#two fulcrums

[b-radley66]

Wonderful commission from @punkzcakes of two Fulcrums. The ‘other’ Fulcrum is an OC known only as Face; she was raised by a Mandalorian after she tried to pick his pocket. Ahsoka realized that she needed to be in more places than she could be. Of course, this is either a discussion of Rebellion Things (tm) or Face trying to get Fulcrum-Prime to audition for dancing at the club. Fulcrum-Prime maintains that she doesn’t need to audition, she has experience dancing on Jabba’s sail-barge, which is a story in itself.

Please, go visit @punkzcakes and if they have commissions available, commission them! They are so talented and great to work with!

[fernesaul]

I am, in fact, a simple person

Give me a repressed brain washed freckled man and a big fluffy rebel catman and I'll draw them kissing

[oftenlyshitposting]

*ezra and sabine sibling-arguing heatedly*

shin: ...what's going on?

ahsoka: entertainment

hera: more like repeated history, i say

shin: what? what do you mean?

jacen: they're doing the 2nd mandalorian-jedi war

ezra & sabine: ENOUGH OF THAT JOKE

shin: you're right, 'soka, it is entertainment

[barissoffee]

They spent the entire season of Ahsoka trying to convince the audience that Sabine and Ahsoka have this deep and meaningful Jedi Master and Apprentice relationship but it's just not believable at all plus it doesn't help that we never saw that relationship develop pre-ahsoka show and also that they probably only said two words to each other in star wars rebels

[blaiddraws]

it appears "tomorrow" has brought sleepy cuddles... 2!!!! nimbasa edition

[triumviiirate]

i spend a lot of time thinking about the empty space between jim and bones at spock's funeral

[chrometheraptor]

[aceofstars16]

Also what are your thoughts on mabcifica?

As friends, great! As a ship, not a fan 🥴

[the-headless-horsedude]

i've decided, since i don't have enough things going on, to make the scavengers out of perler beads! up first was krok and spinister!

[cyber-streak-2]

Fulcrum: Why are you hitting me??

Spinister: Because I thought you were a dead mech coming back to life.

Fulcrum: Then why were you hitting me??

Spinister: Dead people should stay dead!

[seth-shitposts]

Force User Zeb AU - Ch IV - The Warrior & The Fool

Heh, hello. I am here to drop the next chapter of our Force User Zeb AU fic.

This chapter covers how Kallus gets recruited as a fulcrum agent. its much shorter than the previous chap, but i really enjoyed writing it heh. I hope yall enjoy it as well!!

[trek-tracks]

As an English professor who teaches writing and rhetoric, I actually use Kirk, Spock, and McCoy all the time when I'm teaching my students about the balance between Ethos (credibility and authority), Logos (logic and reason), and Pathos (emotion and idealism).

If there's an imbalance or over-reliance on any of them (say, if Kirk uses only his authority as captain as the reason for a decision, if Spock focuses too rigidly on a logical outcome without considering reality, or if McCoy protests too emotionally without examining the bigger picture), the story tends to comment on the resulting errors in judgment and negative consequences.

That's why they're so perfectly positioned to comment on philosophical issues; the ideal is a balance between all three. While it doesn't always lead to a perfect solution (because usually there isn't one), their harmony often gives us one of the better choices. That's also why, in my opinion, the series doesn't work as a balance between Kirk and Spock alone, requiring Kirk, Spock, AND McCoy to reach its full potential.

Basically, if you take my class, you *will* get a Star Trek reference at some point. Whether my students consider that a good thing or not is really up to them. :)

Them: Describe Star Trek: The Original Series in three images.

Me:

[sunatsubu]

It's finally done! Some story ramblings below:

Was thinking of two possible scenarios:

This would be when Kallus is still undercover as Fulcrum, and he comes across the Spectres during one of their missions which of course goes sideways so he has to cover their escape. BUT he gets hurt doing so and chaos happens and basically the only way to help the Spectres escape is to sabatoge the ship. Kallus is too injured to move and resigns to go down with it, believing he's not worth saving but fine with that as long as the Spectres make it out safely. BUT of course Zeb is having none of that and comes back for him! Saves him just in the nick of time and the rest of the ship goes down so Kallus's undercover status stays intact.

OR

An alternate way for Kallus's final full defection to play out, he manages to get away from Thrawn but is still badly hurt and doesn't make it onto an escape pod. Somehow Zeb manages to get onto the ship (or maybe was already on the ship for whatever Plot reasons) and comes to save him.

[revelboo]

Oh no, I have a feeling the Scavengers are NOT gonna like their little human asking to go home…

Not particularly

Lifeless Ordinary Pt 6

Scavengers x Reader

• “What do you mean ‘no?’” You demand and Misfire hates that the crook might have been right about it being better not understanding you. Because then he wouldn’t have to listen to this argument, keeping an optic on Spinister as the medic gets increasingly agitated. “I don’t belong here.” No, but if he has his way, you aren’t going anywhere. He likes having you around and that realization surprises him.

• Nervously clicking at the device in his hand, Krok grimaces behind his mask. It’s not like he doesn’t understand why you’re upset, but even if they knew where your world was, he’s not wasting the fuel to get there and risk stranding the ship. “Sorry, tiny. You’re a Scavenger now,” Misfire says, baring his denta when you glare at him. “Deal with it.”

• Hasn’t he taken care of you? Misfire’s the one that kept poisoning you, not him. Spinister reaches for you, curling his servos around you and lifting you to cradle against his neck. Glaring defiantly at the rest of the crew, before carrying you to his quarters. Feels you pushing at him. “Spinister! This is important,” you tell him, frustration evident. So is keeping you happy. You only think you want to go home. Cupping you to him with one hand, he finds your stuffed animal and pushes it at you until you take it with a sigh. “You realize I’m an adult, right?”

• “I’m not stupid,” he growls and you wince at his tone. Because it had honestly occurred to you that the big guy isn’t a genius. Leaning against the warm mesh of his neck, you feel his big servos rubbing against your side and hip. “I just have trouble remembering things. Focusing. I get angry.”

• You lay a small, warm hand against him and he doesn’t know how to explain that it’s a bit easier to focus with you around. That this place feels more like a home with something uniting them. Something they all care about even if the others don’t want to admit it. That he might come apart completely if you try to leave, so he can’t allow it. You’re a good thing. His. He found you. And he’s keeping you.

• “You gonna get their home world’s location from Swindle?” Crankcase asks Krok. Can feel the tension on the bridge. Even Fulcrum looking uneasy as they wait on Krok’s decision. Knows it’d probably be best for you, to go back. Primus, knows they’re awful at caring for an organic. Just a bunch of dysfunctional failures and rejects, the dregs of the Decepticon army. But they’d banded together into something that while still very dysfunctional, he’s willing to fight for. And that little human is a Scavenger now, too. Lost just like the rest of them.

• “Misfire’s right. The human is one of us,” Fulcrum says, knowing that his opinion probably means very little to the others. Too new to them himself, but after a few false starts, they’d accepted him. Made him feel welcome among them. This may not be what you want, but it’s what they need. Spinister and Crankcase are both less volatile with you around. And it’s not just those two, everyone is more relaxed lately. Surely Krok’s noticed that. And it’s not like any of their lives went the way they wanted, but they’re okay. You will be, too.

Previous

Next

[wifelinkmtg]

This was intended to be an essay about chivalry—its history, its uses, its various incarnations—medieval violence, the Romantic reinterpretation, the ideal of chivalry in the American South and its attendant lynch mobs. I would have talked about the chivalric triad: Knight, Innocent, Enemy—the way the Innocent serves as a fulcrum for the Knight to enact violence against the Enemy—the iterations of this triad in any number of places in our society, from the so-called sheepdog mentality trained into our police to the legion of revenge-fantasy Taken clones. I would have talked about the way Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling incorporates chivalry with the sacrifice of Isaac, the theology of self-justified suffering that comes from that. I would have talked at some length about various portrayals of lesbian chivalry in media—Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Locked Tomb books, Signalis—how they use it, what they say about it, and whether at the end there is anything worth salvaging from this intrinsically violent way of relating to the world, to others, to oneself, to God.

I think a version of that essay might still be worth writing someday, but right now, there's something I need to talk about much more urgently. Right now, there's something I suspect you might desperately need to hear. Today I'm going to talk about Godzilla.

GODZILLA SAVED MY LIFE: A Polemic

Godzilla Minus One (2024) takes place in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Its protagonist, Koichi, is a failed kamikaze pilot who in the opening scenes is repeatedly excoriated for his cowardice and dereliction of duty. When he returns home to a bombed and desolate Tokyo, his bereaved neighbor tells him, if people like you had done their duty, this would not have happened. The film spends the rest of its runtime doggedly refuting this idea. It says, out loud, that the relentless calculus of sacrifice that turns men into things to be spent has no place in this world, that it is needless and cruel. It is not subtle about this point. It is not trying to be.

I saw this movie in its black and white version in theaters in February, on the last day of its run. Its version of Godzilla inspires in me both terror and near-religious awe. It looms over the film, an echo both of the devastation of the war and of Koichi's guilt and shame, its presence inviting—demanding—the final consummation of the mission he abandoned.

I wept in that theater. I gripped my friend's hand and I sobbed. This is unlike me (unless I'm watching Gunbuster), and it took four days for me to work out why this Godzilla movie had affected me so profoundly.

arkansas kamikaze

and she looked, and behold! a beast rose from the sea, and against the beast he breathed glory in a Zero dive. his beatified smile shone from the wreck of the Little Rock Planned Parenthood clinic. and a great wind blew out of heaven, and she woke

and made breakfast, and watched her son wholly absorbed in Bonhoeffer, found her lipstick worn down to the nub for practice stigmata, and saw for a moment the dove descending, the tongue of fire over his head.

The thing about being raised in a right-wing fundamentalist family is that you are from birth being prepared to be a weapon, or a martyr, and there is really no difference between those two things. If my mother had had her way, I would have gone to a tiny far-right college and studied law for the sole and explicit purpose of getting Roe v. Wade overturned. She would, I believe, have settled for me bombing an abortion clinic. Certainly it would have been easier for her to reconcile with that than with what I became instead.

The other thing about being raised in a right-wing fundamentalist family is, some things stick. And it's very hard to notice, as your beliefs and values and identity undergo radical changes, that there is still a whisper in you that believes in the power of the glorious death, of the ultimate virtue of strapping explosives to your chest and walking into the halls of the Enemy. And when you feel helpless, when you watch systems and institutions that ought to prevent atrocities instead encourage them, that whisper grows louder and louder and louder.

Watching Koichi fly his last mission, watching him an instant before impact eject, and live—watching everyone live through the final confrontation because they had all rejected the calculus of sacrifice—allowed me to see also for the very first time this parasitic idea that had grown coiled inside me since infancy, allowed me to see where it had come from, its whole monstrous lineage, and then it allowed me to take hold of it and pull it out.

Twenty days later, Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, in protest of the still-ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. He was, like me, raised in a right-wing fundamentalist environment. He was, like one of my siblings, a member of the US Armed Forces radicalized by his experiences and his own conscience. People called him a hero and martyr—on this very site, in responses to the excellent Crimethinc piece circulating at the time, I saw people saying they felt like they should follow suit (even though the article in question explicitly and repeatedly warned against it!) As if the loss of a person of conscience and conviction could be anything other than a tragedy, as if anyone in power choosing to support the genocide could regard the death of one of their own soldiers as anything other than what soldiers are for, as if the moral response to a genocide could ever be to add another corpse to the mountain—and still I saw people lionizing him, praising his courage and his sacrifice, all but telling people to follow in his footsteps.

No. Aaron Bushnell was a suicide. He lived his whole life within organizations that taught him that he could purchase more with his death than he could ever accomplish with his life, and while we may praise his conscience, we can only mourn his loss and the grievous error that led him to it.

This is the thing about learning to see this parasite: you begin to see it everywhere. Our history for millennia is awash with human sacrifice: Abraham and Isaac, Jephthah and his nameless daughter, Agamemnon and Iphigenia, the crucifixion of Jesus—and later, litanies, row upon row of dead saints, stories of glorious last stands. The courageous martyred dead: blood and corpses, only and always, to Moloch.

In light of the recent US election, perhaps many of my American readers are feeling shock or horror or despair. I understand, and without blame, with love and gentleness, I tell you that this is because you have not correctly understood the scope of the problem. You imagine a discontinuity between the liberal version of American capitalism and imperialism and the fascist version of the same. No such discontinuity exists. Things will no doubt be different for us here in the US than they would otherwise be, and probably worse, but there is no distinction to be made between the genocide of yesterday and the genocide of tomorrow. The enemy is the same. The work is the same.

Above all else, this is to warn you: when you do this work, when you look for a place you can put your shoulder to the wheel, there will be people who want to spend their lives—or yours—like coin to purchase some great change immediately. Perhaps they mean well, and helplessness and desperation drives them to act without regard for the consequences. Perhaps they do not mean well. Do not follow these people. Perhaps they merely expect you to go to prison, and have no plan for how to support you after that. This is barely different. It is far better for you to languish in useless liberal nonprofits which will accomplish nothing of value than to attempt radical direct action with people with correct politics and no forethought, and end up dead or imprisoned—but these are not the only two options. Aaron Bushnell cannot ever again do anything for anyone. You can.

This is as much as I know for certain. I love you. Don't die.

-------

End Notes

It would not be unreasonable to ask me, in light of what I've said here about martyrdom, what I think of it in other cultural contexts, especially since a similar word is often used to refer to e.g. Palestinian people murdered by Israeli soldiers. The answer is nothing at all. Such people get to use whatever words they want to salvage whatever meaning and comfort they can.

Godzilla Minus One, as effective a movie as it is, was not solely responsible for the scales falling from my eyes. It was an important part of the process, but I doubt it would have sufficed on its own were I not in community with people I trust and talk to about such things. "Godzilla and also my trusted friends saved my life" is, alas, a worse title.

There will be a part two to this. Part one seemed more urgent.

[paleode-ology]

so sorry to intrude but I literally said this exact thing a few hours ago and I’m crying at the collective Izzy brainrot we are all experiencing

something something Izzy telling Stede he and Ed balance each other out something something their relationship clearly still being out of balance something something Izzy can counterbalance them both