p3melee-blog

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like the thing that always makes me insane about the way people talk about academia on this website is that it’s just so sentimental and individualised, like at all times they are just talking about themselves and how special they are for having this elite knowledge and even the idea of thinking of university as a mass industrial racism factory whose societal function is to regulate class reproduction makes them insanely mad because it means having to think of themselves within a social location that isn’t merely specialest little guy on planet earth. Most people I speak to in the academy, who have the highest levels of education and most elite credentials in the country, are some of the most dull, unremarkable and boring people I’ve ever spoken to. Academia is an incredibly alienating place but I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met who have identified the actual causes of that alienation correctly. I have been in academia long enough to have learned the lesson that university is only incidentally a place of learning, because the primary incentive structures that drive universities are not “making sure students get the most beautiful well-rounded and objectively true education” and talking to people who actually believe that unironically is like talking to people who think Starbucks’ mission statement of nurturing the limitless possibilities of human connection is what drives all of their business decisions

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please, untitled document was my father, call me untitled document (1)

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the magician

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i want viktor to keep the hood at the end of arcane

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inspired by the glorious evolution/viktor giving too much of himself for the sake of others

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my jesus boy is depressed

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arcane season two mention :

im cooking here trust

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it's me and my emotional support "got resurrected but came back wrong as an allegory of jesus" characters against the world (kiriona art by cabramso)

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"It was affection that held us together."

zoom in for better detail (tumblr likes to butcher my quality lmao)

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and with your help it can rack up 700k notes on tumblr in 2024

no tumblr this doesnt need tags im releasing it into the wild as god intended

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I have an ice-cold take to share but I'm trusting you all with my vulnerability

Obviously Taylor Swift's private jet carbon footprint is a fucking problem but also I think if she did the alternative and flew on commercial airplanes to get to her concerts then someone would absolutely bite her.

I think she'd safely get through about 5 flights but on the sixth there will be some Swiftie who spots her and enters a complete hyperventilation fugue state that manifests with something similar to cute-aggression but it would manifest in the form of biting Taylor Swift as much as possible. I don't think she would leave unscathed.

Like politicians already travel privately to avoid assassination and it's just that I believe the number of political assassins out there pales in comparison to the number of 23-year-old white sorority girls who are one Taylor-Swift-spotting away from putting their invisalign into practice.

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Wrt your posting about the jedi taking on children, I disagree thst the argument about force sensitive people 'need' to be trained for everyone else's safety. It's like Dragon Age mages or BNHA quirks, it's not special if someone can fireball me if they're having a bad day, some random person can already beat or strangle me with just their own two hands in the real world, no fireball necessary.

I mean idk I feel like Star Wars does a fairly decent job of establishing how dangerous force sensitivity can be - it’s not just extra strength or throwing things, but also mind control, healing (which i know is rare tbf), communicating with animals, etc. It also establishes how scary it can be to have those sorts of powers without knowing how to deal with them. I think Rebels does a good job of exploring this kind of thing with Kanan and Ezra.

However I also agree with you that it doesn’t “need” to be a problem, like force users are not inherently doomed to darkness/violence unless trained eternally across all space and time. But I think force sensitivity introduces a wholly organic way to accrue power (both physically in the sense that you’re more powerful and socially in that you have a type of organic ‘capital’ that can be used to gain social and political power in society, either because people adore you and want to follow you, and/or because they fear you), and having that type of power isn’t dependent on class position or family history*, it’s essentially random chance if someone is force sensitive or not. Which creates a threat to the types of societies depicted in Star Wars where there are durable ruling classes who want to maintain power.

And I think the Jedi Order offers a solution to this problem by capturing that type of ‘organic capital’ for lack of a better term; you monopolise an institution responsible for moulding force sensitive people into a particular type of subject - one that is not a threat to the prevailing societal order - and in exchange for being forced to be a Jedi you get massive amounts of privilege via access to knowledge, social status, material needs, and so on. While this creates civil unrest and distrust of the Jedi from a lot of laypeople, it’s a pretty sweet deal in the eyes of the Republic if it means not having to deal with rival force sensitive groups using their power to make political demands, especially through violence.

I think looking at it this way explains why the Jedi don’t really accept or allow any other type of force user, especially as they become more enmeshed with the Republic (the coven in the acolyte is a good example, the dathomiri witches, etc), and why a lot of force users who are not Jedi are labelled Sith, either because they adopt that label themselves or because they’re labelled that by the Jedi. And I’m not saying “the sith are just misunderstood victims” or whatever, but that in a scenario where you have a very powerful monastic order that controls how the rest of society understands and interacts with force sensitivity, force users who fall outside of that are going to be treated as a criminal class who are a threat to the republic (because they are - Maul is treated this way, Dooku and Anakin quite literally topple the Republic, etc). So like in the settings Star Wars tends to play in, force sensitivity is narratively understood as a source of incredible potential power, and capturing that power via an institution like the Order makes sure that power potential is not disruptive to prevailing society and power interests. Which is why I think the Jedi do have a fairly good rationale for taking kids and training them, even if that rationale is tied to the maintenance of the status quo - the Order’s power depends upon the maintenance of their own monopoly

*KIND OF. obviously some of the canon loves doing blood lineages with palpatine and shit, the midichlorian thing, etc. which sucks so bad. But general canon consensus as far as I know appears to be that anyone can potentially be force sensitive

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its very very important to chop some apples and throw them into a rice cooker with a little cinnamon + sugar trust me

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i would have booped you my brother, my captain, my king