#Violence is a tool

[defensive-tactics]

Answer violence with violence of your own. Fight dirty because the attacker certainly will...

[green-alien-sings-pompeii]

I'm not saying I want a reflection of the French revolution in the US, a lot of innocent people were persecuted and guillotined just because of their association with aristocratic privelage

But like. I can't really see anything else working right now. Every movement will always have bad faith players who only care about their own agenda, you can't ignore a method just because of those who abuse it (that's the exact tactic conservatives use to pile red tape onto government assistance programs)

[gigglepuffpixie-pol]

i can't count the number of times i'd see "pro palestine" then a tiny scratch on the surface later i'd see a bunch of slurs. it's like the movement was mostly just a reason to say shitty things. (i know that's not true, but fuck it happened a lot)

more than once someone was a legit survivor of racial violence only to, a couple comments down, start slurring jews.

W T F ???

This is so funny now im seeing people talking abt "imperfect allies" and how we can't afford recriminations and "i told you so"s and how we need to really come together and build community now.

It's too little too late. Oh NOW we want to talk abt imperfect allies, when earlier you called me a zionist cunt who deserves to die for DARING to suggest that kamala would be a better president for marginalized people in this country? NOW we need to look past differences and embrace our shared humanity?

No. You just need my labor again, you just need black and jewish and women and trans labor to do all the hard work of building a backbone of aid and solidarity again, because you're feeling the loneliness and vulnerability of a fractured, losing movement.

[autumndragon]

it's the same move

[mandareeboo]

I don't normally condone violence but GET HIS ASS BESTIE

[shinedoitsulikeabright]

Manwhore AU headcanon

I like to believe Manwhore Ody got home shortly after the war ended because he didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit that canon Ody has to deal with.

Like imagine: if only he seduced his way out of the whole Polyphemus situation, he wouldn't have pissed off Poseidon, meaning he would've got home pretty much immediately.

I'm not even saying he had to fuck Poly (he'd die), but he could've used his babygirl looks or something. Be like "I'm sorry about your sheep, pookie *bats eyelashes*", but no. He just had to abandon all reason and blind the cyclops before telling him his full legal name and address.

[hayatheauthor]

Y'all are so lucky I'm not as much of a menace to society as i could be. Sacrificing a lotta fun for your mental health

[beingformed]

busy thinking about how Lt. Hodgson freaks out during the attack-that-wasn't in the fog, and how scared he is when he tells Little about the Comanche massacre, and how he makes it clear he sees all Native people as potentially vicious child killers, even though he had just executed an innocent Netsilik family and was himself a child killer

[sappho-favourite-pupil]

idk the thing about arcane is that it was so good and it could have been even better and then season 2 ruined everything. for example, i still refuse to believe - after months - that they decided to recur to the "love and forgiveness" trope. like fuck off. i didn't realize i was watching a disney movie.

what really baffles me is the writers really decided to go down this path with both caitlyn and vi's love story and - what's worse - with the political situation between zaun and piltover. yeah, violence is a cycle, but i'm sure forgiveness will be enough to stop caitlyn from hitting vi again and piltover from oppressing zaun, in the future.

[defensive-tactics]

Become emotionless. Become the attacker. Make the attacker fear for HIS life...

[bratzboykai]

Idk if you just can't face the fact that the apartheid state of Israel that you're in support of is inherently violent in not only literal violence by inacting a genocidal war against an entire people, but in its very foundation as a settler state that forcibly displaced people using international law, military power, etc, and then spent decades of time and money to further dehumanize said people so you'd be ok with the socially engineered violence so that it has a right to exist in your eyes, than yeah you're STILL supporting zionism lol all zionism is inherently wrong and it is violent!!

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

LGBTQ Christians, like a lot of Christians, value their feelings and comfort over the very real harm caused by Christianity and the people who've been harmed by it. Good for you that your denomination is affirming and you have every right to practice the religion of your choice but how fucking dare you try to dictate how people should feel about a god and religion that has been used as a tool to oppress the very community you're a part of.

[rose-chateau]

One thing that a lot of healthy people (and even some chronically ill/disabled people) don't seem to get is that medicine is here to make things more convenient for you.

If you just can't get enough fiber or sodium in your diet, here's a pill you can swallow to get all that stuff instantly. You get nauseated whenever you're in a plane? Here's a pill for it. Your periods are awful? Try this synthetic hormone that comes in a million different dosages so you have a lot of options to find one that suits you. Your body isn't flushing bacteria as well as it should? Here's three supplements that helps your body do that. Your whatever organ isn't producing enough whatever juice? We make that in a lab now. Take a pill or have it infused yearly.

Recently my dietary restrictions got so hard to follow that my doctor just said to do the best I can and then upped my anti-inflammatory meds. I can kind of eat what I want without consequence now. Yes, it's worse on my liver and I may develop an intolerance for the medication, but my other option was "be sick and in pain all the time because all food hurts me right now."

With wellness culture blowing up, now more than ever I see people (even chronically ill people!!) parading their health as the result of lifestyle choices alone, gloating about how they don't take evil dirty medication--you're just not yourself when you take insulin!! When in reality, not everyone has the privilege. Some people are too busy or too disabled or too sick to go without medication. And even if you CAN be healthy and happy with lifestyle alone, it's still going to take up time and effort that you might want to devote to something fun instead. And that's okay!! Optimization is not your obligation.

Take the fucking headache medicine. I don't know where some people get the idea that medication makes you weak or that you need to have earned it, but it's not about strength or weakness anymore. The universe said I love you and she gave you a little morsel of magic so you can keep watching tv without your head exploding.

[maggiecheungs]

“utena is a bit like a shoujo equivalent of evangelion” = a common and inevitable comparison that is admittedly not a bad elevator pitch, giving an idea of utena's symbolism and the genre tropes it engages without requiring an essay-length summary of its plot and themes

“utena is evangelion for the girlies” = SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UPPPP

[defensive-tactics]

Give yourself permission to do whatever it takes to stop a violent attack. Be determined.

[sticks-and-souls]

Anakin & Letting Go

I always found it to be a little skeptical that Anakin could become a force ghost after it took Yoda, Qui Gon, and Obi-Wan learning and training how to do it, and I always thought “really? Anakin? Finding that level of peace and letting go?” But after this episode, seeing the care and lesson that he imparts upon Ahsoka that he learned so painfully, I understand it from him so much better. Vader was so stuck in his complete self-hatred that he allowed nobody who had known him before as Anakin to reach him (most notably Obi-Wan and Ahsoka) because of the overwhelming extent of his shame. It took his son, who had never known him and yet who still stood before him and believed in him, loved him, sacrificed himself for him, to call Anakin back from the depths of Vader. And this Anakin, let everything go to save his son and to allow his son to save him.

And it felt so impactful to get to see this mature post-Vader Anakin reaching out to Ahsoka to teach her this very hard-earned lesson that he took the very hard road to get. Because she has Vader in her. She is everything Anakin taught her, and we saw the behaviors that led Anakin to becoming Vader—the fear of losing his most cherished relationships—reaching out of Anakin very early in the clone wars (and before) and the two of them are both very aware that he imparted those lessons on her. And then we've seen across this season—and overtly in her clone wars flashbacks—that she believes she is inextricable from these traits.

I’ve always loved Anakin as a fictional character, getting to see his earnestness, his flawedness, and his intensity (to borrow Huyang’s very accurate adjective), but this episode brought a level of humanity to him that has moved me so deeply. Life is HARD, loss gets forced on all of us no matter what, and the lessons that we learn through mistakes that we made can be extremely painful because acknowledging and taking responsibility for hurting people is actually really painful for humans (not owning up to our actions is the emotionally easier choice and George Lucas has stated time and again that the Dark Side is about taking the short-term easier choices). But it ultimately means that learning from your mistakes is an actual choice you have to MAKE. And this is the core of Anakin’s lesson. He is teaching Ahsoka that she has to choose which lessons he has taught her that she will live by, but more than that, that she is empowered to be able to choose. Yes, she has everything that he taught her—the good and the bad—but she is not condemned to live out all of the lessons. 

And the beauty of it isn't just the lesson, but that Anakin gets to be the one to teach it to her. The betrayal that she experienced in discovering his fall, the taintedness that she has been portraying that she feels about herself, gets specifically addressed because if he figured it out, then she definitely can too. If he is more than just Vader, then she is too. And THAT is what the "Is that what this is about?" line is actually about. It's so so important that we get to see pre-Vader, Vader, and post-Vader across her vision because the point is that yes, Vader is a part of him, and that brilliant shot of the two of them glaring Sith eyes across the blade at each other did it's job in conveying that Ahsoka is capable of that darkness too, but you are not only the darkness. You get to choose. ("You're more than [death and destruction] because I'm more than that"). And more to the point, you have to choose. Because if you don't specifically choose to fight the dark, then you're ultimately choosing to fall into it. "Fight or die."

So for Anakin to be able to reach out to her one more time, to be able to love her the way he, as Vader, had refused to the last time when they met on Malachor, and to open with “you’re never too old to learn”, because god if he didn’t learn that the hard way too. And to be able to pass on to Ahsoka how to actually let go because he himself had only just finally been able to learn it as well, feels so powerful and poignant.

And that look of pride and wistful sadness that he gives her at the end? That both she and Luke were able to learn so quickly what took him so long? And that maybe, he may have helped save her from the worst traits that he imbued upon her? That’s him having let go of his own shame. He feels grief, he feels guilt—we can see it on his face—but what has happened has happened and he has accepted that, and finally learned that letting go doesn't mean it didn't happen, it means it doesn't have to define your actions going forward.

And finally, it’s also him letting go of ahsoka. By teaching her that she will choose her destiny, he has to accept that he cannot control it either. And he has. “There’s hope for you yet.” 

So yeah, Anakin learned to let go, and getting to see him here, in this headspace of acceptance and peace, practicing and understanding what it means to be a Jedi, was so unexpectedly cathartic and revelatory for me as viewer.