#why does genocider have so many names

[danganronpa-textposts]

thanks for the submission!!

[haunted-xander]

Despite her wariness at Chisa reccommending her for this mission, she ended up doing it anyway. She just couldn't let anyone else get caught in a trap.

So, here she was. Hidden away on the helicopter headed for Towa City. All those stealth games are coming in handy now. Being the former Ultimate Gamer has it's perks. Once the other people inside the helicopter left, she got ready to leave quietly. Before she could do that though, she noticed someone else sneaking their way off. ...Is that... Fukawa-san? I don't think she was sent on a secret mission like me... She must've gone on her own. ...I guess that's not surprising. Togami-kun's the one leading this operation, and she's always following him around...

After Toko went off on her own, Chiaki ran off as well, making sure to go in the opposite direction. Her job was to act as back-up in case something happens, so for now, she is to stay on stand-by.

After a while, walking around got kinda boring. Even with all the Monokuma robots and the creepy, giggling children. I wanna go home... This is a lot more boring than I thought it'd be... I wanna play games with Kamukura-kun and Komaeda-kun again. She was broken out of her internal pouting by a shriek coming from up ahead. Rushing forward, she readied her hacking gun to shoot.

When she finally arrived at the scene, she saw what looked like Toko and another girl in a school uniform struggling against a hoard of Monokumas. 'Toko' cackled and twirled the scissors in her hands, slicing them into a nearby Monokuma's 'throat'. "Oh, what the hell!? These things just don't stop coming! Do those brats have some eternal Monokuma factory nearby or something!? What a pain! I don't have nearly enough scissors for all of them!"

"T-Toko! W-what do we do now?! I-I-I don't have any more bullets! A-and there's s-so many of them! W-w-we-we're done f-for-!"

"Not quite yet! You're not done yet!" Chiaki rushed over and shot the nearest Monokumas all in the eye, destorying them immediately. "That uniform... Another Future Foundation member!? I thought only Master's team was sent here, what the hell are YOU doing here, huh!? Answer me!" 'Toko' seemed oddly put off by her presence. "There's no time for that right now! We need to deal with these Monokumas first. Questions can come later."

"R-right! I-I can't do much right now b-but... I can distract them at least!" The unfamiliar girl stood up, and seemed to be gearing herself up. "Alright! I've done enough crying, time to get started! I-I'll start by... running around annoyingly in circles! that'll draw their attention for sure!"

"Wha- Dekomaru! You keep your ass right where I can see you! Dekomaru!!" As the girl started running around while yelling taunts at the Monokumas, 'Toko' threw and slashed her scissors at the Monokumas while screaming at the girl for being reckless and stupid.

Ah, they seem like good friends. I'm glad. Fukawa-san seemed like she'd have trouble getting along with people.

[ushnuu]

Fandom: Dangan Ronpa Series, Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Genocider Syo | Genocide Jack/Naegi Komaru Characters: Genocider Syo | Genocide Jack, Naegi Komaru, Fukawa Toko Additional Tags: Semi-Public Sex, Wall Sex, Cunnilingus, syo has a tongue and she knows how to use it, Top Genocider Syo | Genocide Jack, Minor Fukawa Toko/Togami Byakuya (one-sided), Multiple Orgasms, Kinktober 2024 Series: Part 1 of Kinktober 2024 Summary:

Toko Fukawa isn’t gay.

Luckily for Komaru, Genocider Syo is.

[fairuzfan]

I'm to the point where if I hear you're endorsing/voting for Kamala Harris and you're publicly getting mad at people for not voting for her, I'm not even going to listen what you have to say, you've made it clear you have to strong principles to guide your decisions beyond "what's worse for me personally?" I think Harris voters have no actual ideologies to live by, despite claiming they do, and I fundamentally don't respect them for it. It's one thing to be angry at people who won't vote for Harris, but it's another thing to pretend you're doing it because you have some sort of moral authority and not basing it off pure selfishness. You think that solidarity is posting about things and that's it. You refuse to make yourself uncomfortable, even momentarily. And you get mad at people who are willing to go through discomfort for the sake of others. You call them names, ans claim that THEY are the selfish ones in this scenario. You've given up on making a change in the world for the better, or maybe you were never interested in it. All of your arguments pale in comparison to reality, because Harris is actively funding a genocide. She has even refused to acknowledge a reality in which she does not fund that genocide. Has made such a thing clearer and clearer. All my problems here in the imperial core are secondary to that. I'm about to go through multiple personal issues that are made increasingly hard by political factors and I still think that's nothing in comparison to what Palestinians and Lebanese are going through overseas. You've placed yourselves as the ultimate victims in the world and to me it's laughable and completely out of touch with just how fucked everyone else is because of the imperial beast that is Amerikkka. And speak nothing of the way the victims of Amerikkkan imperialism on Turtle Island bear the brunt of societies' woes for your personal comfort and refusal to make any meaningful change. Not ev baby steps! You think trump is an accidental anomaly and not a product of a larger issue within white amerikkkan politics. Is it not shocking to you that so many people here are voting for trump so enthusiastically?

Seeing things like the weaponization of personal identity, like "Muslims for Harris," used so plainly is an insult to the ideas of internationalism that you all claim to follow. What use is solidarity with the victims of imperialism if you refuse to acknowledge the entirety of the imperial complex? That includes the democrats you hold so dear as well as the Republicans? What use is any of this if you only think for yourself?

You claim to be thinking of others, and that's why you vote for Harris... but what is so incomprehensible to me is the comfort in which you accept the inevitability of Palestinian deaths. Why are you so willing to accept that reality? Why are you comfortable with that reality? It shocks me and disgusts me in a way that I can not really describe. You lot argue and argue and argue, but in the end, the difference between you and me is that I refuse to engage in a reality where Palestinians must die in any case. You have yet to refuse that. In actuality, you all refuse the baby steps, the bare minimum, of refusal to engage in continuation of that reality. And because of that, I do not take you seriously, nor do I view you as being moral in your decision to sacrifice Palestinians.

[tododeku-or-bust]

wait sorry, what does muhammad ali have to do with drafting? /genq

I assume you're referring to my addition on this post? All right!

Well first, famed (and to many, infamous) boxer Muhammad Ali wasn't technically a draft dodger. He was a Conscientious Objector on the grounds of his religion (he was in the Nation of Islam at the time). They just didn't accept his objection.

But Muhammad Ali was very, very known for being confident and outspoken in his beliefs and in himself. And the main political reason he gave for not wanting to go to war was that he "had no quarrel with the Vietcong". He was arrested in 1967 for refusing to go, and White America swore he was a coward, an uppity n*gger, and every foul word in the book (for being unwilling to entertain and/or die for them).

Essentially, he recognized and pointed out that to go to war with Vietnam, war with other people of color, for a country that refused to respect his own people's basic civil and human rights was stupid. He has no issues with Vietnam. He had issues at home! If he went to war and died, he'd be dying for furthering the interests of Western Imperialism and white supremacy via a genocide. If he went to war and committed said genocide, lived and returned, he'd return to the very same white people who sent him to fight treating him like he was subhuman.

It happens in every war; Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II. To this day, we are learning of and pushing contributions of Black soldiers and platoons that got ZERO credit in comparison to their white counterparts. Silently sent to the back in history, treated like garbage upon their return, and expected to risk their lives for a country that hates them.

Why would anyone want to fight for that? Why would I want to commit a genocide? Why would I risk my life to commit violence the world over for a country that hates me and disenfranchises my people?

Anyway, so he was arrested and convicted for refusing to go to Vietnam, his boxing titles stripped, (also deadnamed! For they refused to call him his chosen name of Muhammad Ali, but Cassius Clay!) and again, white america had nothing but vitriolic hate for this man. But he stood on it, and eventually the conviction was overturned.

Also, because he was willing to say what needed to be said as a famous face to the world, his words had an effect worldwide. Y'all know how y'all want your celebs to say something? He did! And he risked it and lost it all! So that's why I brought up Muhammad Ali. Famous Black man who wasn't just a boxer and entertainer, but an activist who did the right damn thing in the moment, and will be remembered by history as doing such.

Happy Black History Month, and Free Palestine!

[cressidagrey]

Unknowing

Summary:

“If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her.”

What if… Azriel actually takes Rhys at his word? And does exactly what his High Lord ordered? With unexpected consequences.

This is the Inner Circle finding out about said consequences. Azriel is very good at keeping secrets

Warnings:

(This is a doozy.) Mention of Sex Work, Unexpected Pregnancy, Mention of Faerie Genocide, Mention of Faerie Wings being used as leather, Mention of Sex

Note:

This was a thought experiment that kinda started to grow a life on its own.

(super pretty divider by @saradika-graphics)

Azriel slid into the Dining Room of the River House nearly on the cusp of being late. Mostly because he hadn’t been able to pull himself away from what he had been doing that afternoon. 

Nobody in his situation would have wanted to leave. 

It had involved his wife and the flower field in their backyard… their daughter sleeping peacefully in her willow basket a few paces away, cradled in a bubble of her mother’s magic that would keep her asleep and safe from anything that could happen to her. 

Fed, changed and as happy as a clam to fall into her usual milk-induced coma, he knew that she would only wake up if she wanted more milk. 

Which meant that her parents had some quality time for each other…and they had made the best out of that. 

The result was a little shimmer of magic all over Azriel that he couldn’t get scrubbed away. Not that he had tried particularly hard either. He liked having that proof of his wife’s pleasure all over him. 

His wife, his mate, the mother of his child…his fucking sanity . There were many words he had for Embelia. 

She was the bright spot of his life, untouched by the darkness that leeched around him. A secret he gladly kept.

And if the glimmer of her magic followed him and showed everybody that he was hers…well, then that was the case. Azriel didn’t particularly care what anybody else thought of it. 

Azriel was out of fucks to give, to be honest. Had been, for the better part of two years…ever since that Solstice. 

He was pretty sure that something inside him had splintered apart at Rhys’ order. 

That fucking order had been the reason why he had ever even met Embelia though. He had taken Rhys literally. If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her. That had been Rhys’ words. 

Her had been Elain. 

Azriel had listened to Rhys. He had followed the order to the fucking letter, giving the High Lord of the Night Court to complain about. He had left Elain alone…who had figured things out with Lucien. Both now happy and ensconced in Day Court, with Helion, Lucien’s actual father. 

And he had gone to that pleasure hall.  He had asked for any female that wasn’t afraid of him…and then Embelia had claimed his hand with hers. And that had been that. 

 Granted, he hadn’t known her name then. For months, all he had known her as had been Blossom. That’s who she had been to him for months . 

Just Blossom. Every Thursday, he had gone to that pleasure hall and paid for her company. 

And then she had gotten pregnant. 

Not quite what either of them expected. 

He hadn’t even bothered with a contraception draught and while she had, apparently it hadn’t stood up to Azriel of all faes. 

He should probably thank the mother on his knees for that . 

But Embelia had told him about the pregnancy and had been very clear from the start that while she wanted the child, she wasn’t going to ask anything of him. Which was simply unacceptable. 

He had grown up a bastard. He was not going to put his child through the same if he had any choice in that matter. 

And he had been a little bit in love with her then already. So taking her from that pleasure hall and making her his wife…moving her into a cottage he found and making a life with her…that had been the easiest decision he had ever made. 

They had just fit together…

She had come to live with him, and had given up her job, though that wasn’t something that bothered her all too much. More than anything she was happy that she no longer needed to do that to keep alive, to make a living…

And he got to hear the story of how she had come to Velaris and to the pleasure hall.  

Embelia was a Floresco Fairie. One of the few survivors of that breed of Lesser Fairies. The rest of her family had been slaughtered in the Spring Court Centuries ago. 

She had escaped and had ended up in Velaris of all places, traumatised and alone. Still half a child to her people, not having a trade or anything of that sort. The natural ability of a Floresco Fairy made it possible for her to grow flowers and life wherever she stood but none of that particularly lent itself to a well-paid job. 

So the pleasure house it had been. With a glamour, of course. 

The first time he had met her, she had left the glamour fall away, showing him a pair of iridescent pink wings sprouting out of her back. 

Even then he had thought that she was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. 

That opinion had never changed. If anything…after the birth of their daughter, after the mating bond had snapped for both of them, sometimes between cutting the cord and pressing a kiss to their daughter’s blood-covered head, covered in downy black curls…and he had watched Emmie cradle the baby against her chest, watched her coo to her, not caring one bit about blood and sweat and anything else, because there was their little girl that they had hoped and prayed for…somehow at that point, love seemed such a weak word for what he felt for them both. 

Somehow…somehow they had become the light of his life, the only guide he needed. And he protected that ferociously. 

Maybe even more than was necessary. 

He kept them away from his job and from anything and anybody that may would know him as the terror of the Night Court. 

They were his. His. His . 

The first thing in his long life that was his and his alone . 

And maybe that was too possessive, but…he had never wanted to listen to anybody else’s opinions about his and Embelia’s relationship. 

And everybody would have had their opinions. 

He knew that.

Instead…he had kept them a secret. 

To this day, nobody knew. Not Rhys, not Cassian, not Mor, not Amren…not Feyre or Nesta. 

Though of all people, sometimes he thought that maybe Nesta suspected something. 

But even if she did…that was fine too. 

He had made Embelia his wife, and his mate and the mother of his child and nobody could take her away from him. Nobody but herself, and she was gloriously happy in their little flower-covered cottage, where she was…content to dabble at being a housewife. 

After the life she had, he could understand it. She revelled in the normal, in doing nothing but dote on their daughter and try and cook him dinner, which had started as absolutely disgusting but these days often turned out at least mostly edible…to tend to her garden of flowers, which were all she ate anyway…

To just exist there, in that little slice of paradise they built. 

And instead of being with her…he attended a family dinner at the River House that evening. He would have gladly just stayed at home, made himself dinner, or maybe let Embelia try to feed him, which never quite worked out and then walked their daughter to sleep. 

It would have been perfectly fine to him. To press a kiss to their daughter’s black curls and stroke her iridescent purple sparkling wings that were carefully folded and laid over her back…her heart-shaped mouth would open into a perfect o and she would yawn and he would fall in love all over again. It wouldn’t just be perfectly fine. It would be everything he had ever wanted. 

And then he could lay her in her crib and he could walk the few steps to their bed and crawl into it next to his wife, and she would give him that smile…and he could cocoon both of them in his wings and fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that she would be there the next morning.

Maybe kiss her some more and hear very perfect noise that left her throat and feel her warm body against his, skin like silk and small warm hands that could take him apart in seconds. 

But no. Rhys had ordered him. Like he was sometimes prone to be doing these days. Maybe because he didn’t know how Azriel spent his free time and clearly him being a loose cannon was way more believable than anything else. 

Oh well. Azriel wasn’t in the mood to clear that up. 

If anything he was in a brooding mood, wanting to go back to his afternoon in the flower field. 

“For cauldron’s sake,” Cassian complained, just as he started to violently sneeze. Multiple times. “Did you roll around in a flower field or something?” his brother demanded and Azriel was amused besides himself. 

“Yes,” he agreed drily, taking his seat next to Cassian who just glared at him and then grumbled under his breath, swapping seats with Nesta because otherwise he was probably not going to stop sneezing. 

“The Lord of Bloodshed taken to his knees by some flower pollen,” Amren drawled from across the table and Cassian glared at her. 

Nesta just snorted in amusement. 

Rhys and Feyre appeared at that moment and at least the discussion of flower fields was tabled for the moment. 

Which was just as well. 

Azriel mentally wondered if he could get away with skipping dessert if he cited some headache or something. He could get dessert at home. It promised to be much better than anything that would be served at the table anyway. 

Or maybe that was just going to make Rhys think that he was on the brink of some sort of breakdown even more than he already was. Who knew? 

Was it worth the mental berating that it promised to give him? All under the guise of worrying about him or checking in on him? 

Azriel had his own opinion about that these days. 

He couldn’t help but flinch as Nesta suddenly reached out to touch his hair. 

“What are you doing?” he asked her drily as Nesta pulled back her hand, Embelia’s glimmer sticking to it. 

“You have…glitter in your hair,” Nesta gave back. “What did you do?” she asked him with a grin. “Is that some kind of fashion choice now?” 

“It’s not glitter,” he gave back. It wasn’t. It was the flakes that Embelia’s wings shook loose when she trembled. It did look like glitter though. Sparkling, catching the sunlight…gorgeous, like every inch of her. 

“Az, I don’t know if you are ready to hear it, but it definitely looks like glitter,” Nesta told him with a snort. “Don’t worry, it suits you,” she said graciously, biting back a laugh. 

Mor was watching the whole thing. “It’s not glitter,” she finally said, mustering his hair with far too much interest. Azriel forced himself not to twitch under the assessing gaze of her brown eyes. Once upon a time, he would have given nearly everything to have her look at him like that, but nowadays…there was nothing there anymore. He would always lover her but sometimes during centuries of yearning for her it had settled into a deep and abiding friendship. Into loyalty. No longer the bright burning of desire, of…anything like that.  “Though I would really like to know where you found a Floresco Fairy to talk into your bed, Az,“ she said with a wink. 

Azriel didn’t react. 

“A what?” Feyre asked, curiosity piqued. 

“Floresco Fairy,“ Mor repeated. “They used to live in the Spring Court…centuries ago.”

“They don’t anymore?” Feyre wondered and the conversation around the table dropped. 

“Tamlin’s father had them slaughtered and used their wings for leather,“ Azriel said, his voice forcefully even. It was even more horrific than it sounded like. A whole breed of faeries was killed off because of their wings. Floresco Faeries had never been violent or a fighting breed. They kept to themselves, raising their families and growing their flowers and their crops…and then it had been ripped apart into a bloodbath. 

Embelia had been right in the middle of that. She had escaped, her youngest sister in tow…who had later succumbed to her injuries and all Emmie had been able to do was to bury her into the icy ground in Winter Court. She hadn’t outright said it but Azriel had known that for years she had wished to bury herself right there alongside her sister. 

Feyre just stared at him, blue eyes wide. “That’s horrible,“ she whispered, swallowing. 

“Yes,“ he agreed. It was. 

Horrific. 

“Not all died, a few escaped,” Mor said, trying to make it seem less horrific than it had been. “It happened a very long time ago. But still, they are quite rare. Where did you find her?” She asked Azriel, clearly trying to find something else to talk about.

He wasn’t stupid enough to lie to Morrigan, whose gift was Truth. 

“Today? At home.” He answered honestly. 

“Home?” Mor repeated, sounding amused beside herself. 

“Is she the same one you bought that solstice gift for?” Nesta piped up. 

He had asked her for advice, more out of desperation than anything else. She had been quite helpful though. 

He hadn’t been anted to ask Mor for obvious reasons, Armen would have probably bitten off his head and Feyre…well then Rhys would have known. But Nesta? Nesta had listened to him when he had asked politely and had then told him that if she liked him, she would like whatever he would buy her.

Not that useful but oh well. 

So he just nodded. 

“Which one did you end up picking?” Nesta asked him, curious. 

“I just bought both,” he admitted with a shrug. 

A hair comb that Emmie still wore nearly every day, silver and pink stones intertwined, keeping blush hair pulled back from her face and a pair of earrings that she also wore sometimes. 

She liked things like that, even when she never seemed to spend much money on them. And he liked buying her stuff like that because then she wore it and had that pleased little smile on her face, content and happy…

“Lucky girl,” Nesta told him with a secret smile, elbowing his ribs and he bit back down a smile for himself. 

“Az got a girlfriend?” Cassian asked, sounding shocked. 

“I do not,” he disagreed with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He had a wife. Very different. 

“So you just buy…What did he buy, Nesta?” Cassian asked. 

“He was waffling between a jewel-encrusted hair comb or a pair of lovely earrings. Apparently, he got her both,” Nesta answered her mate with a sigh. “You should take some advice from him,” she told him drily, making Cassian roll his eyes. 

“So if you don’t have a girlfriend, you just buy hair combs and jewellery for any female you come across?” His brother asked him drily. 

He just shook his head, not saying a single word. His shadows tightened in response, crawling closer to him from where they had skittered away. 

They liked Embelia, though they had taken a special liking to his daughter, tendrils oftentimes coming to play with her or checking on her through the night. With Emmie they kept a respectful distance, though they liked to hide and play with her, like they basked in her pure presence.

It wouldn’t surprise him all too much if that’s what they did. 

“Flower and Bud are safe” they whispered at that moment, even when he hadn’t asked. 

Right. Safe. 

“Leave him to it, Cassian. Though maybe next time wash off the glimmer. Or don’t have one of your amorous adventures before you show up to dinner,” Rhys drawled. 

It shouldn’t have upset him like that. It shouldn’t have. 

It was harmless. Mostly at least, but Azriel couldn’t help but feel the icy rage burn bright in his chest at Rhysand’s words. At his brother’s words. 

He didn’t have many good things in his life but he had Emmie and he was not going to let anybody take her away from him. He was not. 

That was simply unacceptable. 

“If you try to forbid me from bedding my wife, Rhysand, we are going to have a problem,” Azriel snapped back icily. 

A real problem, because he was not willing to give up Embelia under any circumstances. Not her and also not the pleasure they shared. 

He regretted his words instantly. One could have heard a pin drop in the Dining Room of the River House at that moment because this was the last thing anybody had expected. 

The last thing. 

He had kept his wife and his daughter hidden and he had been completely content with that because it had kept them safe and secure and he hadn’t wanted to listen to anybody trying to talk him out of it or telling him it was a bad idea. 

It was his fucking choice and he had never regretted it once. 

“Your wife ,” Amren was the first that recovered. “Your wife?!”

“Yes.”

His wife. His daughter. His family. 

The family he claimed. They were his. 

“You don’t have a girlfriend but you have a wife ?” Mor repeated. 

He just nodded. 

“You got married. When?” she continued asking him and he met her gaze. 

“About a year ago,” he answered. It had been just the two of them…and well, the babe slumbering in Emmie’s womb, but that was the whole reason for the wedding in the first place, right? 

“You didn’t even invite us to the wedding!” Cassian complained, having suddenly recovered his ability to talk. “You got married and you didn’t tell us?” 

Clearly. 

“And you never thought that that was something we may want to know, Azriel?” Rhys asked, his voice icy but Azirel met the gaze of violet eyes with his own.

“If you believe it or not, I can just about manage my personal relationships or my amorous adventures without the input of you, High Lord,” he drawled. 

There had been no reason to tell anybody. Least of all Rhys. 

“That was not what that was about and you know it,” his brother hissed at him, but Azriel just shrugged.  

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was. 

Maybe it had really just been a political worry for Rhys, but that didn’t mean that what he had done, hadn’t hurt…didn’t mean that he hadn’t pulled rank with Azriel in a way he had only done so very rarely. 

Rhys had gotten what he had wanted in the end. Elain and Lucien had figured it out…Day and Night were closer than ever. 

And Azriel…well, he was still pissed off about what had gone down in Rhys’ office that Solstice. Fucking furious, to be honest.   Even after Embelia had come into his life…even after she had married him. Even after the mating bond had snapped. He loved his wife, but he was still fucking furious about being treated like that. 

Furious and hurt. 

And maybe that had played into his decision as well. 

There was no reason to tell Rhys what happened. No reason whatsoever. 

Rhys must have caught that thought because the shimmer of night started to swirl around him, but Azriel wasn’t scared. He just raised a single eyebrow in question. 

“No reason?” Rhys questioned harshly. “You are the Spymaster of this fucking court, Azriel! You don’t think that maybe I should know who you are cohabiting with? Who you share a bed with? Who you married? How long did you even know this female before you married her?”

“A few months,” he answered drily. “What do you think I talk about when I am with her? Bring up the secrets of the Night Court as Pillow Talk? Oh, I tortured a couple of faes from Hewn City this afternoon, oh, harder, love? ” He questioned with a roll of his eyes.

Feyre choked out a laugh.

Rhys did not find it amusing. 

“Where did you even meet her?” he demanded. 

“Why, Rhys, I just followed your orders. You told me to go to a pleasure hall so I did,” he shot back. He had followed that order to the fucking letter. 

“So she’s a whore,” Rhys said and Azriel just looked at him. 

Embelia wasn’t ashamed of what she had been. Quite frankly, neither was he. She had done what she needed to do to survive. He was never going to give her the fault for that. The fault was on Spring for slaughtering her family and on the Night Court that they hadn’t given better support so that she would have never gotten into a situation like this where that was the only way out. 

But Embelia? She had been a whore. It was a simple fact. And she wore that proudly.  

“She was. Yes,” he agreed and he could see it on Rhys’ face what he thought about that. 

“You ordered Azriel to go to a pleasure hall?” Cassian asked. “Why?” he demanded. 

“Because he fancied himself in love with Elain of all faes and I couldn’t have him bring our court to the brink of war because he couldn’t keep it in his pants!” Rhys growled. “So I told him to go to a pleasure hall and pay for it to get it out of his system.”

“Rhys!” Mor snapped, shock colouring her voice

“Clearly, I was right, because your infatuation didn’t last long after you were told no. How long did it take you until you were in that pleasure hall?” Rhys demanded. “A Day? A week?”

“Around 6 months,” he answered, his voice even. “After it became obvious that Elain was going to give in to Lucien…Once it became obvious that she wasn’t interested in me. Then I started visiting the Pleasure Hall. I married my wife 4 months later.” 

“By the mother, Azriel, did all your good sense leave you?” Rhys asked him, shaking his head.  “What were you thinking?”  he demanded. 

“That I love her,” Azriel said calmly. “I love her,” he repeated. 

“Wow, she must have really been worth the money you spend on her,” Rhys drawled. 

She had been. Every gold coin. Every fucking clipped copper he paid for her company. Everything had been worth it, just for Embelia’s company.  

He didn’t even react to it. He had heard worse. But he could feel his rage grow with ever fucking word Rhys uttered. 

“She is worth more than you will ever understand,”  Azriel said quietly, his voice laced with steel.

Rhys glared at him. And then he said something so utterly inappropriate that the rage exploded. 

“So that’s what you needed all the time? Some pretty female that opens her legs and suddenly she leads you around by your prick?”

It felt like somebody had sucked all the air out of that room. 

Azriel’s blood boiled with anger and hurt, seething inside,  his control barely keeping the darkness at bay.

He wanted to kill Rhys at that moment. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry before. 

Having their relationship reduced to that…

Embelia’s face appeared in his mind, her smile, her laughter, the warmth of her touch. 

His sanity. 

He had made his choices, and he would stand by them. No one, not even Rhys, could make him regret loving Embelia.

“You can say whatever you want about me, but you say a single thing about my wife or my child and I’ll rip out your fucking throat, and don’t think for one moment that I won’t,” he snapped back harshly. “And yes, for the record, she was worth every fucking clipped copper, I spent on her. She was worth everything. I wanted to marry her. I asked her. I made that choice. She has done absolutely nothing but love me .” 

“You got a kid too?!” Cassian piped up. “Az?” he asked and Azriel ground his teeth.

“Yes,” he bit out. 

“How old?” Cassian asked quietly. 

“3 months tomorrow,” Azriel answered honestly. Cassian stared at him, hazel eyes harsh. 

“Boy or Girl?”

“Girl.”

“I got a niece and you haven’t told me?!” Cassian demanded. “How dare you! I owe her three months' worth of gifts and cuddles!”

“Cassian!” Nesta said sharply and Cassian started pouting. 

“Are you sure that the kid is yours?” Rhys drawled. 

He didn’t even bother to answer that question. 

“Where are you going?” Rhys demanded as he stood. 

“Home,” he gave back clippedly. “I’d rather walk my daughter to sleep than listen to you insult her mother and ask if she’s actually my daughter.” His voice was dripping with disdain. “Like there ever were any questions about it. She got her mother’s wings and my colouring.”

***

Nobody followed him home. Which was a good thing because Azriel wasn’t in a particularly forgiving mood at the moment. He was still furious. Utterly furious. 

Even as he walked through the door of the cottage… right until he saw Embelia sit in the living room, in that overstuffed armchair and nurse their daughter. She looked up as he entered, smiling.

And suddenly, every bit of anger just went up in smoke, because he couldn’t care less. 

Not when his mate was sitting there nursing his daughter, and it was so easy to just cross the room and drop to his knees before her, to let her reach out for him and run a hand over his hair and jaw and he leaned into her touch, breathing in the smell of earth and home and love. 

Home. He was home, he was with her and that was all he cared about. He stared at his daughter, happily drinking…dark eyes closed in concentration, one pudgy little fist pressing against Embelia’s breast, clearly making sure that her source of milk was going nowhere and he pressed a kiss to her downy soft hair, breathing in the combination of scents of himself and Emmie that clung to her. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Embelia asked him softly and he just shook his head. No. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted to be with his girls. He just wanted to…He just wanted to be right there. 

“You are the best things that ever happened to me,” he whispered hoarsely. 

A gift from the mother herself, and he still wondered every fucking day how he deserved both of them. 

Emmie ran a hand through his curls, staying quiet, as their daughter stopped drinking and he reached out to take her. 

Embelia happily relinquished her hold on her, but not before pressing a kiss to his cheek, and a soft touch to their daughter’s wings…iridescent black. 

Her wings. His colouring. 

No question about it. 

He walked her to sleep like he always did when he could be there, pressing her little body tight to his chest, a scarred hand holding her as carefully as she was made out of spun gold. 

Emmie had laughed at him at the start, at how carefully he held her, telling him that she was a baby and would survive it if he kissed and cuddled her. Still, he had been terrified of hurting her. 

She was so small, and his hands were so big and broad and scarred and…

But sometime during the last few weeks, he had realised that his daughter…his daughter would never look at his hands as anything other than the hands that had held her and comforted her. She would grow up with these scars…she probably wouldn’t even notice them. 

They would just be a fact of life to her. 

So he walked her, the slow swaying circles around their living room that he always made to calm her as much as him, as Embelia tidied around the living room, got ready for bed, and made herself comfortable for the night. 

He could hear the bath running as he felt the touch against his mind. It wasn’t Rhys. 

It was Feyre.

He was surprised enough that he let her slide in, just a little bit, and he knew that she caught a glimpse of the baby in his arms as he felt the surprise register. 

“She’s beautiful.” It was nearly a coo in which she said that, much to his amusement and pleasure, taking in the iridescent wings that lay folded over her back. 

“She got it from her mother.”

It was the truth. Embelia was the most beautiful fae he had ever laid eyes on. The kind of beauty wars were fought over, that brought males trembling to their knees…Azriel easily admitted that he also met that particular criteria. 

“You missed a knockdown drag-out fight between Rhys and Cassian…And then Mor and Nesta decided that they should also get a word in.”

That was not what he had expected, to be quite honest. 

He had half expected that he was going to end up taking his wife and his daughter and find someplace else for them to live. 

“Amren stopped them from levelling the city,” Feyre said drily. It should have amused him, but it didn’t. Not really. 

“You should have come to me after that solstice, I would have told Rhys that he was being ridiculous,” Feyre told him drily. “I’ll deal with him. I promise.”

“It’s fine,” he waved her off. It was fine. 

Right now at least. He never could stay angry when he got to be home when he got to hold his daughter. How could he be angry when he got to hold her? 

He didn’t want to be angry when he held her…He just wanted to breathe in her scent and feel every bit of tension bleed out of him.

A snuffling sound came from his daughter, then a heart belch…and her little body relaxed against his, clearly on her way to the land of dreams. 

“No, it’s not, he should have never done that,” Feyre cut him off. “Or talk to you like that for that matter. Neither on Solstice nor today.  I’ll make sure he understands that. It won’t happen again. You can expect an apology tomorrow.” 

Now he was amused. It bled all over Feyre, who just huffed. “What, do you doubt that I can make him apologise?” she challenged him. 

“Of course not, High Lady,” he promised her. If anybody could get Rhys to weaken in his stance, then it would be his mate. And that was exactly why he had never told Feyre, never wanted to bring her into a position where she was in disagreement with her mate. 

“So congrats on that wedding,” Feyre said suddenly. “We owe you a gift or two, I think…Who knows what Mor is gonna come up with…” He could just hold back the snort at that but could feel Feyre’s amusement leech all over his mind. “Can I…” she trailed off, unsure for a moment. “May I see her?” she asked, curious and delighted for him all the same. He could feel that. 

He pushed a memory at her, from that afternoon…of his wife and his daughter in that spring sun, in that flower field,  their wings glittering and fluttering, Embelia’s pink hair falling to her waist in soft waves and curls, their daughter with his dark hair and her wings, curled up in her mother’s arms, grinning gummily at her…Happiness was oozing from every second of that screenshot. 

“You are beyond lucky,” Feyre said quietly. 

“I know.”

He knew that with every fibre of his being. 

“What’s her name?” Feyre wondered. “She’s beautiful.” 

She was. Gorgeous in fact. And that wasn’t just coloured by the fact that she was his wife and his mate…but she was gorgeous. 

“Embelia,” he answered Feyre. “Family calls her Emmie though.” He called her that, some of her friends did as well. It was what she was most comfortable with. 

“And your daughter’s? What’s her name?” Feyre asked. 

It had taken them months to settle on a name, and then finally, it had been so easy. 

“Aster.”

“A Star and a Flower,” Feyre realised with some amusement. 

“Embelia thought it was just fair.” 

[soon-palestine]

Israel, the world’s most innocent country, fell victim to a horrific attack from Iran with zero reported casualties on the same day Israel killed dozens of civilians in Gaza.

Israel had been minding its own business, quietly bombing hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, and an embassy, when the Iranian regime launched their outrageous attack for no apparent reason. Thankfully, the US and UK scrambled jets to defend Israeli airspace because it’s wrong to bomb countries in the Middle East, unless your name is Israel, in which case you can do all the bombing you want.

Every British and American ship in the region is now in grave danger and the risk of terror attacks on our soil has surely increased, but you will be relieved to know our countries have not benefitted in any way from our intervention. Personally, I can’t think of a better way for Israel to spend our tax money.

Our leaders have condemned Iran in the strongest possible terms, which is confusing because I thought we were supposed to remain ambiguous and say we’re investigating the matter when such an attack occurs. Perhaps this is one of those rules that only applies to Israel though.

When informed of the attack, a calm and rational Suella Braverman screamed: “WAR! I WANT WAR!” and when she’d stopped hyperventilating, she added: “This must be the end of western backsliding on Israel,” because she thinks we have not been sufficiently supportive of their genocide. Anyone who is not on the same side of the argument as Suella Braverman must ask serious questions about themselves.

Iran’s unprovoked attack involved giving Israel adequate warning and launching 30-year-old missiles, 99% of which were intercepted, and then saying the matter is closed unless Israel escalates further. The fact Iran would consider retaliating to further escalation from Israel shows just extreme these lunatics are.

Among Iran’s targets was the Israeli air base from which the missiles that struck its embassy were launched, killing 13 on April 1. As of yet, we have no indication as to why Iran carried out the attack, but we’re going to tell you it’s because they want to start World War III. Psychos.

Conspiracy theorists have suggested it’s actually Benjamin Netanyahu who wants escalation, but it’s unclear why the man who faces political oblivion, and possibly jail, would be incentivised to draw his allies into the fight and cause everyone to forget his many war crimes.

Israel, the country that definitely does not want war, has vowed an “unprecedented” response against Iran which will probably kill many more than zero people. If Iran expresses disapproval at Israel’s next mass murder, it’s because they’re trying to destabilise the region. At this point, we’ll have no choice but to help Israel do to Iran what we’ve spent six months helping them do to Gaza - launch precision strikes that destroy 70% of the buildings in the country and leave survivors living in tents.

Worryingly, we’ve just discovered at the most convenient moment that Iran has enough uranium to build 12 nuclear bombs. If it were true that Iran had so much weapon-grade uranium, it would be incredibly stupid to attack them, but we’re going to insist we must attack them because we’re weapon-grade idiots - and we think you are too.

Please just switch your brain off and accept what you’re being told, you simpletons! What matters is rich people can afford nuclear bunkers if this all goes horribly wrong. In the meantime, you can look forward to lots of exciting stories in the media about bringing back conscription and describing how you are likely to die in humanity's final war. Are you looking forward to radiation sickness and nuclear winter? Because they sound like brilliant fun! x

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this outstanding piece of journalism as much as I did, you can support my work here:

[that-rad-jewish-girl]

Double standards are the name of the game when it comes to antisemitism “anti Zionism”.

“The pager and walkie attack was a declaration of war and a terror attack!” Okay….then what tf are all the rockets being launched over the northern border? Remember when Hezbollah bombed a soccer field and killed 12 children? What was that?

“The Palestinians are being killed - it’s a genocide!” No, it’s a war. What was Oct. 7th? Was that not a genocide? 1 million people have died from the Russia-Ukraine war…..is that a genocide? Are Ukrainians committing genocide right now by bombing Russia? How many civilians have died (on both sides)? Is that genocidal?

“Israel stole the land from Palestine and they need to give it back!!” I’m tired of this lie - it’s getting old. But even if you were right, what does it matter? I guess everyone who has ever migrated in the history of all time needs to move back? How far back should we go? The early white Americans were from England, sure, but before that they were from somewhere else. This is such an unproductive conversation to have it’s not even funny. I guess every country needs to close their borders and not allow any immigration. Oh wait! - you claim that’s apartheid and xenophobia. So the standard only applies to Israel?

“Israelis are white colonizers!” Again, a lie. A lie I’m tired of. But were we white when you put us in camps? Were we white when we were slaughtered for not being white? Were we white during every genocide to ever take place against our people? If you stuck me in front of a Nazi and said “she’s a Jew”, would that Nazi say I’m white? How dumb of a claim to say that we are white only because the most recent country some of us come from is a white one. Try applying that to any other ethnic or racial group. I guess every black person in the UK is white now. Why? Because they live in a white country. Ridiculous thought process.

Even more ridiculous is to talk of “Israeli occupation and colonialism” without talking about the history of Palestinians. Staging a coup in Jordan? Assassinating the Jordanian Prime Minister? When that didn’t work, they sent their troops to Lebanon instead. That’s why Hezbollah is in Lebanon today. That’s why they have control over Lebanon today. They went in as refugees before staging a coup and talking over the government. Hezbollah has direct control over much of the land there - only because of Palestinians invading under false pretenses and taking over. Native Lebanese people were slaughtered en masse, and many fled for their lives. But yeah, let’s talk about the big, bad, boogeyman Israel.

[jesncin]

The potential of Ma'alefa'ak; a comics retrospective

Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz, Martian Manhunter's evil twin brother, is considered the most iconic villain of the martian's rogues gallery. Aside from the white martians (which are arguably more often used as Justice League rogues), Ma'alefa'ak is the most frequently revived and adapted rogue to go against J'onn. Readers tend to remember Ma'al as "the Darkseid cultist who genocide-d the entire martian race", and while that's true for his first iteration, I don't believe that's the reason he's persisted as long as he has.

As with much of Martian lore, Ma'al's character and origin has been reinvented many times in both comics and adapted media. I would like to take a retrospective look into how Ma'al has evolved and shifted from his initial origin story, what I find compelling, what works, what doesn't, and where I'd like to see this character moving forward. This post will cover the comics and a separate post will cover his film and tv adaptations.

As we go through these iterations, I want to dig into what the through line of Ma'alefa'ak's character is. What do writers decide to keep and reinvent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?

disclaimer: Ma'al is frequently coded and sometimes even explicitly written as a disabled martian. While it's not a one-to-one comparable marginalization to any human disability (it's more of a fantasy disability or thematic rather than true representation), I figured it's still important to disclose that I am not a disabled reader. These are observations from an outsider perspective with no personal authority. Additional content warning for discussions of sexual assault (not directly, more like an act likened to rape- with the exception of a brief analysis on Brightest Day), genocide, and ableism.

Let's start with Martian Manhunter's 1998 solo run, issue #0 Pilgrimage. In this storyline, Ma'al is introduced as "the only martian born without telepathy!", and is therefore the only martian immune to fire (famously the weakness to the martian race). He admits to creating the telepathic virus that caused the martians to combust into flames, thereby killing them. Notably Ma'al is described as a "priest / scientist", and he explains that his goal is to wipe out all telepathic martians so that he can no longer be "the freak". The twins fight, presumed they killed one another, and went on their separate paths: J'onn is teleported to Earth, while Ma'al just kind of. Takes the world's longest nap in martian rubble. J'onn takes a pilgrimage to Mars one day, which alerts Ma'al that his quest to eliminate all telepathic martians is not complete.

Ma'al continues to appear as an overarching villain on issues #3-9, infiltrating J'onn's human life as John Jones and eventually impersonating the Martian Manhunter to get the Justice League to turn against his twin. In the process, Ma'al also impersonates several League members, sporting a signature Joker-esque smile to let the reader know it's him. This act of impersonation and trickery becomes a popular staple in future incarnations of Ma'al, as is often the case for shapeshifting villains. Ma'al adopts the "human" name Malefic.

In issue #7 we're given a flashback to a once living Mars, where Ma'al is being tried for the crime of "mind rape". It isn't specified who the victim of his crime is, unlike other iterations would later elaborate on. The reveal here is that Ma'al wasn't born disabled: he was punished to be by the martian council. His memory was wiped to make him believe he was disabled by birth.

[I know I could share other more informative panels of this flashback but I have to share what I consider, as a twin, the funniest panel ever]

In issue #8, it is revealed that while Ma'al's memory was wiped, his hatred was so strong that even though he doesn't remember why he hates he knows that he just does. So he secretly orchestrates the genocide of telepathic martians. J'onn notably defends his brother from the martian council initially, telling them that Ma'al deserves a chance as a new person, only to be proven wrong. By issue #9, the twins have a final battle with each other in the present. J'onn reinstalls Ma'al's telepathic abilities and memories, reactivating Ma'al's weakness to fire and letting him burn in the sun.

And that's Ma'alefa'ak's first debut! A standard trickster evil-twin villain who dies in his very first story. He does show up later in this solo run, but it's with a rebooted origin. So they're kind of like two different Ma'al takes in the same run.

Let's talk about this first version! We're dealing with a very typical evil twin character; he's described as the evil parts of what was supposed to be a whole person, while J'onn is all the good parts. There's a semblance of themes surrounding disability and destined good/evil, but it's only touched upon in this first take. One of the core flaws to Martian Manhunter's longevity as a solo character is his underdeveloped moral code and themes. It's the reason why J'onn doesn't have a stable rogues gallery, because he just kills them. He will SAY he has the basic moral high ground of "killing is bad, life is sacred" but he has no problem tossing his villains into the sun before acting upset about it later. J'onn lets his brother burn, but the narrative feigns him to have concern afterwards over how he couldn't save his poor brother. It's an odd read.

J'onn's "killing is bad" moral code also doesn't bounce off against his evil brother in a meaningful way. Ma'al wants to kill all martians so he won't be the freak martian anymore, but then what? He could go to a planet like Earth with no telepathy where he'd be normal, but instead he just,,, buries himself under some rocks to sleep until he realizes J'onn is still alive- which gives him purpose again. It's funny in a petty way, but meaningless considering he is now 50% of the martian population. While I consider this iteration of Ma'al's motivations to be shallow ("focused hatred" as a core motivation is short lived and unideal for the longevity of a recurring rogue), I do find Ma'al's shenanigans impersonating both J'onn and League members very fun to read.

He's a true equal to J'onn and while his immunity to fire wasn't explored as much as it should have been, it's no wonder this first impression gave Ma'al his iconic status as Martian Manhunter's arch nemesis, there's a personal connection between them as brothers. It's a familial short-hand for a deep relationship between hero and villain, but it's something to work with. Because even after death, Ma'al is still a revisited character.

Honorable mention time! The "DCU Villains Secret Files and Origins" (1999), featured an exclusive short comic on Ma'al's section that foreshadows the shapeshifting shenanigans he's about to pull on the League. His character page describes him as being born without telepathy even though that's proven to be untrue. We'll discuss the ableist narrative of having a disabled martian seeking to destroy all able-bodied martians in detail after looking through more of his backstory. Also, in the Secret Files information, Ma'al's marital status is left ambiguous for some reason. In case any of you were wondering if he was single.

Up next, Ma'alefa'ak returns in the 3-part flashback arc, In My Life (issues #33-35)! This story contains the most extensive characterization of Ma'al in the comics. In this storyline, we get to see J'onn and Ma'al's twinly birth. Sha'sheen and M'yrnn (J'onn and Ma'al's mother and father respectively) give J'onn a blessed name, while Ma'al is given a cursed name that prophesized darkness within him. Great favoritism on the parents, there. As the two grow up, J'onn is treated better than Ma'al-who is ostracized as someone vaguely "difficult". Despite this, J'onn cares about his twin dearly, constantly defending and giving his brother the benefit of the doubt. J'onn confronts his precognitive mother, and asks why she gave his brother a name that alienates him from martian society. Sha'sheen avoids answering directly and instead explains that before J'onn was even born, she had visions of a terrible future where a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" will be needed. "Ma'al's name serves as a warning", Sha'sheen says.

J'onn grows up to be a manhunter like his mom, while Ma'al becomes a theologian and quantum physicist. At a big council meeting, Ma'al opens a portal that allows the people of Apokolips to visit Mars. The Apokolips people are friendly at first- asking around for an anti-life equation- but then quickly attack with an army and kidnap a bunch of Martians! They've taken Ma'al and M'yrnn too! J'onn goes on a quest to rescue his friends and family from Apokolips.

In the next issue, J'onn traverses Apokolips to free the kidnapped Martians and meets his love interest: M'yri'ah. He finds a traumatized Ma'al, whose mind has been experimented on by the people of Apokolips. J'onn also finds M'yrnn, who has been so horrifically tampered with to the point he is beyond saving. J'onn manages to save a group of Martians and head back home to Mars.

In the last issue of this arc, it's revealed that Ma'al is feigning being messed up by Apokolips. He's actually working for Darkseid and is snooping around for the anti-life equation! Meanwhile J'onn gets happily married to M'yri'ah, but before they can get-funky-Martian-Style, M'yri'ah feels her mind is being intruded on and is traumatized. An emergency council meeting is called, where we learn several Martians have been telepathically violated. Sha'sheen asserts -because the narrative didn't set up any other suspects- that the perpetrator is Ma'al. J'onn continues to be defensive of his brother and tells his mom they need more evidence before they can accuse him. Meanwhile he orders the manhunters to do a mental patrol while everyone sleeps.

In a sequence that is cosmically funny, J'onn goes to his home where he has it Martian-funky-style with his wife only to hear a cry for help from his mother who turns out to be dead. As a funeral is had in her honor, Sha'sheen's ghost materializes to J'onn. She reveals that she intruded into Ma'al's mind and confirmed her suspicions; Ma'al is Darkseid's servant. Angry, J'onn confronts Ma'al on Venus where the two fight.

J'onn proposes to take some of Ma'al's darkness and offer some of his lightness to heal Ma'al (some sort of Martian fusion I guess?). Ma'al is disgusted at the prospect of being more like J'onn so the two battle it out. I respect an identical twin that wants individuality. Anyway Ma'al loses and is brought back to Mars where his telepathy and memory are wiped away as punishment. J'onn goes home to have it Martian-funky-style with his wife which results in his baby girl K'hym. The ending is very abrupt.

There is a lot to dissect with In My Life. This is personally my favorite Ma'alefa'ak comic because while it's silly, predictable, and really slows down in issue #34 on Apokolips, it has some compelling characterization moments for Ma'al.

"But what am I, dear brother, other than what our mother made me? And what she didn't do to me, Darkseid and Desaad surely did. Am I the villain or the victim in all this?"

Let's discuss! Ma'al is set up to be the dynamic opposite to J'onn. While J'onn is "the best aspects of the Martian race" and is a duty bound to the point he is a law enforcer, Ma'al is an authority-questioning, faith-doubting, anti-establishment, outsider. There's a scene where M'yrnn is teaching young martians the ethics of telepathy: while Martians can read each other's minds, they are still entitled to privacy. To this, Ma'al calls out a double standard: how come manhunters are allowed to break these rules? M'yrnn essentially responds "it's tradition, don't question it." Even J'onn challenged this notion later when the Martian council accuse Ma'al of being the perpetrator of Mind Rape: "in investigating a mind rapist, you propose we rape Ma'alefa'ak's mind as well?". Yet that's exactly what Sha'sheen does to confirm her suspicions. She's allowed to after all, she's a manhunter.

Ma'al's entire reason for opening a portal for people of Apokolips to visit is because he's lost faith in Martian gods- something considered blasphemous by the Martian council. J'onn tries desperately to get Ma'al to assimilate into a society Ma'al doesn't identify with, going out of his way to propose how he could infuse his brother with parts of himself so that Ma'al could be more like him.

"I will not be you! I will not give up who I am! If I am flawed, then I will be flawed! I am Ma'alefa'ak! I will not be you!"

We all yass'd in quick succession. After their fight, J'onn's rebuttal is "You are as you are. Perhaps the only way to change that is to take it all away from you." Absolutely wild that J'onn and the Martian society are the good guys here. There's a story in here about someone who has been Assigned Ostracized At Birth and then dares challenge society's double standards. It's a far from perfect story, Ma'al absolutely victimizes himself as having no agency in following Darkseid's orders- but he came to this point as a result of a society and religion that shunned him. His punishment is to have his rebellious tendencies and memory stripped of him, and in the words of the comic:

"he would be mamed. He would be crippled. He would be given a new identity so that he would become a useful member of our society again. But he would never be fully trusted and he would never know why."

Dystopian!! He's been Martian Unperson-ed like it's 1984 by George Orwell. Of course this doesn't work and continues the cycle of Ma'al feeling shunned by society, this time because he's disabled, causing the destruction of Mars through H'ronmeer's Curse. Maybe Sha'sheen should've just named him something nice.

Immediately I know what the criticism to this is- Ma'al is a Darkseid cultist and telapthic rapist (and eventual perpetrator of genocide), why is it a question whether he is a victim? To this I say, we need to look at the bigger picture: how often are we treated to narratives that frame a rebellious and marginalized character who Has A Point About How Unfair Society Is, but "their methods are just too extreme"? It's the classic MCU villain and respectable-hero dynamic. Villain challenges the status quo, Hero upholds it.

Within the context of In My Life and Ma'al's lore, none of Ma'al's worst actions make any sense. In his first appearance, Ma'al is tried for the crime of "mind rape". However we, as the reader, are not privy to why he did these things. M'yria'h wasn't even written as his victim yet at this point. As she's consoling J'onn over Ma'al's trial, she says "I know how hard this was for you" "he cannot hurt others again". In My Life is meant to show us why Ma'al did those crimes. Ma'al was looking for the anti-life equation for Darksied, which My'rnn explains earlier to the Apokolips guests that "neither me nor my people have any desire for them {the anti-life equation}". Yet Ma'al violates M'yri'ah's and several martians' minds to fruitlessly find the anti-life equation when Ma'al should know that no one on Mars is interested in it. M'yri'ah is re-written to be his victim in this story, because it sure would be messed up for Ma'al to hurt his own twin's wife! Ma'al is oddly unmotivated in his origin stories, was he collaborating with Darkseid all along before opening the portal? Or was he indoctrinated by Darkseid after he was on Apokolips? What about Darkseid's ideas does he find appealing as an outsider?

Then there's Ma'al creating H'ronmeer's curse to wipe out the Martian race so he wouldn't be a "freak" anymore. This is also unmotivated. He had his memory erased, and all that remained was that he may not know why he hates Martians, he just does. So the next logical step was genocide? His motivation is watered down to "vague hatred".

Let's look at the optics of a story about a disabled character seeking to destroy the able-bodied population. Although I don't think Ma'alefa'ak's origin story is as intentional in its implication as some MCU propaganda perpetuates in its "respectable hero" narratives, the story of Ma'al is still the result of something so ingrained and unquestioned. It's reflective of the privileged fear that fights for equality will only result in the oppressed group oppressing the privileged-by doing unto them the same kind of oppression the privileged are used to doing to the oppressed. The privileged cannot comprehend what making space for others looks like, all they know is what it looks like to have that taken away.

No disabled person would go to the lengths a fictional Martian does in their frustration against an ableist society. Historically, it is able-bodied people and ableist society that's sought to wipe out disabled people and their culture. Everything from enforcing laws that ban the use of sign language in schools, discouraging disabled people from marrying each other, and the forced sterilization of marginalized people among many things, all exist with the goal of erasing disabled people. You've heard of fantasy reverse-racism, now get ready for fantasy reverse-ableism.

So why did the writer choose to make Ma'al do these nonsensical things? It's simple; J'onn is the best parts of the Martian race, and Ma'al is the worst parts. In a blogpost, Martian Manhunter writer John Ostrander discuses what went into Martian worldbuilding:

"Tom and I decided we would investigate and explore Martian culture in our version. He [J'onn] was telepathic; his race was telepathic. What did that mean? What were the societal rules? Rape, for example, would not only be physical; it could be emotional and mental. On the flip side of the coin, sex would involve a melding of minds as well as a melding of bodies. With his race dead, J’onn would be forever denied that. He could never again experience physical love on so deep a level."

Yeah their first thought about Martian worldbuilding really was "dang what's sex like for Martians, I guess it's super personal for them". Ma'al telepathic violation of M'yri'ah is not meant to be a deep look at rape culture or how something so vile can happen, it's just a demonstration of what the worst thing someone in a telepathic society could do. It's not even a sexual violation, Ma'al did the equivalent of looking for a secret pie recipe in someone's head, but it's framed as sexual assault by the narrative. That's why it's so unmotivated. Genocide is the next worst thing a person can do, and so that's all Ma'al is known for to most people. These narratively unmotivated actions, detached from a story about marginalization and challenging an unfair society.

And despite all that, telepathic violation and genocide are not what end up being the things future writers keep about his character. So let's continue.

Honorable mention time! In the 2006 comic run: Martian Manhunter The Others Among Us, it is revealed that the Cay'an (a surviving green martian and villain of the story) hates J'onn for letting his brother live! She wishes he was harder on Ma'al so that Ma'al wouldn't have destroyed their home. Ma'al doesn't appear in this story at all, but his influence on Martian Manhunter lore is so strong he still gets a mention and inadvertently spawns another rogue for J'onn.

It sure is weird how the narrative keeps punishing J'onn for caring about his brother. I would understand if In My Life was a story about giving an abusive family member too many chances or how some people are a lost cause, but that doesn't work when Ma'al is marked as an alienated outcast since birth. J'onn caring about Ma'al isn't a flaw to me, it's the one thing no one else in Martian society would do for Ma'al.

Moving along we have 2007's JLA: Classified: The Ghosts of Mars (issues #42-46). So if Ma'al's debut story was about impersonating J'onn and Justice League members to get everyone to mistrust and eventually kill the Martian Manhunter, The Ghosts of Mars is about Ma'al doing all that again but this time he's a dream ghost. Ma'al just possesses J'onn now. The writer, Justin Gray, really did his homework on both Martian lore and Ma'alefa'ak's origin story as there are some very specific callbacks that I enjoyed reading in this run. Rick Leonardi and Sean Philips's art is so appealing too! I love that they committed to Ma'al's edgy design.

So the reason J'onn is seeing Ma'al's Force Ghost (essentially) is that back when J'onn and Ma'al were kids, they partook in the G'amal'Khul ritual- which bonded a portion of each other's souls within themselves. Ma'al has a bit of J'onn's soul within him, and vice versa. What's notable about this incarnation of Ma'al is that despite the fact it heavily calls back to Ma'al's history in the In My Life storyline, it makes one key difference: Ma'al is explicitly labeled as disabled.

Textually it's more like a late-bloomer situation, where Ma'al can't hear The Great Voice in the way J'onn naturally could, but I think it's telling that the writers were willing to label that as a disability. Whereas In My Life and Pilgrimage never even used the word "disability"- Ma'al was only coded that way. You'll notice a still continuing theme of Ma'al needing to "overcome" his "flaws" in order to become a "useful member of society" or "a complete family". This ableist mindset and language is never called out or explored as something flawed in Martian society. It's just a given, acceptable thing.

Ma'al does eventually develop Martian Telepathy enough to hear The Great Voice, and then In My Life events remain the same in their briefly summarized retelling. Except!! For when J'onn is having a ghost-argument with his brother and calls out Ma'al by listing his crimes, J'onn does not mention Ma'al's violation of M'yri'ah or any other Martians. Later on, the ghosts of K'hym and M'yri'ah don't bring it up either. Possibly implying a small but noticeable retcon. Contrast this with his original incarnation, where that was Ma'al's defining crime that led to him being mind-wiped.

[these are from 2 separate pages that I fused together to save up space but please appreciate Ma'al peeping over J'onn's shoulders twice]

However there are some choices in characterization for Ma'al in this arc that are at odds with Ma'al's core themes and origin as a marginalized martian. His goal in this mental-ghost-argument with J'onn is to convince his brother that the Justice League will never accept J'onn as one of them because of anti-alien xenophobia. And in doing so, Ma'al weirdly props up Martian Superiority talking points.

Ma'al talks about how humans can never be faithful to their partners because humans can't shapeshift to keep the relationship spicy and interesting (I'm not joking). Unlike Martians who can change it up every now and then. Ma'al even says that because they're not telepathically open to each other like in Martian cultures, their sense of family "pales in comparison to Martian sensibilities". Having Ma'al flex abilities Martians can do as superior because humans don't have those abilities, in the same arc that explicitly labels Ma'al as disabled, is a bizarre characterization choice. While this version of Ma'al appears to have kinder parents raising him, the larger story beats of In My Life play out just the same. And those story beats rely on Ma'al being ostracized from his family since birth. The entire premise in this arc is J'onn being ostracized from human beings, who judge his more alien-appearance compared to Superman. J'onn even calls this out as racism. Yet no introspection is given over how Martian society oppressed Ma'al as a disabled Martian. So there's a bit of a dissonance in themes here.

Overall while I did enjoy this iteration of Ma'al (his ghost-aura pettiness continues to amuse me), I felt that a better version of this story was told through Martian Manhunter's Brightest Day arc. J'onn is tricked into trapping himself in his mind where he fantasizes about the Justice League sequentially dying off and is given cryptic clues in order to wake himself up. This arc deserves a shoutout because it also continues this Martian ableism tradition, but it's vilified this time!

The villain of this storyline is D'kay D'razz, and she's some kind of Martian scientist who seeks to cure Martians whose minds can't be read but are able to still telepathically read the minds of others, or "cerebrally isolated Martians" as D'kay puts it. She even proposed purging disabled Martians, which the Manhunters didn't like so they imprisoned her for hundreds of years in isolation. We don't get any named disabled Martians, they're mostly props to D'kay's belief and desire to breed the perfect Martian race with J'onn. It's odd that this time ableism is something Martian society and the manhunters disapprove of, since it was something they enforced in Ma'al's origin.

The Brightest Day Martian Manhunter storyline is also another prominent recurrence of Martian telepathic assault. Only for D'kay, unlike Ma'al's telepathic violation that was framed as rape, her goal with J'onn is explicitly sexual. "Rape" by term isn't mentioned at all in D'kay's plot, yet it's absolutely what she did to J'onn: deviously tricking him into hopefully giving her a Martian child. Yet J'onn as a victim isn't something fully recognized by the narrative to the extent that M'yri'ah was for In My Life. There's a larger conversation over the treatment of male victims in DC (and mainstream at large), but I think it's particularly clear in the case of J'onn versus M'yri'ah's treatment.

So our next two versions of Ma'al are more Elseworld takes on his character and they're much shorter to dissect. While I believe Ma'al is at his thematically strongest in these previous comics, I think these are still worth looking into because they continue some interesting staples to his character that we'll see in future adaptations of him. Also this is a Ma'alefa'ak retrospective, we're being thorough.

Get a load of this guy! Ma'alefa'ak appears in 2010's Batman The Brave and the Bold: Invasion from Mars! (issue #18) In this story, Ma'al is reimagined as a white martian. That's right, contrary to popular belief, Young Justice was not the first to make Ma'al unrelated to J'onn and turn him into a White Martian. Oh no, no no. Batman Brave and the Bold paved the way, my friend.

In this version, General Ma'al is trying to bring Martians back by destroying humans on Earth. Even though it can be argued this character only shares a name with Ma'al and little much else, there's some semblance to his character here. Ma'al possesses Batman in the later half of the story, even sporting his Joker-esque smile as he tries to take over Batman's mind. That's just about it, though!

Ma'al being reimagined as an Alien Invader seeking to wipe out humans and replace them with an alien race is a really generic villain motivation (for Kryptonians but especially Martians) so it doesn't stick. This does already show writers trying to freshen up Ma'al as a rogue by changing his Martian race. This Ma'al is the cutest design in the world.

Our last prominent Ma'alefa'ak comic appearance takes us to the infamous New 52, which features a red Martian variant of Ma'al who is once again, not J'onn's twin brother. The New 52 is a reboot where the DC universe gets an overall edgy makeover. For Martian Manhunter, this meant the 12-issue solo Epiphany. While it's easy to write this take off as a dark Elseworld interpretation with no connection to the characters' history, the Epiphany run actually has a ton of call backs to Martian Manhunter history. I like to describe this series as taking all those references and throwing them in an evil, twisted blender. So let's discuss. Since this series relies on a lot of time skips and twists, I'll be describing the relevant plot points as they happen chronologically in the universe.

Long ago, Krypton-uh I mean-Mars, was a technologically advanced society whose people became so arrogant of their progress that they didn't realize their planet was hurting. So the cosmic Spirit of Mars itself decided to psychically send the Martians a vision; a cry for help. Instead, most Martians interpreted this vision as a threat. Many just saw the vision of a large cosmic monster coming for them. Martians like Ma'alefa'ak, weaponized the growing fear and paranoia for his own gain. He convinces the Martian council that they should make a Martian Manhunter; a fusion of all the best Martians to be their weaponized champion against the coming threat. J'onn volunteers to be the soul vessel of the weapon. At the last minute, Ma'al betrays the Martians by slaughtering some of them to perform "Ancient Long-Banned Black Martian Blood Magic" to turn J'onn into a monstrous hybrid.

J'onn is betrayed, but decides to make the most of it by challenging the cosmic monster to a fight. The Spirit of Mars takes the form of J'onn's son and shames Martiankind for responding to its cry for help with violence. It punishes Mars by sucking the planet dry and spitting J'onn off-planet. Ma'alefa'ak seemingly escapes with his troops.

As millions of years pass by, J'onn goes insane and out of loneliness, splits himself up into a bunch of Martians with consciousness of their own and spread them throughout the planet (and the universe I guess). Out of shame, J'onn hides from his past and convinces himself he's a hero with false memories. Eventually in the present day, all of the split parts of J'onn decide they want to return to him as "our god", and they do that through...a fake alien invasion.

The invasion consists of a fake Ma'alefa'ak (constructed by J'onn) and his team of fake White Martians (also constructed by J'onn) who seek to put J'onn into a giant magical beam that would supposedly bring Mars back. J'onn splits himself into 4 new identities to make himself harder to find, but he's found and brought to the beam regardless.

The magic spell goes wrong and instead sends him to a universe where Earth and a resurrected Mars are about to collide into each other. J'onn tries to save both the resurrected Martians and the people of Earth by taking the Martians through a portal back to before the spell happened. Which he does. But as he makes it back to normal Earth, he is treated to the plot twist that none of the Martians (neither the ones that attacked him nor the ones he was saving) were real. J'onn realized he orchestrated the whole thing. And before the reader can think too hard about all the innocent people J'onn killed in his weird roleplay game, the comic ends with a little girl basically telling him "well, at least you tried to do good." J'onn quickly flies away because- yeah I don't think he was convinced by what she said either.

And that's a very brief summary of the New 52 Martian Manhunter arc. I'll go into more detail in the analysis since the story is so overloaded and convoluted that it would take forever to explain every plot point as its presented to us in the comic. So let's talk about themes and how Ma'alefa'ak fits into this story.

One of the other foundational flaws of Martian Manhunter as a superhero character is that he is in many ways, a creatively redundant variation of Superman. Whenever writers try to flesh out the world of Mars, they often end up accidentally re-creating Krypton. In J'onn's limited Rebirth solo run Identity, he's basically a more corrupt Jor-El figure. When both Superman and Martian Manhunter are the last of their kind and powerful, an exciting villain means bringing out another Martian or Kryptonian that seeks to take over Earth to bring their lost planet back. What Epiphany tries to do to differentiate J'onn from Superman is to dip into the cosmic horror idea that J'onn is not who he always thought he was. He's not a hero, he's a weapon designed to attack the Spirit of Mars. The new identities J'onn split himself into are convinced they have fully lived lives and are horrified to learn they're a part of something else. The full horror comes around when J'onn realizes he's constructed all this alien-invasion destruction himself. It's a very unnecessarily edgy end to a story with potential. But how does Ma'alefa'ak fit into it?

Outside of the origin story, the Ma'al we see in this arc is mostly a fabrication of J'onn's mind. Sure he has his own consciousness and we can only assume he's an accurate re-enactment of what the real (probably dead) Ma'al was like, but he's still an extension of J'onn at the end. Ma'al is characterized as a paranoid, violent egomaniac. He casually uses forbidden Martian magic to fuse Martians against their will, and his ultimate goal is to recreate Mars in his image. I highly doubt the writer of this run was referencing Ma'al's more generic re-imagined motivations from the Batman Brave and the Bold comic, but it's interesting that making Ma'al into discount General Zod is a thing that happened twice. So how does this fit into older takes on Ma'al outside of being overly edgy? It's all in the details.

The first time J'onn (as one of his new human identities) meets Ma'alefa'ak in the story, Ma'al and the many White Martians have disguised themselves as humans on Earth. Ma'al takes the form of Leo Chandler, a disabled, wheelchair-using boy paralyzed through motor neuron disease. Out of all the throwbacks to Ma'alefa'ak's disability, this one is the wildest. Leo is introduced as having been kidnapped by his own mother before murdering her himself.

But eventually J'onn learns that Leo is not who he seems. He is Ma'alefa'ak in disguise, and Leo's human "mother" was another Martian in disguise. Ma'alefa'ak's "mother" grew to like humans and decided she didn't want to go through with the invasion. She paralyzed Ma'alefa'ak with her powerful telekinesis into a form he finds disgusting and inferior. Once J'onn's many identities get close to the magic beam, Ma'alefa'ak regains his true form again. This is a surprising mix of many things from Martian Manhunter lore. Ma'alefa'ak being disabled by another Martian, finding humans inferior to Martians, even the part where he kills his own mother, are all callbacks to his original iterations. The missing thematic piece is that Ma'al is not marginalized by the Martians or humans in any way, so we're left with only the cartoonishly evil and generic "bring Mars back in my image" through genocide ritual sacrifice.

This is further contrasted against how J'onn is reimagined in this run. Remember how when J'onn's mother tells him she foresaw how he would become a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" way back in In My Life? Well in Epiphany, J'onn is now the ultimate able-bodied best Martian. He is a magic-made mix of the greatest warriors and intellects Mars has to offer. Part of the themes of this run is the way J'onn's unique existence dehumanizes him. After witnessing Ma'alefa'ak slaughter Martians with forbidden magic to complete J'onn's transformation, J'onn tells Ma'alefa'ak "You murdered me!". His new identities have personal crises upon finding out their lives are fabricated. So even though J'onn is Mars' ideal champion, the transformation is a burden on him.

In terms of J'onn and Ma'al's dynamic, we're not given a lot to work with. They're basically council associates until J'onn is betrayed by Ma'al turning him into a hybrid fusion monster. The fabricated-by-J'onn's-mind-version of Ma'al hates J'onn for resisting his destiny as a weapon to bring Mars back. There's something about how Ma'al's hatred of J'onn is characterized in this series that feels strangely familiar. Sure, Ma'al is defined by paranoia and ego, but the hatred almost feels like classic Ma'al's vague and petty hatred. It leads to amazing instances of dialogue like "COME DOWN, MANHUNTER! AND MA'ALEFA'AK WILL RIP OUT YOUR TRAITOR'S HEART AND EAT IT AS HATE FUEL FOR BLACK BLOOD MAGIC!" along with the classic "I HAVE HATED YOU SO MUCH I THINK I LOVE YOU, J'ONN." A real tsundere moment for Ma'al.

There's many other nods to Martian Manhunter lore- but to keep it Ma'alefa'ak centric, I have to point out that the series does end with J'onn talking to Ma'alefa'ak's force ghost. And I find that so amusing as an arguably intentional reference to their JLA: Classified, the Ghosts of Mars arc.

So that's New 52 Ma'alefa'ak. My main criticism for Epiphany as a Martian Manhunter take is that it feels less like a story with a unique voice and more like an amalgamation of annotations, references and citations to other Martian Manhunter stories. There's a great premise at the center of Epiphany; the cosmic horror of realizing you're not who you thought you were, that your existence is fabricated and fake, but it's bogged down with an edgy convoluted story that loses what it wants to say. This is reflected in their take of Ma'al. If you remove all the strange quirky references, he's just discount general Zod of Krypton.

Epiphany is a symptom to a larger core flaw to Martian Manhunter's as a superhero character. If Superman is an allegorical immigrant that symbolizes hope and Batman is vengeance initially motivated by grief that eventually evolves into hope, then what grounds J'onn J'onzz as a character? He may be an alien, but stories exist to describe human experiences. DC recognizes J'onn is a survivor from planet-wide destruction, but its writers don't know what to do with him after the fact. What is heroism motivated by? Why does he choose to protect his new home?

Because they're unable to answer this, we get story after story of J'onn grieving Mars like he's your best friend who can't get over their ex. It's why they constantly revisit his origin story, because they don't have anything else to say about J'onn outside of his grief. This affects his villains too, most of them reverting to just tempting him to bring back Mars. Testing nothing else about his character. This isn't a bad plot to have, but it's J'onn's ONLY plot most of the time. So unless Martian Manhunter gets a major revitalization of his entire character, he can't grow into a self sustaining property. Speaking of revisiting his origin-

It's time for our last honorable mention! With the Rebirth reboot across the DC Universe, we get yet another Martian Manhunter origin retelling. This time, in the form of a limited 12 issue solo series Martian Manhunter; Identity (2019) written by Steve Orlando with art by Riley Rossmo.

Ma'al gets but a single mention in this series, but it's crucial to point out for many reasons. For one, Ma'al is revealed to be a slut. And while I'd love to stick to that one point alone, it's the broader implications of this reimagining that are important to consider in terms of how Ma'alefa'ak has evolved as a character. As of writing, Identity is the most thorough characterization of J'onn's wife and daughter in all of comics canon. It is the first time M'yri'ah and K'hym are fleshed out to have personalities, motivations, occupations and lives. Before this, they were props for J'onn to love and feel sad about. Yes, these two are what Jor El and Lara are to Superman and what Thomas and Martha Wayne are to Batman, but they only got fleshed out all the way in 2019.

In Identity, M'yri'ah works as a nurse who has suspicions about the growing fire virus infecting Martians. After learning J'onn is a corrupt cop who tried to sneak her and their daughter K'hym off-planet before the fire consumed them all, she dies by opening her mind to K'hym's and getting infected. So how does this come back to Ma'alefa'ak? The true origins of the fire virus remain a mystery in this interpretation, so we don't know if Ma'al is still responsible for burning all the Martians through Hr'onmeer's curse. But what we do know is that he's no longer involved with M'yri'ah in any way. Sure she knows who he is, but there's certainly no hint of a violation that occurred between the two. Much like with the JLA Classified: Ghosts of Mars comic, we're seeing the more controversial parts of Ma'al be removed in newer iterations of the character. Because it was never integral to either his character or J'onn's origin story.

I'd love to do a thorough analysis of Identity, since it is both an earnest attempt at revitalizing Martian Manhunter into a solo character while also being a showcase of common pitfalls writers run into when developing his character and world. BUT since this is a Ma'alefa'ak essay, that would be a huge tangent. So that concludes all of Ma'al's current comic appearances, time of writing. Just know that all the stuff we mentioned before about J'onn's lore accidentally recreating Krypton, Superman and Jor El are in this limited run as well.

Earlier in this essay I posed a question about Ma'al as a character; "what is the through-line of Ma'alefa'ak? What do writers decide to keep and re-invent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?" With the way Martian Manhunter struggles to get a footing in DC comics, it may look like we have an unsatisfying or incomplete answer to that question. When you look at the timeline of Ma'al's comic appearances, it's basically his initial origins, one revisit in a JLA comic, some mentions in other comics, and 2 Elseworld takes. That's not a lot of substantial iterations to see the character properly evolve past a reference. So what now?

This is where we must head into adapted media, because Ma'alefa'ak's story doesn't end with the comics. I think it's crucial to examine the way Ma'al has been adapted because we get to see writers look at the source material and decide which parts of him resonate with the stories they want to tell. It's where we can truly see what aspects of Ma'al endure with time. So join me as we look into the 3 cross-media adaptations of Ma'alefa'ak to finally figure out what is it about J'onn J'onzz's evil twin character that keeps him coming back. In another post!

[evilminji]

The Anti-Ecto Acts... could literally start WW3

I am sitting here, contemplating China. The country. Literally one of THE OLDEST countries. With a truely massive population. And... I will admit my ignorance. But from what I have heard? They are big on honoring the Dead.

Their Dead.

The Dead of China. Hundreds of millions of souls. Which, statistically, would mean the average human ghost has a good chance to come from the region. And they are not alone.

Again, my ignorance curses me, but if my general knowledge is to be believed? It is a common practice in Asianic Countries. Oh sure, they won't argue there might be BAD ghosts. But that's to be expected! There are bad PEOPLE! They die.

They have monks and priests for such things. Specialists. Ancient problem, tried and true solutions. They move on and have lunch, consider what options there are for dinner. Business of the day and all that.

But THEN.

Fanatics from the West. Painting themselves as Men Of Science, not only dare to play god, but tear open a hole to THE AFTERLIFE? And start ATTACKING indiscriminately? They stand before an international stage and spew clearly bigoted pseudoscience, to justify their genocide, while ALSO letting God's and demons run roughshod over the WORLD, just so they can try to convince everyone they have the right to MURDER YOUR ANCESTORS?

They OPENED THAT GATE! They LET THEM OUT! There is a difference, culturally, for many of your countries between the soul of a dead man (powers be damned) and a SPIRIT OF LIVING STORMS.

You are not IDIOTS. Tigers are dangerous. Wolves are dangerous. But someone walking into a crowded mall and releasing frightened wild animals DOES NOT mean we go into the wilds and start killing! We charge the madmen you attacked innocent people!

The fact that tigers and wolves are dangerous IS NOT NEW. The fact that the souls of the dead are dangerous is ALSO not new! It is not malicious. It is INHERENT. A state of being. That is why they are not encouraged to linger! We love them, but this world is not built for them. It is fragile and barren, built for the living.

But dear sweet FUCK, the WROTH.

How? Many countries EXACTLY. How many religions? SPECIFICALLY honor and protect the dead. Declare in no uncertain terms, the SANCTITY of the soul?

How many people have LOST somebody? A friend, a lover, a CHILD.

And in one breath you give them hope then THREATEN it? "They may still be out there... we are going to brutally torture them to death. Because your loved ones are animals to us."

The UN would have the SINGLE most ugly, barely contained, riot imaginable. Spiritual Leaders would be tearing CHUNKS out of the US. The Pope, the Dalai Lama, you name it. You can NOT invade THE AFTERLIFE and not have it IMMEDIATELY become a religious concern.

Not to mention the international SAFETY concern. One countries actions? Unleashing beings that can effect the GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM? The ENTIRE planets weather? Plunged EVERYONE into Eternal Sleep??! How can that not be considered DILBERATE after the first one!

Your grand idea is to ANTAGONIZE them? Make MORE of them come through??

"Kill death itself". You fanatical NUTJOBS! That's not even a NEW hypothetical! That ends HORRIFICLY for literally EVERYONE. Eternal starvation, suffocation, crushing, and worse! We suck the planet dry, over populate so horrifically we end up BURIED UNDER OUR OWN CHILDREN, and suffer FOREVER without the release of death!

You fucking MORONS! Eternal life is a well known CURSE!

Their science is shaky at best, hardly peer reviewed. DEEPLY unethical. And clearly dangerous! Radioactive!!! In a population center?! How many innocent people have been exposed!?

And if the Ghost are reaching OUT? Imagine meeting long dead countrymen, who come to you fearing for their very SOULS. Who have lived in peace. Unknown to you, for CENTURIES. Who beg you, in YOUR native tounge, to help. Talks of people disappearing. Fear and desperation.

This is not to say world leaders are great and benevolent figures, free of greed or sin. Nor their governments. But it is quite another thing entirely, when they talk... and all you can think is "you are talking about my dead father. My late wife. My deceased son."

When they spew their HATE. And back hand your loved ones by doing so.

What powerful person has not lost SOMEBODY.

All this? And I have not even TOUCHED on the shit storm DC would add on top. The Drama? The IMMEDIATE near certain SMITING? You want to MURDER Superman's FAMILY??? I'd say pick a god and pray, but you've already made enemy of ALL of them.

So... good luck and get fucked?

@hdgnj @the-witchhunter @stealingyourbones @nerdpoe

[sepublic]

Another thing I’ve noticed about Wittebane fans is that they would really rather speculate on an unseen dynamic and how codependent it was, or on Belos having religious trauma or being a socially awkward child (despite this conflicting with him being a confident, silver-tongued politician) over like. Discussing Belos’ character as he actually is onscreen.

And onscreen Belos is about Christian colonialism, he IS the religious trauma. He’s the white saviorism, the racism, the genocide, the arrogant delusions of Puritans. These are actually onscreen, and darker and deeper than like, the Wittebanes being Cain and Abel or Saturn devouring his son because what are you actually discussing here that’s topical?

But fans don’t want to talk about that, they don’t want to talk about what makes Belos his own character and what makes his writing work. They want to make Belos and Caleb into a racist, less interesting version of the Nocedas, Clawthorne sisters, Collector, etc. And when Belos doesn’t measure up to these standards because he’s a square peg being put through a round hole, fans get angry at the writers. It’s alienating to those who want to discuss Belos, the actual Belos.

And I think it boils down to fans being discomforted by topics such as colonialism and genocide, and facing just how intertwined Belos is with depicting it on a large and personal scale; He isn’t even a metaphor at this rate, but a literal example of a Christian white man from a 1600s American colony. These subjects are not something fans can romanticize, so they focus on the dynamic with his brother, on being codependent or tortured or suffering from religious trauma, etc.

It’s very faux-deep, it’s pretentious in a Dark Academia way, Cannibalism as a metaphor for love. It reminds me of fans who claim to love Dark Fics and can handle dark topics, but then implode when you ask them to discuss critical race theory. They think they’re being subversive and even punk but it’s just white guys in the end. It thinks itself deeper just for being ‘darker’ but it’s not even that dark compared to other things, it’s just edgy. King and Steve’s conversation as a stand-in for Dana’s ruminations on God are genuinely deeper than every Cain-Abel Wittebane fic.

There’s a Vtuber who just did an Owl House marathon and while she didn’t pick up on a lot, the discussion on Belos by fans who are explaining it to her is so refreshing, because there’s no mention of Caleb! There’s no mention of Belos being repressed or feeling abandoned. It’s all about how he actually is onscreen and is presented and what he does onscreen. It’s about the delusions and evil of those who practice Puritan ideology. And the actions that have far more impact than killing his brother.

And it makes me think, this is another reason why we don’t see Caleb; Because the writers knew fans would use him as a distraction from the actual things they’re discussing and satirizing through Belos. They would use him as a distraction from the true motives, the banality of evil, as Belos does; And Belos himself doesn’t even do it that much, he’s upfront about how he thinks witches are inherently evil and need to be killed in the name of God so even he is avoiding factoring Caleb into the discussion! Alas, the writers underestimate just how far fandom will go when they get even a scent of a possible white guy.

Can we talk about the Wittebanes as they actually are instead of retreading other characters’ old ground? The tragedy of the Wittebanes isn’t about some lonely orphan just wanting to be accepted by his community, being unable to handle the thought of his brother leaving, and not knowing any better because that’s just how things were back then; It’s about seeing your kid brother embrace the alt-right pipeline because white supremacy makes him feel special, and no matter how many years you spend trying to change his mind, he eventually, finally turns on you too.

[laws-long-ass-sword]

The thing that makes me crazy about Law's backstory in particular is that Corazon wasn't some saint, even if Law thinks of him that way, he beat the Donquixote children for years. And when Corazon took Law away, he begged Corazon to stop, that he was wasting the last months of his life, retraumatizing Law over and over by bringing him to hospitals Law knew wouldn't treat him, and he was right! Corazon didn't listen because of his selfish need to see that this little boy lives, no matter how realistic it actually was and how much he knew it was hurting him. But through sheer chance and the force of Corazon's determination, he does find a way to cure Law's illness.

We see Corazon put on this act of smiling and acting goofy, something I have to assume is against his usual nature, because it's a show for the kid, to make him feel better.

What's crazy is that Law asks Corazon if he's part of the Marines, because soldiers killed his family, his schoolmates, and his entire people, Corazon says no, and Law knows he's lying, but he smiles anyway. And when Corazon is bleeding on the snow, he apologizes for this deception to Doflamingo, but he really is apologizing to Law, but Law doesn't NEED an apology.

The way that Law's legs shook so bad when he approached Virgo, because of how scared he was of the Marines, how he sobbed and begged for help, but he leads Corazon to his murder anyway.

The way we see it sink in for Corazon that he's going to die here. He smiles, because if he's dying for this kid, then that's alright.

The way that Law dedicates his Entire adult life to Corazon, a man who showed Law love and compassion for just a handful of months. From his tattoos, to his crew name, to his righteous death, it's all for Corazon. How even though Corazon could not fire a single shot at his brother, Law believes Corazon would want to Law to avenge him. Law simply cannot comprehend that Corazon sacrificed himself for Law because he loved him unconditionally, as a parent would love a child. Law believes there has to be a Reason why. It's only after his talk with Sengoku he finally is able to understand the full scope of Corazon's love for him. For Law to kill himself for Corazon and not even understand he was loved...

Something interesting here I would like to note too, is that Law obviously blames himself for Dressrosa's fall into Doflamingo's hands, but at the same time, he doesn't seem to care that he'd be bringing hell upon the country if his plan worked. How paradoxical. We see Law put on a show of confidence and control that crumbles immediately the moment The Birdcage is raised. Law is paralyzed through most of the rest of the arc in sheer terror. Though, I am very fond of his audacity, with Doflamingo's gun pressed up against his head, "Bring back Corazon right now, and lick the asshole of every citizen of this country."

There are just so many layers of tragedy in Law's story it makes me want to wail at the sky. The fact that Corazon saw Doflamingo in Law, and in saving Law he could somehow retroactively save his brother, who he hated. And how he wasn't necessarily wrong, because what kind of person comes out of the Flevence genocide? But as Law puts it, "he gave me my heart."

[weemietime]

1. there's no such thing as a soul and 2. why does israel specifically need to be where it is now? israel has not even existed for a century. many different people have inhabited the land for thousands of years, mostly arab. is the only argument for the current geographic location of israel a religious argument? why can't it be anywhere else? if it's not a religious argument, why is the land so important if the it was jewish land thousands of years ago? is america justified in its existence despite having killed dozens of millions of native americans? WHY CANT ISRAEL ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD? WHY IS ISRAEL EXPANDING INTO LEBANON AND WHY IS IT BUILT UPON THE EXPULSION OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIANS? Religious arguments should not be taken seriously in the current day. The only other argument i've heard from zionists is one of racial superiority. Zionism boils down to white supremacy and Judaism/Jewish people are completely separate from that. The original zionists claimed to be secular marxists. How can you reconcile these inconsistencies and expect people to not think you're genocidal???

Good l-rd, the Kremlin-Hamas propaganda pipeline workin overtime. *Pats trunk* I can fit so much Nazi gibberish in this bad boy. 1) I don't give a shit that you don't respect my traditions and my beliefs, we already know you have no respect whatsoever. Cool.

2) Israel is where it is now because it is Israel, you deranged fucking lunatic. No, the people who have lived there over the last centuries have NOT been Arabs. There is ZERO archaeological evidence to back up a claim that Palestinian Arabs have been in Israel from the same time as Jews.

3) Point blank, everything you've built up here is a Nazi lie. this is false. A lie. We Jews dig up thousands years old shit from our culture in Israel. Not Arab/Islamic culture. It isn't there. You know your little al aqsa flood operation as Hamas calls it. Arabs built Al Aqsa over our most precious Beit hamikdash. Just for spite by the way. Muhammed hated Jews, ask the Jews of Medina how he handled them. Oh you can't they all got beheaded and enslaved.

Then turn around and call us colonizers when we return street names to their ORIGINAL Hebrew. You're ignorant as fuck of history, "dismantle colonialism" but simps for Hezbollah, the long arm of the IRGC who colonized Iran from the native Persian population. Do you know how many countries Arabs conquered? You don't know shit about the Middle East, keep us out of your fucking mouth.

This is called DARVO and its a tool of colonizers to suppress indigenous history and tradition and overwrite what really happened. And y'all are mad about it because Jews won't let it happen. We won't let you gas light and manipulate us and say see we're the indigenous ones when Arabs were the ones who rolled in and stole our land in the first place.

Arab migrations happened and the Arabs who lived there knowingly lived in stolen land, that is not our fucking problem. I would be content to live in peace with Arabs. I would respect moderate Islam. I would even say sure you can call Israel your homeland even though it's not, whatever.

By the way when Israel declared independence Israelis didn't force Arabs out of their homes. The Arabs all ganged up on Israel and attacked. The Arab league told those people leave your homes, we will kill all the Jews then you can come back. Welp they lost. Tel Aviv wasn't there before 1920s, dipshit. Most of Israel has been build on ceded, legally purchased land.

The amount of private land that was taken from innocent people occurred as insulation from terrorism from a war six other fucking countries started at once. Israel is genocidal huh, Israel has never once fired the first shot in any war its ever been in. Think on that you limp ugly bitch.

We're a community, a family. That's what Judaism is. By the way, that's what the people in those kibbutzim were doing too. They were peace activists, pro Palestinian peace activists, lol. They tricked them for twenty years, multiple generations, being their friends.

But Hamas doesn't want peace and they openly say it over and over and over again to you dumb fucking imbeciles, over and over and over. No peace, no compromise, no ceasefire. They want total annihilation of Israel and Jews world wide. That's their agenda. Don't even fucking come back if you can't acknowledge that this is what they want to do.

Palestinian Arabs can't even pronounce the word Palestine in Arabic lmao. It's not got any Arabic etymology. It was a slur to mock US, THE JEWS, by the romans. Can you pickup a G-d damn history book and read for once in your piss baby life?

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

Qibli is overrated as all hell. Don't get me wrong, I can see why he's liked but some of you guys act as if he's the friggin saviour of mankind. My biggest problem with him is how he seems to get excused or validated for stuff, that other characters get demonized for. Most of the things he does seem to get excused (cough cough Sandstorm), his family isn't all that developed besides him having an abusive mother to be saved by Thorn ( the books completely ignore his siblings, they literally only exist to be bullies and "see how much better Qibli is then them!?" And while yes, not every character needs to be super developed it almost feels at times as if the book ignores that they were as poorly raised by Cobra too. Heck, they barely have a point in existing imo. Challenge, name one of them, most people I know barely remember them even existing.) In the infamous vase scene he is the sole cause for Winter losing it, by having him lie to Moon, moments after he'd found out about the genocide. And while yes, Winter shouldn't have lashed out at Moon, the way the fandom demonizes him for it, yet ignores the way Qibli behaves and the things he says is very annoying to see. I won't even get into the ships here, that's always a mess. The love triangle was a mistake IMO. To summarize, I don't hate Qibli, I just dislike how he doesn't seem to be held to the same scrutiny as other characters. Sorry if I come off as mean here, I was writing straight from my head so I'm probably missing some stuff 🙃 He does have many interesting qualities, although Darkness of Dragons didn't really utilize them well.

.

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Hi! Can I request Yandere Byakuya with a gender neutral reader(if you do those) who is the ultimate delinquent and they are very aggressive and hot headed, stubborn and just overall not a pushover at all. They care but they will absolutely beat the absolute shit out of someone?

Yandere Byakuya Togami x Ultimate Delinquent Reader

He’s not inherently fond of you

You’re supposed attitude, your dress, and your ultimate title

all point to a character he does not know or is fond of 

The absolute opposite of an Ultimate Affluent Progeny 

No money, no prospects, nothing to your name but your reputation for delinquency

And after all that you couldn’t even become the ultimate highschool level gang leader 

That role was manly taken

It's his mistake for taking you for a complete idiot

Losing his cool during the trial as you reveal his trickery and outside intentions with the investigation

“What?! Did you think I was an absolute dolt?!”

He also doesn’t expect how quickly you put him in a headlock as you spit in his ear

“Don’t. Ever. Include me in your crackpot ideas again, got it?!”

“F-f-fine…b-but I can’t help you if you look like an idiot-"

You tighten your hold 

Having Sakura and the majority of the group forcing you to let go

It's a strong-standing rivalry between you two

That everyone’s aware of 

Even Genocider Syo expects this 

But as many know supposed hate can be just as close as love

And in Byakuya’s case, it's quite an extreme example of that:

Dear fiendish enemy of Mine,

You will be pleased to know that I wish to accept an apology from you. 

I will be in the library, waiting.

–The Ultimate Affluent Progeny, Togami Byakuya

That’s what it said. The letter slipped under your doorway in the heat of the night or the morning you typically slept in on. You scoffed crumpling the letter before tossing it into your trashcan; just to spite him you debated leaving your room at all. You were all for keeping everyone alive and whatnot but the meetings were early and you were never one for following rules anyway. As much as you hated being grouped up with the rich boy you weren’t going to go out of your way to be some other hero type; that’s what Makoto was for. With ease, you settled into your bed drifting into another deep sleep. You’d eat later.

When you awoke, you had no indicator for any time passing. With an audible growl from your stomach, you tiredly sat up, finally setting yourself on a mission to feed yourself. Considering Monokuma hadn’t woken you up obnoxiously you figured nobody had died yet. That was good. Best case scenario it was ‘nighttime’ and you could feast without anyone bothering you. Pushing the handle down you only gave it a nudge with your hip. 

“D-did I forget to lock it?”

You tried the handle again to find the door was still unmovable. Getting irritated quickly you went to kick the door open only for the door to stay in place with the weight of something on the other side. 

“But why would there be something against the door?”

You tried again but to no avail spiraling you into a fit of anger. Turning from the door in a huff you began to take your anger out on the few pieces of furniture. Kicking over the table, throwing out the drawers of the cabinet; you were about to slam off the objects resting on the bolted shelf. Stopping when you see a familiar letter next to a lunch box.

Dear idiot of Mine,

I knew you wouldn’t follow such a simple command and that’s what I counted on! 

Now who’s the victim of their own laziness?! Since you are so inclined to laze about it makes you a difficult target in the killing game. Nonetheless, I can not have your reckless discretion decide both our fates thus I am making the executive decision to keep you caged.

“Caged!? That brat who does he think he is!?”

See like a dog you have a master. I would have included you in this decision if I was sure you were competent enough to understand it. But you are not and I am tired of trying to change that. 

Therefore be pleased you are going to be taking a back seat to this game and if you’re lucky enough Monokums will let you watch as I win this game. 

Eat dear idiot. And if you can muster the brain power read. You might be interested in rotting your life away but I am not. The exact opposite actually, I fully intend to have you tamed when I am through with this game.

Enjoy your suspension (Y/n), Togami Byakuya

Throwing the letter out of sight you reached into the duffle to find a few full thermoses, multiple bottles of water, some books, and some canned foods. Resisting the urge to throw its contents all around the room you instead picked up the letter again rereading the words as you tried to make sense of your predicament. 

“S-suspended!?”

‘Was that even possible in a killing school game.’

Whether or not it was as the Ultimate Affluent Progeny: Togami Byakuya said so. And it would be your fate until the game officially ended.

[rei-ismyname]

X-MEN #7 From The Ashes

Possibly the biggest downside to the circular, repetitive nature of X-Men comics is that real life is awful enough. Jettisoning the hope of the Krakoan age for the misery porn of From The Ashes feels kinda callous and depressing in a world where there are multiple ongoing genocides and the USA just said yes to fascism again. Nevertheless, join me in some light escapism - a little Magneto goes a long way. Spoilers for X-Men #7.

I've also been spelling Jed Mackay's name wrong. Sorry

Running throughout this issue is Magneto's flashback to The Iron Night. The 'this is Logan behaviour' exchange from the previews has been all over my dash and it's great to get more of this dynamic. It's fantastic to see someone in universe say it out loud - Logan is a whiny little bitch, often a hypocrite, and can be blind to his immortality privilege. Scott knows that better than anyone - his wife's boyfriend throws a tanty like no other. They love him, but it's another reason why he's not the best Wolverine. I hope 'Logan behaviour' sticks around in the fandom.

This is Logan behaviour, Idie

I appreciate the informal nature of the Piper discussion. For one, you don't want to scare the kid or make her feel unwelcome. Idie said that she 'couldn't wait for you (Cyclops) and Magneto' re: Idie - having Psylocke be the one to spell it out for her is effective. The X-Men IS a team and the stakes are incredibly high. Besides, as Beast said in my first screenshot they have a Cerebro. This test could have been done from afar without the risk, and it's implied that it was.

I'm enjoying seeing Idie behaving compassionately, but it looks like she's got some serious anger and mistrust of authority (both justified) from Krakoa. It's great she's getting this kind of character focus and I hope it's followed up on. So many threads and beats have been setup that are likely to be disrupted by the Raid on Graymalkin event kicking off next week, but I'll reserve my judgement on that for when this first arc is concluded.

This is Logan behaviour, wild sentinel.

Gotta love Max and Scott's friendship being shown as they drink crappy beers and bask in Magneto rhetoric. I don't want to question the expert, but is this sentinel Wild or wild? It's clearly not an ORCHIS Iron Man model, but Wild Sentinel has a very specific meaning.

Okay, clearly Wild. It's not attacking either of them, though. Kind of Cyclops to spell out the Star Trek Borg adaptive schtick they've got going on. This is the action scene of the issue, the mandated violence.

I don't mean that entirely pejoratively either. I'm just as susceptible to the Magneto and Cyclops power fantasy as the next person, though it's a bit of a dirty trick to wait until issue 7 to show it.

This is NOT Logan behaviour, Magneto.

Sigh. I love your sense of drama Magneto. Play to the crowd, old man. I hope your monologue doesn't become ironic. Oh wait, we already know it has. This could have been a clever moment.

Uh oh, looks like his knees are weak and arms are heavy. Vomit on his sweater already...

So we see the moment Mags' powers start to shit the bed, right after a Wild Sentinel attack. I'd be suspecting Cassandra Nova's involvement just off these two data points tbh. Which idiot resurrected her anyway?

Oh, fuck off. Logan behaviour, Mackay.

R-LDS sounds like horse shit to me. Scott says 'we don't know that for sure' so how does this speculative condition have an acronym already? Mags is speaking as if it's a fact, but he doesn't even have the same body The Five resurrected. Maybe he has Umari-Key-Waiting Room-Brashear Portal Syndrome. Obviously he's scared but this feels like an idiot ball moment, and a cynical jab at Krakoa. The Five was something they got right, even with Sinister in the mix. The implications would be insane. 16 million Genoshans were resurrected, 250k Krakoans (give or take), a whole bunch of vulnerable human children via The Phoenix Foundation, Captain America, and 1000 fucking years of Sinisterized clones etc that had nothing of the sort.

No, there's way too many data points that apply to Magneto alone to make seriously considering The Five's resurrections as the source of patient zero's malady. It would be scientifically irresponsible to get to the point of naming it and then an acronym for that. Mags is good enough at science to know this, and Beast is too. I'm no scientist, but it manifested during a fight with a Wild Sentinel. I assume they have better resources than the Marvel wiki I'm using, but that robot/Cassandra Nova is my prime suspect - the lady they know for certain to be involved in ongoing genetic fuckery - activating X-Genes. Though not Piper Cobb...

Or yes Piper Cobb? Smash cut cliffhangers aside, this would be a great time to retcon Homo Sapiens Superior right the fuck out of existence. It's never made sense, and not just the 'Superior' part. Again, I'm not a scientist but I'm certain that's not how phylogeny works. They're mutated humans, but I don't live in 616 which canonically operates on impossible physics, so idk. My fingers are crossed but my expectations are nil.

That is Logan behaviour, masked kidnapper

Okay, we'd known from solicits that Beast would be getting beat down in captivity at Graymalkin. I had speculated he'd give himself up to get inside, but the ol' bag over the head works too. I dig his outfit.

X-Men #7 is worth reading IMO, and it's one of the better ones based off Magneto content alone. Last issue I wrote that the formula was becoming easier to spot, and I stand by that. A handful of character moments, some new information about one of the ongoing mysteries but it piles more questions on top of half answers and speculation. For example, we get to see Scott and Max fight a sentinel and be friends. There's new information there but a LOT more questions. The characters are at the point of absurd speculation which raises tension but doesn't make them look very competent. To kick off the event 'Raid on Graymalkin' they went with a final page bag over the head instead of any choice and comic book events notoriously derail everything so friends can argue and punch each other.

All that said, it's only *just* acceptable in my opinion - and that's the best I can say for the rest of the line too. We know that there's been ongoing issues with writers simply not knowing major Krakoan plot points, though they probably have the excuse that they were writing before FOTHOX/ROTPOX ended. Surely there's someone in charge of overseeing all this, like Hickman was as Head of X. *Looks at the credits* Tom Brevoort - Conductor of X... That's a fancy way to say 'line editor/hatchet man.' I'll stop there and save it for the From The Ashes piece I'm doing, but spoilers: I'm not impressed with how this guy keeps failing upwards.

What did you think? Thanks for reading.