#a lineage of true motherfuckers

[theancientwise]

Friendly reminder...

that this wonderful Lady, queen Emma of Normandy,

in "Vikings" continuity descended from

these two powerful and charismatic people...

and from this unpredictable motherfucker, or rather, siblingsfucker...

... No wonder she is such a badass!

(credits to vikings, vikings valhalla, and thanks to maevelin and samaraweaving for the gifs).

[xxcherrycherixx]

fuck it, we always talk about the apple hate but we never talk about the blondie hate-

that is my bbgirl my best friend, she's my pal. she's my home boy, my rotten soldier. shes my sweet cheese, my good time boy

and ppl always be bashing her for being "annoying and sticking her nose into shit" like bestie im sorry she's not another copy of literally all the other princesses- like yall want her to be holly? who is like forgettable af but hey shes not "annoying" (sorry holly enjoyers, but i legit forget about her existence so much)

she's such a fun character! her entire shit is be gay do crimes hun, she breaks into houses on the regular and just vibes there, she has like 4 restraining orders against her- she picks locks so good that people regularly just go to her when they need to sneak into places

she looks at girls with this face!

THAT IS HEART EYES MOTHERFUCKER NO ONE ELSE WAS LOOKING AT CUPID LIKE THAT, ONLY THE COUPLES BE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER LIKE THAT THIS BITCH GAY GAY AND THEN THE WAY SHE SNAPS OUT OF IT AND JUST KEEPS STARING FOR A GOOD WHILE LIKE "oh shit well that's something i didn't know about myself-"

queen shit.

she wants to fit in so bad!!! she wants friends!!! she is my sad little meow meow!! she wants to become a reporter probably because her momma would tell her about how she use to work on the school newspaper!! And her momma would be so proud of her if she became a big time reporter!!🥺

she is so desperate to fit in, she's so ashamed that shes not real royalty like all her friends are that she feels she has to lie about it, and in blondie branches out where she tells a slightly more accurate version of her family and apple calls it a just right royal story, she's so happy and she looks so sweet!! she needs some validation babes!!!

she just wants friends!! the way she lies about her lineage is always to try to get the other royals to like her, she thinks she has to be like them for them to want to be her friends!! there's a hierarchy in ever after high that gets more detail in the books, royalty gets treated like celebrities with specialty seating and other perks. blondie is like every child who grew up in a fancy school when your family didn't have much, you see your friends constantly going on about their big house with a pool or the new shoes that cost more than your entire wardrobe and you start to feel alienated from the group. once more she needs some validation!!! help my girlie out!!!!

and the way she breaks into the bears homes, she believes they're her friends. so to her its fine to come over and ask momma if she has anything to eat, and the bears themselves don't really tell her to her face that shes not welcome. it seems baby bears outburst is the first time the bears have openly reacted negatively to her presence and blondie just thinks it was something to do with the other girls.

onto our big boy: BLONDIE IS SO FUCKING DISABLED CODED.

she cant understand social cues and is a perfectionist, her special interest is her show, she is picky when it comes to food preferring her safe food of porridge. this girl is a dead ringer for a bitch on the spectrum (this is coming from a bitch on many specrtrums including the autistic one) the thing is what i hate most is that when people hate on blondie, they're hating her for her neurodivergent traits. they might not realize it but that's completely what it is. "she's nosy and rude" she doesn't understand that what she is doing is rude, she cant tell when she crosses a line, i have done shit like that so many times like saying things i see as true and upsetting the other person and not realizing why.

she also has very strong signs of adhd with how much and how fast she talks and her lack of focus as shown in just sweet, just sweet shows these traits so perfectly, it was the episode that truly made it clear that this girl isn't neurotypical at all. i feel people call her annoying because of this, she talks so much and pair that with her autistic traits and she becomes unlikable for so many, but she's such a sweet girl underneath, there's a reason people still willingly hang out with her and that's because despite the fact she has these traits that come off as negative. she's still a kind girl happy to help her friends, she refuses to out ashlynns and hunters relationship because she can recognize that would be mean to her friends, she accepts helping raven out despite the fact her and the rebel haven't always been on the best terms, she invites poppy to the blue moon forest fest and is implied to help holly with picking locked doors enough for holly to consider her a close friend.

blondie is not your typical perfect character like so many of the cast is, but that's a good thing because if she was then she would just be another background character to forget about. she has her own personality and she has her own interests, she is one of the most neurodivergent coded characters in the series.

did i mention this girl has to be a woman enjoyer? because i swear she has to be- at some point she has to realize that maybe her extreme pickiness when it comes to boys is less about that individual not being just right but instead boys as a whole not being just right for her. do i need to show the heart eyes picture again?

[tysonfurybattlepass]

top 5 felines ever to exist on the planet?

oooohohohoho. so. technically, taxonomically speaking "feline" means only the little cat subfamily, so we'll be focusing on them. pls read this in the burger king foot lettuce voice btw

5. jaguarundi. idk why but he's giving otter or weasel, and allegedly they move like a mustelid too. their short legs and long bodies allow them to keep a low profile, and likely evolved convergently from weasels because it was a useful hunting adaptation. they also come in two colors, which i did not know until looking for facts for this post! (recently the first ever albino one was discovered too, so i guess technically three? but being white would be really bad for a wild cat so lets maybe not intentionally go for that morph.)

4. lynx (all variants). two words: BIG PAWS. the canadian lynx is so dependent on the snowshoe hare as a food source that its population directly correlates with the hare population in any given area. when there is a boom in hare births, there is also a boom in lynx births and migrations to the area. when the hares have been hunted down to a smaller population, the lynxes either starve or leave.

3. asiatic golden cat. tell me this is not the prettiest motherfucker you have ever seen in your life. sometimes known as fire cats, it was believed in some parts of southeast asia that carrying even one hair from a golden cat could ward off tigers. they are one of the least studied asian cats, but collar trackers suggest they may be more diurnal than most felines. despite their name, they are not closely related to the african golden cat, which is part of the serval lineage of cats.

2. mountain lion. that is right, this human-sized greek god of an animal is more closely related to domestic cats than to any true big cat! mountain lions have been known to bite the back of the neck and paralyze their prey by piercing the spinal cord! it's a good thing they're normally shy. rest in peace P-22, the griffith park mountain lion. he inspired a new generation of urban conservationists, and i'm glad the indigenous people of the area were granted rights to his body to give him a proper sendoff. he lived a long life for a puma, but his euthanasia due to pesticide-related illness is a stark reminder of how severely wildlife depleted our world is becoming.

1. african black-footed cat. these little serial killers have THE highest k/d ratio of the entire true cat subfamily, stat padding a disrespectful 60% of all the prey they go after. compare that to the mighty tiger's 10% success rate, and you will begin to understand why they make this regular ass cat live in the zoo.

[candyradium]

Sunday DnD update: we have made it to level three!!! subclass time!!! armourer artificer time for Gabriel!!! i am now a tank AND a scout. im so versatile <3

Various other session happenings include:

PC vs PC arguments are extremely fun and i wish i had more braincells available so i could play Gabriel more true to his character (i.e. a blunt vindictive asshole who is extremely protective of his sister) (i am very tired today so i tried my best. but i could have been Meaner)

everyone keeps giving Gabriel gifts. everyone loves my boy. my 8 charisma standoffish asshole of a character <3

(Gabriel's liked gifts: food (Caspian gave him soup), pieces of metal (Cedric gave him a metal pipe), and tools (Cedric ALSO gave him thieves' tools but only bc he lost Gabriel's ones))

In related news, Caspian is 100% playing the platonic version of a dating sim

Cedric is a hypocrite ass motherfucker and also cannot deal with his Extremely Cursed Sword NEARLY as well as he claims that he can

WE HAVE ACQUIRED A GUN. GUN ACQUIRED.

It is my duty as the party artificer to wield the Gun. As the only one with proficiency(?). It's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it

(I don't even need a gun! My armour has a built in ranged weapon! Also it was wielded by an agent of Lolth and may it may not be cursed!)

Mammon is a bastard. gave me a spell and in return stole my other fucking arm in a dream (vision?). this is exactly why i do not fuck with higher powers of ANY sort, fiendish or celestial or anything else,

(i still had it when i woke up from the tiefling-lineage-induced dream BUT. even if it had actually been taken it. wouldn't have been that bad. I've already lost one arm and i just built myself another one, it's not like it's gonna be HARD to do it a second time)

(also mechanically arcane armour replaces missing limbs, making it. almost meaningless. so,)

[toomanylizzes]

Thinking about Thom and Elayne

no, not that weird gross thing

book spoilers under the cut

I wonder if anyone outside of Moiraine and Thom ever realize that Thom may have saved Elayne’s life when he assassinated Taringail.

Let me explain.

So let’s say Taringail’s plan worked: he assassinates Morgase before she could kill him because awful people believe everyone is secretly as awful as them, and Morgase doesn’t need him anymore now that he’s given her a daughter. He somehow rallies enough support to become Andor’s first King. All hail Taringail, the first of his name, yadda yadda yadda.

And then what?

At that point, he defies all of the Andoran laws of inheritance and royal lineage: he’s not a woman, he’s not the High Seat of an Andoran house, and it would be a big stretch to assume that he has any of the traditional ties to Ishara. So while he would probably have his supporters - ambitious opportunists are gonna ambitiously opportune - he’ll have a huge set of detractors, and we know this because we’ve seen this happen. 

With Rahvin. And Rand. 

We’ve seen loyal guardsmen leave because they don’t want to serve a super shady king. We’ve seen Andoran loyalist High Seats leave Caemlyn in disgust and then openly defy the motherfucking Dragon Reborn when they thought he might actually dare to rule their country. We’ve seen the common people whisper and spread rumours that their queen was murdered, and there was a usurper who sat on the throne.

So we know Taringail would probably have had a hard time holding on to the throne, and would likely have to resort to the super dark Cairhienin tactics of, y’know, murder, kidnapping, and blackmail, to handle any threats to his rule.

And Elayne would be the biggest threat at all. 

Because Elayne is Morgase’s true heir. Elayne has blood ties and thousands of years of tradition behind her. Elayne is a potential rallying point for any Andoran who doesn’t want a king to rule them. 

Even if Taringail rewrote all the Andoran laws to ensure, say, the first-born child would rule regardless of gender and thereby bump Elayne down from first in line to third, Elayne would still serve as a symbol to the old rule, and symbols are dangerous.

And now we’re entering into some dark German fairytale shit, because what are your options if you’re an objectively shitty person who’s just usurped the throne? If Taringail didn’t have the stomach to murder his own daughter, he’d still have to control her in some way so she could never be a threat to him. Lock her away somewhere, perhaps, and pretend to rule as Regent. Restrict her access to education, and never let her supporters talk to her. Don’t let her out from under his thumb until he’s good and ready to die. Don’t let her ever find out that he murdered her mother. Tightly monitor Galad and Gawyn too, while he’s at it, because the former may still turn out rigidly moral (and fondly remember his stepmother) and the latter may remember an oath given at their sister’s cradle. Don’t let the White Tower anywhere near her because he’s extra fucked then, and he’s ultra super fucked if it turns out she can channel.

Easier to just kill the brat, and make it look like some kind of childhood illness. 

And again, we’ve seen this all before, because we’ve seen Rahvin give the order to kill Elayne. And Thom wasn’t terribly surprised. 

So it’s probably a good thing that Thom’s love language is assassination.

(Seriously, though, this is such a fairytale scenario wherein the Good Queen was killed by her wicked husband who takes her throne. The Beautiful Princess is either locked away, or hidden away as a baby before she is killed. Then she is discovers her magical powers, and there’s a rescue at some point that involves the Dragon Reborn due to ta’veren bullshit, and some shit involving her brothers, and probably Aviendha’s there too.)

[chromes-corner]

I’ll give you one (1) 🥚 hard boiled egg for your takes on the new cookies

OMG OMG OMG THANK YOU FOR THE EGG AND FOR LETTING ME TALK ABOUT NEW UPDATE COOKIES YESSSSS ILY

Wildberry Cookie

Ok ok ok so like obviously im gonna be super partial towards this guy because I love knight/paladin-looking characters and ughhh his design absolutely tickles my brain. I am so so so into the bigass gauntlet he has its SO COOL I LOVE IT!! the stoic look is really dragging me in as well. whats this man so serious about??? his job???? i really wanna know what his job entails because he cant JUST be hollyberrys bodyguard. there's no way in hell she, victorious warrior over literal dragons, needs a bodyguard. also i know this probably wont be true but itd be really fucking cool if he was related to hollyberry. like the color palette is all there and he has word berry in his name and, uh, thats all the steam this theory has, BUT STILL!!! thatd be a cool foil for princess, right? a relative who takes his lineage seriously??? idk man i just really like this dude. a lot. also I'm hoping he's not just another caramel arrow personality-wise bc I'm getting those vibes just a little bit from him. that'd be so sad :( give him a cool character quirk devsis. makes my boy stand out. i really hope the fanbase gives him the same love that theyre currently giving the other new guy. ugh the skoinko boinko <3 <3 <3

clotted cream cookie

i might rag on this guy in the future for looking super fucking generic, but tbh he's... fine. that's it. he's fine. i really don't see anything special about his design. i like his poise and his general air, but honestly? no brain tickling here. take this as you will, but, honestly I looked at him and immediately thought "genshin impact." now I have never played genshin impact, nor do I ever intend to, but he just looks like one of those characters, with the done-up fancy-ness and such. I'm not really into him design-wise. i am intrigued by who he is/might be character-wise, however. yes yes, all of us are up in arms because the last hoity-toity bureaucrat was affogato, and we all know who he is now, plus CC is a politician, and those guys are always evil, but lets wait until we know more about him before we make accusations and all. though, ill admit, some of those voicelines in the trailer were rather sus. calling him an "unexpected guest" and him saying "i will emerge victorious" gives me lowkey villain vibes, but again, lets just wait and see. another thing i want to point out is that the trailer highlighted his skill being used on madeleine in particular, and we know for a fact that madeleine plays a part in this story (it is his homeland, afterall) so im very VERY curious about that. mayhaps we'll have a little rivalry between those boys?

anyways ummm yeah also the super-epic tier is ummmmm bullshit <3 and I hate that its very stupid <3 <3 teehee love and light!!!

ALSO I WANT TO KNOW WHO THE COOKIES-N-CREAM LOOKING MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE CAKE WOLF IS!!!!!!!!! THEY ARE HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[voidpomf]

hand holding with venti

I always get sucked into stories that put effort into exploring the relationship with oc/reader x canon. Not just the sexual side, but all aspects. What are they like after getting rained on, are they angry and snippy or get dower and quiet. What are the little quirks that make the relationship special.

i have a really soft spot for hand holding. I’m very particular with any sort of physical affection and so can count the number of hands I’ve held on one hand. But holy fuck is it such a pleasant experience.

okay enough ranting....

Hand holding head canon/ideas

venti x reader

If you have played any sort of instrument I feel you end up with hands that are never idle. Personally I find myself constantly tapping along or swishing my hand to the time signature(because im a fucking nerd so ofc i know how).

The same would be the case with Venti, this goof seems to have a endless amount of energy and obviously using music and poems and pranking  to release that energy. Without any conscious thought hand holding with him would include lots of instances of random or rhythmic tightening of his grip. Perhaps a random ditty had floated into his mind and might eventually be hummed out.

If you notice and decide to join in either(hums or grips) turning into a weird duet that only the two of you know it’s happening.This could easily evolve into an improve dance break or need to just get close and giggle over the silly situation.

From what i’ve read/seen I think we’ve all agreed that Venti would be a clingy motherfucker and honestly I accept this with wide open arms(please let me hug the boi *grabbyhands*). So hand holding (and probably most forms of affection) would be physically stimulating and done with meaning.

Exploration with hand holding would be a key factor in the relationship...other than the other physical clingy-ness...

Unfortunately the two of you can’t always be attached by the hip (or by face...chest...legs..moving on.). But there are a lot of options. Perhaps your would be the fleeting touches before or after the main hand holding event. Accidental brushes while walking side by side, or placing your(or his, just take his hand, do it) hand on top of his. There was something very comforting to the two of you being connected in a simple small way while in each others company. Finding that even if your attention wasn’t on each other, you would still seek that connection.

There would be times that you need both of your hands, or maybe just didn’t want to grasp a hand. So let’s explore some;

~ALTERNATIVE HAND HOLDING THAT ONLY INCLUDE ONE HAND~

But first an honorable mention,

PINKY HOLD. You only need one pinky, but you better hope their strong to hold the power of your bond. Musicians tend to have iron pinkies after absolutely destroying them in the process, so Venti’s would be ready for the task. A simple hold that could turn into full hand holding. It’s cute. Like two little wiggly worms

YOUR POCKET NOW BELONGS TO ME. Perfect for the winter or those who like to wear(or like their partner to wear) baggy clothing. I feel it would end up being you, as Venti seems to like more form fitting clothing. You would be minding your own business pursuing some wears in public when hands sneaking around your waist only to settle in your tops side pockets.

This particular connection is helpful at satisfying you snuggle levels when Venti is busy practicing a piece or work shopping a poem. With his hands free he is welcome to gesture and write away, but with the added warmth that your body provides on his back. It might distract him a tad, but he doesn’t care. There’s a daily quota to be had

TUG BOAT. I personally default to this a lot, when the ‘tug-er’ latches onto the ‘boat’ via a sleeve or bag strap. Sometimes Venti’s heart is just not in it, he’s whiny, bored, but nothing sparks his interest.  Leaving you to search for said spark would be rude though, so as a ‘compromise’ he’ll cling to the bottom of your top or a belt loop as you lead him around as a boat. Being one with the wind you forget about him sometimes, he does a very good job at not bumping into anything or holding you back. If you know about his true lineage, he would rather be in spirit form and fall asleep in your traveling bag.

If you are not a morning person, ho boy would you be tugged along in the morning. Even in the early mornings does this boy have energy...you not so much. Sometimes once he got you up, he would have to manually attach your hand to a loop on his shorts to get you into the kitchen for breakfast. The whole morning passing by like a fog and before you realize it, you’re fed...hydrated...and now snuggling the bard on a couch. A warm mug full of the beverage of your choice in your hands to help you wake up further. Destination reached.

[365days365movies]

Western August V: Broken Arrow (1950) - Recap (Part Two) and Review

Where’s Jay SIlverheels, by the way?

This is, like, one of his most acclaimed roles, and he hasn’t shown up anywhere yet. Well, before he does, I should elaborate on why I care so goddamn much.

As I said last time, Silverheels was cast as Tonto in 1949, and became the most recognizable Native American or First Nations face in the United States. At the same time as him, another actor was working. His name was Iron Eyes Cody, and he actually also appears in Broken Arrow...somewhere. Cody made his career as a makeup artist...who specialized in redface. Yeah, that’s a weird-ass thing for a Native American actor to take part in, right?

Silverheels and Cody worked together on Broken Arrow, but Jay thought something was off. Still, the two went on in their respective careers. But they would go in two completely different directions.

During the time of Jay’s rise to fame, the Native American Civil RIghts Movement also began. This culminated in 1969 when Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, John Trudell (pictured above) and the Indians of All Tribes protest group occupied Alcatraz for 18 months. Yeah, the prison in the San Francisco Bay. It was originally native lands, so they took it back...until the government stepped in and ended the protest. But that’s a WHOLE other story. The point is, shit was changing. And suddenly, Jay Silverheels was enemy number one.

Like I said before, Hollywood and Native Americans never had the best relationship. Or even a good one. Hell, there’s a 1915 article written by a film executives that said they stole from film sets, but were trustworthy if provided tobacco and firewater, which is NOT AN EXAGGERATION AT ALL OF WHAT THAT DUDE SAID. And extending to Jay’s role of Tonto, Native American depictions in film were quite stereotypical. Broken and simplified English, savage behaviors and a misunderstanding of Western technology, headfeathers and hollering...you know, real racist shit. And since Jay was kind of the face of that to America...his career didn’t go well. And it REALLY didn’t help that he leaned into it.

Look, Jay was a massive advocate for the Native American Civil Rights movement, and he made that well-known on every possible occasion. However, he also treated Tonto as more of a parody of himself, performing the role for talk shows and commercials, like this above commercial for pizza rolls. And yeah, people were NOT FUCKING HAPPY about that. Native Americans labeled him an “Uncle Tomahawk”, and he was shunned in the community. Meanwhile, Jay’s career was absolutely tanking, barely getting any rolls after 1970. To make things worse, he has a stroke that year. And to make things EVEN worse...let’s get back to Iron Eyes fucking Cody.

In 1971, Iron Eyes Cody was cast by the Keep America Beautiful organization as the “Crying Indian” in their Earth Day commercial. This is the most successful commercial in the history of television, and it launched Iron Eyes Cody into fame as the most recognizable Native American face in the country, if not in the world. He met three Presidents, the Pope, got a stamp, was nominated for statehood...just, ludicrous amounts of acclaim and fame. When asked what his tribal lineage was, he would claim that he was of Cherokee and Cree descent. Just like Johnny Depp did! Which is fitting, because just like Johnny Depp... 

IRON EYES CODY WASN’T NATIVE AMERICAN AT ALL

Born Espera Oscar de Corti, he was an Italian kid from Louisiana. Yeah. This guy, this motherfucking guy, made his career playing pretend as a Native American. Remember when I said he was a makeup artist for films, making people look more authentically redface? Yeah, he did that as his job AND AS HIS LIFE. He would also always wear his Native American costume in public, which even Native Americans thought was fucking weird.

And Jay Silverheels KNEW this, by the way. He found out while the two were working together...on Broken Arrow. Which, of course, is why I brought this up. So this must’ve been a goddamn gutpunch for the poor guy. He’s labeled Uncle Tomahawk, while Cody’s being lauded as the best Native American actor ever, AND HE ISN’T EVEN NATIVE AMERICAN. Jesus Christ, this sucks.

Jay Silverheels died of a second stroke in 1980, at the age of 67. Iron Eyes went on to be on Mister Rogers, got even more film roles, and died a successful man in 1999, at the age of 94. There was an attempt to expose him in 1996, but that attempt got backlash from a fuckton of people, including within the Native American community. Only after his death was he finally revealed as the son of Sicilian immigrants who played a fake Native American for the cameras. And to be fair, he did give to Native American charities and causes, he was an advocate for Native American rights, and he at least raised the awareness of Native Americans to people who may not have known or cared about them otherwise. And yet, despite that...

Fuck Iron Eyes Cody. He’s still a dick.

Time to get back to Broken Arrow, huh? Here’s Part One if you missed it!

Recap: Part 2

After the gross-ass flirtation between the two the next day, Cochise arrives to tell Jeffords that he’ll allow the mail through, but nobody else. Jeffords takes the news back to Tucson, and nobody believes him. He’s given resistance specifically from John Lowrie (Robert Griffin), who bets Jeffords money that five mail riders won’t make it through. Jeffords takes the bet, and Milt Duffield is the first to volunteer to ride.

Duffield and four other riders make it through. But in the process, a military wagon train is ambushed by Chochise and his men and slaughtered. This seeming dichotomy leads the men of Tucson to believe that Jeffords is a traitor and siding with the Apache. In response, after a tence-ass altercation in a bar, the men mob together and IMMEDIATELY TRY TO LYNCH HIM JESUS CHRIST

He’s saved at the last minute by General Oliver Howard (Basil Ruysdael), who asks Jeffords to ask for a meeting with Cochise. He agrees to arrange it, if the peace-seeking General agrees to come alone. He does, as the General is actually a decent-ass dude. He’s not racist, and he believes that the Apache should be allowed their territory as well. Sick.

Also sick is the fact that the romance between Jeffords and Sonseeahray is going ahead towards marriage! Gross! Fucking gross. Cochise approves of this, and arranges it with the parents, despite warning them of the troubles ahead. However, that night, Jeffords is almost killed in his sleep by one of the tribesmen. Jeffords stops it, and Cochise intervenes, ashamed by the actions of one of his people. This is Nahilzay (John War Eagle), a rival suitor of Sonseeahray, and a traitor to Cochise’s word. So, to act upon his honor, Cochise kills him. Whoof.

The General comes for the treaty, while Sonseeahray prepares for their wedduuuuuuchh. Sorry, threw up in my mouth a little just then. Anyway, four days pass, and the men of the Apache Tribes have gathered to attempt a peace negotiation with the General. After a round of questions by the generals, the two Americans leave. And at this point, a dissenting voice rises. This voice does not believe the Americans. He says that the Apache don’t need this treaty, but need a new chief who is not softened to war.

But Cochise rightly notes that the Americans are growing in strength, and the Apache are shrinking. He puts it to a vote, and while some men leave, the majority of the Apache agree to peace. The leader of these men takes a new name: Geronimo (Jay SIlverheels). Sick. Geronimo and his new allies leave, ready to continue the war in the stead of the other Apache. But still, overall, there is a tentative peace that’s been struck.

But, of course, Geronimo doesn’t care about peace. He and his men ambush a stagecoach party, accompanied by Jeffords. But Jeffords is able to put out smoke signals that bring Cochise’s Apache to their aid, chasing off these renegades. Looks like the treaty’s working after all! I’m sure that it’s not gonna backfire even a little bit.

Anyway, the wedduuuuching between Jeffouuuughrds and Sonseeeewahray takes place and I stop myself from vomiting all over my computer.  There, a wedding prayer is said, and that prayer has been mistaken for being an authentic Apache Prayer for 71 years. It comes from THIS FUCKING MOVIE.

Sixteen days pass, and the peace treaty is still intact. Jeffords and Sonseeahray wax poetic about their love, and I feel like burying my head in the couch pillows to GET AWAY FROM THIS. But that’s interrupted by the arrival of Bob Slade (Mickey Kuhn), the son of racist farmer Ben Slade. He claims that the Apache have stolen their horses, which Cochise doubts. Still, on Jeffords’ suggestion, they go to investigate. And of course...it’s an ambush by Ben Slade, John Lowrie, and their compatriots.

The men fire away, aiming for Cochise. They miss him, and instead hit Jeffords and Sonseeahray, who tagged along for some reason. Slade is killed by Cochise, who escapes with his life. The men realize how severely they’ve fucked up, and they take off for Mexico. Fuck you guys. Jeffords lives, only to see that Sonseeahray is dead. When Cochise returns to find Jeffords and the survivors, they also notice a still-living settler. Jeffords wants to kill him, but Cochise stops him, now fully believing in peace.

Although he grieves, he also recognizes that Sonseearray was a Girl in the Refrigerator all along, and her death has inspired TRUE peace between the settlers and the Apache. And...that’s it.

That’s it?

That’s...one of the most sudden and anticlimactic endings I’ve seen in a while. I’m a little disappointed, to be honest. But OK, before I get on a tangent, let’s do a full review, huh?

Review

Short preamble! I did like this movie...mostly. It’s kind of haunted by the whole underage love interest and the redface. Hard for me to see past that, BUT IF I TRY...I can acknowledge that this is a good movie. I didn’t even mention that it’s loosely based off of a true story! Yeah! Tom Jeffords and Cochise actually did have a relationship. It’s a VERY different story, but their friendship really did exist.

If I was gonna guess my rating ahead of time...I’ll go with a 76%-80%. But let’s see how that holds up in the breakdown.

Cast and Acting - 7/10: Despite the position he’s in, Jimmy Stewart still turns out a great performance in this movie. Sure, watching him kiss Debra Paget make me cry on the inside and outside, but he was good in the role of Jeffords, especially when up against the racist settlers. Jeff Chandler also manages to be good, despite the fucking redface. And Jay Silverheels...Jay was great, even though I thought his role would be more than a single scene. As for the rest...Paget was bad. She was not good in this movie, sorry. And everybody else was basically just OK. Nothing to write home about.

Plot and Writing - 9/10: This was a solid-ass story, and I liked almost every part of it...save the underage romance. Which, no, I AM NOT FORGETTING ABOUT. Dude, Jeffords didn’t do that in real life. So, for the love of GOD, why make his fictional bride fucking 15? Guys...gross. Really fucking gross, Albert Maltz. Other than that, you did a great job, I just wish that wasn’t a part of it. Ugh.

Directing and Cinematography - 10/10: Yeah, Delmer Daves is a legend. I thought of writing the into to these recaps on him, but I really wanted to talk about Jay Silverheels and Iron Eyes Cody. But I’ll get my chance; Delmer Daves also directed 3:10 to Yuma, so I’ll bring him up one of these days. Anyway, Delmer Daves does a great job with this movie, and it’s gorgeously shot. Ernest Palmer is cinematographer, and he also does an excellent job.

Production and Art Design - 9/10: Sure, the settlers look generic, but the Native Americans? Excellent costume design, with a lot of authenticity packed in there. Credit where credit’s due, here.

Music and Editing - 7/10: Well, the music is great here, if not extraordinarily memorable. Hugo Friedhofer does the composition, and he does a great job. But is it iconic? Eh. Not really. I don’t remember it having a massive impact on me, unfortunately. And the editing...is also OK. That ending is weirdly paced for me, and very abrupt. But J. Watson Webb Jr. does a decent enough job, I think.

That’s an 84%. Huh. Genuinely thought it’d be lower.

This is a good movie, don’t get me wrong. But it’s...complicated. I would recommend it with warnings, I’ll put it that way. Good, great even...but complicated. Outside of that, I have to admire the stance to put Native American tribes on a equal stance, respect-wise. For the time, and for the genre, that’s a rarity. So, as always, credit where credit’s due.

Next up, we continue our foray into the classic Western...but stick with Jimmy Stewart. I wanna give him a second chance. And hopefully, this one doesn’t include a romance with a fifteen year-old. Hopefully.

Next: The Naked Spur (1953); dir. Anthony Mann

[frumfrumfroo]

I just....wow. Rian really was like “Women’s awakening and Heroine’s Journey” and set up the most powerful and fulfilling arc for Rey...only for it to turn out that JJ thinks of Rey EXACTLY as the sexist fanboys do, as a carrier for another man’s legacy, except in some fake feminist way where women being alone and without their fulfilling love is Strength. They’re really going to try and spin this as empowering and slap “Rey Skywalker” all over the place and act like it was ever enough

It is, indeed, the Nightmare Scenario.

To me, the thing that makes this so baffling is how JJ really gave Rey exactly the life she was afraid of in TFA. He, in HIS FILM not Rian’s, has her look up at that older scavenger woman and see the face of her future- he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time. This motherfucker sketched this character with a real edge of poignancy which gave her humanity, that moment of ‘is this all my life will be?’ and the longing of adolescence. She wants life!

And then he made that vision come true. She ended up precisely as she feared she would, alone on a dead planet with no family and no purpose. They put a fucking line in the fucking visual dictionary about her always being more comfortable in deserts.

That’s how bad this fucking movie is- they put this line in a visual dictionary to try to justify dumping their heroine in her depression dream and leaving her there with nothing but ghosts EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING. LOCKED IN ETERNAL CHILDHOOD, HER LOVE INADEQUATE TO SAVE HER PRINCE AND HER VICTORIES ENTIRELY COMING FROM ACCIDENTAL CONNECTIONS TO MEN. She has no power, none of her decisions matter or have any consequences. And her reward for all her suffering and faith is getting to crawl back into her defensive maladapted coping mechanisms with a new set of pretend parents and some identity theft.

When WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?

What is going on in the tiny minds which produced this? Super empowering how none of her choices mattered and she couldn’t save her soulmate because we wouldn’t want to imply any possibility her romantic love could be consummated. No it’s a barren, frigid thing, and she can only come down from the pedestal long enough to give him a chaste peck as he dies, snuffing out all chance of renewal and rejuvenation for the galaxy.

This broken fairy tale full of dead things. It’s so wrong.

[disregardcanon]

rwby volume 6 episode 1

1. hot damn, adam continues to worsen. i know i’ve been told that he just keeps getting worse and worse and worse until he’s dead but he started at rock bottom and it seems like he’s tunneling to the center of the goddamn earth. 

he murdered an entire building full of people just to sIT ON A THRONE WITH NO REAL BENEFIT TO HIMSELF BECAUSE PEOPLE WON’T FOLLOW HIM NOW

2. qrow really is trusting, all things considered. i think calling him naive wouldn’t be right because he definitely knows that people CAN fuck him over, but he does believe the best in the people he associated with and i think that ironwood is going to prove to deserve it as little as lionheart did 

3. i am so happy to see the girls back together again. the whole gang is good, of course, and i hope that the rest of rngr don’t stay away for too long... but the girls being back is just so refreshing. i missed the rwby dynamic 

4. i love sun and i’m gonna miss him, even though i think this is a good choice for his character and he is really not needed in this arc. i do hope we get to see a little of him and team sssn doing their own do just cause i love them 

5. oscar’s comment about seeing those other huntsmen and suddenly being glad that THEY’RE the ones saving the world was so funny and true XD 

6. i’m interested in some parts of that intro! the different images of qrow and ruby being dragged into darkness by tendrils were... concerning, i’m not concerned by adam’s looming presence because i know where he ends at least, and i’m interested by that statue and then the line of guys that lead up to oscar- so i’m betting that’s an ozpin lineage and that we’ll get to know some more of them. 

the way that it shifts into jaune shoving oscar against a wall, though, is a little concerning. i would assume that’s directed at oz because of pyrrha, but that could really throw off the group dynamic and make things harder on everyone. 

also the way that weiss helps ruby up at the end is just HEART EYES MOTHERFUCKER whiterose shipping goggles are a go

7. i still have caffeine in my system and laundry in my dryer so i’ll watch at least one more before i go to sleep 

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 18

lets goooo

I love the ‘no guns no swords no briefcases’ sign sm

NEVER over the ‘my first blaster(tm): big grip for little hands’ fucking iconic

‘get the hell out of my bar’ swerve lmao ily

so now we continue on with the remain in light arc, this issue subtitled ‘house of ambus,’ which is a dopeass name and also promises some ambus lore, which is exciting

first aid holding his gun sideways like a gangsta lmao I canttt

forgot there's literally a guy named dipstick LMAOOOOO that's funny on so many levels like...it sounds like dipshit, and also a urine dipstick is a urine test used to detect various stuff so that's the first thing I think of...what a name

‘put two and two together and make it a fist’ skids ily sm

pharma is in full-on dr thot mode over here, oh boy

lockdown looks like such a nerd on his edgy decepticon hoverboard

the fact that cyclonus immediately goes along w/whirls suggestion to disobey rodimus and attack the enemy....both of them are icons

OOOH ALL THE TITANS...that's such a good panel 

ok but I cant get over how lowkey funny it is that there's this battle going on rn where most of the participants can turn into various vehicles, but they're all riding around on dorky air scooters instead. this series, man

well, at least chromedome transformed

I fucking love that rodimus is always doing this like, ridiculous 80s action movie nonsense, I feel like that's perfect considering his g1 debut was in a ridiculous 80s action movie

poor tg just found out he’s gonna die in like 3 days and then rodimus immediately is like ‘wanna make that today?’ and does some crazy shit while tg clings to him like a terrified baby

rodimus mid-car transformation is fucking wild lmao

and now we finally get to see a bit more of what’s going on with our framing device flash-forward - it’s not just rodimus, everyone’s there! except ratchet...also, they’re in jail. woohoo!

and then there’s magnus, looking completely healthy but strangely unresponsive...

TYREST....this motherfucker....he is like, SO MUCH. the cape...the helmet crown thing...the holes....

tyrest told rodimus to ‘shut up or be held in contempt’ ayyyyyyyyyyyy

‘crimes against creation’ that's pretty dramatic dude

Let The Robots Swear!!

ok but rlly I find it funny that they're not allowed to say swear words (I'm assuming its not allowed rather than it being a creative choice) but all the death and violence and body horror is ok

chromedome is sitting there like oh holy shit did I find my now-dead husbands missing 1st husband after millions of years, like a WEEK after my husband died

chromedome mimicking the moustache with his finger...cute

its interesting to see a ‘sibling’ type of relationship here, since that's really uncommon for tfs since they don't really have families/lineage - of course, we don't really get to see dominus and minimus interact (until the FU), so

minimus really tried to pass himself off as a law-breaking smuggler lmaoooo that was never gonna work mdude

like he just continues acting exactly like ultra magnus except he pretends not to know these guys lol

‘forceful expressions of innocence’ tailgate ily

poor tg :( 

OH GOD pharma time. he’s out here looking totally unhinged and also thotty somehow, like usual

I SO subscribe to the idea that ratchet and pharma are exes are pharma still isn't over ratchet. that's the most entertaining and interesting way to read their interactions imo

dual chainsaw hands.....Bruh.

skiiiiiiiiiiiids....I love skids, he’s just such a good dude

also he’s really cool and also sexy. I feel like if anyone would be the mary sue of the series it would be skids rather than rung lmao 

oh shit I forgot skids gets skewered by star saber

aaaaaand ratchet’s in the box!!!! jesus pharma just say you kin the joker and go

HOW is ratchet alive tho like....wouldn't he need energon?? isn't energon basically blood for them, but also food, and fuel, and basically everything? I don't get it but yknow what, ill suspend my disbelief bc its so entertaining 

see, the little backstory on tyrest is really interesting, cause it seems to me that at one point, tyrest did have the best interests of the cybertronian people in mind, and he really did stand for true justice and tried to end the war peacefully - but somewhere along the way things went bad, and now here he is

oh rung, scolding somebody for revealing top secret information, that’s rich coming from mr hipaa violations himself 

lmao and minimus cant restrain himself from scolding rodimus either, and then very obviously fishing for information so he can ask questions without it being clear that he already knew all about the lost light 

vhbjahdbhjhdf im NEVER over rung passive-aggressively antagonizing minimus so he can accuse him of being ultra magnus hvbhjkdnfssfhsabjhdfk that's so funny

also its another example of rung maybe not being the best at his job - he’s basically manipulating magnus’s OCD to try to force minimus into revealing his identity...ethical? perhaps not. effective? oh yeah

I mean I guess you could say this is an example of rung being really good at his job, bc he was able to use psychology to deduce minimus’s identity...it’s more like he also decided to disregard medical ethics and ethics in general 

and then the reveal....ultra magnus is actually a much smaller green dude?! whaaaat!? 

ill talk more about it later but fr this is one of my favorite concepts that mtmte introduced, I fucking love it 

ahhhh I love this issue. tho tbh I love basically every issue. anyways tho I love the continuation of ratchet and pharma’s story, with pharma officially going off the rails with some complete bullshit, and also the big reveal about magnus/minimus! great stuff

[aniimvs]

Plots please!!

subject plots please // accepting : :

i'll respond with three or more potential relationships // connections // plots between our muses. a creative exercise with no pressure to follow up, but we can if you'd like!

𝐢. hollywood archaeology from hell

in the victorian or edwardian era, professor kenobi would be ahead of his time. he has no interest in the veranda-style anthropology and archaeology his colleagues use. while kenobi's peers are sitting in imported armchairs watching local laborers work their asses off while simultaneously getting all the credit, kenobi is chin deep in the trenches with his toolkit and notes. he's in there when there's still stars in the sky before dawn and his kerosene lamp calls it quits before he does at night. dude runs on coffee, dedication, and sleep deprivation.

so imagine his horror when he's in a place like the temple of the forbidden eye, telling his crew to not. touch. a single. damn. thing. to not even look, cast no stray eye in this evil place. and then he comes to the relic. there, alone, in the middle of a simple stone pedestal. but it's too easy, of course, kenobi is well aware of that. so he studies the room, his eyes traveling the corners and the seams. there's trick and he will find it.

that's when kenobi notices the small trail of dust falling from the ceiling just above the artifact. he tells his crew to back away slowly so they avoid the possible danger as kenobi observes the disturbance from a safe distance. there's no rumbling, nothing. it doesn't feel a trap's been triggered

then, there's an echo of movement from above. then another and another, as the grit fall gets fiercer and fiercer. kenobi takes a step back as an ancient stone from above drops. it shatters against the floor as another dark shadow plummets after it. kenobi has a hard time seeing through the dust but when he does, he sees an absolute wreck of a man covered in cobwebs, torn clothes, and bloodstains.

and this motherfucker just plinks up that artifact, slips it in a back and when he sees kenobi he pops out some migraine-inducing one liner because kenobi is facing his worst nemesis: a budget anakin skywalker with han solo dna to fill in the gaps.

rest in pieces, kenobi.

𝐢𝐢. the world between worlds

i have no idea what they'd talk about, but i have a feeling plenty of folks wanna have a talk with ben solo. no force ghost has ever been able to reach him. not with a sith lord shaping his mind from a young age and not when he's been far more in touch with the dark side since birth.

i'm not a hundred on what kenobi would want to say to the boy whose mother named him after her only hope and thought the name would give her son another legacy to draw strength from. and honestly, i'd like to see what benlo has to say too. he literally only had moments to live without a sith lord churning in his head before he became one with the force. so, he's just freed. just experiencing true silence and aloneness with himself, and already other voices want to chime in. even if their intentions are well meaning. even if they're finally getting to say what they've been trying to communicate for decades at this point...

how would benlo react? how would kenobi react? what does kenobi even think about all this...this.

𝐢𝐢𝐢. that's a nice padawan you got there

i always bring up my tcw verse with prequels characters. my bad, my bad. but because i'm just so curious as to how jedi would react to the jedi killer when they're still in power, even if its waning. they're not extinct at this point but they are threatened, the council knows this. i already have an idea of how anakin would react to jedi killer kylo ren going after ahsoka would be like ────

but what about you, general kenobi?

to quote what i've said before about what he's like in tcw era, since kylo is not skywalker clan: i don’t have my tcw verse written out but it follows the same lineage that kylo ren is part of in the old republic. and it’s a similar deal, he’s got an ancient alien in his head who compels him to become the jedi killer. he starts off as a regular apprentice. a little bit awkward but he’s got a sense of humor that mirrors anakin’s even if his delivery isn’t as snatched. but i imagine the few times people interacted with kylo ren, nothing strikes them as unusual. but then jedi start showing up dead around coruscant. some established jedi are among the victims, but it’s mostly apprentices. and there’s no real identifiers as to who the culprit is. the few witnesses who caught a glimpse of the so-called jedi killer was a creature all in black with a gruesome mask.

so imagine, seeing that mask of ren standing over a prone snips ──── she's not moving, not even the rise and fall of breathing ──── with a lightsaber held high.

𝐢𝐯. disney if everything was directed by tim burton

a smol idea to throw out there. i've seen you mention a disney verse ( and i assume it'd be fairytale-esque?? yes?? maybe?? ) and while i couldn't find any info on what you had in mind for kenobi, i do have a black knight verse. so if you ever wanna explore eldritch fables, i volunteer with my ren a la mordred.

[innuendostudios]

A small supplement to Always a Bigger Fish, The Origins of Conservatism. If we’re going to claim conservatism is fundamentally about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful from democratic principles, we need to talk about where conservatism comes from, going all the back to the late 18th Century. From there we take an extremely truncated traipse through conservative thought throughout the ages.

Keep this series coming out by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

I have suspicions that some of the claims I make in Always a Bigger Fish - that conservatism isn’t, at its core, about fiscal responsibility, limited government, or the rights of the individual, but is about maintaining social hierarchies, that it believes people are fundamentally unequal and likes the free market because it sorts people according to their worth, and even softly implies capitalism itself may be innately anti-democratic - might, ah, raise some eyebrows? So I’m gonna show my work on this one.

Two of the architects of conservative thought were Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, who formulated much of their political theory while writing about the French Revolution. They, in turn, were influenced by earlier writings from Thomas Hobbes on the English Civil War. And what all three of these men were doing in writing about these wars was defending the monarchy. The sentiment that the masses should be powerless in the face of nobility was being challenged, and, while these men thought the revolutionaries themselves actually quite compelling, the democracy they were fighting for Hobbes, Burke, and de Maistre found repulsive.

Come the end of the Revolution, when it seemed democracy might actually spread across Europe, Burke, especially, began to hypothesize ways that one’s position within the aristocracy might be preserved even should the monarchy fall. He turned his eye to the market.

So, OK, round the cusp of the 19th century, the prevailing economic theories were those of Adam Smith, who championed what’s called the Labor Theory of Value, which I don’t super wanna get into because there’s like a billion videos about it already, but really briefly: if you take materials out of the ground and turn them into useful goods, it is that labor that makes the good more valuable than the raw material, and when someone buys that good, they cover the cost of materials plus the value your labor has added to them. In contrast, what Burke argued was… well, a lot of nebulous things, but, among them, that, in actuality, when a person of means buys a good, that, rather than the moment the good is produced, is when value is bestowed upon it. Value is not dictated by the producer, but by the consumer.

Now there’s like two centuries of argument about this, we’re not gonna dig into it all, but, obviously, this is, in some sense, true: if the people with money don’t want to buy a good at a certain price, eventually the price will come down. So price is not solely dictated by labor. But what Burke does is claim that price and value are the same thing. No one ever gets cheated, no one ever gets a good deal, whatever the buyer pays for a thing, that’s what the thing is worth. Your labor is only as valuable as the degree to which it satisfies the desires of the moneyed classes.

This was Burke’s nod to the fact that, within capitalism, the wealthy held outsized influence - being that, the more money you had, the more value you could dictate - and he argued that this was moral. That the wealthy deserved this influence. (Burke was, by the way, wealthy. Sort of. He had a royal pension) What he felt the French Revolution revealed was not that oppressive nobility was bad, but that France must’ve just had the wrong nobles, because a proper aristocracy wouldn’t have been overthrown. The problem was, as we’ve discussed, not the hierarchy itself, but the wrong people being in power.

The Revolution had taught him that perhaps power should not come by birthright. Perhaps we needed a system whereby those deserving of power could prove their worth. This should, ideally, be war, but capitalism would suffice. The structure of royalty would continue to exist, simply derived by different means, because the structure of democracy, where, on election day, the nobleman has no more power than the commoner, was, to an aristocrat, profane. What the structure needed was some tinkering to make it democracy-proof.

So that’s Burke. Over the next century, democracy did, in fact, spread across Europe, and Burke’s - and several others’ - theories of value were picked up and iterated on in what came to be known as The Marginal Revolution by economists Carl Menger, Stanley Jevons, and this Valjean-looking motherfucker Leon Walras. Marginalism amped up the idea that it is a good’s utility to the consumer, and not the worker’s labor, that gives it value, which confers a unique power upon those with money, and brought this thinking into a post-monarchal world. Their theories became especially popular when people realized they could be used to rebut Marxism. Jevons was taught all over Europe, and Menger became core to the Austrian School.

And by the time we get to Austrians, this mass of theories has, somewhere after Burke and before Hayek, coagulated into what we know of today as “conservatism.” These are among the most influential thinkers in conservative thought, and they are in a direct lineage with Burke and de Maistre.

Now, while Burke is called “the father of modern conservatism,” these boys are not the alpha and omega of early conservative thought, but their ideas helped form the basis of conservatism and have never gone away. If you can point to some paradigm shift in the history of conservatism where the royalist sentiments of Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre were rooted out, I’d love to hear about it. Because I listen to the thinkers championed by conservatives throughout the ages, and I keep hearing the same thing: that humans are innately unequal and society flourishes when power is doled out to the deserving.

Friedrich Nietzsche was not a conservative but was deeply influential on the early Marginalists, and he claimed the purpose of society was to produce the handful of Great Men who created everything that made life worth living, believing, “Only the most intellectual of men have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can goodness escape being weakness."

James Fitzjames Stephen, who wrote a book-length rebuttal against early progressivism, believed, “[T]o obey a real superior, to submit to a real necessity and make the best of it in good part, is one of the most important of all virtues—a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting."

Hayek and Schumpeter believed, respectively, that “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use” and “[W]hat may be attained by industrial or commercial success is still the nearest approach to medieval lordship possible to modern man." (He’s saying that’s a good thing, by the way.)

Need I mention Ayn Rand’s belief that "The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment... The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains."

The “godfather of neoconservatism,” Irving Kristol, echoing Burke’s yearning for a good war, felt the hierarchy should extend beyond the borders of a single country, believing, “What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?"

And modern conservatives love the “natural hierarchies” of Jordan Peterson, who believes “blblblblblblblblblb.”

We keep behaving as though conservatism’s disdain for equity isn’t there, or, if it is, that it’s new. But it’s been there since the beginning. Conservatism upholds the status quo and defends the powerful, first from democracy, then from communism, now from social justice. Conservatism has rallied every time a movement has tried to share power with the disadvantaged: They were against same-sex marriage, they were against giving women the vote, they were against freeing slaves (note I said conservatives, not Republicans; do your research.)

Conservatives say, “We are the party of measured steps, caution, of evolution over revolution,” and that’s usually just before they say, “But now, now is the time for swift, decisive action!” Most every Republican claims to be a break with tradition. “This time we’re gonna flip the script: bend the rules, outspend Democrats, invade your privacy, and start a war with no exit strategy.” And that’s what they’ve always said. All that changes is which continent the war is on. I’m not going to say the slow, stodgy conservative doesn’t exist, but it has never typified the Party. Rhetorically, it’s a character that they bring up to contrast themselves with whenever they need to rally their reactionary base. They tell us that’s what their Party is like, and we just take their word for it.

I don’t feel the need to pretend that, just because most democracies have a left wing and a right wing, that both are equally valid and moral. There is no rule that proves this. There is only the liberal sentiment that saying otherwise is poor sportsmanship (a standard the Right does not hold itself to). Conservatism is a reactionary politics that has, at best, mixed feelings about democracy, where my biggest issue with liberalism is that it is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of conservatism and does not fully commit to its own democratic principles.

I’m going into all of this not because I want to stick it to the people who insist I don’t research my videos - though I, a little bit, do - but because we can’t talk about the Alt-Right if we keep portraying them as a break with the conservative tradition. They are the conservative tradition, only more. There is nothing they believe that conservatives don’t have a long history of being sympathetic towards, they’re just usually more ambivalent about it. As I’ve said before, this is, ultimately, my interpretation of history, and, while many experts agree with me, I am not an expert. But I do my homework.

So, tell you what: I’ve made a post on Tumblr listing all the books, essays, and documentaries I’m consuming for this series - the ones I have lined up, the ones I’ve completed, and some notes on what I’ve found valuable in them. I’m going to treat this as a living document and add to it as the work continues. Not that the people who say I just make shit up ever read the show notes, but I will keep a link in the show notes of every video, so, if you want to check my work, or research alongside me, you can do that. I have also livetweeted several books, including the primary source for this and the previous video, The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, under the hashtag #IanLivetweetsHisResearch, so, if you want a play-by-play of an entire book complete with my own observations, that’s where you can find it. So far, in addition to Robin, I’ve done Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians, Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works, and one weird essay on Lara Croft I read for the Fury Road video.

If you want to read more about the history of conservative philosophy, in addition to The Reactionary Mind, I recommend “No Law for the Lions and Many Laws for the Oxen is Liberty” by Elizabeth Sandifer, in the essay collection Neoreaction a Basilisk. (El recently got some grief from Nazis, so maybe consider buying her excellent book.)

Going forward, if anyone comments that I clearly don’t know anything about conservatism, I hope you will stand with me in not taking them too seriously unless they demonstrate having done at least some research, because I do mine.

[birthrightforged]

[ *KICKS DOWN THE DOOR INTO THE EXISTENTIAL BRILLIANCE OF BIRTHRIGHT*

KNOCK KNOCK MOTHERFUCKERS!

So it’s been a long ass time since I’ve gone off on why I think Corrin would choose Hoshido over Nohr and the effects his Nohrian family (mainly Xander) have on him mentally and emotionally.

First of all my reasoning for Corrin will always remain the same: a combination of revenge and guilt. He stays in Hoshido not because of any actual loyalty to his step-siblings, but because it is the quickest way to kill Garon and end the war. He hopes that Xander and the others can see things the way he does but...

“ I fear the Hoshidans might try to brainwash you... I am well aware of your Hoshidan lineage. It is true that we lack common blood. But still, we've treated you as kin since the very day you arrived in Nohr. No matter what anyone says, you are my brother/sister, Corrin. I know that Camilla, Leo, and Elise feel the same way. And Father will forgive you. I know it. You are of Nohr! Return to us, Corrin! “

THIS LINE. THIS LINE RIGHT HERE FUCKS ME UP SO HARD YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

At this point Corrin has just lost his mother and re-awoke to traumatic memories blocked out by a combination of said trauma and probably magic, and the first thing the person he’s seen as an older brother and a father figure for years says after Corrin dares to question such things is: “I fear the Hoshidans might try to brainwash you... I am well aware of your Hoshidan lineage.”

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, XANDER!?

Saying something like that could send someone spiraling. If Xander knew the entire time about his lineage, than what else did he know? Was he complacent in it? Did he ever actually care or was it all an act?

Hearing this basically breaks Corrin. He wants to believe Xander has nothing but good intentions, because he’s always believed in him. But now, in that moment, that trust is shattered, as not only does Xander not believe him the ONE TIME he needed him to really listen, but also scoffs it off as BRAINWASHING, the same thing GARON DID TO HIM FOR NEARLY HIS ENTIRE CHILDHOOD.

The worst part of it all, the more Xander tries to hide how he really feels about this, the worse it gets for Corrin. He’s literally pleading for Xander to listen because he knows if he can’t, he can only assume that Xander is just like his father... and must meet the same end. ]

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 10: Thoughts on 1x08 Day Trip

Wow it’s been a long time since the last installment of my re-watch. That’s okay. I’m continuing now with Day Trip; here are some notes:

This is something I should have realized ages ago but Clarke actually says in her voice over that the Ark has kept them alive for “three generations.” So in other words they (JRoth et al) know, explicitly, that their timeline doesn’t make sense!!! Three generations means Clarke’s grandparents were Grounders. How tf did they get so many people so motherfucking fast?? Generation 1 must have had 15 kids each.

Netflix subtitles suck: “Earth is survival. Mankind if going home.” Thanks Jaha, that’s helpful.

The dual sides of Miller: breaking bad news to parents, then down for some murder. I wish we knew what made him turn around re: Grounders during the S2-S3 hiatus. Did he and Lincoln became buds?

Also speaking of Miller, before S3 I didn’t like him much, tbqh, and even now that he’s a low-key fave I still laughed when Lincoln head-butted him and he went down. Because I mean he really goes down, it’s hilarious.

So for some reason I remember reading that S1 is supposed to be roughly October and S2 is roughly November. And I live just a tad south of where the show takes place so I know something of VA winters (or as I like to call them “winters”) and, yeah, October IS probably when people who don’t know what seasons are should start worrying about the cold. So this episode’s story line makes sense in and of itself. But my question is: why was winter never actually a problem??? Like there’s been snow in the background on occasion but literally no one has ever been cold? It’s such a bizarre problem to just jump up front and center in ONE EPISODE and then, without being remotely solved, just disappear entirely from view. This has bugged me for years and will continue bugging me forever. [Actually ETA everyone forgets about winter about a third of the way through the ep so literally it’s not even an issue for a full 40 minutes.]

Kane: look at this supply depot I learned about from “civil defense plans from before the war.” First, later retconning says there was no war so what’s that about? And second and more importantly I get giddy whenever I hear “civil defense plans” because whoah-boy do I have a whole cache of trivia about those!!

“The 100 would die from exposure before help arrives.” They are really assuming exposure-death is going to happen like NOW aren’t they? That’s unrealistic, October is not that cold. (Fuck, October this year was like 80 degrees.) Also, again, no one is ever chilly, not in this episode or any subsequent episode. Please explain.

I had a semi-theory about Bellarke and leadership and here’s another data point for when/if I put that together: Clarke is seen as the leader from the POV of the Ark leadership, going all the way back to their first contact. This is somewhat understandable, given that Bellamy, still a fugitive, can’t be having one-on-one chats with the Chancellor. Plus, Clarke’s lineage makes her an obvious point person. So here we see the different spheres of leadership further dividing: Clarke still isn’t (I don’t think) really a leader to the kids but she IS a leader from the point of view of the adults. This paves the way for Bellamy to be side-lined in S2 when the Ark comes down, because he was never a leader in their understanding.

They’re even breaking up ice from the dropship seats--that’s an early frost right there. A frost we never see again!

I love the socialist delinquent collective. We needed more of this, everyone working together and shit. Could have sustained like 4 seasons on that.

ALSO THERE ARE JASPER AND MONTY I LOVE THEM.

As far as I know, Dax is the only delinquent with an actual violent past. And of course he doesn’t last long. Also interesting for my purposes how Shumway manipulates him: with favors, including a “choice assignment.” Fits my theory that one’s job is one’s life.

It’s been a long time since I watched a S1 ep but apparently Bellarke are still pretending they don’t like each other. Interesting. Man to follow the twists of this relationship requires watching more than one episode every six months. I’m just going to say this here but there is no way that it would make sense to have “I don’t want to be around anyone I actually like,” even said not-entirely-seriously, coincide with “Clarke run away with me” all within one 40 minute episode. Like honestly cutting that dialogue was SUCH a good idea.

Jasper and Monty are the best everyone else GO HOME RIGHT NOW. Here we see Monty having literally no idea how to actually cheer Jasper up because Jasper is legitimately terrified of the future and Monty survives on dry wit and nihilism. I do appreciate how that bit of disconnect grows and grows over the course of the next four seasons.

#Awkward love triangle alert. Honestly I don’t hate it as much as other people but the worst of it is that it puts Raven in this position where she just doesn’t shine as bright as we all know she can.

Miller is really not a great guard. Just wanders away from Lincoln and lets Octavia in to set him free. That’s the opposite of “guarding.”

Octavia’s like a totally different person in current-canon. She doesn’t even have the same voice anymore.

I don’t know if this is a fair criticism given that current-canon Octavia is hardly what anyone would call mentally stable but in a certain sense I wish she’d been...more explicitly fucked up? Like I can’t always tell if the ridiculous things she thinks are meant to be read as ridiculous. For example, “I’m sorry I freaked out when you kidnapped me, it’s because of my childhood” is deeply ironic. It IS because of her childhood--her childhood makes her incapable of understanding that kidnapping is wrong. But that’s not what she thinks she’s saying. But, like, is that what the writers think she’s saying? I’m not really sure. Are they on the same page as Octavia, or are they like me, on a plane above? Maybe I should have more trust in them, but did you see S4? Mmmmm hard to trust after that.

Speaking of O being fucked up, this story line would make somewhat more sense if Lincoln were actually a bad guy. It’s hard to reconcile the Stockholm Syndrome-y elements of their love story with him being, from like 1x08 on, basically a stand up fellow in every respect. Not that I don’t love Lincoln as is. It’s just that I kind of have to throw out whole episodes of characterization to make him make sense.

“I want you to remember me after I’m dead.... This only ends one way” could have been long-term foreshadowing except that we all know why Lincoln was really killed off. Plus there are too many twists and turns along the way.

Miller thinks he can give Lincoln a beating when Lincoln literally felled him with his hands tied, I mean, wow, glad you have some self-confidence at least.

Nothing will ever beat the aesthetic of Bellarke at the depot site. Also Clarke is so convinced that Jaha will be lenient on Bellamy when if she just thought about the events of her father’s death with some degree of care she’d realize that perhaps (and don’t get me wrong I love Jaha, but just maaaybe) he’s not someone to count on for forgiveness or rule-breaking. Possibly. He’s just too unpredictable. Also what is Clarke carrying, and where tf are they supposed to be? There’s like a...Colosseum there??

I think that by S3 Raven has a crush on Octavia but I also think that this Octaven scene is evidence that they were never actually friends and that Octavia, in particular, really honestly likes almost no one except Bellamy (partially out of obligation because that is NOT a healthy relationship), Jasper, Monty, and Lincoln.

Do they have furs??

Raven is so beautiful. She is the most beautiful.

Clarke has some kind of knitted thing on her ankle. The costuming on this show is A+. Wow.

I’m not sure what I think this “supply depot” is supposed to be. Why didn’t they just call it what it really is: a “bunker”? It looks sort of official (”Supply depot #22″) and it’s on the civil defense plans so it’s obviously a government site. But was it intended for government relocation (conceivable, Mt. Weather and Raven Rock are the big ones but there are others on the East Coast) or for civilians? My understanding is that the civilian shelters were mostly above ground. They were for re-location post-blast, away from the major cities. I’m also semi-confused as to why it’s in such bad shape. They built good bunkers during the Cold War, and that’s true in this universe too: Mt. Weather survived, and so did Murphy’s lighthouse bunker. Why is this one such shit?

Bellamy Blake/Guns: The true OTP. I know we all gush over Bellarke but has he ever smiled at Clarke the way he smiled at that firearm? I’m afraid not.

Jasper’s first words while high are “Earth is scary” and yet the jobi nuts are what he wants to ingest for fun during his last days on Earth. Not realistic.

“You’re acting weird.” / “I’m feeling weird, but in a good way.” WINK. BRING DEVON BACK FOR A FLASHBACK EPISODE THAT IS JUST JONTY ON SPACE WEED FOR FORTY MINUTES.

He says “Earth is scary” before he sees the Grounder hallucination so what prompted that observation?? Is that just his unfiltered thought all the time? Poor Jasper, so sad all the time.

The Jasper & Octavia friendship was so meaningful, and so beautiful, and I miss it. (Sidenote: Octavia does know how to sew, and sewing is one of her jobs in the camp, fits with my other theories, good.) I love that Jasper’s the sort of person who wants “I love you” to be the last words he says to someone before his certain death.

....Well I just realized something. FUCK EVERYTHING. We’re not gonna think about that.

(This is why I don’t want to watch S5, because I’m afraid it will distort even more my otherwise pleasant experiences watching the show’s first two actually-good seasons.)

“Here buddy, take this.” I know I point out this line every time I watch this ep but BUDDY. He’s the little brother of the group I don’t make the rules. Also of importance: “You’re bombed.”

I love sneaky-Octavia and frankly I don’t think she gets enough credit for being sly. I wish they hadn’t played up her great warrior prowess as much because it’s totally unrealistic, but that she has a natural head for low-level treachery is reasonable. Also she and Clarke could have teamed up for some Slytherin-y evil-plan fun times.

READY TO BE A BADASS CLARKE.

This learning-to-shoot scene, in all its cliche flirty glory, is officially the moment Bellarke became endgame, jsyk. They’re hot, he’s obviously attracted to her, they snark at each other, there’s touching involved, they’re bonding over a (newly) common interest....

Clarke at least obviously perceives them as co-leaders (following the “for now we make the rules” Charlotte story); she wants to talk about how they’re going to deal with the guns in camp. Those questions interest me a lot and, hey, do we ever find out how they DO deal with them, like what the rules for access to weaponry are? All that government-building stuff is of interest to me but w/e. Meanwhile, Bellamy sees Clarke as the obvious (sole) leader in his absence (he tells her to keep Miller close).

Bellamy’s experience with the glitter berries is ALSO negative, yet he also chooses to use them as a party drug. Maybe I just don’t have enough experience with drugs but is that not odd??

Jaha would definitely refer to the victims of the culling as “320 souls” who were “sacrificed” but is this also how Bellamy thinks of them? As SOULS? Or is he just really good at keeping his hallucinations IC?

Clarke playing with the bendy gun is the second most hilarious thing in this episode, second only to Lincoln knocking Miller out using his head. Clarke’s a riot. She would be so fun when drunk.

My entire Miller-is-a-drama-nerd headcanon comes from a post someone made about that 2-second moment he’s standing there talking to himself while high and I have NO REGRETS. It’s canon.

“Finn, babe, I know you’re grievously injured and need to stay lying down but the whole camp’s nutter-butter for some unknown reason so get your butt out here to enjoy the hilarity. This is priority one.”

Shame on everyone who doesn’t properly appreciate Stoner!Monty. SHAME.

Clarke is so efficient she uses her state of intoxication to do some problem solving.

She’s obviously a Daddy’s Girl. The excessive use of the word ‘kiddo’ alone basically confirms.

“Forgiveness isn’t about what people deserve” is a criminally underrated line. Especially given the running thread of forgiveness and absolution through the whole show. I agree with that meta from back in the day that Bellarke’s view of forgiveness in the first two seasons is shallow, that it’s harder than just “if you want forgiveness, I’ll give it to you” but I still think there’s something there in Clarke’s initial glitter-berry-fueled realization.

You know what I had always previously assumed that Raven was high when she said “You are the most beautiful broom in a broom closet of brooms” and I wondered, you know, why she chose to eat the nuts AFTER she saw the full effects of them, but now I think she was sober and that was her way of taking care of Connor (?). Because she doesn’t sound space-y when she says it, and at the same time Finn is dumping nuts into the fire and then he says “I got this one,” about another delinquent who is high, which makes it seem a lot more like they’re wrangling their wasted compatriots rather than getting wasted themselves. Which brings up the inevitable question: how did Raven and Connor get to talking about brooms??

Bellamy has explicit suicidal urges but also sees suicide, or death, as something he doesn’t really deserve. Which is fucked up but also...I wish that had come up more explicitly in S4 when so many other characters, including characters he interacts with, start talking about ending their lives. He tells himself (I’m assuming this is him and not Dax speaking through Jaha) that “life is a struggle.” Here he frames it as ‘the struggle of life is what you deserve as punishment for your sins,’ which is interesting enough though bleak, but perhaps he could find some slightly-less-bleak framing of it a (canon-verse) year later?

Bellamy’s confused face when he realizes his gun is a hallucination is the third most hilarious part of this episode.

The Bellarke story line in this episode (both in the sense of the Bellarke-relationship and the Bellamy and Clarke intersecting story lines) IS SO GOOD. Hot damn.

This scene by the tree is also why I still haven’t forgiven Clarke, like 10 years later, for walking away in 2x16. Because Bellamy didn’t run! She asked him to stay and he stayed! She offered him forgiveness and he knew, I’m sure, on some level, that it wasn’t that simple but he still came back! And she couldn’t do that for him.

“All I think about is how to keep everyone alive. But we don’t have a choice.” Already she’s seeing their leadership as pre-ordained (I think in part to alleviate her guilt for all of the things she’s already had to do as a leader, which we see in her convo with her dad weigh on her heavily), and this is the weakness Lxa exploits in S2. The hero/martyr complex.

Bellamy and Clarke walking into camp with the guns = the reason I’m bi.

Bellarke are so smart in this convo with Jaha: Clarke gives her speech first, and then Bellamy’s like “I see that doesn’t convince you, how about some of the coin of the Ark-realm: we make a deal. You live, I live. Everyone wins!”

Lol @ Finn thinking he’s a part of the leadership team.

I feel like one way of summarizing S1 was “how the first people back on Earth after the nuclear apocalypse set themselves up for another apocalypse” but then the show kind of...didn’t go there? Like they make their Oppenheimer references and there’s tons of stuff about accidental escalation and accidental war (a big fear during the Cold War irl btw), and Finn even lays it out here in this conversation with Clarke: bringing in guns is a first step down a dangerous road; this is how it starts. What happened to that whole theme?

I know I talk shit about this show a lot (probably more outside of tumblr than on, actually) but I really do honestly love it, at least in its first two seasons. Like this episode...that was some good shit.

[aviculor]

Truth be told, on my snk post, I should have described the whole thing with Christa/Historia. You know, the descendant of the German race’s true royal family (the lineage of Ymir the Nordic giant), who was forced to live as a commoner. The good guys depose the current house in order to install Historia as queen as per her birthright so the military would control the government and be able to carry out their plans without anyone getting in their way. I mean, I’m literally not even exaggerating.

I don’t know how anyone can even try to deny the overtones to this series. You think something can’t be fascist propaganda just because you like it??? This is beyond walking like a duck and quacking like a duck, scientists have performed DNA profiling with polymerase chain reaction analysis and it’s a motherfucking duck.