luke skywalker as a soldier is one of my favorite ways to approach his character. there's so much about it that he would love. the camaraderie, exposure to new worlds, exposure to new political ideas. there would be parts of being a soldier that would feel like a grand adventure, one he's wanted since his youth. (and he gets to fly every day - how amazing is that!)
yet, being a soldier is exhausting. not just physically, but mentally. as his force powers awaken, does he feel the death toll as intensely? he's a leader in the rebellion fairly quickly. even if not in rank-no one has achieved what he did. he stopped the ultimate evil. but war takes its toll.
throwing away the lightsaber at the end of rotj is not just a rejection of the dark side; it's a rejection of his life as a soldier. he's done being a weapon. he's exhausted. there's been too much death and misery. he becomes a jedi when he abandons the cycle of violence.
Rivers of Blood
Machines of Steel
Violence has a brand new deal
To these metal beasts it's all their lifeblood
Gunpowder, bullets, and all in-between
They're addicted to it as if a call from a siren
These search lights are the first I've seen
While the horsemen of the war tread in the horizon
This is how it's always been
This is where their spirits always lie in
ok i am actually so very angry and there's literally nothing i can do to fix it. life keeps going on. she might even be happy. and fuck dude, i'll make sure im happy too, i was a fully developed person before she was in my life and i'll continue to be one without her. but God Damn, the fact that she can just do something so blatantly awful and unfair to me and then run off without any actual repercussions is just so fucking rankling to me.
like perhaps she feels guilty. she said she did when it was all going down. but it was just something she "needed to do". so obviously she didn't feel guilty enough or she wouldnt have done it like that lmaoooo
i really did deserve to have a good solid yell at her. but unfortunately, by the time i did see her in person i just wanted her out of my fucking life. so. no yelling was done, unfortunately.
[CGworld anon] Japanophone Jon_dArc on Reddit translated part of the article in the short thread "Who is the most skilled boss in elden ring lore?", and clarified some wording. I brought it up because some Radahn fans assumed he was winning in the trailer and let Malenia get up because of honor. In actuality, what we saw was Radahn trying to pick off an already-exhausted and wounded foe after throwing his army at her. And still getting stalemated and impaled pre-Rot. Almost the opposite context.
having discussions about malenia and radahn in a broader context (e.g. reddit threads) is kind of a lost cause because a lot of people have attached themselves to the idea of wholesome can-do-no-wrong chad radahn vs the vindictive evil bitch malenia. i won't comment on that too much in depth, but it leads to very skewed discussions where people insist malenia was weak and just cheated him out of a fair fight.
the game indicates to us that radahn is not underhanded, per se, but maybe driven is the right term. he relentlessly pursued the title elden lord enough to heckle several demigods and make a good attempt at sieging leyndell. his idolization of godfrey runs deep. it seems clear that his exchange with malenia wasn't one of honorably waiting for her, but more that he was taunting her (again - the line of "meeting radahn's measure").
but to that end yeah i agree with that assessment of the trailer. it's particularly reinforced imo in how the items around her describe her skill and determination, and it also reminds me of her cut line when she killed the player. the full exchange was originally "Now do you understand? I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella." which to me she's conveying the spirit of what's described in that article; perhaps, even, that this is what she said to radahn.
and radahn in the trailer certainly seems like he was expecting her to lay down and die; he's taken by surprise when she continues to fight with the shattered prosthetic.
part of the problem with discussing their battle is that the story trailer (extraneous media) is the only context we have for the battle of aeonia & their part in the shattering at large, which is really unfortunate. the total lack of explicit and in-depth context here is probably my biggest gripe with the game.
im not antisocial or even agoraphobic I'm literally just so so so traumatized by gun violence that it's hard to even think about going out without feeling like I'm going to puke. not some deep introvert im just constantly bracing for a bullet rip thru me or planning out how i can use my body to shield the most of my friends from different angles
Do these weirdos think that when terfs talk about "males" they're talking about trans men? When a terf talks about males, they are exclusively talking about trans women. They are misgendering us as means to deny us our womanhood. "Trans men are men and have male privilege" does not have remotely the same violence. There's no misgendering in it. Trans men are men.
This just annoys me cuz the two examples are absolutely nothing alike, and they both are not bio essentialist. Even if you think trans men are denied access of male privilege, the statement that trans men benefit from patriarchy has no violence to it, no misgendering, it truly has no fangs. It's just a statement about trans men being men and likely having male privilege. It's not bio essentialist cuz it genders trans men how they identify.
The former is incredibly violent, misgendering, and is bio essentialist.
Is this person trying to say "TIMs are males" is about trans men? Cuz it's not. Is this person trying to say trans men actually aren't men? Cuz they are. Is this person trying to claim that trans women on Tumblr dot com saying "trans men are men, therefore they benefit from patriarchy" is the same as a hate group, that has a tangible real world grip on society, and is oppressing the trans community, saying "trans women are male?" God I hope not.
Had to be present in yet another conversation where cis women were discussing the man vs bear thing, and I couldn't say anything about it to them because they do not react well to men having opinions on "man vs bear" so I am addressing their argument on tumblr dot com instead.
"Men are more of a danger to women than bears- the number of men who kill/attack women each year is way higher than the number of bears who kill/attack people each year."
Okay? Those statistics don't prove what you want them to prove. Obviously the numbers are higher for violence against women from men versus violence against people from bears- Women encounter men more often than people encounter bears. A lower number for people killed/attacked annually doesn't make something safer. In 2022, there were fewer deaths by firearms (20,138, excluding suicides) than deaths in motor vehicle traffic crashes (42,514) and I still feel a hell of a lot safer in a car than I would around a person with a gun.
Also, that disregards the fact that, when women are attacked by a man, it's most commonly someone that the woman knows, not a random person in a forest. 12% of female murder victims were murdered by a stranger, and 12.1% of female rape victims were raped by a stranger. An intimate partner is more likely to be a threat than a stranger in the forest.
Also, if we're talking odds- in the event that both the man and the bear would be aggressive, I think your chances of outrunning or fighting a man are significantly better than your chances of outrunning or fighting a bear.
Idk it just pisses me off that people are trying to get data to support their idea that it would be safer to be around a literal fucking bear than a human person who happens to be male. I can't stop anyone from choosing bear over man in this scenario, but that decision isn't based on facts and statistics, it's based on fear and gender essentialism.
end notes for zero-sum game (tw: slavery, sexual abuse)
hi if you're here it means you read my deranged aventurine smut. thank you for reading that abomination lmao I hope you enjoyed it 😭 once again I've touched on really sensitive topics and don't want to be misread so I'm writing some disclaimers/explanations below:
In the act of gambling with human stakes, as well as doing business with human traffickers, Aventurine is essentially himself engaging in human trafficking. This is not something he particularly enjoys doing or wishes to exploit (which I did try to indicate in the narrative); he only does this for his role with the IPC.
The reason I made this a narrative about human trafficking is not because I wish to glamorize this crime. I framed the narrative this way because I wanted to point out how Aventurine actively perpetuates the kind of capitalistic violence that ruined his life by being a Stoneheart. This is something that is implicit in the game but not openly explored, hence I expanded on it here.
Somewhat thematically related: the reader actively engages in self-objectification—using it neutrally as a tool for their espionage work at times, but also positively in order to eroticize their one-sided and exploitative relationship with Aventurine. This was not intended to condone the objectification of human beings; rather, I wanted to show how a lifetime of sexual objectification and extreme dehumanization as a slave has led them to objectify and dehumanize themselves, sometimes even in the capacity of enjoying it.
Aventurine in canon similarly engages in self-objectification and dehumanization as a trauma response (i.e. he refers to himself as a chip in a positive manner, clearly as a reaction to how his owner referred to him callously as a chip when he was a slave), though in my opinion he's not really implied to derive any real joy from the idea.
Related to the point of objectification: Aventurine and the reader clearly do not engage in particularly safe, sane or consensual sexual dynamics (specifically referring to how he started undressing them before they fully consented to public sex and just kind of decided what to do with them without prior discussion). This is not because I think this is acceptable behaviour; it is a reflection of their unequal power dynamic that the reader actively encourages and Aventurine is fine with perpetuating. It is also implied to be the result of his own distorted relationship with sex—he has literally been coerced into doing exactly the same thing in the very same establishment, and assumed that the reader would be fine with doing it too because they generally enjoy it when he exercises "ownership" over them, which they both associate with sexual control for traumatic reasons.
I've seen discourse around the fandom where people interpret the act of kissing Aventurine’s commodity code as a purely sexual or fetishizing action. I thus feel compelled to explain that the act of Aventurine and reader kissing each other’s codes in this story served a specific purpose within the wider narrative about dehumanization. I wrote a lot of things in this fic purely because I was ungodly levels of horny for Aventurine (lol), but those particular actions actually had narrative weight lol
With all this being said, I hope it is clear that the reason I chose to focus on themes of slavery and dehumanization is not because I intend to promote or glamorize them, but because I wanted to explore specific points of Aventurine’s characterization that exist in canon. The theme of sexual abuse (and its psychological fallout) is also something that is a natural extension of his story arc in canon. I have no wish to perpetuate any of these things, and I have faith that my audience can distinguish fiction from reality and thus will not have their perspectives on real life issues be seriously influenced by my dumb horny fic on tumblr dot com.
Also I should hope this is obvious but do not use your regular everyday gloves to finger someone! I like to imagine that Aventurine’s expensive science fiction gloves has the incredible ability to remain sterile in everyday circumstances 👍