#tyrant! the story of robespierre | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nesiacha · 9 months ago

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Propaganda mediatic around Tallien and french revolution

I fully understand that certain figures of the French Revolution are preferred over others who are less liked. It's a matter of preference. I myself have a very cultured friend who is a fan of certain royalists from this period like Olympe de Gouges, although I also admire the character in a certain way and deplore the sexism of that era which excluded her (such as the fact that she totally defends Louis XVI), but I've always enjoyed debating with this person, who is so respectful of others' opinions, very knowledgeable, and well-versed in the subject. Of course, the difficulty lies in not trying to defend the golden legend or the black legend.

It's another thing entirely to invent completely grotesque or even false facts to glorify one figure of the French Revolution and destroy another. In the grotesque episode of "Les Femmes de la Révolution Française" from "Secret d'Histoire," which was actually sexist (I" love" the fact that in this show, which claims to want to glorify women, they talked about the term "demi-mondaine" for women, when will there be an equivalent term for men, or the way paternalistic that someone call Olympe de Gouges the "little" Gouges ), there were also very serious errors or lies, take your pick.

To insinuate that Marat was a dictator when he was simply a deputy who was elected by universal suffrage, a journalist whose recommendations were not heeded, and who was arrested and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal though acquitted according to the rules, what a funny dictator, I've never seen anything like that from a dictator before.

Furthermore, under what conditions would he have pulled off his coup d'état? The story continues in the next episode, I suppose, even though so far no historian has found any trace of Marat's coup d'état. I imagine the show will clarify that (or not). Under these conditions, I will address Tallien. They try to present him as heroic in the face of Thermidor when in reality everything was prepared for the theater of Thermidor, which was actually more anti-democratic than they let on and not out of the courage of this individual. They say it was Theresia's letter that motivated him to enact Thermidor when in reality it's because Fouché and his gang, of which he was a part, committed the worst atrocities during the French Revolution, and he wanted to escape the punishment that would rightly fall upon him and his friends and try to regain political "purity" by pinning everything on those who were to be executed (he later demanded the head of Billaud Varennes to further absolve himself). There are other motives regarding Thermidor that have nothing to do with the Convention wanting to get rid of a tyrant (Robespierre has faults but not those of a dictator or tyrant) or that they were fed up with the guillotine (the guillotine continued to function after Thermidor and the Convention had voted overwhelmingly for the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, arrests, the Law of Suspects). One day I'll write a more detailed piece on what I think because it's very complex, but you can watch "Robespierre: la Terreur et la Vertu" with English subtitles, it gives a better understanding of these events.

Tallien engaged in lucrative business, arresting the richest in Bordeaux so they would hand over all their money to him for personal use. Clearly not an upright man, but very serious. His lucrative business leads me to see two possibilities. Either he plundered honest people in difficult times under the pretext that they were rich and risked ending up with nothing for his personal profit, all while abusing his position, which is generalized extortion. Or he knowingly let suspicious individuals escape in exchange for money (should we recall that some suspicious Frenchmen betrayed France by handing it over to Toulon or Dumouriez), and imposed dechristianization not out of anger like Momoro, for example, but for his political career and to flatter himself, which is worse (sorry for comparing a man like Momoro to an individual like Tallien, they are truly incomparable). Later, he joined the muscadins, among other merry groups.

In any case, it's very serious, and whatever one might say about Robespierre, he had every right to be angry. Tallien is a political turncoat and bloody as Barras (I hate Ridley Scott's Napoleon for destroying the French Revolution and glorifying Barras, among others). The difference between Tallien, Barras, and Fouché is that Tallien completely failed, and an unpopular opinion perhaps, but I'm glad to see he suffered so much; it's well-deserved karma for all the wrong he did.

P.S: I love that the show "Secret d'Histoire" shows Thermidor as a great day for prisoners, as if they don't care about arbitrary arrests after this event (including the arrests of Albertine Marat, Simone Evard, Thuillier found mysteriously hanged, the fact that some political prisoners had to wait a few months after Thermidor to be released).

#frev #french revolution #tallien #marat #thermidor #robespierre

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avergehistoryenjoyer · 1 year ago

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Hello! I redid it with an alternate album cover for the show, I hope you like it!

Bonding activity!

Colour, decorate, do whatever you want with my Maxime colouring picture!

Show your creativity!🥰

#frev #French Revolution #robespierre #Tyrant! The story of Robespierre

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avergehistoryenjoyer · 2 years ago

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And at last, here’s a preview of the show opener, “Tyrant!” Lyrics are below, thank you so much!

Long ago, in old Paris,

There lived a man so vile and obscene that

History reveres him to this day

He who led his horrid reign

Of terror, violence and pain

Has finally met his rightly deserved fate

No more shall we pray for our lives as we cower in fear!

No more shall our people be slaughtered on mass!

Rejoice and applaud, for there truly is a god

‘Cause the monster is dead; all our problems now lie in the past!

He was a tyrant!

A brutal monster

A tyrant!

A bloody dictator

Tyrant!

The likes of which you’ve never seen before, oh

Thank the lord that the honest men settled the score

So now that brutal tyrant

Can’t torture the living anymore!

#frev #french revolution #robespierre #maximilien robespierre #tyrant! the story of robespierre

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ratticus-the-emperor · 3 years ago

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i have this idea for a yuu that was immortal in their world. like; a yuu that was born somewhere along 927 AD (when England was founded) with VERY good memory.

obviously 927AD is very long ago so this yuu is old as hell but eternal life and eternal youth makes people think they're still 17-20 ish and they don't talk like an old person. this yuu isn't a boomer because they've been existing for so long and have changed with the times and stuff.

i like to imagine this yuu living through many significant events in history, befriending important figures and acquiring a superiority complex over time. so when they arrive in twisted wonderland they adapt super quickly and have a lot of interesting stories to tell.

like sometimes in history class they're talking about some war and yuu just chimes in with; "damn, this sounds like the hundred years war, can't be sure though i wasn't there for this one— not my world" and everyone just brushes it off like they're joking because they're a magicless human and stuff.

immortal!yuu also has a field day telling stories to their friends like one day they tell the adeuce duo +grim about the prohibition era while drinking canned beer that they pulled from god knows where. also probably told epel stories about when they were a pirate for a while. yeah only the first years +staff know about yuu's immortality, dorm leaders have a more comedic way of finding out.

in the rose red tyrant arc yuu makes a passing comment about how pre-overblot heartslabyul kind reminds them of the great terror with the "OFF WITH YOUR HEADS" flying around with less actual decapitation. at the revenge unbirthday party they ask yuu what they were talking about and yuu tells them about the french revolution in a very nonchalant way.

also when they talk about Robespierre they let a "i've met him by the way, he was kinda cool when he was younger but he turned creepy when he started to play god," slide by and the guys just have to do a double take because EXCUSE ME PREFECT DIDN'T YOU SAY THIS HAPPENED MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO??

this yuu is also really good at almost everything because immortality made them so bore that they decided to just randomly learn how play the hyperbass flute and do the cha cha slide. and that's where i'll end it have to go practice guitar now bye

#twisted wonderland #disney twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland yuu #twst yuu

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otnesse · 1 year ago

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He'd be a lot better if they cut out the Gaston Reprise, as that sabotaged any brilliance he might have had as a villain. Even Vladimir Lenin, himself not exactly prone to keeping his crimes or those of his Bolsheviks hidden (he was notorious for, among other things, boasting with pride that pointless and excessive cruelty was one of the fundamentals behind Marxism in response to complaints about his Cheka forces' excessive brutality), or for that matter being a huge bully towards his own forces [there's plenty of stories where he tries to bully his own inner circle into submission if they even slightly disagree with the way he conducts his plans] nevertheless was careful to avoid broadcasting his intention throughout the entire USSR to have the Romanovs assassinated, and don't get me started on how Hitler kept his genocidal plans against the Jewish people so top-secret he nearly had Heinrich Himmler brought before him to at a bare minimum scold him just for the latter indirectly alluding to it within his own office at the SS Headquarters. The comic adaptation certainly did it far better, they just had Gaston say "Crazy old Maurice... Crazy old Maurice... Hmm..." before cutting away to back at Beast's castle, and then showing him meeting with Monsieur D'Arque the next time we see him, which gave the distinct impression that he kept the other Villagers in the dark about his plans for blackmail in contrast to the film where he outright gloated his plan to blackmail Belle in front of everyone. If anything, the Gaston Reprise killed any sense of him being genuinely believeable due to the writers cynically thinking their audience was too stupid to realize Gaston was a villain already (in real life, no matter HOW much he has it made in life, if he exposed his plan in THAT manner, the villagers would turn against him, at the very least try to talk him out of it). Heck, even the remake was a lot better in that front in actually DEMONSTRATING Gaston as very manipulative, since the arrest of Maurice was less to force Belle's hand in marriage and more of a CYA to cover up attempted murder when he tried to expose it to the bar patrons (and his trying to force Belle's hand in marriage came across in that version as him simply jumping at the chance rather than the main crux of his plot).

As far as the other stuff like the references to Scar, Ursula, or Jafar, I'd say that's unfortunately VERY realistic compared to Gaston's antics (or rather, his antics if we include the Gaston Reprise), largely because that's literally how every single tyrant and dictator gained and maintained power throughout history, whether via force or even by being elected (Robespierre, Lenin, Castro, Mao Zedong, Stalin, Hitler, Putin, Obama, Mussolini, Biden, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, you name it). Heck, it's even been the case with some non-politics based stuff as well. Like Belford (the Wolf on Wall Street). And that's not even getting into wikia administrators who do by and large tended to be bullies (and unlike Gaston who literally got a pass for openly declaring his intent to persecute a harmless crackpot just to force Belle to marry him and got cheered on, I know a few weaseley mods who end up ticking off too many people and got blocked from the place they terrorized, like DocColress [too bad he found an alt in the form of TruthGuard]). If anything, the most successful bullies are the ones who KEEP their more bullying aspects secret from everyone else rather than openly engaging in it in front of everyone like Gaston did.

Gaston definitely had SOME potential to be a realistic villain, but that got squandered due to Linda Woolverton and Jeffrey Katzenberg wanting to force in a feminist message in the most blunt and crass manner possible at the time. So all in all, while he could have been a genuinely threatening villain, they squandered it to such an extent that he actually comes across as one of the more cartoonish ones purely by accident.

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frevandrest · 2 years ago

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Okay I've been very shy for a while to ask but please if just could you bless me about what know on robespierre cuz I find some people say "he wasn't a tyrant" and he didn't control on everything and the "reign of terror" and his image get f--ked by some of thermidorian propaganda so I just wanted to know the reality of WHAT THE HELL WAS REALLY HAPPENING so can you explain the idea of "reign of terror" and whether robespierre was a bloodthirsty dictator or just a person trying to fix everything but failed in the end? .. and also why he used the term of terror exactly and why some people [you know who lmao] get upset about this .. and THANK YOU <3

Aww, I understand being shy but questions are always welcome! Now, to answer: keep in mind that all of this is very complex (more complex than what could be answered in one message), so a lot will be simplified or left out. I also hope others can add more to this if I forget some crucial stuff.

So, your questions (warning: this will be long):

"I find some people say "he wasn't a tyrant" and he didn't control on everything and the "reign of terror" and his image get f--ked by some of thermidorian propaganda" This is true. This is what happened. "Tyrant" had a very different connotation in 18th century than today, but Robespierre does not fit any of the definitions, imo, because he did not rule France. (More on that in a moment). This is not necessarily a defense of Robespierre - it is a simple fact. One can dislike him, but the term tyrant is incorrect and obscures the fact that he was just one of the people in the government. He had power, yes, but so did many others, and some of them were the ones who overthrew him.

This is where Thermidorian propaganda comes into play. These men ("Thermidorians"), in attempt to shield themselves from punishment/responsibility, retroactively (= after Robespierre's death) devised an interpretation of 1793-1794 ("The Terror") in which they blamed Robespierre and his allies for what happened, including their own crimes, and also misinterpreted the situation to make themselves seem innocent. It didn't work - most of them had to face some punishment - but the story (Thermidorian propaganda) remained, and it's still alive after 200+ years.

This doesn't mean that everything that happened in 1793-1794 was good, or that everything Robespierre did was good, but! It means that most people don't even know WHAT happened or what Robespierre really did or didn't do.

so can you explain the idea of "reign of terror"

I guess there are different ways to answer this, but here is what we know. The "Reign of Terror" or "Terror" is a name retroactively given by Thermidorians to the period of Robespierre's "rule" - but like I said, there was no rule of Robespierre per se, since many of the Thermidorians ruled at the same time, and some were responsible for the worst examples of violence during the 1793-1794 period. The name "Terror" to label "Robespierre's" policies in 1793-1794 was first uttered after Robespierre was dead and was part of the idea to make what happened seem like Robespierre's tyranny/specific policies. But those policies never existed. There was no specific government outline for the Terror. So, it is really difficult to say what the Terror was or when it began because it was never a specific policy. This is why different historians give different dates of its beginning and different explanations. The best one I could find (and the one that makes the most sense to me, imo) is that the Terror was a series of emergency measures introduced to try to win the war (France was at war with half of Europe - a crucial fact that is often forgotten when talking about this period of the Revolution) AND to protect the Revolution (because there were many who tried to overthrown it). These two goals were connected, because French émigrés (nobles and some others who left France because of the Revolution) allied with foreign powers against the French Republic, and because there were many counter-revolutionary attempts in and outside of France (for inside of France, see war at Vendée. Most of people who died in the French Revolution died at Vendée and not by guillotining).

So, the situation was dire and the government (so not Robespierre himself) decided to put a moratorium on the newly adopted Constitution of 1793 and to introduce emergency measures in an attempt to try to win the war and control the situation. Such emergency measures are what gave the government (and Committee of the Public Safety) more power than in regular circumstances, because circumstances were not regular. Whenever there is a war, it is a standard to make emergency measures, and those measures give more power to the government and also include limitations to civil liberties enjoyed at the time of peace. (We see these sort of measures in all types of wars and conflicts, from WWI and WWII to present war in Ukraine.)

So, that was what happened. Emergency measures, that specifically focused at winning the war and preventing counter-revolutionary conspiracies. It was, in a way, successful - the French won the war. (At least if we take the Battle of Fleurus as a major victory in 1794).

The issue was, imo, not that these emergency measures existed (because this is common at war), but that they were not always implemented correctly. For example, the instructions from Paris on what to do around France were not always clear, which meant that different people conducted emergency measures in very different ways, some of which were very violent (notably Carrier at Nantes or Fouché and Collot at Lyon).

Meanwhile, there was a tension between what people (mainly sans-culottes, the lowest classes) wanted vs what the government was giving them. The sans-culottes advocated for harsher measures and punishing those they deemed at fault (and also demanding price controls and other measures), and the government had to balance these demands with what was possible/realistic/politically wise. And different groups within the government had very different ideas on these things! So, what happened is that the revolutionaries/government themselves split into factions and fought against each other on what to do. These fights and divides happened even at the Committee of the Public Safety (CSP), the body of 12 men (including Robespierre) who were the de facto emergency government. This led to infighting where different factions turned against each other and many prominent politicians were guillotined (yes, Robespierre took an active role in this).

Anyway, the fights and tensions within CSP culminated in June and July 1794 and Robespierre's opponents staged a coup on 9 Thermidor that removed Robespierre and his allies. This is generally marked as the end of the Terror, even though prosecutions continued (often turned against Jacobins), and well, Thermidorian Convention had a trouble controlling the situation (inside or outside the country). They slandered Robespierre to legitimatize their move against him, and to cover that many of them were terrorists themselves (and some of them responsible for excesses in violence 1793-1794 which are today assumed to be done by Robespierre, but were not).

whether robespierre was a bloodthirsty dictator or just a person trying to fix everything but failed in the end?

Robespierre was just one of the people in charge (or in "charge", because things were very chaotic and disorganized, particularly in terms of what was going on outside of Paris, because everyone interpreted directives from Paris the way they saw fit). So, he wasn't a dictator, and not responsible for many things that are attributed to him.

Now, what he wanted to achieve. I think he wanted to win the war and protect the Revolution, but it was not really achievable because the infrastructure was not there, the institutions were not there, people's culture/mindset was not always there. I am not sure if he knew that, and there is something to say about errors he, and others in the Revolutionary Government, made in trying to handle the situation (vague instructions come to mind). That being said, it is difficult to say what would be the correct way to handle the situation (and, again, they did achieve military victory, so it's not like all of it was bad).

It is also clear that, by spring 1794, Robespierre was overworked, ill and under a huge mental strain that did not help him make the best moves (in what to do about the emergency measures and how to deal with divisions within the CSP). There are many moments that I do not understand (for example, his refusal to end emergency measures after the battle of Fleurus) and I don't think that he behaved error-free during this period.

But in order to discuss these things, it is important to know what Robespierre really did, and it's not possible to get there if we are still stuck at "18th century Hitler and one of the worst tyrants in history" story, which is just a continuation of 200+ year old Thermidorian propaganda. (With a dash of general anti-revolutionary propaganda that is common in many Anglo (?) places).

#well that was long #and i still feel i missed so many things #frev #french revolution #robespierre

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teatitty · 4 years ago

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1.) The first time you’ve heard of Frank Butler? He’s Annie Oakley’s husband! (She actually won his heart when she beat him in a shooting contest and they were faithfully married for 50 years, it’s actually a really cute story!) 2.) Robespierre’s Noble Phantasm would be the ability to mind control a crowd into a frenzy against anyone he deems a tyrant (I mean, he was responsible for the Reign of Terror...) and I would pay to see him square up against Iskandar and the Ionian Hetairoi...

Oooo imagine Annie and Frank as a dual-archer whose NP is both of them shooting up a storm from opposite sides of the field,,,gorgeous

I’d love to see Robespierre tear Col*mbus a new arshole lmAO let him be buddies with Robin, Geronimo and Billy

#Anonymous #asks

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opinions-about-tiaras · 2 years ago

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This is a lot of hand-waving to obscure what’s a fairly narrow defense, I feel like.

It is true that Robespierre can’t be considered to be either genocidal or a dictator. But that’s because he was a member of what would today probably be called a junta; it was him and the eleven other dudes on the Committee of Public Safety who betrayed the revolution to rule as tyrants. They were surrounded by many other traitors to the ideals of the revolution as well (and those who never really believed in it in the first place) but that doesn’t somehow, you know, make it better.

Robespierre’s story was, indeed, a story of (supposedly) anti-death-penalty pacifist who when he achieved power started doing a bunch of murders, among other enormities, in collaboration-slash-rivalry with other people who were doing the same thing to a greater or lesser extent. “He wasn’t a dictator” is a very, very thin defense that obscures the actual valence of his actions under quibbling about specific terminology.

The Committee and those on it were a gross betrayal of the Revolution it was supposedly created to safeguard. It is difficult to take seriously men who, when they had no power, wrote glowingly on the rights of man, and who, when they got their hands on real, serious power to shape a nation-state, decided “what we really need here are purges and show trials. And it’s dangerous to allow the Convention to be democratic or actually issue a Constitution; if it looks like we’re going to lose a vote there we’d better eliminate the deputies who are gonna cause that.”

Power doesn’t corrupt; power reveals. And what it revealed of the Committee was men who either never believed in the Revolution they midwifed at all, or who, at best, thought that the ends could justify the means.

And frankly, some of them were either blithering idiots or superb at lying to themselves and others; Robespierre truly believing that if they could simply eliminate “faction” within the Convention everything would work out was an act of supreme political naivete, and stuff like “no, see, the royal bureaucracies were run by the aristos, so you should have been suspicious of them, but OUR bureaucracies are run by the People, and so don’t need oversight or accountability; you can trust them implicitly, because the People can do no wrong!” coming out of the Committee was an insult to the intelligence of any thinking man.

Made this for convenient use

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kshitij1997 · 5 years ago

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As promised, the second chapter is up now!

All frozen characters belong to Disney, all I own is this head-cannon and the original characters.

A warning for playing fast and loose with some history, please don't lynch me _/\_.

With that out of the way, on with the story :D

Chapter 2 – The order of an Arendelle past and present

The Kulning had begun as a practice in ancient Arendelle as a way for shepherdesses and cowgirls to call their sheep and cattle after a long day of grazing the plains. With the passage of time however, it was recognized by the native people how effective the Kulning could be as a way of communication in the northern plains. A woman skilled in Kulning could transmit messages across the country, ranging from glad tidings to blood feuds and war cries. This peculiar quality of the mode of expression in question came to define the social culture of the nation, with the Kulning heralds serving as beacons to bring in a good harvest or a call for aid. There was once a moment in the middle ages when the heralds managed to alert the entire country towards a devastating plague which undoubtedly helped save many lives and livelihoods.

The plague arrived despite all preparations and ravaged the country. Nevertheless, the position of the heralds was solidified into the Arendellian culture as guardians of the nation. A herald was protected by law, and the practice took on a sacrosanct and spiritual meaning as the knowledge of interpretation was only passed within the direct family of the herald. Popularised as 'the voice of the nation' during the renaissance, the Kulning became a power statement in the country, the voice that united the northern mountains and plains to the southern rivers and coasts.

For all the similarities in people that the Kulning celebrated, it couldn't account for how differently the north and the south were blessed and cursed in equal measure. The north had far more resources, even if the southern societies were far more developed. And while southern Arendelle regularly courted wealth makers, intellectuals and scholars in its high society, it had the extremely unfortunate vulnerability of having one of the very few warm water ports in all northern Europe. A reality that left it open to regular attempts at usurpation and war. Furthermore, by making southern Arendelle a major education centre in Europe, the south often found itself facing revolutionary ideas and fringe groups. Adding the general apathy of the north, who disapproved of the high class living southern society, completely removed from nature, the people-nations drifted further apart, such that even the voice could not unite them.

Tensions notwithstanding, there still existed a grudging peace and cordial relations between the north and the south, a reality which came crashing down in the seventeenth century with the horrific thirty years war. A war Arendelle wanted no part in but was coerced into joining due to union of marriage between the crown of Arendelle and the Habsburgs, in an uncharacteristic move for both royal families, as there was no common relative between them. If history were a reliable witness, it would dictate the defeat and destruction of both the royal families in northern Europe. While the Habsburgs would never gain a foothold in Arendelle again, the crown survived by the skin of its teeth. The crown paid a heavy price for the privilege however, namely the death of one of the greatest kings of northern Europe, Gustavus Vasa, who had almost singlehandedly saved the country from the jaws of the Holy Roman Empire. While the south was more forgiving to wartime obligations, the north was absolutely horrified at the taboo implications the Habsburgs brought to the crown and refused to support the war effort. It was a miracle that the Arendellians managed to eke out a win in the Baltic despite abandoning the Habsburgs. Nevertheless, even as Arendelle enjoyed a new boost of power, the Habsburg bloodline further cracked the bonds between the south and the north, which had started calling itself Northurldra. While the regional name was recognized, never had the sparsely populated north had openly used it in defiance. Throughout all this, the voice persisted, dutifully sending messages back and forth, bringing the news of the audacity of the north to the south. This further grew the enmity between the two regions as the age of empires dawned in Europe. While the south used its famous resourcefulness and ship routes around the world to build the empire, the Northurldra stuck to its beliefs of frugal living, and fell behind as a result.

In an attempt to find direction in the brave new world, they turned to an institution called the fifth spirit. While the figure was a vestige of ancient times and had been dismissed as superstition by the south, the Northurldra maintained the customs and rituals of the fifth spirit, coronating said figure on the same basis one would crown kings, which further distanced the Northurldra from Arendelle and as a result, the Northurldra fell back even further.

While Arendelle made a few colonies in the Indian subcontinent, China and the East Indies(*Indonesia), the stagnant region in its own backyard had started to look embarrassing. To save face, the south started contacting the Northurldra, who saw how the wind was blowing and gracefully accepted the invitation to cooperate. Things looked up for Arendelle as Carolus Rex, the man who led the nation to innumerable victories against the Southern Isles and Russia. However, it was short lived as the King died in battle, breaking all cooperation between the two regions. The relations mostly stagnated after that, as Arendelle supported the French to defeat in the seven years war which further reduced the nation's standing in Europe.

The regions further drifted apart as the French took a step closer to the revolution, to which Arendelle responded by doing something they had never done before, something that would become a core strategy for the country to show defiance and protectionism. The country was closed to the mainland for over a decade, avoiding the cataclysmic war between the French and the rest of the continent. Many scholars, philosophers, merchants and businessmen fled to Arendelle during this period, whom Arendelle was all too pleased to accept despite the isolation, which further led to a divide between the Northurldra and Arendelle. The new immigrants didn't care much for the north and preferred to look to the west. As a result, the crown started dealing with the fledgling United States. The crown of Arendelle was the first to recognize the sovereignty of the new nation, so the United States more than welcomed Arendelle into its sphere. It was this Arendelle that was left to crown prince Runeard, who in the best Arendellian tradition, went against all of Europe and made a deal with the French directory and vowed to back Robespierre. However, Robespierre's head, bloodlust, propensity to roll heads and power grew quicker than what his fellow Jacobins would allow, so they used the national razor to make sure he didn't crumble under the strain. A far cry from a man who in his former career as a lawyer, held a well-known disdain for the death penalty.

Ah well, at least they left the general of the French army alive. The general with whom King Runeard had built a correspondence starting back in his days in France receiving military education. It was Napoleon, who took power in the ensuing vacuum of leadership after the directory was left toothless. Various deals were struck, the gates to the country were opened, the Corsican general made short work of the rest of the war. The era of Arendelle and France's rise to dominance in the continent had begun.

All this while the heralds worked tirelessly, communicating everything throughout the country, which held the nation together even as it drifted apart, owing to the adage: if the heralds fall silent, Arendelle would fall.

It was this era in which Runeard ascended onto the world stage and built the fearsome reputation of a tyrant, displaying in full color the Habsburg entitlement and madness that Europe feared. To this man, the death of his queen in childbirth was but a trivial price to pay in his quest of consolidation. If there was any genuine affection or joy left in him, it was due to his heir, Prince Agnarr.

The prince was lightly built but was a frequent unwilling host to various ailments and illness. King Runeard doted on the boy as a toddler, but as the prince came into the age of reason, he displayed wisdom far beyond his years, and knowledge well cultivated, for when illness confined him to his bed, he grew his passion for books on science and statecraft, and more importantly for stories and tales. It was this spirited lad who often questioned his father's murkier intentions:

"Is a dam really the best idea? That massive architecture could be a powder keg waiting to go off."

"You're about three-quarters of Europe away, son. For the true powder keg, you need to approach the Crimea or the Balkans." The king said with a bemused expression.

"Father, this is serious."

"Do you see me laughing?"

"No, what I mean to say is that the Northurldra are not very sympathetic to your cause, and a dam is giving them further impetus to oppose you. They can use it as a fortress, we can't."

"The military implications of the dam are the farthest thoughts of my mind, son. The northern backdrop is a source of indignity for me. The rest of the continent is experimenting with steam and coal, and those peasants are content with their medieval equipment? Never. If anything, I am doing them a service by integrating them and bringing them into the modern age with us."

"It still could be a problem, though." Agnarr mused

"Oh take a breather boy, or your hair would turn grey before mine does." The king laughed.

As much as the king enjoyed teasing the prince on his lack of mirth, he recognized the mind for politics that the kid had. It was this kid who advised him not to get involved in Spain as Napoleon proceeded to bring Iberia into a crisis of succession, this boy who started a friendly correspondence with the crown prince of the northern Germanic kingdom of Corona, which became an alliance that brought Arendelle the backing of Prussia and the Southern Isles(The characteristic Arendellian zeal and skill in making deals became a force to be reckoned with in the hands of the prince). A fact that put the father and son at odds frequently. These odds were mostly harmless and good-natured, with genuine concern behind them, but it all came to a head in the spring of 1812, when Napoleon was about to launch a physically, economically and emotionally devastating invasion into the Russian empire to bring Tsar Alexander the first to heel.

Added to this was the military expedition in the north, which didn't make things easier.

By then, the prince had overcome the ailments he had suffered earlier and had grown in stature. At the age of fourteen, he could almost see eye-to-eye with his father.

Almost.

Mid-March, southern Arendelle, 1812

"What do you mean you can't lead?!" the king bellowed "I didn't raise a coward!"

"I chose not to lead, not because I can't, but because these wars are a fool's errand." The prince answered calmly.

"I didn't ask you for your opinion." "You should have. Dear uncle Napoleon is screwing himself with this conflict."

"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF HIM IN THIS MANNER?! HUH! I have known for over twenty-five years now, long before I ever met your mother. I am to just abandon him in his time of need?!"

"If you really cared, you would've stopped him. The Russians aren't to be fucked with." A rare poor choice of words for the crown prince.

"Where did you learn such beautiful language, huh?! From the girl you've been meeting?! Has SHE BEEN POSIONING YOUR MIND AGAINST ME?!" retorted the king after smacking Agnarr in the face for that comment.

"Who?" Asked Agnarr as he nursed his cheek. "Don't you DARE play coy with me. You thought I wouldn't find out?! Whatever childish games you play, that's your business. When the fairer gender gets involved, any fooling around that you do does become my damn business." The king answered in a voice dripping with disdain, venom and contempt.

"Her name is Iduna, and no, she has not influenced my decisions in any way whatsoever." The prince now rose from where he had fallen and continued "As for the other business you're insinuating, it's a pity I can't strike you back."

The king loomed dangerously close and growled "Try me."

For a moment it looked as if they had forgotten that they were father and son, rather two strangers who were spoiling for a brawl.

The prince relented and said "Father, why can't we talk like the well-educated people that we are? A mosh pit between us would be shameful. Let's discuss this calmly."

The king took a moment to breathe, stepped back and said "Very well, but I can't stand back this time like I did in Spain. I will rally my army with the French, for the sole reason that I can't let the Tsar have any more influence in Europe than he already has. As for the north, it's time they bowed down to the true authority in Arendelle."

"We should have pursued the peace talks further with the Northurldra, pa. We would have reached an accord."

"I know from experience that's not true. I did offer the NORTH the gift of the reservoir, at great personal cost of the empire. How do they show their gratitude? By nearly blowing up the blessed dam! How do I reach an accord with such animals?" The king said.

"Maybe they couldn't forget the valley of death." Agnarr suggested.

"It's a bloody shame they didn't remember the valley that well either, for they should have guessed that my kindness to them is a privilege they have, not my duty or moral law towards them." Replied the king "The expedition up north will happen, if the Northern people hold their lives and livelihoods dear, they would be wise to stand down without much destruction."

Agnarr sighed, the appeal of the cabinet of ministers to avoid a civil war was not coming to fruition. So he decided to cut his losses "While I can't endorse your decisions here, I can understand them."

The king cut in "Fortunately for me, I don't need anybody's endorsement."

"Please let me finish, pa" Agnarr pleaded " I know you can't step back on your obligation to aid the Emperor of France, and that you can't afford to lose face in the continent due to the Northurldra. I understand this is a time of giants. But hear me out on this. Due to my correspondence to the kingdom of the Southern Isles, Weselton and Corona, I cannot be seen opposing them. The delicate alliance that I have constructed with the crown princes there contradicts Uncle Napoleon's stance against the Russian empire. As you clearly know Corona has close ties with Russia, and the Southern Isles and Weselton have economic rivalries with France. If I accompany the French and make that political statement, I shall lose all the hard work and toil it has taken to establish bases of power across the continent."

There it was, that classic fatal flaw that held back the Arendellian skill at forging alliances everywhere; it was impossible to keep everyone happy. The king stayed silent, which emboldened Agnarr to drive home the point he was making "Furthermore, the Emperor is powerful, but not infallible. His Navy was utterly decimated seven years ago, who's to say that his armies can't?"

The King put two and two together, and spoke at length "So you're staying in Arendelle?"

"Yes, and promise me this."

"What?" "Promise me that you will offer the Northurldra peace terms if they surrender or cooperate."

"If they are reasonable, I will surely be open to peace."

With their tempers abated, father and son embraced, knowing that they wouldn't see each other for a long time.

"Let's make a toast" Said the king.

"Father, I'm not a man yet, so I can't consume alcohol." Agnarr grinned at the suggestion.

"You're plenty manly to me, son. You stood up to me like a man, with far more courage and gumption that those twits who run the empire, so you've earned a drink."

With that, the king made himself and his heir a drink and made a toast "To the lost."

"To the lost." Repeated Agnarr, and drank "OHH it burns!"

"Of course it does" laughed the king "It's aged, it's supposed to burn."

They both enjoyed a moment of silence, after which Agnarr asked "Why do you always toast to the lost?"

The king answered "It is never an unsuitable moment to pay our respects to those who were lost so that we may have this."

Agnarr smiled, for he rarely saw the king being this way.

"What was the name of the girl again, the one you met some time ago?" The king spoke suddenly.

"Iduna, she hails from the north. However, I don't know if she is Northurldrian." Agnarr replied.

"Hmm" acknowledged the king "Tell me more."

"She says she hails from a family of heralds, which is plausible, for she has a wonderful voice." Agnarr finished with a smile.

"If I wanted to admit something deep and personal, I would say that the kulning always brought me peace." The king revealed. Agnarr simply looked on. "All right, I would try to be fair to them."

"Thank you, pa. I really appreciate it. I would appreciate it more if I negotiate with them personally instead."

"Don't worry boy, I know how to handle them."

Christmas eve, 1812

The boy-king reminisced over the last complete conversation he had had with the late king Runeard before it had all crashed to pieces. The French campaign was a disaster, and the Arendellian contingent sent to aid the French was lost almost to a man. The fact that the Arendelle authority was not present with the Emperor severed any ties or pretensions Napoleon had about his allies.

Arendelle was left stranded in the continent, and Agnarr had to learn a lot in a very short time to retain and appease the understandably indignant mainland allies of Corona, Weselton, and the Southern Isles. November and December had been very difficult for the boy-king, he left no stone unturned; offering to pay reparations, giving up the colonies of the Indian subcontinent to the British east India company, giving the Dutch autonomy in the East Indies, et cetera. But the giants of Europe wanted what he couldn't give them; Runeard 's head.

They considered themselves merciful by settling for his disappearance. However, by giving away all that he could in the circumstances and making amends for his father, king Agnarr had won some trust and goodwill amongst his allies, who saw him as a man who could survive adversity, and his tireless endeavours to ensure that relief reached the families of the lost won him the respect and popularity of his people. As for the Northurldra, they had been rendered inaccessible by a thick mist which didn't let anyone in or out. There were rumours of a possible way to reach them, however it was through the dark sea, and the dark sea was not famous for being tranquil and friendly to voyages.

All that was in the recent past where the boy-king had ben pushed to his limits. He would have given up, if not for Iduna, soon to be the most important person in his life. She stuck with him through thick and thin, holding his hand and giving him support wherever she could. To express his gratitude, Agnarr attempted to rescue Iduna 's people by evacuating them, but it was all in vain.

"Your Majesty?" whispered Iduna after knocking on his door.

"Come in Iduna, and please call me Agnarr." Replied the tired king.

"Only a few minutes till Christmas" said Iduna as she made herself comfortable in his quarters.

"Hmm" mused the king. Then he began "Why don't you hate me? My father ruined everything for you, and I couldn't save your people after I promised." He paused to wipe the tears forming in his eyes.

He was stopped by Iduna, who wiped his eyes for him "After the year we all have had, I don't hold anyone to their promises. Everyone is fallible, no one is perfect. I appreciate the mere fact that you tried to rescue them from your father's wrath." Said Iduna, ignoring the lump forming in her own throat.

Agnarr sighed " This has been a rotten Christmas."

Iduna corrected him "The circumstances are rotten, but the festival shall always bring good cheer and hope. We're both alive, if that is not hope then what is?"

Agnarr smiled "What would I ever do without you?" "I'll always be with you" Iduna grinned. They looked at each other with the gaze of contentment and blossoming love for a while. Then Agnarr spoke

"Sing me a song."

"I sing to you every night."

"Something special for Christmas eve, please?"

"Alright, here's one that never fails."

Where the north wind meets the sea

There's a river full of memory

Rest my king, safe and sound

For in this river all is found

Iduna continued to sing but paused when the king had tears streaming down his face.

"It's your voice, it can reduce me to a baby in an instant." Agnarr smiled through his teary face.

"I'm used to it; I can never finish a song when you're listening." Iduna laughed.

The king wiped his face and remarked " One of these days, I'll make you my Queen, just you wait."

"Will they accept me?"

"They better, cause if they don't, they can go fuck themselves."

"Your Majesty!" said Iduna in mock alarm.

"I've been through every street in hell this year, whilst proving myself to Europe and my own people, I've earned the right to cuss like a sailor." Agnarr said with a haughty air.

"Cuss away then." Iduna guffawed.

The bell chimed twelve midnight; all was well for now.

"A merry fucking Christmas to you, Iduna." Chortled the King.

"A merry fucking Christmas to you as well, Agnarr." Chimed the would-be Queen.

Ha! This was a rite all right.

I have never typed so much in my life for one single document or story. Apologies if this was a big history lesson for you people, but I felt that laying out this exposition was vital in making sure a lot of plot points make sense in the future. I also tried to include some Agnarr-Iduna fluff, so there's that

So hang in there, cause we have one more chapter before we reach the famous sisters.

For those who want to relate to the history:

Arendelle and Northurldra: Sweden and Norway,

Corona: Prussia,

The Southern Isles: Denmark,

and Weselton: Belgium

As always, constructive feedback is always welcome :D

#frozen #frozen fandom #frozen fanfiction #frozen fanfic #fanfiction

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greystreasure · 2 years ago

Text

Beebeep paid

#BEEBEEP PAID FREE#

Ironically the rise of the world-famous French Cuisine (born in the Palace of Louis XV and brought to perfection by Louis XVI) goes back to the fact that after Louis XVI was beheaded, thousands of cuisine personal from the Royal Palace were without work. Romantics don’t like to hear it but it’s true: the real reason behind the French Revolution was a lack of bread. So what did the Revolution bring us in the end? Royal Irony The Revolution is over the people have nothing to say in the Napoleonic era of the web. And of course he will be off to his invasion of digital Russia to destroy Emperor Page and Brin… And actually, he might get by with a little help from his friends. Well, as bad comes to worse, Steve Ballmer now wants to conquer Yahoo! and reduce the number of titans to two. You need connections and loads of money to make it in the world of the three titans. If you look at the success story of startups that made it ( like Youtube for instance), you’ll realize that the dream of the cool website, that simply offers good information while finding users and making money, is a Fata Morgana that drives thousands of young enthusiasts into death of thirst. Nowadays, building up a web service and making money outside the Territory of the Three Web Caesars is considerably more difficult than just starting a “real” shop. Truth is, the World Wide Web is in the hands of a few Emperors-namely Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft-that split the territory amongst themselves quite some time ago. Ironically, people still believe that the Internet belongs to them, some journalists behind the times even complain about “the mob reigning the web.” Remember, after the French got rid of their sleepy King Louis XVI, they installed the radical Robespierre, followed by the brutal tyrant Napoleon Bonaparte I. How did we get into this mess? Just a Little Bit of History Repeating “Fast-food data junkies,” that’s what we are. We mindlessly link our friends to the dumb-ass websites where spammers and stalkers, grudgers and psychos, and old, finally-forgotten nags-dressed and masked as virtual vampires-wait behind some wonder-wall.We outperform each other blogging, twittering, tumblering, and Facebooking.The corporations have become even more shrewd (via viral campaigns, paid comments, and “Social Media Consultants”).We write (short notices), and read (bee-beep-bee-beep) even more fast-food data.We are bombarded with even more idiotic advertisement (spam).We have more tasks in our inbox and less concentration to complete them.

#BEEBEEP PAID FREE#

We have more junk data and less free time.

And best of all: it all comes free of charge. We can now literally X-ray politicians before we vote for them. The Internet is the taser against the shit bags that try to manipulate, embellish, and block information that is inconvenient to them. News has become more accessible and more transparent. The public opening of digital publication technology (AKA “blogs”) has provided a free speech transport with rocket engines. We read and write more today than we used to. To free us from propaganda, to free us from mindless TV, to free us from advertisement torture, and to enrich us by letting machines do all the boring work so we’d have more free time. The IT-Revolution promised to free and enrich us.

#Beebeep paid

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margridarnauds · 6 years ago

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2, 8, 9, 20, 30, 31, 32, 40, 51 (for the abominaton)

Thanks!

2. Favorite part of writing.

I love the feeling that comes with putting the thoughts that I’ve been visualizing in my mind on the page, I love getting to work with characters that I love dearly and putting them where normal circumstances wouldn’t, I love dealing with a wide cast of characters that help me learn more about myself.

8. Favorite trope to write.

In general, I like to write emotionally constipated characters dealing with their gay emotions for the first time. Also, I tend to work with straight-up fix-its or dealing with post-canon events (and, when I say “post canon” I mean “post my very, very specific version of canon).

9. Least favorite trope to write.

This is probably surprising, but I tend to not be fond of actually writing depressing endings. Like, even in the universes where I kill characters off, I like to at least give them some closure, even if it’s an afterlife AU. (Which…the Afterlife AU for Pour la Peine is going to be fun if I ever get around to it).

Also, I don’t like Modern AUs all that much, even though I have numerous ones for 1789. It’s probably mostly a matter of translating 18th century politics to the modern age. That and I hate writing anything set in the modern age on principle.

20. Post a snippet of a WIP you’re working on.

Tw: References to animal abuse, bullying, and Lazare being a 13 year old with slightly homicidal tendencies (BUT HE’S STILL VALID)

Lazare didn’t know how he got involved. One moment he was gritting his teeth in anger at them, his rage reaching a boiling point after one of the punches caused Ronan to cry out, the next one of the bullies was on the ground crying, Ronan was putting another one on the ground nearby him, and he had his hand wrapped around Denis’ throat, feeling his fingernails tighten around skin that had never been bruised before. All those military exercises his grandfather had made him run had their uses, he thought, as a strange thrill ran through him. Thibault Denis couldn’t do anything now, couldn’t hurt anyone; he was completely under his control. No matter how much he tried, flailed, choked, the little pretend tyrant was weak. So this was what authority meant. All that time when his grandfather had tried to explain it to him, and he’d never fully understood it.

“Lazare!” He was vaguely aware of Ronan shouting, and that was enough for him to release his grip. The boy fell to the ground, looking at him like he was Death incarnate, all widened eyes and quick breathing before he ran as fast as he could, his legs barely supporting him. The others followed suit, and it was just him, Ronan, and the cat. He flexed his hands, remembering the touch, looking at Ronan, wondering how he would look at him now that Lazare had hurt one of his own, but if he’d seen anything unusual, he hadn’t noticed, lavishing attention to the cat instead.

“Why would someone do something like that, huh? It’s just a cat, it wasn’t harming anybody.” Ronan held the wretched thing in his arms, petting it, with its torn ear and matted, faded fur and bony spine. “It probably just wanted to make friends.”

“The world can be cruel.” It had been the first thing he’d been told, when he was left on the steps of the Chateau de Peyrol and greeted by a stern, sharp man who introduced himself as his grandfather, and it had been something that he’d made sure he’d remember. The world had been cruel since time began, it would remain cruel. All that was important was ensuring that he himself did the best he could in the role he was given and to support the Crown in its efforts to keep order amidst the destructive forces that would bathe the world in fire otherwise.

Ronan shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be.” He held the cat a little closer, letting it burrow its face into his chest weakly, its pink tongue flicking over his fingers slowly. “It doesn’t have to be.”

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.

There was a sadness in du Puget’s eyes, and Peyrol felt like he was a schoolboy again, missing some obvious point that he had just explained to him in vivid detail. Only instead of the immediate reprisals, he got this. A beating he could deal with, scorn he could deal with, pity he could not. “We are all human beings, Monsieur de Peyrol. We are all human beings with a child’s longing for the companionship and love of our fellow man. If you cannot do that basic amount for him, then you will never deserve his trust or his love, no matter how many livres you pour into it.”

31. Hardest character to write.

In general, any of the kid characters. I HATE writing children in general, and in the first part of the Abomination in particular SO MUCH rests on selling the kid versions of Ronan and Lazare and their relationship because literally the rest of this universe depends on them. I consider having to type “How do children make friends” and “What do children do with friends” to be on par with me trying to think about how long it’d take me to bang the man who (hypothetically) killed my father as far as Signature Abomination Moments.

For the non-historical characters of 1789, I’ve talked repeatedly how hard Solene is to write because of how little we get on her and how downright contradictory a lot of it is (see: her talking about how ambition and bloodlust have blinded Ronan…while she and the girls lynch a baker and march to Versailles. You go girl?) And you want to do a solid job with her, especially since her storyline touches on subjects that are STILL pretty damn sensitive, but you also don’t want to accidentally put her into any of the contemporary stereotypes of The Fallen Woman, The Victim, The Fury, etc, or any of our modern stereotypes when it comes to what a sex worker should look like and behave. That and trying to develop her relationship with Olympe is going to be slightly harder than usual, given that I still…need to figure out how they’re going to meet. With Pour la Peine, it was easier, since they had an easy way to meet up (Ronan’s funeral, RIP bro), but here, this is taking place in the canon era.

On a larger level, writing ANY of the historical figures that we have a decent amount of documentation for is hard, since these are people who are still highly controversial to this day and who can kind of….shift between different sources. Not necessarily the ones they wrote themselves, but, like, if you ask ten different people about Robespierre, you’ll get ten different responses. You’ll think you’ve caught onto him, and then he slips away. Likewise for Antoinette or Fersen or De Launay. Even Papa du Puget is rather hard for me to grasp, not the least because I know that the sources I need are locked behind an archive in France, untranslated and mostly obscure. (Funnily enough, the easiest for me to grasp is the Marquis de Sade, because the man’s just a dick. I will proudly proclaim the man’s a dick. He deserved to spend the rest of his life rotting away and I consider it an eternal tragedy that far better men than him in every way died during the course of the Frev while he managed, despite himself, to survive.) With some characters, like Danton and Desmoulins, I sense that my interpretation of them is going to be much different than the normal interpretation of them.

Basically, there’s a lot of pressure with them that isn’t necessarily there with the canon OCs, I don’t have as much freedom, and it can be damn hard to put them into a given situation to see how they’d react. (Incidentally, I’m going to put a tentative guess that they won’t react well to L/R. Just a guess. Though I’m sure Lazare can win them over with his A+ social skills, charm, and tact.)

32. Easiest character to write.

Laz and I get along very well at this point, even as I torture him.

40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why?

Fanfiction, actually.

With original fiction, there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to constructing the world you’re working with and the characters and how they interact with it. And, believe me, it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also damned hard to visualize it. Like, I fucking specialize in Early Irish Lit, and yet my retelling of CMT is hard to write 90% of the time because I have a hard time working with this world and how it works (which…given that the rules themselves weren’t concrete in the original lit, I don’t feel all that bad, but still). To tell you the truth, even after looking at tons of pictures of longhouses and hillforts and costumes from the Book of Kells, I still can’t get a decent idea for this stuff. It’s even harder for the main WIP, where I have to do a lot more construction, working with inspirations from multiple time periods, and it’s a real mess because I’ve never entirely gotten those inspirations under control and the characters keep shifting out from under me.

With fanfic, on the other hand, you have characters, you have a setting, and you have a decent idea with how the world works. Now, you can always do what I do and completely throw canon out anyway, BUT you still have some basics. No matter what, I have some baseline for the characters and some baseline for how the world works and I can build my research off of that.

51. Describe the aesthetic of your story _______ in 5 sentences or words.

Doing this for the first part because it’d be literally impossible to do it otherwise.

A gloved hand on a black walking stick, a slightly bent, silver wolf’s head gleaming from the top.

A sea of golden wheat over flat land as far as the eye can see, a sharp blue sky hanging over it.

An old, faded book with a decrepit spine.

A blue parrot locked in a gilded cage.

Two boys against a tree on a slightly chilly summer night, looking at the stars, unaware of what they hold for them.

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theculturedmarxist · 7 years ago

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Is there a doctor in the house?

“How do you expect anyone to do anything in Communism? If a doctor is paid as much as a janitor, why would I do all the work to be a doctor? Checkmate, commies.”

Trying to talk to people about Communism, and the general conception of what that entails, can be a tricky sort of process. Generally speaking, communist thought is contingent on at least passing knowledge of the principles derived from the broad and numerous bodies of socialist thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are innumerable books, pamphlets, essays, and so on full of rigorous thought and speculation about the circumstances of today and what they entail for our future, and how we as communists should go about ordering that future.

One of the greatest difficulties though when introducing someone to Communist thought is trying to coax them out of the bourgeois conception of society that most people have been ingrained with more or less from birth. The above is a tiresome refrain of those believing they’ve btfo Communism. It frequently jockeys with the whole ridiculous mudpie “argument” for the most popular brainlet thought-ending cliche.

If you look back to the media of the previous century, with the advent of the Space Age and then the Computer/Information Age, you can see a variety of imaginations trying to conceive of what all these radical changes will mean for society. Disease would be banished. Poverty would be impossible. Racial and religious differences would be treated as irrelevant, just as they truly are. Humanity would have bases on the Moon and Mars, toeholds that set the stage for mankind embracing its spacial destiny. There would be plenty for all, onerous work would be obviated, and the potential of the individuals of the world would finally be enabled to expand to its fullest.

In short, people were imagining a world beyond what they had then. What of now? Popular media, especially in the realm of science fiction, is emaciated. There is no future, no daring or imaginative alternatives. “Now” stretches on and on into forever, even when it would make no sense for such an arcane system as Capitalism. This isn’t because people are content with things as they are, but because their conception of what is possible has been carefully curated so that any alternative is branded as “utopian,” and anyone with a burning need or passion for change is only a single step away from the ever-lurking Liberal geist of “fanaticism.” Robespierre did his job only too well, apparently.

The soil of the imagination has been salted by the bourgeois enamoration with things as they currently are, and in seeking to maintain the status quo, anything as dangerous as an alternative to Capitalism has to be either excluded from public thought to the greatest degree possible, or else slandered and lampooned until all that’s left is a ridiculous straw man of anything or one that could endanger the unmitigated flow of profit.This is why in popular media, Capital is an omnipresent force, whether in fantasy, historical or contemporary drama, or projections into the future. “We’ve reached the end of history,” blah blah blah.

It’s difficult then for people to understand what Communists want, and how Communism is conceived. There are innumerable dogmatic conventions on what Communism should look like and how, which to describe them all in an exhaustive sense would be beyond this post, so for now I suffice with an unspecific, generic meaning when I’m speaking of “Communism.”

As Capitalism is the absolute, when non-Communists listen to Communists describing the things they want and the changes they make, they don’t consider what any of these alterations would mean, or what would need to happen in order to make them possible. For whatever reason, they can only conceive of now, but different, as if such a thing were possible.

Inevitably the question gets asked, “why would I be a doctor instead of a janitor?” It immediately gives away how deeply subsumed they are by their ideology. Health isn’t an interest of the individual or community, it’s not something to be cultivated, or even a fundamental human need; to them, it’s a service or commodity to be dispensed by a “professional.” Their class character is exposed, along with their ignorance of life outside of their comfortable cell. The suffering or need of others is dispensed with, and human life is devalued to whatever baubles this person believes they should be showered with for all of “their effort.”

Do they imagine that people would simply do without? Just lie down and die if people refused this tyrant’s “expertise?” It flies in the face of reason and precedent. Previous to modern times, educated medical professionals (to the standards of their time) were vanishingly rare. Most ailments were treated with a variety of home and traditional remedies. Do they really imagine then that a parent would sit idly by as their child wastes away due to lack of a doctor? As reckless as it might be, if the likely ultimate result either way is death, then WebMD and a prayer is certainly preferable to looking on in impotence.

This hypothetical would-be doctor imagines that society as it would exist then would be society as it exists now, only with a mandatory minimum wage. “No one would become doctors if they didn’t get rich doing it.” Again, reason and evidence shows them definitively to be in error.

I am not a fan of Cuba’s interpretation of Socialism, but I can’t help but admire their resourcefulness in such extreme deprivation. In retribution, the criminal blockade by the United States starves and isolates the island, but examining the circumstances of life there and the accomplishments they’ve managed despite that are quite remarkable. It isn’t much talked about, how Cuba, immiserated by poverty as it is, has an astonishingly small ratio of doctors to patients. They export their medical expertise to other countries, trading doctors for necessary resources. They’ve managed to eliminate mother-to-infant HIV transmission, and have even developed a cure for a certain cancer. Doctors are well respected, but they aren’t nearly as privileged in Cuba as they are elsewhere in the world.

I doubt every last one chooses their profession out of simple altruism, but to my understanding they aren’t made rich, either.

One of the most remarkable manifestations of Cuba’s adaptations to their radically changing circumstances was its reaction to the disappearance of the Soviet Union. The USSR provided most of Cuba’s industrial needs, and their sudden collapse meant not only the disappearance of Cuba’s most significant trading partner, but also the immediate evaporation of the means to maintain their existing industry and produce new goods.

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Unable to provide for their people, they took the radical step of providing the people with the knowledge and expertise they needed to provide for themselves. Technical and engineering manuals and textbooks were distributed. Everything was recycled as needed. Motors from broken washing machines were cannibalized to motorize bicycles.

As the crisis grew more severe, people’s creativity grew more powerful, and everywhere you looked you saw solutions. Ernesto Oroza

In Trotsky’s 1934 article, If America Should Go Communist, he makes a very salient point.

At present most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward peoples of the Soviet Union.

American and Russian circumstances were and are worlds apart. Russia’s expression of Communism resulted from the dire situation it was left in after the first World War. Its industry was smashed. Its people were starving. The interim Liberal government that came to power after the abdication of the Tsar continued to fight the ruinous war against the Central Powers, pouring millions of men into the theater of industrial murder. No sooner do the Bolsheviks take power and end the war than every industrial power on the planet invades. On top of years of misery under the Tsar, are compounded years of civil war the most vast country on the planet. After this, it is scarcely another decade before another World War washes over the CCCP, killing tens of millions of people and leaving Russia’s industrial and agricultural heartlands in devastated ruin. Despite all of this, the CCCP managed not only to industrialize, expand education and literacy to its large population of impoverished, illiterate peasants, but managed to make it the number 2 power, and eventual superpower, on the planet, and the first space-faring nation to boot.

America would not have such problems, Trotsky says. Is he wrong? The US is majority literate (more or less). They have already a sprawling (if crumbling) infrastructure, the benefits of the Internet, already existing industrial and technological capacity, to say nothing of the country’s rich farmland and abundance of natural resources, much of it mapped and explored and exploitable at need. They have over 200 years of democratic experience and tradition, and one of the most educated populations on the planet.

Believing that the United States, were it to adopt communism, would look anything like Soviet Russia in form or function, is nothing but ridiculous. It’s an immature bogeyman, a ghost story the bourgeois use to convince workers that, like children, they should be afraid of the things they imagine lurking under their bed.

Adopting Communism would mean dispelling the bourgeois fiction of private and intellectual property (as opposed to one’s personal property). It would mean an end to the dictatorship of capital, and the social controls that the bourgeoisie have erected to constrict human activity in order to farm us for profit.

Instead of educating our children to prepare them for “a career,” they could be educated in the skills of living. Our health and physical education classes could indeed return to teaching health and physical education. The whole population could be given the basics of medical care and the rudiments of identifying and treating disease.

Freed from the anxieties and pressures of Capitalist society--no longer having to worry about where one will live, or how one will eat, or where all the other necessities of life will come from--at a stroke much of society’s afflictions would be eliminated, improving health dramatically without a single pill or incision. With no profits to sustain it, the sugar industry would wither and die, severely impacting national obesity rates. Imagine the impact the elimination of the automobile industry would have as well, reducing the number of wastefully produced luxury vehicles and their billions of tons of emissions, clearing our air and skies. The ridiculous regime of mandatory testing, and the poisonous “education” that has evolved to support it, would vanish. With access to higher education a guarantee, and no private property to starve such “unproductive” members of society, our children could enjoy the simple pleasures of recess again. No longer cooped up in jobs that they loathe and indeed make them ill, Americans would have uncountable hours instead to spend in recreation with their friends and family, enjoying among other things their country’s wealth of natural beauty.

Technology changes more and more day by day, and we’re rapidly approaching the point where even the most rural areas have access to the sum of medical knowledge on the internet. Where infrastructure or remoteness limit the availability of medical care, an internet connection to sophisticated medical AI can provide millions with immediate and accurate medical advise. Consider technology like the epipen or asthma inhaler. While I don’t imagine it’s possible to simplify all medical devices to such pick-up-and-use types of equipment, with the medical education they receive in school and access to reliable medical information via the internet, it would be possible to make equipment and techniques that any able individual could use to treat themselves for common and mundane afflictions. Medical care need not be the exclusive province, or entitlement, of some wealthy elite class of privileged gatekeepers.

Yet, still, what about the doctors? There would still be a need, however improved living conditions and education become. Some things cannot be left to amateurs, however enthusiastic or skilled, and specialized training will remain a necessity to one degree or another for some time. Would we need then to elevate doctors above the mean of hoi polloi, just to ensure that these necessary skills exist in our society?

I believe that assumption to be fundamentally false, and indeed another unconscious betrayal of the pervasiveness of bourgeois ideology. The popular belief that money is the primary, if not only, motivating factor for people. Despite the use of money being the exception rather than the rule throughout history, the fantasy that people are indigent and lazy without cash in their pocket or a knife at their back has been relentlessly cultivated in the popular mind, and yet we know that this simply isn’t true. Most people aren’t motivated by money, and compulsion only breeds misery.

Without the constant population shuffling caused by the modern market economy, I believe that people would begin to settle as they did in bygone decades. Individuals would no longer need to leave home to “find a job.” Friends and family and other social connections would congregate, and the community could rebuild itself. This would be the source of your doctors and surgeons, the natural human instinct toward community participation and effort, and those remarkable people that feel this most strongly. Those individuals who become physicians only to grow rich would be excluded--and rightfully so--from the profession, and the quality and abundance of medical care would rise. That’s aside from the salutatory effects of the diminishing alienation resulting from strengthening communal ties. Happy people, surrounded by friends and family, secure in their bodies, homes, and livelihood, are fundamentally healthier people. This would be the most major contributing factor in expanding the availability, access, and quality of medicine: to begin with, there would be fewer sick people. There would be fewer sick doctors, too, no longer burdened by the insane costs of medical school and the large debts accrued from long years of study.

This is a rather rosy estimation, but I think it is the correct one. Communism doesn’t mean poverty; it doesn’t mean now, but different; nor does it mean Capitalism, everyone makes the same wage. Communism is the complete transformation of society, by our own hands, by our own rational actions to satisfy our own needs and those of our community, in the absence of all the coercive and exploitative forces by which we’ve been imprisoned and to which we’ve been conditioned. Just the thought makes me feel better already.

#medicine #medical care #Communism #Socialism #Communist Society #CCCP #Cuba #a different world is possible #and we can make it

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napoleondidthat · 7 years ago

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“On Pourra me juger a nu...” (Napoleon at St. Helena)

Napoleon has caused his name to ring unto the ultermost parts of the earth. Does that mean however that we know him as he really was? No, for our ideas regarding him are full of incoherencies.

The Man of Brumaire, the Tyrant, the Drinker of blood, the Corsican Ogre, Antechrist?--Or the Poet of Action, the Professor of Energy, an iota all ablaze with glory, the face of God in the darkness, the Beggar of the Infinite, the Image of Him who is to come, the Messiah...?

In this mystery fraught with confusion, it has at any rate generally been thought that Napoleon must have been a very curious personage...that the tiniest relics left of him had therefore a special value...that every sneeze he gave should be counted and handed down to posterity.

And yet he was lost in the midst of his family, his brothers, his sisters, a countless band, to whom he threw crowns, and chateaux, and millions, who, never satiated, abandoned and betrayed him;-- a husband whose wife was faithless to him and a brother sold by his brethren: a poor career indeed.

Or Napoleon a lover! -- No! He had no time for that! A few days of burning passion, his wedding night on March 9th, and on the 12th his departure to join the army, -- a few fleeting love affairs, of course -- a touching attachment for the “rose-bud” Maria Walewska, -- a few illegitimate children here and there, of course: not much of a life!

The time has come, now his Centenary is a thing of the past, to rid him of all these toys, of all the rubbish of anecdotical history, to get to know him as he really was, to set up his statue in incorruptible metal.

To know Napoleon, he must first of all be set in his historical surroundings. Now his active career is confined between the years 1789 and 1815. It thus coincides with the French Revolution, which cannot be separated from the Empire. Clemenceau once imposed upon us the doctrine of the revolutionary cycle, which takes in Mirabeau and Danton, Marat and Robespierre and Carnot. Doubtless; but also and above all, Napoleon, who was so completely the man, the soldier, the legislator, the Emperor of the Revolution that his fall was the signal for the Restoration.

He lived all his life, at the constant peril of his life, in the revolutionary tempest, in the battle of the gods, of the “gods athirst”: not only of the gods of the Terror, but of the gods of the ancien régime, the ancien régime of France, of the whole world, the gods of divine right, of all the privileges, of every form of servitude and resignation.

From this fiery furnace he drew the Tables of the New Law, the Civil Code of the French: the land for the peasants who draw their furrows therein, the Gospel of Equality and untrammeled labour.

To know Napoleon it is necessary to stand close to him in this atmosphere of fire, to follow him step by step without empty rhetoric as without prejudices, but as far as possible with the same dramatic and epic motion, to dash onward at the charge amidst plots and battles, to note down, simply but faithfully, his acts and gestures, the flash, the blaze of the work he was hammering out: -- At the Bridge of Arcole, -- at the Saint Bernard -- at the Coronation, -- at the Kremlin, -- on the Rock of Saint Helena : -- so many high reliefs, moulded in bronze, soon to be “famed in story”.

To know Napoleon better, it is necessary to try to reach his brain, his thought. And that is by no means easy, for he had no confidents, merely agents. “Le Seigneur l’avait fait puissant et solitaire”, the Lord had created him powerful and lonely. And he maintained around him, “as it were a halo”, “the vagueness which enchains the multitude and pleases it.”

But yet he let slip, here and there, in the midst of action, or at Saint Helena before his testament, winged words which might be seized on, for they are clear-cut as medals. The French nation has never been conquered when united.-- Italy is my mistress: none but me shall share her bed.-- The British Isles in a state of blockade. -- Rome the second city of the Empire. -- I shall be the Brutus of Kings and the Caesar of the Republic. -- A second Prometheus, I have stolen fire from heaven...

In this light he may be judged as if he were “stripped to the skin”, or at any rate he may be understood; it will be possible to understand the wonderful prestige which attracts the crowds and leads them on along every road in the world towards his tomb.

It will then be seen that his undying personality, that personality which stands out from all attempts at research, is not far from being that which the people alone knows and which is sufficient for it to adore him -- the Napoleon who once stood upon the Column with his little hat, piercing eye and stubborn chin, his grey frock-coat and big battle-boots, his sword falling by his side like a folded wing, his hand thrust into his waistcoat, standing before the lowering horizon with the calmness of a god, fraught with thoughts whence order is to spring.

--Edouard Driault, The True Visage of Napoleon, Preface

#Edouard Driault #The True Visage of Napoleon #Napoleon books #excerpt #Napoleon Bonaparte #napoleon #bonaparte #Napoleon I #Emperor Napoleon #Napoleon description #Literary #Book

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