horizonboundtrainer

[horizonboundtrainer]

I'm done outlining exactly how one of my story's main villains dies. How do you defeat a nearly invincible mage empress? Convince her that her people no longer need her guidance, promise that you and your friends will find a solution to the cosmic cycles of divine tyranny and finally make her commit ritual suicide to take accountability. And no my main characters don't see any problem with this outcome. Their values simply ain't ours because they were never born into a world where our views are the norm.

( This is considered an honorable, if not unrealistically merciful way out in their culture—the kind of thing you only see in storybooks. The idea that sapient life is inherently sacred would be laughable for most people in the setting. Most of her enemies would have done far worse the moment she surrenders. )

[horizonboundtrainer]

Trans rights isn't even a conservative policy in Hoenn btw. It's like arguing that we should have traffic signs in the modern era—one of those things so mundane that running a mayoral campaign on it will have May laughing you out of the room for living in the second century. There are far more interesting topics to spend her time on.

( Honestly you'd get more respect from her by debating the virtues of monarchy because it's an actual point of contention in the region... albeit a very fringe perspective. )

[horizonboundtrainer]

Still working on my original story and sometimes I think about how the main villain for 2/3 of it is a woman who went from a slave to a liberator of the oppressed to a tyrant empress fueled by the blood of children. A younger Mithra would have smited her current self... and immediately stolen her plans for enslaving the gods. She's nothing if not ambitious lol. And OH BOY do her actions have consequences.

[horizonboundtrainer]

May considers certain aspects of Hoennian culture, especially Draconid culture, quite conservative. Ofc her definition of conservative is extremely different from our own. Keep in mind that modern Hoenn is a bizaare amalgamation of several political and social frameworks formed as a response to foreign imperialism. Maintaining the delicate balance between them is difficult at best, even for May.

Like Devon is actually the League's most progressive master in modern history. Not that it's much of a competition next to genocidal imperialists, open racists, neofeudalists, and people knowingly pushing their region towards ecological collapse. Devon's operations are rather benevolent in comparison.

[horizonboundtrainer]

May doesn't particularly care for our definition of what counts as Western. When she refers to the "West" she's talking about something like South East Asia, China, or India, who've historically been some of her region's major trading partners. "East" in Hoennian terms is Alola and the minor regions between... Or she's talking about Reborn. European cultural influence is a very modern thing.

[horizonboundtrainer]

Get in the water

Don't mistake my threats for bluff

You have lived more than enough

[horizonboundtrainer]

May's pain tolerance can generally be described as "yes". It's an unholy combination of willpower, mental conditioning and her ability to detach the "self" from the "body". It's possible for her to reach for the kind of maniac strength most people can normally only access during life or death situations because she genuinely doesn't care about damaging her body to achieve her goals. That self preservation instinct's been burnt out over the years.

And it isn't really a skill that's unique to her. Kyogre was the one who taught her how to better compartmentalize. Like for all its wickedness, the whale's been a patron of ascetics, sorcerors and philosphers for millennia before AZ—Kyogre's brainhacking techniques are legit. Everything the buddhists do has been done before.

[horizonboundtrainer]

Hi I apologize for my earlier post yesterday while paranoid on vyvanse. I can see how that might be hurtful to others worried about antisemitism and bigotry being on the rise. Yes it's a very real concern that is scaring a lot of people. There are a bunch of people freaking out here over zohran's views on israel. Some of the fear is rational and most of it def isn't but my anger aint helping at all.

Sorry I just had to cut off a irl old friend over the shit she said about wanting trump to jail our mayoral candidate. She's been getting more right wing over time and I don't think we can help her anymore. It's terrifying and I'm so fucking tired of constantly trying to fight this bullshit

[horizonboundtrainer]

The dyanamic May has w/ most of her friends:

Found family except you slowly come to realize that you're not all that close to May at all. There are people she calls her sworn siblings and you're not one of them. And you'll probably never be. At most you're able to catch impressions of her from a distance, enough to keep her memory alive once she's gone.

Like it's not just people she interacts with here—She has hundreds of friends, employees and aquaintences in her life. May was actually dating Vito Winstrate back in the day. Very few of them actually see her for what she is and those who do tend to find her unsettling.

( Vito isn't one of them. He tried to be. It didn't work out. Even now he has nightmares of feathers sprouting from his limbs and and fungal bodies cracking open his skull as he slowly becomes part of the Cave of Origin. )

[horizonboundtrainer]

Working on my original work again and uh... Lets just say that one of the main characters is blaise asf about self harm because she can heal away anything less than the destruction of her brain. She hacks off her own arm in her chapter 2 as raw materials for her magic. And regularly uses herself as a blood source for carnomancy.

She views it through a very clinical lense tbh. Being raised by fairies gives you a strange idea of what's normal.

[horizonboundtrainer]

Embracing your true monstrous nature? Yeah. That's the point.

May doesn't want to be normal. She doesn't actually want a place where she can belong in human society. She'd rather be something beautiful and terrifying and fundementally unknowable. If the majority of the world died, she would have still been one of the few survivors chugging along trying to build a new form of society.

[horizonboundtrainer]

too many stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for pretending to be something you aren't and losing yourself in the process. not enough stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for choosing to openly embrace yourself even if it's strange to other people

[horizonboundtrainer]

In a Johto AU May is more "normal" than her Hoennian self with a degree, a boyfriend, and a decently paying job and an unusual number of wild Pokemon following her around. This is not a good thing.

Because in this AU her mother got her way and managed to keep her from leaving on any journey so she could force her idea of normalcy onto her child. A lifetime of repression and conformity does horrible things for the human psyche. She's practically a time bomb ready to go off.

[horizonboundtrainer]

NYC DEFEATED THE CORRUPT GERIATRIC SEX CRIMINAL RUNNING FOR MAYOR

IT HAPPENED

ITS POSSIBLE

EAT MY ASS ESTABLISHMENT POLITICIANS

[horizonboundtrainer]

Someone wanted to do a childhood friends ship w/ my idiot lol. Not happening.

If you knew May before the age of 12, she either hated you or barely remembers you exist. She had no human friends at this point. Like she beat a classmate to near death for abusing wild Pokemon. As far as she's concerned, all of her peers in Johto were massive pieces of shit.

The only ones she's in contact with at the moment are the nepobabies in local politics who keep trying to wine and dine her. May's keeping those messages on read.

[horizonboundtrainer]

A bit of smth about my original setting... The Ninevan empress is the keeper of the fire of creation which is a lot weirder than it sounds when you take into account that her flames are magic in its purest form. The world was born from fire and it will die in fire. Mithra's basically a living god of magic, albeit one that's still subordinate to her patrons. She's less than happy about the whole matter.

Also keep in mind that the eternal flame needs to be fed. Mithra broke all of the rules building up her mage supremacist empire rather than parceling magic out sparingly ( which is what the gods before her did ) so the flame's slowly dying as a result. Hense the brutal imperialism as an attempt to stave off the consequences of what she's done. The gods are greedy bastards, she's a selfish bitch and the whole cosmos suffers as a result.

( It was meant to be a paradise at the start. And then the realities of maintaining it set in and the fallout of how she overthrew the last emperor led to a series of revolts and well... Mithra and her archons have only further to fall. )

[horizonboundtrainer]

We can do little to guide the way this movement unfolds (nor would we want to), but we hope that some of the tools and tactics employed by our friends and comrades in Hong Kong might be of use to those in the streets of other cities. In particular, we offer for your consideration the evolution of the “frontline” role in the Hong Kong movement, in hopes that it might be helpful in bridging gaps between militants and peaceful participants in the streets elsewhere.

As in past movements, there have already been significant disagreements about how to engage with the forces of the state in the US. As with other movements since Ferguson and before, some (but not all) formal activist organizations have begun to engage with the “soft” wing of the local repressive apparatus, springing into action to tamp down the militancy of the initial uprising: “Community leaders” collaborate with the police, walking crowds into ambushes and kettles, and literally point out “violent” protestors in the crowd. Meanwhile, local governments nationwide claim that those initiating property destruction or fighting the police are “outside agitators,” with the mayor of Seattle tweeting that “much of the violence and destruction, both here and across the country, has been instigated and perpetuated by white men.” But it is abundantly clear that pent-up rage against the police is extremely widespread, and on the streets a broad consensus has emerged that they must be opposed.

Hong Kong may offer one path that escapes the seeming inevitability of conflicts over violence, nonviolence, and how to engage with the forces of the state. For those who are looking for a new way to bridge gaps between militant and peaceful forms of participation, we think one of the city’s most important contributions to the new era of struggles has been the development of particular roles and formations to be deployed on the streets, as well the structures behind them that helped to better link those willing to fight the cops with others in the movement. In particular, we want to highlight the concept of Hong Kong’s “frontliners,” who not only developed many successful techniques for confronting the police, but also established a new kind of relationship between the militant and nonviolent elements of street actions through many months of experimentation.