalore happened.

As soon as Sabine caught wind of this, she flew furiously off of the rails as Sabine does. Sabine was always impulsive and emotional. She wanted to take the Empire on, full-frontal once again. Ahsoka likely contacted Bo-Katan to assess the situation, and to see if there was anything that they could do to help. Bo-Katan told Ahsoka that it was a lost cause, and to protect Sabine at all costs (Ursa’s dying request for maximum pain), one of the few remaining Mandalorians and the last remaining member of Clan Wren. Sabine and Ahsoka fought hard, loudly and contemptuously about this. Ahsoka tried to reason with Sabine, but she wanted to go scorched-Earth. Sabine’s rage panicked Ahsoka. Ahsoka stayed to keep Sabine in check on Lothal until the dust settled, and then Ahsoka left without a word. Sabine thought that it meant that Ahsoka didn’t trust her to do the right thing, or to fight for the right causes. Ahsoka thought if Sabine had any capacity to use the force, this deep-seated anger and her inability to let go could become problematic.

Sabine remained on Lothal to keep her promise to Ezra, broken and downtrodden. With Ahsoka and her family gone, and with Hera, Zeb, and Chopper busy with the New Republic, she felt incredibly alone and refocused her energy on finding her long-lost friend …even though that felt hopeless too.

Ahsoka, also broken and downtrodden, continued to travel alone with Huyang to protect the people in the galaxy; quietly working towards peace and justice, following the Jedi ideology and code, but never truly feeling worthy of the title. When she ran into Din requesting her to take on Grogu as a padawan, not only did it frighten her further, it stung.

Din said, “A Mandalorian and a Jedi? They’ll never see it coming.”

Ahsoka smiled fondly, a deep regret inside her formed as her failure with Sabine marinated, missing Sabine dearly, and she thought, “If you only knew the half of it…”

[rathologic]

hi, sorry to send something again so soon 😅

so, the religion Clara tries to convert people to in P1. is it meant to be a spin on Christianity? because there are references to God, figures from the Bible, and many mentions of Heaven and Hell. P2 Clara especially seems to have a much more religious aspect to her character (if the “God loves me 😌” line doesn’t give that away)

and i’ve always been really curious about that. is it an altered version of Christianity? (i say altered because i know Clara has a line in P2 where she’s like “why does everyone think God is up above us? he’s down below!”)

the "religion" she's converting people to is the ideology of Humility, as developed by yulia lyuricheva and katerina saburova -- I'd summarize it as "justification of sacrifice to keep the world in order". the Law it maintains is the same as that which aglaya is an instrument of, but it's also integrated into the Kin's cosmology (moreso in p2 with one of p2's worst twists). humility itself is the mechanism of the saburovs' insane death gamble to save the town via clara, so it's also manipulation all the way down :-)

The first thing, the original creation, was the Earth. The ancient one, giving life to plants and animals. She begat the Abattoir; she begat the Kin. She gives and she takes. The dead go into her; everything ends with her. She is the inception and the completion. Such is the Law. We, the Saburovs, act in the interests of the Law, by which everyone must abide. Ours is a faith of Humility.

The faith of humility is a faith for the doomed. Whoever is resigned to death deserves to die.

Let me tell you about the Law. It's not a state law, but rather a natural one. When mysterious evil emerges from nonexistence, it's a clear sign that this law has been violated. Disease is a retribution for trespassers. It's an attempt to restore the balance.

the thing with all of the Humbles is that they believe themselves responsible for the tragedy that's befallen the town, by way of some immediate or past misdeed, and by converting them to the faith of Humility they agree to sacrifice their lives to stop the plague. while the idea of the humbles' "sin" and of a "miracle" in this framework are basically christian, I'd say that comes from the lens of how Clara is interfacing with the idea of humility, and not a foundational way of describing it as a religion

which is because Clara herself 100% identifies with what I'd call not altered, but neutered christianity - the type of cultural implicit christianity where text and worship aren't rigorous (per there not being any functional religious meeting places in the town) but like the ideas are there. patho goes to some lengths to avoid mentioning, e.g., jesus, but the biblical tie-ins especially re: peter stamatin, the idea of the Cathedral, and the dialogue you mentioned lay out that the settler-town is influenced by a basically christian worldview. though I don't have the background on Russian christianity to give any implementation details 😄 (this also applying to pathologic being written from mostly the same cultural context)

+ the changeling justifies her existence (having woken up in a grave five minutes ago) by believing she's a saint and miracle-worker, which in the context of the town's beliefs, of her being a kid, and of how she finds her powers to work, spin into mysticism where within this culturally christian baseline (a post I drafted this very week basically asks why this is the case for newborn clara, given that she's ultimately better described by the Kin's beliefs and imagery) she bends the rules to portray herself as more legitimate (consciously or not) i.e. the voiceline in 2 above. so since she's the point-of-view character for 95% of the interaction the player has with humility, it gets translated through her own lens :-)

[yangzhouman]

long post about batman beyond because i have feelings

batman beyond is so damn bleak in the obvious ways and yet it goes all the way thru. like it initially positions itself as a story about how “keeping it in the family” just ends up with dead family members and the only way out of being eaten by generational trauma is to abandon the family structure. what bruce and terry have at the start is loose and resistant to definition even when others try (”your keeper’s here” and “who else could take care of his affairs? he has no wife, no children.” / “me. i could do it.” / ) and when they (meaning terry and bruce) eventually label it as an employer/employee kinda thing it feels fresh. 

when you’re the best man for the job you can call your boss a bitch. and he’s not gonna be in your living room at the end of a stressful day. there’s distance. there’s employee rights. they both care deeply about their job and eventually about each other but there’s no guilt when the job gets in the way, because there’s nothing for it to get in the way of -- their relationship IS batman.

it feels un-familial EVEN WHEN the family metaphor gets pushed onto them. it’s important that bruce isn’t terry’s father; terry has a father that he loves, and bruce needs to come to terms with a more impersonal, wider guilt of being an ageing bat in a city that will never stop needing batman. when others do try to conceptualise whats going on with terry and bruce thru a family lens, it jars because that straight up isn’t the connection they have, and people can tell -- they’re just missing the context of both being batman.

it’s good! it’s really good! it turns batman on its head by looking at it as an ideological gap that people can slip into, rather than something that is handed down, man to boy, with a clear lineage and direction -- now it’s an analytical framework of vigilantism that is open to all who feel brave. widening batman up like this makes barbara’s relationship with bruce & batman a little more complex too, as she is distinctly not a wayne and does not see bruce as her father, but still stepped into a sort of shadow/partner role to the big bat (misogyny... she’s proto-terry in the context of batman beyond but why does terry get to be more? questions i know the answer to.)

imo batman beyond, when at its best, makes batman a possibility: a nebulous idea that centres around gotham and righteousness rather than an individual and his grief. it’s a way out for bruce in particular, who calls himself batman in his own head but has to come to terms with a new bat who has no debt with him in any way -- and he grows in that safe relationship. as an old man! he grows!

and then. and then. oh my god. oh my godddd dc falls to its old ways and terry becomes bruce’s biological son? he gets narutofied*? it is single-handedly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. there is no escape! batman is bruce wayne and can only be bruce wayne. it/he is a trap that absorbs anyone who comes near! batfam is a curse that infects and infects! i am putting up with it because i like batman beyond so much even with this. but god. what a letdown what a needless twist in a universe that already has MANY cloning stories and MANYYYYY biological heir stories

*this refers to uzumaki naruto from NARUTO who starts as a nameless orphan in a hostile world, but then discovers that he is actually the son of two very important people, which stands in opposition to the earlier story beats and makes him special in a way that i find very gross, as it cheapens the work that he has done as a character-in-story to carve out a place for himself in the narrative world, and shows a lack of commitment on the author’s part to challenging storytelling by relying on the tired shonen tropes of bloodline rights and inherited power as proof of character significance

[thephantomcasebook]

Are the show writers aware that the Blacks are not the underdogs of the story? These guys have more dragons and more houses on their side. The only issue is Rhaenyra's sex but she has that more or less covered by marrying Daemon who is viewed by the misogynistic lords as the true power behind team black.

On the opposite aisle there's the Greens with fewer dragons and fewer houses. They are led indirectly by the Queen Alicent and Otto. Only by grit, stubbornness and spite did the Greens pull a surprising twist in the end, wiping out Rhaenyra and Daemon not only physically but also from the histories of Targaryen Kings and Queens. Many people assume the greens are the top dogs because they have a male heir and tradition favors their side. But the show has given almost no indication of any of these being an advantage. In fact the characters and their cause is treated with outrage and scorn in the show writing itself...as if they're making a grave mistake of challenging Rhaenyra's claim.

So which is which with these writers? I for one don't see The Blacks as the underdogs of the story. But thaz just me.

The show was built up and pitched as "The Avengers" of ASoIaF - basically GRRM's favorite characters - coming together to fight the evil-doers.

Now, on the surface, GRRM's world and writing doesn't work that way. However, when you get a bunch of room temperature IQ HBO Executives who are agenda minded over story telling, you get the good progressives vs. bad conservatives narrative that is germinated through-out the show. And I know that for a fact because - a now fired - former executive from HBO admitted that personally at a party that "Progressive Agenda" in their content was mandated in the "Trump Era".

So, to be fair, The Greens didn't stand a chance of getting a fair shake from the get go. It was basically mandated by the Studio Heads of the time that the Greens had to be an allegory for Trump Supporting Catholics. It was actually a selling point to Sapochnik who felt so fucking strongly about American Politics that shit for brains had to make some artistic statement - or his wife did.

They've dog whistled the Greens being bad from the beginning, from Criston beating to death a gay man to trying to make Alicent look like a Hypocrite by actively skewering Aegon's character from the beginning to make her both a bad mother and Stockholm victim of her own ideology.

Cause let me tell you as a minority - who looks like Criston Cole/ Fabian Frankel could be my brother (I'm not kidding) - and who is Roman Catholic and staunchly in support of Trump, there is nothing that a privileged white progressive hates more than a conservative woman - especially if she's a minority.

Alicent is and remains a lightning rod for every sexist and bigoted progressive to take out their weird and creepy hatred of women on and still claim themselves virtuous because of their assured cultist beliefs, it's fucking strange.

Also, the other problem is that the Normie fandom has been trained by "Game of Thrones" to root for the people with silver hair and the traditional Red Three-Headed dragon on a sable field. while the book readers, who should know by now from "Fire and Blood" and especially "Dunk and Egg" that the Targaryens are the fucking worst - which is the whole point of Dunk teaching Egg to be better than his family throughout the series. The hardcore ASoIaF fandom read obsessively but don't question the narrative as a whole.

@duxbelisarius did a 12 part Military Breakdown of the conflict and all the inconsistencies. But still, your average GRRM fanboy will agree it's fucking stupid, but let GRRM's bias in the narrative dictate their point of view. And in the end they just crave the blood shed and darker elements. Which - to be fair - has always been a part of the fandom since I joined it in 2009 when I was 19.

There's just a ton of factors, but those are the big ones.

Studio/Showrunners political mandates in the "Trump Era"

"Game of Thrones" residual bias for the normie fandom

GRRM bias toward characters creating false sense virtuous protagonists.

And a near fandom wide conditioning of disliking institution supporting moral characters.

I could write an essay about it all after 14 years, but that's what I've got tonight/this morning

[propheticclown]

Conversations with my partners always have an inevitable point in them where I get compared to a fictional character they like. It'll be a nice conversation, I'll be yapping my head off about a thing and then they'll go "You know what that reminds me of?" and I know that I'm about to be compared to one of three characters.

Nagito Komaeda

The second I start talking about my ideologies, it's like my partner sees me doing his fuckass sprites. 2. Edgar Allen Poe (BSD)

Probably the best character I can be compared to on the list. He's a tad odd but I take it as slight reassurance because he's their favorite BSD character. But then there's the worst one. 3. Eridan Ampora

This will happen at the most inconvenient of times. It is never a pleasant day when I'm compared to my least favorite Homestuck character. Whenever my partner compares me to him, I feel as though a sin has been personally committed against me and God for that matter. It is an outrageous claim to make and my soul withers away every time it happens. The sky darkens and dread consumes my inner being the second the vile name is wrought from my partners angelic lips. A voice so beautiful shouldn't even utter the demonic name. The egregious offense that is made through this comparison is astronomical, practically tantamount to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. I don't know what sins I have committed to make my darling derive, what I can only assume to be a twisted form of satisfaction from comparing me to the unholy being, but I fear that there will be no forgiveness or cleansing of my soul and this ceaseless torment will continue to plague the very fibers of my being until all my manners of existence are erased from every conceivable corner of the universe and perhaps even beyond that. Although I fear I have no one to blame but myself, for being so vile myself. A despicable monster that was somehow graced by my love's presence. I am no better than those they compare me to, even worse perhaps. I exist as the embodiment of shame and wish that I could pass from my own self-loathing, but nay. I remain. I remain as a reminder to myself that misery is naught but a close acquaintance to my personage. My worth is derived through how I may entertain others. I am but a clown of tragedy.