flencersergeant

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“We’ve come to teach you how to live”

“In their story our deaths are not celebrated or mourned or noticed in their story our deaths do not count we are not even numbers to them “

This an essay about a book called 20th century men. This is gonna be spoilers so heads up.

I am fully convinced that the story of the Cold War the story of the 20th century and that a proxy war is the most unjust war.

This book convinced me, This book is wickedly awesome.

The plot is about one of the last acts of the Cold War specifically the war in Afghanistan in an alternate universe where the war is being led government made and owned super-humans. Captain America is the president and iron man is Russian general With a nuclear reactor in his chest.

The story telling romantic and heartbreaking at the same time. The main characters struggle against ideals and systems older and larger any of them could hope to understand or come to terms with. Everyone in the world seems to live by ideals pasted down to them by their government captors, by their struggling refugee communities or by mass media fed to them before they were even big enough to understand why they were watching it.

It bounces between five different failed idealists. the soldiers and bomb makers of a different age

They made the world worse while they were trying to make it better or had the chance for a better world snatched right out of their hands.

The stories takes on several perspectives but focuses the most on Peter plantov a general of the ussr and his side of the afghan war. He thinks his bombs can save the world. He’s wrong, his bombs won’t even save his Russia.

But it is so interesting and heartbreaking to watch him try. All around this book people’s earnest hopes and dreams are smothered by their own violence or by the violence greater powers.

Power does not give you agency. intelligence will not change your fate. The only thing that people have are ideal. About the world about their people about themselves. And maybe most of these idea aren’t really serving anybody but the war machine but I don’t think anybody in this story has the ability to recon with that.

Some of them don’t even have the mental faculties to recognize the truth of their lives anymore

The brutality of the extent of their remaking into weapons of empire are beautifully represented by stipan morian’s artwork, only a quarter literally representing the actual events of the proxy wars this book is about.

it always prefers to show the emotions of the characters over the actual events without becoming confusing to the reader .

I spent a lot of time just looking at the art because I’m an artist and the art in this book is kingshit.

the mood and the style changes every time we switch to a new character without feeling like it doesn’t belong.

It’s expressive cartoonish and grisly. Like these people are trying live a whole human life inside of a place antithetical to joy. It really kicks your ass and helps you through a story where if you know anything about your history you already know the tragic ending and the futility of everything its characters do.

it does this without ever making you feel small like the characters and their life stories are unimportant or like you wasted your time by trying to learn about them.

A lot of modern tragedies Focus on an ideal of nihilism that feels kind of trite and worthless but this tragedy makes you feel like you came away with something about the world and about America

I’ve never really thought about the afghan war before, this is just not relevant to the pop culture. America did this terrible thing to these people. served them these great indignities.

And then left.

in the final issue there is a rant about Afghanistan most famous title “the graveyard of empires” and I’ve always kind of thought that it was a cool title about the strength and unbendable steel of these people but I don’t think it is cool anymore because a home is not supposed be a graveyard.

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ROE IS FISH EGGS

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SWARDS 1-2

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So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom

It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education

602-771-3500 or empower @ azed .gov 🤡

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ALL DEMONS REIGN 1-4

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Kelston Boys’ High School perform a massive haka in honour of the new Maori carving on campus

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Work in progress art for my first ever game working name is roe journey/fish-egg

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Pyschopomp cover

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What differentiates the sacred and the consumed? The mother of the world is an ever hungry beast. But as she is still your venerable mother you will defend her with your life.

The world beast’s worshipers hate her jailors and their own human bodies. Which they work tirelessly to discard.

All animals are parasites to the hard face of the world. stealing nectar and aroma from the unknown. To live on her body is to show gratefulness and to show gratefulness is to defend her from final death.

Name is a work in progress Tonan is an option comes from aztec it means our mother. I think the name of a god generally has to be pretty easy to say. People shorten inconvenient words all the time, especially words they use a lot. And for a cult of people who are primarily defined by their opposition to other groups I think they’ll want to mix it into curses. There will be a lexicon eventually

The first thing I think they need is a widely believed origin myth and opposing version (for enemy groups to believe in) and a third (in group) counterculture version. Basically a vague enough set of myths and rules the religion of people with the same core beliefs can have a protestant reformation about. The followers of these traditions call themselves the deni.

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A struggle I am having is a lot of my ideas are already very fully built out and internally consistent in my head so I have no idea where I should even start in explaining it to other people.

I’m going to try to create a full write ups for future reference. Mostly for having a way to explain these ideas to people on hand and maybe also get some outside opinions for once.

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Artist/ writer

Trying to vocalize my thoughts more

I block bigots and bots

Free Palestine🇵🇸